@ostrich2wrote:The information I've received on this has been somewhat ambiguous - I recently received this notification. I had one box which does match the models on the decommission list (i.e. SA E490-C), so it would make sense the notification would apply to this one.
However I currently have a much newer Nextbox, and the only model number I find on the labels does not match any of the listed model numbers (Technicolor 10242HD). I presumed therefore that this model should remain operational at this point. Nevertheless, when I happened to be making an unrelated service call and I asked the customer service rep if they could confirm this, they told me that this model would also be decommissioned, on the basis that "any Nextbox" model will be discontinued. However, the notification does not say anything like this, and doesn't mention Nextbox specifically at all. So I don't really know whether this will be an issue or not, it's hard to know if the person you're talking to really knows what they're talking about or not.
There are actually a number of reasons to retire old set-top boxes.
Since the PowerKEY issue was mentioned earlier, yes, the internal clock rollover is one issue that needs to be dealt with. It affects both the set-top boxes and equipment in the back-end that encrypts the stream. It is decades-old code, and it is a complicated problem to address because Cisco acquired Scientific Atlanta and then, years later, split the division up and sold off the pieces to different companies. The PowerKEY code is also baked into set-top box software, boxes that are no longer supported or maintained. To fix the software, source code had to be dug up in old archives, the build environments to compile code had to be recreated, and even the people who were familiar with the old code have long since retired or even died. The options for fixing the clock rollover issue are to either update code (which the cable companies would need to pay for) or go with Adara's solution, which is to implement a hacky workaround.
Rogers no longer sells or rents any of the set-top boxes that are slated for retirement. It's going to cost Rogers money to push out a software update, money that they will not get back. There's also a risk of bricking the old boxes. If Rogers plans to sunset Digital TV, there is no point in even going through this effort.
Retiring those old cable boxes will also allow Rogers free up bandwidth consumed by legacy MPEG-2 streams and retire legacy hardware in the back-end. However, this is a secondary concern.
Rogers is also in the midst of transitioning their HFC plants to mid-split, where cable modems will use the 5-85 MHz frequency range for upstream traffic and frequencies above 108 MHz for downstream traffic. The problem is that the cable tuners in legacy set-top boxes expect the 5-42 MHz range to be used for upstream traffic and frequencies above 54 MHz to be used for downstream traffic. Those tuners were not designed to receive the upstream traffic being sent by cable modems, especially at those power levels.
Another problem with old cable boxes (especially those that do not use DOCSIS for communication) is that they use out-of-band signals to update their channel line-ups, EPG and related metadata, software updates, etc. Yes, there are ways to deal with this... but these communication schemes are also somewhat proprietary so no only is it desirable to get of this traffic on the cable plant, you also want to retire the proprietary hardware in the headend that supports it.
Legacy hardware also complicates the migration from legacy CMTS/Integrated CCAP to disaggregated and virtual CCAP. As cable companies switch to DAA/R-PHY nodes, the new hardware technically can still support legacy STBs, but it's problematic to support ancient hardware that still have weird proprietary/non-standard behaviour baked into their hardware.
The old set-top boxes also require infrastructure in the back-end to manage them and allow them to register.
We are now at a point where it makes absolutely zero sense to keep Digital TV around anymore. It's probably costing Rogers more to keep the old infrastructure powered up than what they get from subscriber revenue. It should have also been obsoleted by a move to Fibre-to-the-Home. However, even with DOCSIS 4 on the horizon, and near-term plans to allocate more spectrum for DOCSIS 3.1, legacy equipment and infrastructure in the field weighs on Rogers' ability to evolve and innovate. The sooner that the old stuff can go, the better.
