It’s no secret that cable companies hate the Federal Communications Commission plan to make TV channels more widely available on third-party devices and applications.
The proposal would force pay-TV providers to make channels and on-demand content available to third parties, who could then build their own devices and apps that could replace rented set-top boxes. Supporters of the proposal say Comcast and other cable companies just don’t want to sacrifice revenue they get by renting set-top boxes to their customers.
But Comcast is willingly giving up some of that rental money by developing its own application for third-party devices such as the Roku, Samsung TVs, and the Nvidia Shield. The Comcast application isn’t quite what the FCC wants, since device makers would need Comcast’s permission to deploy the app. Nonetheless, Comcast’s own initiative could also save customers money by freeing them from rented set-top boxes.
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Source: Ars Technica – Why Comcast claims the FCC’s set-top box plan is a technical nightmare