First Fruits: Comcast, Moto JV Starts to Show Wares

Comcast and Motorola’s newly formed joint venture offered up the 1st peek of their work last week during a private meeting at the FCC. Calling itself Combined Conditional Access Development, the jv was formed in March to develop a next-gen conditional access system using Moto’s "MediaCipher" technology as a foundation. The companies haven’t publicly displayed the jv’s work and neither side was offering additional info Tues, but the demonstration seems to indicate they’re getting closer to taking the wraps off their project. The demo was part of a meeting that featured Comcast, as well as other cable operators and cable technology suppliers. They were detailing the feasibility of deploying downloadable security. In March, the FCC delayed the set-top integration ban to July ’07. A condition of the ban, which prevents ops from deploying set-tops with integrated security functions, is that the industry must submit a report to the Commission by Dec 1 outlining the feasibility of downloadable CA systems and a proposed timeline for development. C-CAD, S-A and Nagravision successfully demonstrated at Fri’s meeting their ability to download their respective CA systems over a set-top without embedded security, each using its own differentiated headend equipment. They also were able to download entitlement management messages that let customers access individually authorized levels of service. Comcast said additional work is underway to enable CA systems to be downloaded to a variety of set-tops and CE products in this manner. — Charter and Advance Newhouse filed a joint notice of intent to appeal the FCC’s set-top integration rules earlier this month. They’re concerned the order would prevent the Commission from entertaining cable’s argument that the ban should be eliminated.