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Essentially, the FCC has approved the use of embedded security in low-cost QAM tuners issued by cable companies to serve the needs of expanded basic cable consumers. The FCC evidently feels that many subscribers will benefit from greater low-cost access to advanced services through the availability of a less expensive converter box. No one really benefits from forcing cable companies and cable subscribers to use higher-cost STBs for expanded basic cable networks.

This waiver helps level the regulatory playing field, a small amount at least, between cable and satellite, which has been biased in satellite's favor for many years.

There is a down-side for some subscribers though: Cable companies have been considering a few options in the absence of the waiver. The temporary intention seems to generally be to rely on traps to secure the first level of advanced services (often called "expanded", including networks such as Disney, A&E, USA, FX, TNT, etc.) Traps are expensive to maintain, and therefore represent a significant cost of service, but the up-side of traps for consumers is that once you purchase access to a channel, you can receive that channel on every television in your home, with a tuner capable of tuning it in. With this waiver, the need for traps is relieved; instead that first level of advanced services can be secured with the DTA's privacy mode, which can be enabled and monitored remotely, representing much less cost. However, it means that QAM tuners without CableCARDs are unable to tune in these channels.

Despite this waiver, CableCARD still remains the means by which the industry complies with the federally-mandated requirement to allow consumers to use their own host devices. When considering the value of a QAM tuner a customer may own or purchase, whether it is stand-alone, embedded in a television, DVR, or PC card, a customer must always consider that the promise that that QAM tuner will work is limited to one signal service from each local broadcaster (and not necessarily the main-channel HD service), unless the QAM tuner is CableCARD capable and a CableCARD is installed and paired.

Incidentally, the security these boxes include is not really encryption, but more like the scrambling that cable companies used to secure movie channels from theft, back in the 1970s. It is really just intended to discourage cable theft -- not really safeguard content from piracy.