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Small Cable Chimes in on News Corp. Conditions Request

-- Posted by soullezz
on Saturday, May 3 2008

Small cable interests had some opinions on News Corp.'s effort to escape conditions placed on its DIRECTV acquisition in 2003, provisions that involve pay-TV competitor access to programming controlled by the media giant.

News Corp. has approached the Federal Communications Commission about the conditions tied to its deal for the satellite TV service. The company sold its controlling stake in DIRECTV to Liberty Media earlier in the year. And it has told the commission that it should no longer be tied to conditions that were part of its 2003 transaction.

The conditions are set to expire in 2010.

In its filing on the matter, the American Cable Association, which represents small, independent cable operators, said a granting of the News Corp. petition would erode the benefits gained from the conditions. The association said the conditions have protected competition by allowing for pay-TV company access to "must have" programming.

Also, the conditions have not resulted in any appreciable harm to News Corp., ACA said in its comments filed Thursday.

"News Corp's efforts to change the rules long after the game has started is certainly unreasonable," Matt Polka, ACA president and CEO, said in a statement. "But its attempts to deceive the commission and suppress their true intent to skirt the conditions of the previous order is unforgivable."

Dingell, Markey Call for Conditions on Sat Radio Merger

-- Posted by soullezz
on Saturday, May 3 2008

More lawmakers wrote Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin about the proposed merger between XM and Sirius, calling for conditions on the deal before any green light is given to the companies to combine operations.

A letter written by John Dingell, the Michigan Democrat and chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and Ed Markey of Massachusetts, chair of the House Telecom Subcommittee, made no suggestions one way or another about their feelings on the pending satellite radio combination. "We are not taking a position at this time on whether the commission should approve the merger," they said.

Instead, "If the commission decides to approve the license transfer, we believe the public interest requires it to take concrete steps to protect consumers," stated the letter sent this week to Martin.

Both Dingell and Markey said the FCC should require a merged satellite radio entity to adhere to pricing constraints that XM and Sirius have proposed to regulators. "Such a condition would ensure that a combined entity does not take advantage of consumers by leveraging its position as sole provider of satellite radio services by raising prices," stated the letter.

Also, the lawmakers said the FCC should force a combined entity to incorporate other digital audio technology into their receivers, including HD Radio capabilities or an iPod port.

The FCC remains the only regulatory hurdle for the satellite radio companies to combine operations. In March, the Justice Department's antitrust staff cleared the merger.

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CaptiveWorks CW3000HD Media Center

-- Posted by soullezz
on Monday, February 18 2008

This item is available at EFTA.us.

If you are looking for a diamond, look no further. There is nothing on the market even remotely close to the Captiveworks CW3000 high definition media platform.

Aside from its ability to tune satellite TV, it has a DVD burner, a web browser (Firefox), and it can stream media to computers on your network or play media files from a network computer, play media files from a USB stick or (CD/DVD,) view IPTV channels over the internet, play satellite or internet radio channels, tune local TV broadcasts and it has the capacity to tune one channel and record another simultaneously. And did I mention games? You can add an external wireless (or wired) keyboard and mouse or you can just use the remote when you are not browsing the internet. You can even add your own hard disk drive (for storage.) And since I mentioned it, you can also add a second additional hard drive and use it as a windows computer (dual boot) with all the windows accoutrements you wish. You can also connect to a wireless hub seamlessly. There aren't many things this Linux based TV/Multimedia box can't do.

Setup went smoothly. Channel scanning was fast and simple to do. The CW3000 supports many different types of LNB's. It will take a little time to get used to how to navigate through the various menus and get to where you want to go, but there's nothing like a little exploration and testing to cure ignorance. Learning what button on the remote does what will take a little getting used to, but that's like any new remote control.

There are some issues regarding satellite hi-def channel viewing but nothing fatally flawed. First of all, the older units need a processor upgrade which costs about $60 for viewing mpg4 hi def channels, however mpg2 hi def channels will play without an upgrade. The newer version of the cw3000 comes complete with the upgraded processor but to scan hi def sat channels on any cw3000, an external 8PSK adapter is also needed. The cw3000 is designed to work with the Skywalker1 and the CW3K 8PSK adapters. Both of these products are solid and practically fail safe as long as they are not abused. About the only other problem I have experienced with the CW3000 occurred when switching between mpg2 and mpg4 hi def channels or the other way around. It may take one or 2 tries switching off and on differently formatted HD channels to get them to play, but I suspect that this is a software issue that will resolve in time. The Captiveworks developers are constantly hard at work improving their software.

The back of the box looks like most any computer because that's basically what the cw3000 is, a finely integrated multimedia friendly AMD computer with an Asus motherboard running on Linux. The operating system is stored on and boots from a 1GB internal USB flash drive. Every component and PCI slot has been setup with devices that are supported by the CW3000's operating system and drivers. Other types of devices one may wish to add are also supported which include massive hard drives, USB support for flash drives; mouse’s and keyboards among other things. The possibilities are too numerous to mention here but support is available for many devices that work with Linux. Most users will never need off the beaten path devices, but getting EVERYTHING out of this box that it is capable of delivering is an adventure to say the least!

Since I have been testing the older model with almost nothing to complain about (see above,) I used a DVI-HDMI adapter cable to hook up to my 52" Sony Bravia HD LCD TV. Analog audio out comes through a little green jack like the one on your computer's sound card or motherboard. The units ship with an adapter for analog audio which is a mini stereo to RCA cable. A coaxial S/PDIF audio output is also furnished and the newer version of the CW3000 includes an optical S/PDIF audio output.

Video outputs: for setup purposes or for use with a computer monitor instead of TV, a standard VGA monitor output is provided. For viewing the best quality Hi-Def video, there is a DVI output on the older version and an HDMI output on the newer one. The newer version has no composite output for video and the older version does, however both models support VGA, S-video and component (RGB) video outs which come in handy for older TV's without an HDMI or DVI input. The component (RGB) video output supports HD formats from 480i through 1080i. All modes of HD video are supported through the HDMI or DVI video outputs from 480i all the way through 1080p.

Once I learned to navigate the on screen menus and use the remote control, I discovered just how user friendly this box really is. Even software updates are just a couple of clicks on the remote away. Factory updates and 3rd party software can be applied either via an internet connection or USB flash drive. I know of no FTA receiver that can play .avi movies right from a USB stick to my Hi-Def TV. This one can and it can even author DVDs from common video files or burn music CDs. Indeed there are few computers that can perform these seemingly simple tasks without spending money on more software, more hardware and possibly suffering a brain cramp or two in the process. Such pleasantries are to be found all over this box. There is nothing on the FTA market today that has as many features provided with the CW3000. Its MSRP is a hefty $500 but for all that it can do for you, $500 is an amazing steal of a deal.

Want to know more? Join us at Dsscommunity.com for some chat.

-Conan

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Small Cable Chimes in on News Corp. Conditions Request

Dingell, Markey Call for Conditions on Sat Radio Merger

Ring in Spring Sale at EFTA.us!

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CaptiveWorks CW3000HD Media Center

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