What if, instead of renting a set-top box from your cable company, you could get all your TV channels and online video services delivered to a single device that you only pay for once?

The Federal Communications Commission could make it happen, consumer advocacy groups say. "An open set-top box market is a key component of freeing consumers from unnecessary monthly rental fees, and it would enable them to more easily access online video content right alongside their subscription TV programming," the groups said in a letter to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler yesterday. The letter was written by Common Cause, Demand Progress, Free Press, Fight for the Future, the National Hispanic Media Coalition, New America’s Open Technology Institute, and Public Knowledge.

Replacing CableCard

The CableCard standard created nearly 20 years ago was supposed to make the set-top box industry competitive. And it has succeeded to an extent, letting cable subscribers use TiVo boxes and other devices. But the FCC long ago admitted that CableCard had only limited success. About 99 percent of customers still rent set-top boxes directly from their providers and pay an average of $231.82 a year in rental fees, US senators found in a survey of TV providers last year.

Consumer advocacy groups say that set-top boxes like the Roku or Apple TV, or even game consoles and smart TVs, could replace the cable box for many Americans if pay-TV providers like Comcast, DirecTV, and Verizon adopt a new standard that doesn't require a physical CableCard.

A CableCard "provides the security component that ensures people only can access the channels they pay for," Public Knowledge Senior Staff Attorney John Bergmayer explained in a blog post last August. But CableCards have problems that have restricted their use mostly to enthusiasts rather than ordinary consumers.

"The technical problems include how a CableCARD cannot send signals upstream to the cable provider by itself, making things like video-on-demand impossible. The logistical problems include inventory management—not all CableCards are the same, CableCards can be put into an unusable state—not to mention the fact that, being physical items, they provide a pretext for the cable company to charge a rental fee," Bergmayer wrote.

Congress in December 2014 ordered the FCC to create a working group of technical experts to find a "software-based downloadable security system" that would essentially provide the functionality of CableCards without physical cards. The new standard is supposed to be technology- and platform-neutral. At the same time, Congress ended a rule that required cable operators to include CableCards in their own set-top boxes.

The FCC's newly formed Downloadable Security Technical Advisory Committee (DSTAC) issued a final report in August that contained two proposals for a software-based downloadable security system: one written by Public Knowledge and another written by Comcast.

(Clarification: Comcast contacted Ars to point out that the proposal was a collaborative effort by multiple members of the committee. Our story is referring to page 22 of the report, which says that one of the committee's working groups produced "two proposals for implementing a software-based downloadable security system" and that the proposal for "HTML5 Security APIs was authored by Mark Vickers, Comcast.")

The two visions

The Public Knowledge proposal said that pay-TV operators should implement network security and access control "in the cloud," and that security could be handled by "a well-defined, widely used link protection mechanism such as DTCP-IP."

Under this proposal, "Third-party devices would have access to the video content that users pay for, and would be able to offer their own user interfaces and sets of features (e.g., recording, ad-skipping)," Bergmayer wrote in his blog post. The third-party devices would be able to present pay-TV content from cable companies, telcos, and satellite providers right alongside online video content from providers like Netflix.

Public Knowledge, Google, TiVo, Vizio, and a few other groups created the Consumer Video Choice Coalition (CVCC) to promote this idea. In December 2015, the CVCC says it met with FCC staff to demonstrate a "competitive navigation device" that used "off-the-shelf equipment and open standards" to display video from different pay-TV providers.

Meanwhile, the proposal supported by Comcast and other cable companies would involve pay-TV operators building their own apps for third-party devices, while relying on the security APIs in HTML5.

"The downloadable 'apps' approach enables consumers to watch content from Multichannel Video Programming Distributors (MVPDs) and Online Video Distributors (OVDs) on an array of customer-owned and TV-attached devices, including iOS and Android tablets and smartphones, game stations, PCs and Macs, Smart TVs, Kindle Fire, and Roku," pay-TV operators wrote.

The companies argued that because consumers can access pay-TV content on a "wide and growing array of retail devices," there is no need for a technology mandate such as the one pushed by consumer advocacy groups.

Cable lobby fights back

The National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA), a cable lobby group, told the FCC last week that the CVCC proposal "would require re-architecting much of the MVPDs’ infrastructure, from back-office systems, to headends, uplinks, and central offices, delivery platforms, network equipment, content servers, and security components, as well as creating and deploying new devices for the home."

The NCTA said that the CVCC idea "requires consumers to lease a new government-mandated box from their MVPD in order to serve retail devices." (CVCC disputed this in one of its own filings, saying that "No separate device is necessary unless the operator prefers to provide one." Public Knowledge told Ars that cable companies could either provide new hardware or update the software on existing cable modems or set-top boxes in order to deliver pay-TV content to third-party devices.)

The NCTA also argued that open access to pay-TV content would let builders of third-party devices make TV service worse. Device makers could "rearrange, exile, or drop channels and overlay ads and drop apps and interactive elements that are parts of MVPD service," the group wrote.

"It would allow tech companies like Google to take content, slice and dice and re-purpose it in any way it wants, collect and monetize customer viewing data without Title VI privacy safeguards, and create an entirely new video service without negotiating or paying for it," the cable lobby said.

Bergmayer argued that the cable industry proposal "relegates third-party devices to the role of dumb terminals for cable apps," preventing device makers from creating user interfaces that are better than the ones cable companies provide.

No action yet

The consumer advocacy groups want the FCC to issue a notice of proposed rulemaking soon so it can develop rules by the end of this year, Bergmayer said. But there will be a fight. Cable companies "have all sorts of ideas that they think would be interfered with if people had competitive choice," he said.

The FCC hasn't said how it will rule or when it will make a decision. An FCC spokesperson declined comment when contacted by Ars today.

No rule changes being contemplated would prevent cable companies from building better services and user interfaces on their own set-top boxes. But consumers could have a wider choice if the FCC does what consumer advocacy groups are requesting.

"The intensity with which cable hates this idea is very hard to underestimate," Bergmayer said. "But nevertheless, I think it would be a huge benefit to consumers and competition."