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Satellite TV to FCC: we’re special, don’t make us open up

// December 21st, 2009 // Tech News

If you’ve tried to pump your fully-paid-up cable connection into, say, a computer running Windows Media Center, you’ve probably come up against the closed nature of pay-TV and the severe limitations of CableCARD. And what about satellite TV? Don’t even think about it. The FCC wants to blow open the market for third-party video devices , scrapping some of the current (failed) CableCARD rules and adding satellite providers to the list. The idea has a certain obvious simplicity to it: encourage huge innovation in the video content marketplace by crafting rules that allow third-party boxes to easily access TV shows and on-demand content from both cable and satellite providers (technically, the rules could cover all multichannel video programming provider distributors, or MVPDs).