Is this a good idea?

[BillyT2002]

Please vote whether or not you think this is a good idea and if not, please state why.

Recently I had a thought that the "Plug and Play" rules created by the FCC for cable television are good for the consumer. No one can doubt that the standardization provided by cable cards (thanks to Cable Labs) is great for us consumers.

Therefore, I think that the DBS satellite providers should be forced to create a similar Satcard which conforms to the same standards created by Cable Labs (in terms of form factor, communication protocol(s), etc). There is no reason it couldn't be easily done from a technology perspective and a smart card could still be used, if necessary, which plugs into the Satcard for authentication of DBS satellite services.

This would be great from a consumer perspective as it would make it so that a third-party company (such as TIVO, Replay or any other company for that matter) could create a digital video recorder which can easily accept source material from both cable television and DBS satellite services using existing Cablecard ports.

So, my question is this. Would it be worth having a "Petition for Rulemaking" regarding this suggestion drafted and submitted to the FCC for review?

[cdru]

Won't work.

Satellite technology is inherently different then digital cable. The biggest difference is that satellite signals use a much higher frequency then digital cable. I may be off on my exact numbers, but I beleive satellite is around 2.4GHz while digital cable is typically between 550-870MHz. This would require additional circuitry in every television to allow for both cable and satellite service. For obvious reasons this would increase the costs signficantly.

Don't forget also that with digital cable, all channels are transmitted across the same wire. With satellite, you also have the additional complication of selecting the right satellite, polarity, and transponder. Since neither satellite company has compatible hardware/switchs, this would require one side to adopt the other side's equipment (not going to happen) or to develop a new standard (also not going to happen).

Another reason is CATV has about a 60% market share as compared to about 20%. There are something on the order of 9500 different CATV providers across the country (although many are very small). Even if you take the largest dozen or two, there are still quite a diversification of hardware/systems effecting many people. With satellite providers, there are, for all intents and purposes, 2. Because the CATV market is so fragmented, unification has more value regarding CATV then satellite. If the roles were reversed, I would imagine satellite would have similar pressures.