Gadgetory

thanks for watching tech quickie click the subscribe button and enable notifications with the bell icon so you won't miss any future videos really old-school TVs used to have this knob on the front that you used to change the channels then when more than like four channels or whatever came about you needed what was called an analog cable box so that you could finally ditch the foil covered rabbit ears then they had a brilliant idea and started building decluttering our living rooms once and for all for a little while until digital cable hit the scene in the mid 2000s now I'm sure at the time I wasn't the only one who felt a little bit ridiculous going back to prehistoric looking clunky cable boxes to get these crispy new high-def shows and movies so why did they do it well at first there was actually a real technological reason for those set-top boxes just because a TV could accept an analog cable signal with its built-in tuner didn't necessarily mean that it could accept a digital one hence the need for a separate box then fast-forward to 2018 and not only do most TVs have digital tuners built in but they have like smart features that can handle use cases all the way from video conferencing to casting YouTube videos to streaming other paid services like Netflix so what gives now unsurprisingly a big part of the answer has to do with the cable company's long-running battle against piracy back in the analog cable days the cable industry had an uphill battle on its hands unless a technician showed up on site it was very hard if not impossible to guarantee that a user hadn't spliced together some wires to piggyback on a neighbor's TV signal and the courts ruled that yes users are allowed to have VCRs and they are allowed to record their favorite shows for their own consumption so digital content was an opportunity to take control of the situation using digital rights management or DRM in the form of these physical boxes that decrypted the signal and had to be bought or leased directly from the provider wait hold on a second - I can access plenty of my copy protected programs with a smartphone and this doesn't need a big clunky box on it ok so it's true then that you don't need powerful hardware to decrypt a scrambled or a copy protected Desperate Housewives signal in fact around ten years ago there was a push to get a technology called cable card into more TVs these were small devices that used the old PC card form factor that you could insert into a supported TV or even computer with a digital tuner that would authorize you and let you start watching no set-top box required well gee that sounds great doesn't it the major issue was that cable cards only supported one-way communication meaning that consumers would miss out on program guides on demand and pay-per-view options and DVR functionality and although American cable providers have been required to offer cable cards since 2011 by that time the technology had already basically failed due to its technical limitations and reluctance from the cable companies to support it earlier as they wanted to instead hang on to their own proprietary content protection schemes these days finding a new TV with a cable card slot built in is virtually impossible and successors that allowed two-way communication never really took off due to weak industry support from both cable providers and groups like the MPAA who were fearful of a government mandated one-size-fits-all approach although the industry maintains that it simply wants to be able to keep its own systems to protect content creators and continue innovating many skeptical consumers have opined that the suite revenue they get from those monthly box rental fees doesn't hurt matters either whatever the reason the industry fought hard against a 2016 FCC proposal to allow consumers more choice when it came to set-top boxes such as buying them from third parties and to this day in the u.s. anyway there's no practical way to get digital cable without renting a box from your provider a source of frustration for many as even though many cable company now allow you to stream most channels online through a smart TV app this method is more prone to buffering and slowdowns which you can learn more about up here that and cord cutting just still isn't viable for those who want to watch networks that require a cable subscription in order to stream them so bottom line if you want to get a legit full fat digital cable stream to your sleek OLED TV you'll probably still have to put up with giving up a pound of flesh every month for our clunky cable box but I don't know maybe there's something they could do to make them more tolerable like like how about RGB lighting do you find yourself racing against the clock as a freelancer well it's challenging but thanks to the growth of the Internet there's never been more opportunities for the self-employed self-employed people like me and soon-to-be Colton to meet this need check out fresh books cloud accounting software designed for the way you were just kidding : it's the simplest and easiest way to be more productive more organized and most importantly get paid faster you can create and send professional-looking invoices in less than 30 seconds you can set up online payments with just a couple of clicks and get paid up to four days faster and you can see when your client has seen your invoice to put an end to the guessing games first books is offering a 30-day unrestricted free trial to our viewers so go check it out at FreshBooks dot-com slash tech quickie we're gonna have that link below and enter tech quickie and how did you hear about us section thanks for watching guys like dislike check out our other channels leave a comment if you have suggestions for future fast as possible videos and subscribe do it as fast as possible because that's the channel you're on subscribe now immediately as fast as possible bail