In our last episode, we were discussing how standard practices evolved into de facto standards in the early years of the cable TV business and many of these standards became adopted into franchises, rules and regulations. That took us through the coaxial period. A common theme in my articles has been that, although rules and regulations may be initially painful, they improve our industry. They make our industry better and stronger. No pain, no gain.
      The next phase of the cable industry brought us into the hybrid fiber/coax network era. As we came into this era, we met co-workers with differing backgrounds and legacies from our own. The telephone industry came into cable TV, partnering with traditional cable operators, and brought with them their love of TLAs (three letter acronyms). These TLAs were usually based on shelves of documents defining requirements and practices. These new rules and regulations were being adopted into our industry at a rapidly growing rate. Our industry became better for it too. The new rules and regs, with the new technologies, brought us increased reliability and more professionalism in our operations.
      Subscribers have had a love-hate relationship with cable set-top boxes for years. When cable added a STB to tune new channels, subscribers loved it because it brought them new programming choices. Consumer electronics manufacturers then added additional tuning capability to TV sets to eliminate the need for the box. Subscribers who bought those TV sets dropped their cable boxes. Cable operators began scrambling pay services and those "cable-ready" TV sets now needed a box and subscribers hated that box because it got in the way between the viewer and the TV set’s features.
      In the '90s the cable industry began working with the consumer electronics (CE) industry to develop a solution where CE could build a TV set with appropriate hardware and software to accommodate a CableCARD, which would provide the decryption function. The SCTE had begun a standards development program and now many of these digital TV standards have been adopted into the FCC's rules. Once again we have a case where the standards we developed were now rules and regulations.