I'd say that there's a good chance that the Space mods will nip this thread in the bud, right about here, where it went off the rails into politics. I'll try to skirt the boundary...

It's true that the only reason we have HD at all, a couple of decades after it became feasible, is because the Federal government stepped in to break a classic marketplace standoff. Broadcasters and set manufacturers both said they loved the concept, but neither wanted to go first. It took a third party to finally lay down the law and set a date when everybody had to change at once. Congress passed the law and charged the FCC with implementing the changeover.

The FCC doesn't have much say over cable systems. They're regulated in some states at the state PUC level, in others at the municipal level. I'm not sure that overcompression is really a technical standards issue anyway; it's more a matter of how businesses are using an existing standard and twisting one of its knobs. I'm guessing that it can better be addressed at the state/local regulatory level as a quality-of-service issue. Cable systems are monopolies that are granted a franchise, and they can be threatened with losing the franchise if they screw their customers too badly. Theoretically, anyway, depending on whether your PUC has any sort of spine. Good luck with that.