Two of my favorite new technologies were actually new in 2012; one was new to me.

Fav No. 1: Voice mail that comes over as a transcripted email. I like it because it saves at least four steps common to retrieving messages. Plus, the transcriptions are so bad, they’re great! In fact, they’re downright hilarious.

The steps saved: Instead of having to unlock your phone (step 1), dial into voice mail (2), enter a password (3) and listen through who knows how many other messages (4-plus), you get an email transcription.

If you’re a marketer, you already know what drives you nuts about engineers — and vice versa.

Usually, it festers around who calls the shots on new product development.

Marketers, and especially those with packaged goods experience, want earlier involvement.

Engineers usually hear this lament many months (or years) after they begin writing densely technical, often inscrutable requirements. They want informed direction, sooner.

ORLANDO -- Finally! Someone is going to see what it takes to widen cable’s upstream path.
At last week’s SCTE Cable-Tec Expo here, attendees burrowed into an opening session featuring engineers from mid-sized operators. Massillon Cable general manager and technical operations manager Kelly Rehm made this understated but momentous declaration: “One of the projects we’re working on next year is to go to 85 Megahertz, to improve the return path.”
In the hall, an audible murmur: “Did he say what I think he said?”

It happens about every decade, and the third one is almost upon us: A new standard for video compression, bound to make video shipping better.

It’s called “HEVC,” for “High Efficiency Video Coding.” You’ll see it demo into the industrial mainstream at the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show in January, and into your handhelds and TVs a year hence from that.

Maybe this is happening to you, too. A conversation begins. It’s about over-the-top video, or usage-based broadband, or any of the tangents that go with the new world of video on TVs and screens not necessarily connected to a set-top box.

Then you hear it: “Title 6 video.” Here’s an example, from several batches of notes. “Look. To be a multichannel- video provider (MVPD), you have to comply with the Title 6 rules.” Here’s another: “Anyone with a video server at the edge of the network wants to think they’re an MVPD. But they’re not Title 6.”

And because “Title 6″ is a term that’s been around so long (nigh on 30 years), the natural reaction is to nod solemnly: Ah yes. Title 6.

Which raises the question: What is Title 6 video?

Short version: It’s an outgrowth of the Communications Act, and is the chapter that includes the Cable Act, etched in 1984. Title 1 is general info; Title 2 regulates common carriers; Title 3 applies to broadcasters; and so on up to Title 6, cable.

It mandates all the things one needs to do, in order to be a multichannel video provider. Or, in regulatory lingo, an MVPD.

Here’s a sampling of what’s in the Title 6 rules: Franchising. Closed captioning. Must-carry. Ownership. Emergency alerts. Blackouts. PEG (public, education and government) channels. Program access. Navigation devices.

There’s more, but it turns out that Title 6 is more dated than practical these days, given the volume and pace of technological change over the last 28 years. Why? Those rules were made at a time when signal paths were in silos, and few of them. Phone service came from the phone company over twisted pair. Cable TV came from cable operators over their plant.

These days, everything’s an app, with plenty of pathways into the home.

Should any guy with a video server at the edge of the network be considered an MVPD, without complying with Title 6 commitments? The knee-jerk answer is no. But maybe a better question is this: Rather than try to shoehorn old rules into a new scene, why not ask what’s to be expected from video providers?

There are those who would say that the over-the-top video community views such regulations as a tool kit, from which to help themselves to the assets of others. Take the good or doable parts - think program access and compulsory copyright. Leave the rest, like retransmission consent and the complexity of the Title 6 obligations.

That’s a very short look at a very complicated cog in the tech regulatory machinery. More to come.

Stumped by gibberish? Visit Leslie Ellis at translation-please.com or multichannel.com/blog.