The CableCard—that small slab that lets a TiVo tune into cable by authenticating its connection—would lose a regulatory safeguard under a bill nearing introduction in Congress.

The "‘Consumer Video Device Cost Savings Act" proposes to squelch the authority of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to make cable operators use CableCards in their own boxes—a rule enacted in 2007 that discourages second-class treatment of third-party devices like TiVo DVRs.

"In today’s competitive video marketplace, cable operators have no incentive to make it more difficult for their customers to use preferred devices to access their video programming," a draft dated July 24 reads. A subsequent draft from earlier this week drops that finding and cites a shorter name, "Consumer Choice in Video Devices Act." The bill, sponsored by Rep. Robert E. Latta (R-OH), would bar any FCC "rule or policy that prohibits a multi-channel video programming distributor from placing into service navigation devices for sale, lease, or use that perform both conditional access and other functions in a single integrated device." (Latta's office declined comment.)

The National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA) thinks that's a good, overdue idea, citing $1 billion in added subscriber costs since 2007 and an extra 500 million annual kilowatt hours of electrical use. (The former number covers operator-leased hardware, although it can be cheaper to use a CableCard with a tuner bought elsewhere. The latter comes from Energy Star guidelines allowing 15 kWh per year for a CableCard, against 60 kWh for a minimal cable box without HD or DVR features; older models use much more.)

And NCTA says having more than 42 million CableCards in operator-supplied hardware (versus about 603,000 in third-party gear) ensures continued support. Meanwhile, satellite broadcasters face no such requirement.

"The insurance is already there," said NCTA General Counsel Neal Goldberg in a phone interview. "They've got 40 million-plus boxes in the game."

An electronics-industry executive who didn't want to be identified further agreed. "If they never bought another set-top for their own use with CableCard, it's not like their networks would stop supporting CableCard," he said.

But TiVo and others worry more about CableCard's potential replacements. "The cable guys want to 'end of life' CableCard [and] move on to new security techniques without making a nationally standard successor solution available," wrote TiVo General Counsel Matt Zinn in an e-mail. He predicted higher prices for CableCards that will be left out of new features. (They already can't get many video-on-demand services.)

Hauppauge Computer Works cofounder and CEO Ken Plotkin expressed the same fear about post-CableCard authentication in his company's WinTV receivers. "The issue with 'embedded conditional access' is that each cable operator has their own encryption system, and it is impractical for a small company to develop the decryption technology for each."

Few other firms ship CableCard-ready devices—many gave up after apathetic or inept support from cable before the integration ban and a 2010 set of rules that required operators to let subscribers pop in a card instead of waiting for a service call.

But this fall, Samsung plans to ship a Smart Media Player that would receive cable as well as Internet video services—a combination absent from cable boxes. Samsung is not taking a position on Latta's bill.

Even without that, the regulatory framework meant to open cable hardware has been fracturing. In October, the FCC allowed operators to encrypt basic cable, ending the ability of QAM (Quadrature Amplitude Modulation) tuners to receive local, public, educational, and government channels. In April, it granted Charter an encryption-ban waiver so it could implement downloadable security schemes that electronics vendors might incorporate into future products.

And in January, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit struck down a set of FCC regulations that constrained satellite broadcaster Echostar—but some of those rules, not at issue in the decision, covered CableCard deployment. Last month, TiVo petitioned the FCC to reinstate them.

Nobody here seems to love CableCard all that much—it had one job, to promote an open market for cable gear, and it hasn't done that. (One does exist in Europe, where EU regulations mandate the "DVB-C" standard.) But the Latta bill would erode the FCC's leverage to shape any replacement.

"Once a successor to CableCard is in place, we can [be] thinking about how to phase out some CableCard-specific rules," wrote Public Knowledge Senior Staff Attorney John Bergmayer. "But that should be the FCC's job—this level of statutory micromanagement is not helpful."