Chairman Wheeler: Comcast’s TV app proves the FCC is right about set-top boxes

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler is a fan of Comcast's plan to bring its TV service to customers without traditional set-top boxes.

Comcast putting set-top box functionality into Samsung smart TVs and Roku devices without charging a monthly set-top box fee "points the way forward" and proves that industry complaints about proposed FCC rules are misguided, Chairman Wheeler said. "I think that what Comcast just did is proving our point that you can take a third-party device, put set-top box functionality into it, and protect copyright, protect the economic ecosystem, not have to rebuild the network, and all these other horrible things that the industry has [claimed would happen]," Chairman Wheeler said. "That is the essence of our proposal, that you can safely move content to a third-party device."