AllVid was a proposal to develop technology enabling smart broadband-connected video devices to access the content on the managed networks of cable operators, telcos, and satellite-TV operators. It was initially proposed in the U.S.

Federal Communications Commission The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains jurisdicti ...

's (FCC) National Broadband Plan in 2010. The AllVid hardware would act as a universal

adapter An adapter or adaptor is a device that converts attributes of one electrical device or system to those of an otherwise incompatible device or system. Some modify power or signal attributes, while others merely adapt the physical form of one c ...

for all types of

pay TV Pay television, also known as subscription television, premium television or, when referring to an individual service, a premium channel, refers to subscription-based television services, usually provided by multichannel television providers, b ...

content such as video-on-demand and pay-per-view, as well as interactive programming guides, delivered through a wide variety of means, including

cable TV Cable television is a system of delivering television programming to consumers via radio frequency (RF) signals transmitted through coaxial cables, or in more recent systems, light pulses through fibre-optic cables. This contrasts with broa ...

satellite TV Satellite television is a service that delivers television programming to viewers by relaying it from a communications satellite orbiting the Earth directly to the viewer's location. The signals are received via an outdoor parabolic antenna commo ...

VDSL Very high-speed digital subscriber line (VDSL) and very high-speed digital subscriber line 2 (VDSL2) are digital subscriber line (DSL) technologies providing data transmission faster than the earlier standards of asymmetric digital subscriber line ...

IPTV Internet Protocol television (IPTV) is the delivery of television content over Internet Protocol (IP) networks. This is in contrast to delivery through traditional terrestrial, satellite, and cable television formats. Unlike downloaded med ...

, and Internet TV. AllVid was intended to replace

CableCARD CableCARD is a special-use PC Card device that allows consumers in the United States to view and record digital cable television channels on digital video recorders, personal computers and television sets on equipment such as a set-top box not pr ...

. Unlike CableCARD rules which only applied to cable operators, AllVid would apply to all Multichannel Video Programming Distributor’s (MVPDs) including satellite and telco companies. As of January 2017, AllVid was never adopted or developed.

Design

The FCC has proposed several design aspects to AllVid while soliciting feedback from interested parties on a final specification before going forward for rulemaking. Major elements of the FCC's AllVid proposal include: *Gateway device capable of decoding six video streams and feeding through a home network to various devices.
AllVid Notice of Inquiry
', p.10, 25 FCC Rcdbr>4284
/ref> *Adapter device capable of decoding two video streams and feeding directly to a television or consumer electronics device. *Physical connection using

100BASE-TX In computer networking, Fast Ethernet physical layers carry traffic at the nominal rate of 100 Mbit/s. The prior Ethernet speed was 10 Mbit/s. Of the Fast Ethernet physical layers, 100BASE-TX is by far the most common. Fast Ether ...

Ethernet Ethernet () is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 1 ...

. *

Internet Protocol The Internet Protocol (IP) is the network layer communications protocol in the Internet protocol suite for relaying datagrams across network boundaries. Its routing function enables internetworking, and essentially establishes the Internet. ...

as a communications protocol between the AllVid gateway and end devices. *Encryption and authentication using the

DTCP-IP Digital Transmission Content Protection (DTCP) is a digital rights management (DRM) technology that restricts digital home technologies including DVD players and televisions by encrypting interconnections between devices. This permits the distribut ...

standard used by the

Digital Living Network Alliance Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA; originally named Digital Home Working Group, DHWG) was founded by a group of PC and consumer electronics companies in June 2003 (with Intel in the lead role) to develop and promote a set of interoperability ...

.
AllVid Notice of Inquiry
', p.11, 25 FCC Rcdbr>4285
/ref> *Content ordering and billing for VOD and PPV services may be handled via gateway generated screens but additional options are requested. *Service discovery may use

Universal Plug and Play Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) is a set of networking protocols that permits networked devices, such as personal computers, printers, Internet gateways, Wi-Fi access points and mobile devices to seamlessly discover each other's presence on the ...

, as suggested by

TiVo TiVo ( ) is a digital video recorder (DVR) developed and marketed by Xperi (previously by TiVo Corporation and TiVo Inc.) and introduced in 1999. TiVo provides an on-screen guide of scheduled broadcast programming television programs, whose fea ...

, but other proposals are invited. *Content encoding is proposed to support multiple

codecs A codec is a device or computer program that encodes or decodes a data stream or signal. ''Codec'' is a portmanteau of coder/decoder. In electronic communications, an endec is a device that acts as both an encoder and a decoder on a signal or d ...

to allow devices flexibility in choice of video formats without requiring transcoding by the gateway.
AllVid Notice of Inquiry
', p.12, 25 FCC Rcdbr>4286
/ref>

Responses

Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

has supported the AllVid proposal, stating that "Google supports an all-video (“AllVid”) solution like the one put forth in the NOI. Consumers would be well-served by having such an inexpensive universal adapter available at

retail Retail is the sale of goods and Service (economics), services to consumers, in contrast to wholesaling, which is sale to business or institutional customers. A retailer purchases goods in large quantities from manufacturing, manufacturers, dire ...

, which would feature an easy-to-use, common interface, and employ nationwide interoperability standards to connect to televisions, digital video recording devices (“DVRs”), and other smart video devices. These navigation devices effectively would separate the network interface from the device functionality, making video more “portable” across platforms and devices." The AllVid proposal has been criticized by the

Motion Picture Association of America The Motion Picture Association (MPA) is an American trade association representing the five major film studios of the United States, as well as the video streaming service Netflix. Founded in 1922 as the Motion Picture Producers and Distrib ...

for providing insufficient protection against

copyright infringement Copyright infringement (at times referred to as piracy) is the use of works protected by copyright without permission for a usage where such permission is required, thereby infringing certain exclusive rights granted to the copyright holder, ...

by unauthorized

multichannel video programming distributor Multichannel television in the United States has been available since at least 1948. The United States is served by multichannel television through cable television systems, direct-broadcast satellite providers, and various other wireline video pro ...

s and by

AT&T AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the world's largest telecommunications company by revenue and the third largest provider of mobile ...

for preempting market forces already underway.

Industry alliance

On February 16, 2011 several companies announced the creation of the AllVid Tech Company Alliance. This group works to support implementation of the AllVid standard and specifically addresses issues raised by the

National Cable Television Association NCTA – The Internet & Television Association (formerly the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, and commonly known as the NCTA) is the principal trade association for the U.S. broadband and pay television industries. It represents ...

(NCTA). Alliance members include: *

Best Buy Best Buy Co. Inc. is an American multinational consumer electronics retailer headquartered in Richfield, Minnesota. Originally founded by Richard M. Schulze and James Wheeler in 1966 as an audio specialty store called Sound of Music, it was rebra ...

Co., Inc. *

Inc. * Mitsubishi Digital Electronics America *

Nagravision Nagravision (or Nagra Kudelski or simply Nagra) is a company of the Kudelski Group that develops conditional access systems for digital cable and satellite television. The name is also used for their main products, the Nagravision encryption syste ...

* SageTV, LLC *

Sony Electronics , commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professional ...

Inc. *

Inc. - TiVo withdrew from the group in 2014

Successor proposals

Unlock The Box

In January 2016, FCC chairman

Tom Wheeler Thomas Edgar Wheeler (born April 5, 1946) is an American businessman and former government official. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as the 31st Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. He was appointed by President Bar ...

proposed rulemaking to "unlock the

set-top box A set-top box (STB), also colloquially known as a cable box and historically television decoder, is an information appliance device that generally contains a TV-tuner input and displays output to a television set and an external source of s ...

" and the FCC voted to move forward with the proposal in February 2016. Critics claimed that this proposal was essentially AllVid which Wheeler refuted. The FCC never had a vote to adopt the proposal because Wheeler could not get a majority of commissioners to support it. In September 2020 the FCC closed the navigation device proceeding and eliminates CableCARD support and reporting requirements., 4 December 2020

References

External links

In the Matter of Video Device Competition
(Proceeding 10-91) on the Electronic Comment Filing System from the FCC {{North American DTV Digital rights management standards Federal Communications Commission Cable television technology Set-top box