Will you miss me?

As of July 1 the FCC has ruled that cable TV subscribers will no longer have to rent set-top boxes from their cable companies, reports BusinessWeek. Cable TV subscribers currently number 65 million in the US.

Cable operators are now prohibited from distributing set-top boxes, which contain the "conditional access" security pieces that convey a user's paid preferences to the cable company. The security pieces will instead appear within a CableCARD, an item that can be purchased independently by consumers.

This ruling means a number of technologies can serve as the set-top boxes of tomorrow, including DVD players, computers, televisions or mobile phone providers such as Motorola and Cisco. And it would certainly interest TiVo, Apple or Sony to join the game if so inclined.

At present only a handful of third-party products exist on the market to satisfy the CableCARD need. These include TiVo Series3 recorder, a few CableCARD-ready big-screen TVs and a few high-end Windows Media Center PCs with cable tuners, courtesy of ATI.