It looks as though we’re moving closer to the point when HD content will be standardized by cable operators to run across devices such as smartphones, PCs, and tablets in home networks. The Federal Communications Commission has recently ordered TiVo Inc. and cable operators to include support for HD streaming in their cable boxes as well as HD video recording on external devices. FCC wants to see top boxes supporting what it calls the new “open industry standard” by June 2, 2014. Meanwhile, cable companies with less than 400,000 subscribers are given up until the 2nd of September, 2014 because of the “difficulty they may have obtaining compliant equipment to meet the deadline.”
Two years ago, the FCC required cable operators to “ensure that they provide high definition set-top boxes, except unidirectional set-top boxes without recording functionality” and that they “comply with an open industry standard that provides for audio-visual communications including service discovery, video transport, and remote.” TiVo Inc. questioned the FCC’s “open industry standard” in July this year, arguing that “if each cable operator deploys set-top boxes with its own understanding of an open industry standard, the result may be an outcome that is neither standard nor open.”
The FCC clarifies what the standard meant saying, “Open standards encourage interoperability by allowing industries to build devices and services that work together without consultation: a service or product that is offered according to a standard will work on any device built to the standard, even if the party responsible for the service or product has never had any contact with the party that made the device.”