Why Can't I Buy A CableCARD Ready Set-Top Box? 240
Al E Usse writes "Ars Technica does a write up of the problems that were not solved by the July 1, 2007 integration ban on integrated security in your cable box. The goal was to get everyone on the same page by requiring standardized technology. Just the same, the cable companies aren't really playing ball. 'The companies who make the boxes don't seem interested in selling to consumers [and] cable companies still push their own branded devices.' The article covers some deep background on the whole CableCARD mess, and concludes with the current state of the market: 'Based on June 2007 figures from the cable industry, 271,000 CableCARDs have been deployed. That's an astonishingly low number. 58 percent of all US households with a TV subscribe to cable, according to the NCTA, which means that 65 million households have at least basic cable.'"
Why not TiVo? (Score:5, Interesting)
(Yeah, yeah, I realize that the TiVo service subscription will put off people, but it's worth it.)
Maybe it's not the technology... (Score:3, Interesting)
My dad bought a 58 inch LCD open box from best buy a month or so ago. No rep explained it's functionality to him really. I forget the make now, but it had a cable card slot and a Hard drive for DVR. Off he goes to get HD from Time Warner. They say "hey, you need a box." They didn't ask what TV he had or if it was Card ready.
Moral of the story?
Come thanksgiving, I'm putting a Cable card in the TV for him and hope there is no ensuing SNAFU that prevents him from getting his HD channels. By himself, he would have had no clue what he needed. His only hope *I* see would have been to get an company cable installer who would see the situation and get him the card.
Analog cable for me.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Analog cable and a Tivo with lifetime service (buy one on eBay). That's the way to go.
Re:hackable? (Score:4, Interesting)
I think the more fundimental concern the companies have is the lack of control they would have over the whole system if they don't own it. People could set up services for free that would work better than the ones the cable company would try to sell (because they always halfass features like that).
The more critical question for PVR builders (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Bullhockey (Score:2, Interesting)
that is entirely the problem, and frankly if you wouldnt sell me any box you provide your business is retarted.
the point is that we as consumers shuold have a choice and viable alternatives to paying the outlandish fees that "you" charge while still getting the service we provide.
the whole pay you 6+ bucks a month for the box thing is getting old. the box should either be free or we should be able to buy it from and others. There are no good devices because everytime one was created YOU found a way to make it not work.
first there was cable ready tvs... wait i want my money so lets scramble everything so that they have to have a box
then there was the whole lets only scramble some channels thing which was slightly better..
then digital came out, and the whole one-way two-way problem was created.
its a load of bull crap.
and there is conveniant lockout to prevent other boxes from recording multiple things simultaneously without seperate boxes.
frankly the cable companies are right up there with M$ in my book.. except they are allowed to post fraudulent adds all the time... "no hidden charges just XX a month" oh wait but if you want to to actually watch it youll need a cable box a remote and to pay some other silly fees even though we said no hidden fees.
Ebay All Day (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Try buying a TV that supports CableCard (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't know your system, but here's why I'm trading my Verizon HD DVR box for an HD Tivo:
1. Verizon's guide is wrong about what show is on more often than Tivos was with Comcast cable in my area. neother is wrong significantly often, but Verizon annoyed me more often than Tivo on Comcast ever did.
2. Verizon's box has a habit of turning off when I'm watching stuff. in the first 3 weeks I had it this happened 3 or 4 times. Verizon replaced the box, but did say that this was a known and common problem, which they suspected was somehow related to the new software rollout just about that time. When it turns off, it's totally off as if I'd unplugged it, and I had to wait a few minutes for it to boot up again. I missed the end of a movie because of that.
3. Verizon's DVR refused to play back a number of recordings, giving an error message that they were "Bad Recording"s. There was a different error message I can't remember on one show that wouldn't play back. it suggested perhaps they were from channels I don't subscribe to. Sorry but wrong, I do indeed get the CW and Comedy Central channels as part of my default triple-play package channel lineup. I missed a few episodes of Smallville because of this, as well as South Park and a couple other shows. I do know that a standard box won't play back an HD recording. This problem is about standard shows (Comedy Central is not an HD channel) and also affects playback on the DVR box itself connected to my HDTV. This problem is not at all acceptable. Period.
OK, by tossing this box I lose on-demand, I lose Verizon's own guide, and pay-per-view becomes a phone-order item instead of a push-button item. And I won't get the future torrent support or cellphone scheduling.
I don't care.
What do I hope to get from Tivo? I expect it will be able to play back my recordings. This is by far the most important feature of a DVR box, and Verizon's box is failing to do that way too often for me to keep paying for it.
I'm not losing out on having a guide, I just get Tivo's instead. I'm happy to do that.
I never used on-demand, so I'm not missing that.
Will I miss torrents that I never had? No. Unbox is a good enough thing to replace both future-torrent and on-demand. I'm not even sure I'll use unbox.
The only thing I can think of that I'll actually miss is the other-room playback of recordings. That's kindof nice. Tivo says they would like to offer that in the future, it sounds like a political problem not a technical one. But I do still have my series 2 Tivo for the other room which can duplicate the standard def recordings there, and this feature is not worth paying for the Verizon box which may not allow me to play back a recording even on itself.
And future-cellphone scheduling, well, Tivo allows me to schedule over the net. That's just as good.
For people scammed by their TV manufacturer or ignorant salesman, their particular situation may suck. But I am extremely happy that cablecards exist, and that the cable industry is required to allow something better than their own piss-poor box to be used. That possibility is more important to me than the "convenience" of just using my cable operator's box. The lack of an alternative to what I'm seeing in Verizon's HD DVR box would be very unfriendly to the consumer, and I very much thank congress or the FCC or whoever did it for mandating the possibility of 3rd party alternatives.
Re:but oddly enough, shows work fine from bittorre (Score:4, Interesting)
Cable companies have had their chance to offer TV shows in a convenient and cost-effective format, and they've completely blown it. I'm not going to waste my time and deal with the hassle of conforming to their stupid DRM schemes, and ridiculous pricing (usually over $100/month for HD service, with terrible compression), when I can just get what I want on BitTorrent. Besides, most of the worthwhile shows are on the main networks and PBS anyway; for cable, the only channels with worthwhile programming are Discovery and Sci-Fi. $100/month for two HD channels? And I have to watch it on their schedule and with commercials? I don't think so.
FCC Fails Again - Vote with your Wallet (Score:5, Interesting)
This reminds me of a deadline a few years ago set by the FCC to include working firewire ports on set-top boxes. This would allow a digital connection to certain TV's as well as to recorders like D-VHS or computers (using D-VHS emulators.)
http://www.engadgethd.com/2006/02/01/does-your-cable-box-have-a-firewire-port [engadgethd.com]
That mandate deadline came and passed without compliance as well. Boxes never had ports, or had ports removed even though OEM's like SA and Moto included them, or had ports that weren't functional.
The FCC has been a joke since it was created. Like most of government, despite any good intentions, it has proved ineffectual in enforcing many of its own mandates that has resulted in loss to the consumers while effectively enforcing protections for certain corporations like the Cable Cos resulting in loss to competition.
For me, I've given up. I've basically voted with my feet and stopped subscribing to cable. If I hear about something of interest, I can usually download it or have a friend record it or wait for it on DVD and rent it. The result is that I watch less TV, which may be a good thing or maybe I miss things I would enjoy or maybe it doesn't make a real difference except that the Cable Cos, as well as the content creators, advertisers other related businesses and the FCC (through included taxes), are not getting my money because of this stupidity. You may want to consider the same.
Re:but oddly enough, shows work fine from bittorre (Score:3, Interesting)
Microsoft is like 90% of the way towards not just owning but pwning the entertainment center machine market. But what's holding them back, that last 10%, is the market droid bullshit. I guess that's a good thing for the rest of us, just like Vista's suckitude is providing the impetus for more open source development, cuz what need would there be for Linux if Windows did everything we needed and was mostly harmless, mostly enjoyable?
I would totally support a system that included micropayments at a reasonable fee for shows I was interested in seeing. But as is, they're charging an arm and a leg rate and DRM us so much, it feels like they should be paying us to deal with this bullshit.
Cable companies moving towards DCAS (Score:5, Interesting)
The real path in digital cable is ClearQAM (i.e. unencrypted digital cable) that will eventually transition to DCAS, with CableCard being the lame horse in the race. The Downloadable Conditional Access System (DCAS) [wikipedia.org] is better to the cable companies because:
1. They don't have to deal with any kind of external hardware in terms of inventories and so on.
2. Nobody from the cable company needs to go and activate the hardware (i.e. tens of billions in deployment costs for personnel, vehicles and equipment), because it's all done from the head end.
3. The Conditional Access system is inherently downloadable, meaning it can be renewed if cracked (similar to BD+ on Blu-Ray).
4. The Conditional Access system is embedded inside the chip with special design methods that prevent it from being hacked from the outside. Before you go off on me on this one, note that it's part of the contract when you license the IP that the hardware has a very specific path to transfer information that can't be addressed by additional logic and subjects you to an economic death penalty if you do - no more peeking into internal registers or external memory since all of that has to be encrypted from the inside and done so by design from the beginning.
5. Even if you do go to the extent of de-lidding the chip and attempting to find the secrets, the cable companies can send electronic bullets to disable a cracked device if so found.
6. Content recording and sharing is automatically DRM protected from the head-end's instructions, so only compliant devices within a particular approved secure media sharing framework can transfer the content.
It's a content producer's and cable company's simultaneous wet dream. The cable guys are interested ultimately in selling gravy (i.e. programming), not leasing or selling hardware that needs to be maintained, stocked, etc.. Even the satellite guys that I've talked to have said as much. When you also consider that Broadcom, the very dominant player in Set Top Box chips, is itself pushing DCAS, you can see where this is going. Heck, even Verizon last year tried to throw a monkey wrench in the works by writing a letter to the FCC so it could use DCAS for its new Fiber-to-the-Premises IPTV network. The poor bastards who get the shaft now are the companies providing digital TV chips with cable box functionality embedded, although this is also why Broadcom is intent on pushing this through as a first-mover advantage in the DTV chip market.
Don't fret too much on this one - it's all already essentially been decided for you. The unfortunate aspect of this is that the early adopters are going to get the shaft.
Re:Try buying a TV that supports CableCard (Score:3, Interesting)
That's exactly what I'll tell you. The reason my digital cable box is now plugged into my Myth backend is that it had no provision for deleting unwanted channels or making a channel list like my TV can for analog (and clear-QAM for my new TV) stations. It's amazing that they'd omit such a commonly-used feature so people might be more likely to watch their shopping channels.
If Comcast had just made their STB just -][- this much more user-friendly I wouldn't be using a DVR to skip all their commercials right now.
Re:Why not TiVo? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Bullhockey (Score:3, Interesting)