While the Federal Communications Commission has okayed maybe going ahead with creating a market for non-proprietary cable boxes, Verizon FiOS customers who have been using their Xbox consoles or smart TVs to access a subset of channels instead of renting extra cable boxes for each television set in their home are about to be disappointed, as Verizon is ending these apps.

Ars Technica shared the e-mail that FiOS customers who are using the app have received. It doesn’t include every channel that the subscriber receives, but is still handy for people who already own a game console or smart TV and don’t want to shell out for another cable box.

On March 31, 2016, the FiOS TV app you are using to watch your FiOS TV programming through a Smart TV or an Xbox gaming system will be retired and will no longer be available for use. Sorry for the inconvenience.

But we have great news; you can watch your FiOS TV content using our FiOS Mobile app from your smartphone or tablet. This app allows you to stream TV content in and out of your home and so much more.

They can watch TV programs on a significantly smaller screen than the TV that you game on? That’s nice that they’re concentrating on mobile apps, but not much of a consolation. Verizon explained its decision to Ars Technica by saying that relatively few customers were using the Xbox app, which was available for the One and 360.

Apps like this were one of the cable industry’s arguments against opening up development on set-top boxes to other manufacturers: instead of separate devices, carriers have been developing devices that let us watch content on the devices that we already have. (Before you call them hypocrites, Verizon wasn’t one of the companies that signed on to this argument.) Yet these apps exist at the whim of providers, and they can cut back or limit channels, or as we see here, end the apps entirely.

Verizon kills FiOS live TV apps for Xbox and smart TVs [Ars Technica]

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