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.'"
Bullhockey (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bullhockey (Score:5, Insightful)
That said the other issue I have is that CableCards are only allowed in approved "closed" devices. There needs to be a way that I'm allowed to install a CableCard tuner in whatever device that needs it, my personal computer most of all, without having to do it exactly the way that the industry wants me to. I'm not a pirate, I just want to be able to watch at some future time on the PC of my choice (I know many people only have 1 but I have 4 or 5 in the house at any one time all capable of displaying the content if allowed) or on a mobile device. Heck I'm even fine if they somehow figured out how to force me to watch the commercials as long as I could watch them when and where I wanted to. It doesn't seem like the lack of cablecard tuners in unapproved pc's is slowing the piracy of TV much so why spend so much effort to do it?
Re:Bullhockey (Score:4, Informative)
He had no clue. First, many techs, especially contractors, are clueless. Second, everything Comcast does is braindead.
You can have CCs in any device, no approval necessary. However, there is no guarantee your STB will work with one unless it's been certified. Tivos do work, but only uses them one way. There are only Cisco and Motorola devices that are two-way, and allow on demand or channel guides. One of those bad boys will set you back about a grand, or more for the HDs.
The article mentions that the biggest reason people aren't using CCs is because there are no good STBs. That's totally not true. There are plenty made by Cisco (Scientific Atlanta) and Motorola. They just cost between $800 and $1300 and come with your cable service. There's just no point in buying one, although we will sell them if you want them. As for consumer-grade options, I can't answer that, it just seems that no PC component company wants to make a CC interface, and the only consumer STB is Tivo.
I just wanted to point out there are tons of cable cards out there, and they are part of the digital boxes provided by the cable company.
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No, we don't verify your device or anything.
There may be restrictions on what kind of device you call sell, regarding patents and licensing, but we don't check your equipment beyond "it works to your satisfaction." I don't write the software or build the hardware. But I do know we don't check to see if your device is approved. There are far too many CC-ready TV models for us to verify.
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That said the other issue I have is that CableCards are only allowed in approved "closed" devices. There needs to be a way that I'm allowed to install a CableCard tuner in whatever device that needs it, my personal computer most of all, without having to do it exactly the way that the industry wants me to. I'm not a pirate, I just want to be able to watch at some future time on the PC of my choice (I know many people only have 1 but I have 4 or 5 in the house at any one time all capable of displaying the content if allowed) or on a mobile device. Heck I'm even fine if they somehow figured out how to force me to watch the commercials as long as I could watch them when and where I wanted to. It doesn't seem like the lack of cablecard tuners in unapproved pc's is slowing the piracy of TV much so why spend so much effort to do it?
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Beats the shit out of me. Why do cinemas go apeshit about stopping people from bringing in camcorders when the movie is available on all the torrent sites a week before the premiere? It's not like we're talking the days of 80's mix tapes where each subsequent copy incurred a generation loss. This is digital and it only takes one good copy to get spread across the entire planet.
I have a VCR and could time-shift the shows I want to watch just fine. It doesn't look as good on my HD set so I just download and
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The article did not say it was the technology's fault. The market for simple STBs is not large enough to make selling them to consumers worth it for the manufacturers.
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No, I did. I saw it on Ars earlier. I'm responding to the the summary that blamed us for not playing ball. It blames the cable companies for not playing ball. That's BS. We'll sell you any box we provide. Do you really want to spend $1200 on an SA HD-DVR? Nobody else does, that's why we aren't selling them.
The problem is that there are no GOOD consumer devices. There just aren't. We can't help that. We aren't in the STB business.
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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
Re:Bullhockey (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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Most stuff is 'engineered' to die right after warranty, unless they offer extensive warranty support. Then its good for as long as you can 'extend the warranty'.
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Okay, you could sell us a $1200 SA DVR. But why are there not more companies that just make a
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Stop and Think This Through... (Score:2)
That would actually be a meaningfully more expensive box than just having everything mounted on a single board. Perhaps this is a legislated requirement. Very hard to say if this is true or not. Let's read on...
It works with our system just fine.
Now we get at the meat of the problem. The point of the legislation was to open the system in question up to OTHERS. As it stands, it appears I ca
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Now we get at the meat of the problem. The point of the legislation was to open the system in question up to OTHERS. As it stands, it appears I can buy a tv with a cablecard, but that's it. Motorola and ScientificAtlanta certainly don't have a card and driver for my PC at Worst Buy or even Fry's.
I'd agree this is a problem. But we don't manufacture the STBs. Cisco and Motorola both make boxes that work just fine on CableCards. We don't jigger our network strange to break any kind of standards compliance. We'd have no problem with a PCI card that let your turn your computer into a DVR, we just aren't going to manufacture the card. We use a standard and it works. If nobody else wants to make consumer equipment, there's little we can do.
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Why, it's as if the status-quo of charging ridiculous prices to locked-in customers has been maintained, despite the best efforts of regulators to circumnavigate the cable industry's phalanx-like defense of control it wields over its customers!
You're right, it's not the technology's fault. It's your ((boss's) ^ n) fault.
And what's this!
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Why not TiVo? (Score:5, Interesting)
(Yeah, yeah, I realize that the TiVo service subscription will put off people, but it's worth it.)
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Their box is guaranteed to work with their service, doesn't require internet access (or a phone line) in the living room to get guide information, is automatically waranteed for free as long as I'm already paying for the cabl;e service, is fixed in my home if I have an issue (or I can more quickly exchange it hassle free at the local office in per
Re:Why not TiVo? (Score:4, Informative)
Even better, there's the occasional offer to transfer existing lifetime service to the latest hardware, and a free year of service on the legacy unit, which can then be unsubscribed.
(Of my eight TiVos, two are lifetime, 5 are $6.95/mo, and one is a never-subscribed Series1 20hr unit. Two of the monthlies are also Series1 that I could let lapse and still be able to do manual recordings.)
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At least there's Tivo (Score:3, Informative)
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Let's see what happens when you call your cable provider and ask them to put a cablecard in a box you don't rent from them. At the gates of customer service hell that's called an "unsupported device."
Please, prove me wrong.
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Two days later, I had a technician over, who plugged the cards in and worked with me on getting everything set up.
No problems, no questions asked, and they even came back a few days later when one of the cards started malfunctioning, and replaced
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Oh yeah, this is
I must be new here
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Listening for the faint sound of crickets.
That's the problem with this whole situation. The best people can come up with is
that the single remaining PVR vendor finally has a unit that you can plug into a
digital cable line. Well having the choice between what the cable company offers
and the offerings of a lone voice in the wilderness wasn't exactly the stated intent
of the FCC here.
The next Tivo Corp to come along should h
This is just like (Score:4, Insightful)
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Or maybe most people just don't want to pay the true cost of their phone so the service providers have to find some way to make sure they can still make a profit! The fact is right now the market is completely dominated by the carriers so that all major manufacturers have a lot more interest in making certain the carriers want their phones then the end user does.
If this wasn't the case we would have seen dual carrier enabled phones a long time ago, not just add-ons to let you switch from carrier to carri
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Where the hell are you getting your phones? I haven't seen a phone in the last three or four years (except the iPhone) that couldn't use any old GIF or JPEG as a "stupid wallpaper" or any supported media file (first iMelody, then MIDI, then MP3, now just about anything) as a ring tone even when it's subsidy locked. And i'm not ta
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.
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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.
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So, instead of having 99 channels full of crap, and one with something interesting once in while, you have 999 channels full of crap, and one with someting interesting once in a while. And you pay more.
Color me a little skeptical.
The reason to go digital is to get the DVR in the msot convenient way (as opposed to rolling your own).
It's all in the ratios (Score:2)
It's like the internet, where we've got a reliable 99.99999999% crap-rating, containing every sort of garbage from the goatse man to Klingon Furry Fanfic to blogs about other blogs that are about blogging about blogs. There's just SO MUCH STUFF on the internet that you can always find something interesting to read, despite the overwhelming crapflood.
why so much of everything is crap (Score:2)
GOATSE IS NOT GARBAGE. It's a transcendental meditation on the flexibility of human nature. Get some taste.
The coward makes a good point, and it's important to remember this, as well. Despite what you think about 99% of what's on TV, it's only there because somebody is watching it.
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Ordered basic analog cable ("2-13"), plugged it into my TV w/QAM tuner, and bang, I have all the analog channels, a ton of digital channels, and a handful of HD ones. I don't care for PPV or any pay channels. But if you cared, you'd already have it.
I've called them and told them that it does this, so I'm not accused of stealing. They don't care.
So, the question is why BUY digital cable, as opposed to why HAVE digital cable?
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HD Broadcast + MythTV. THAT is the best way to go
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I don't have the room for a big fat hi-def flat screen, so for the time being, I'm standard-def only.
It annoys the hell out of me that cable companies charge for service AND extra for the ability to use that service on more than one TV. Gone are the days of people having just one TV... And don't get me started on DVR "re
The more critical question for PVR builders (Score:5, Interesting)
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Why would I want it? (Score:3, Insightful)
My conclusion is the reason you can't replace the cable company's box with your own is that no one would want to. This isn't a great conspiracy, it's just that the STB manufacturers aren't going to try to sell a product that no one wants. Why would anyone want to replace one box with another box that does the same thing? The only motivation I could envision is cost, but the rental fees for the boxes aren't usually that high.
For a consumer, using the cable card to use a better DVR or to get rid of the STB entirely is worthwhile. So, the market has responded by providing these options. However, there's no motivation for someone to choose a different basic STB than the one the cable companies provide.
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However, if you have a TV and/or DVR that supports CableCard, it makes it a hell of a lot easier to use all of that stuff together. That's what it's really for.
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I agree with you. For instance, what's the point of having a small flat LCD screen in the kitchen, if you need this big box to go with it. However, my point, and the point of the original article was that you can't buy a box other than the one the cable companies provide. You can, however, by a cable card enabled TV just fine. The uptake has been slow, and they are pricier than they should be, but there are plenty of models out there. (Because of the price, it may be hard to find a small
Ebay All Day (Score:2, Interesting)
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No one reads the Firehose Related Stories links? (Score:3, Informative)
If I dare try to change the channel at precisely the time that guide data is updated on the channel I am leaving, the box may fail to change channels, change to the wrong channel, or even crash. Every recording I make has to be padded by at least one minute start and end to avoid this bug, even back-to-back recordings on the same channel. (Networks shifting start and end times by a minute is exacerbating the problem.)
This requires me to disable the TiVo's Suggestions feature as they cannot be padded.
I can't use TWC's cable box at all with the Series1 units as they lack the ability to trim their recordings in response to a neighboring-in-time padded recording: one or the other recording would not be recorded.
I've been subjected to these boxes for more than a year now (I'm in one of their beta-test cites) and the company has thumbed its nose at local officials demanding a resolution to and restitution for the problems.
The only thing that has alleviated the problem is getting a CableCARD-enabled TiVo, though it too has had difficulty with cards that lose the signal and will not reacquire it without a restart or (disliked by TWC) ejecting and re-inserting the offending card which I've had to do three times so far. And of course it's the card in CableCARD slot 1.
This is 2007... (Score:5, Insightful)
TiVo is all you need! (Score:2)
1) TiVo
2) CableCARDs are not user friendly
The first one is obvious. TiVo Series3 and TiVoHD are the only set top units that are currently on the market because there isn't a call for any others. TiVo has been able to make ends meet because of a loyal fan base and recurring monthly charges. A competing product would probably not be able to even grab 0.5% market share between cable companies and TiVo. So it
but oddly enough, shows work fine from bittorrent (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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BitTorrent is the way I watch TV almost exclusively now. I don't have to pay for cable service (only cable internet), and I just download the shows I want to see, in full HD glory, and watch them on a computer connected to my HDTV. My wife really loves it because we can pause and rewind, and best of all we don't have to sit through obnoxious commercials. And of course, it's all free, except for the internet service.
Interestingly enough, Microsoft is sort of blowing it with their xbox live service. I picked up a 360 recently for the games, I didn't even know they were doing all that other stuff with it. And it's really a cool service -- naturally, it was developed by a third party at Microsoft's request. But they do enough stupid shit there that they ultimately make it not entirely worth my while. Yes, you can download shows "to own" but they provide no mechanism to move them off the built-in hard drive. The bigger dr
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You can stream movies off a Windows Media Center computer but only if all the DRM is happy. FUCK THAT.
Sort of. It's only in certain formats, which is irritating, but you can also get software which apparently re-encodes your video on the fly. Look into Transcode 360, I haven't tried it yet, but it seems to have potential.
what need would there be for Linux if Windows did everything we needed and was mostly harmless, mostly enjoyable?
Well, it already does that, so you'd better tell the Linux teams to stop working on their stuff. The need for Linux is obvious: choice. Even if I prefer Windows, I appreciate having the choice to move to Linux available if I should choose to use it. Hell, even though I think Mac OS is a h
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.
what a headache (Score:2)
I HATE the $20 (2x boxes $10ea) (on top of the huge amount we are paying for basically (every???) premium channel
If it was up to me I'd bag cable altogether (maybe mayb
I wanted Cablecard... (Score:2)
Right now, I pay $10/month for a piece of shit Scientific Atlanta DVR. I've had to get it replaced twice (waiting in long-ass lines at the cable company.) The set top box barely works.
So.. I asked about buying Cablecards. They told me I cannot buy them. Also, they told me each one costs $395/month to lease. Though, later, I found out it was $3.95/month to lease. I was also told that it takes a long
Why can't I buy a digital-to-NTSC set-top box? (Score:2)
We're now barely a year away from the day when they pull the plug on analog TV, and despite statements at the FCC website saying that "you can buy set-top converter boxes now," none are to be had. Not unless they mean $200-$300 video recorders that incidentally provide that feature as a side-effect.
Like Ars Technica, I, too, have been "standing on the doorstep, wad of cash in hand, yelling, 'Please take my money! I want to buy!' but a
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TV is for suckers, period. I would not have said it, if you had not asked, though...
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Or, you know, diapers for the kid...
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Yup. (Score:2)
Yup. I ditched cable TV about 5 years ago when I realized that I was paying my hard-earned money to get bombarded by commercials. After sitting down in front of the History Channel, Discovery Channel, National Geographic, Comedy Central, and other popular cable channels, I noticed that they always only played 5 minutes of program material, followed by 5 to 8 minutes of commercials, followed by 5 minutes of program, followed by 5 to 8 minutes of commercials,
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Too bad that's just flat out wrong. I would know, I have a Myth system that automatically skips the commercials, and it tells me how long the skip period is. On the worst networks, I'm seeing 4-4.5 minute breaks, and that's every 10-12 minutes, I'd guess. The only time it gets as bad as you describe is during sports, or
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Fine, he's wrong for the vast majority of channels and programs. And I, personally, have *never* seen this, except for, as I say, toward the end of movies or during sports programs.
I know that they did that when Lost aired.
I don't know what episodes you were watching, but I've been watching Lost since it started, and I've never noticed this behaviour.
Compare that to contemporary shows in which you get only 44 minutes.
Thank you for proving my point for me. If h
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That seems pretty unlikely, given that the programs are shot expecting a certain commercial break structure. Anyway, I watch Lost on whichever US network carries it (NBC? I don't remember...), so if it's got a 5x5 commercial break structure, I'd notice. Meanwhile, go download yourself an episode of Lost, it'll be 40 minutes long, meaning a 2:1 ratio of programming to commercials. And if they are breaking to commercial every 5 minute
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If that's the case, whoever is airing the programming in your area is actually *cutting out* some of the programming. Lost, just like other shows, is aired expected breaks in specific positions. Heck, major plot points, etc, are often revealed just before a break. So if they're changing the break structure, they're actively screwing around with the program content.
Frankly, I'm not even sure networks would *allow* a cable
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The "44 minutes" was in reference to contemporary shows that DO NOT go to commercial every 5 minutes, which does nothing to prove your point. I do not know the actual program length of the shows with more frequency commercial breaks (as I stated in my previous post), because I did not time how long they showed the commercials.
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After those channels got pulled, there was no incentive for me or around 500,000 viewers to continue subscribing. After that, I just realized I was paying for junk cha
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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).
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This message has been brought to you by people with more confidence than groundings in reality.
Re:hackable? (Score:5, Informative)
The cable company takes its encryption key and encrypts it with the card's public key, then transmits that over the public band. Every cable card device sees this, but only the target card (your card) is able to read it, and use the card's private key to decrypt it.
So now the card has been given the cable company's encryption key, and can decrypt the signal and let you watch all the sweet sweet porn.^H^H^H^H^H discovery HD. The cable company periodically changes its key, and it keeps a list of all the cable cards that are authorized and sends the new key to all those cards.
IF you had all of this working in software, then you could copy the cable company's key into as many other devices as you want. That way, you could pay for one TV, but have other TVs authorized. But, you would have to keep copying the key to all the other devices. You absolutely could not get perpetual free cable. The best you can do is pay for one but actually have many. Hardly even seems worth it.
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:4, Insightful)
No it's not. If I had such a service (and I have no intention of doing so), I'd do what I do now with my ~70 basic cable: block out channels. Religious channels? Begone! Shopping channels? Don't see them. Ad channels? Yeah right. Golf? Get real.
By the time I had blocked out all the channels I didn't want in the first place, I'd probably be down to about the same number I have now. 200 channels? No problem.
Unless you're now going to tell me that using digital cable/set top boxes/whatever, that one can't block channels. If that's the case, then there is absolutely no way I'll be getting any such service.
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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 feat
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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
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That seems *exceedingly* unlikely. But, as someone in marketing, I'm sure you've come to believe it.
We give away an on-screen programing guide that wouldn't be available with third-party hardware.
I hate to break it to you, but if your guide data isn't available via TMS, I'd be very surprised (unless your company is also in the business of authoring it's own guide data). And if it's in TMS, it's available to third-party hardware.
Trust me, 200+ channe
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b: I wanted the much larger capacity, and I'll throw a TB on it once the eSATA is formally supported.
c: Dual tuners == (Stuff I Want && Stuff the GF wants)
c: I WILL be getting an HDTV around January, when you can probably get a 40"+ 1080P for $1000.
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We did that in 2006. It had no effect.
As long as the bulk of voters are easily manipulable through expensive TV ads, the ultimate loyalty of politicians will be to those who fund the expensive TV ads.
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What happens when you have a combo STB that does both cablecard for "normal" TV but allows program downloads from the internet (ie, some future "tv channel" streaming feed standard)? It doesn't take consumers too long to
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It's like the RIAA and mp3s. While the cable operators are trying
to lock us out we are evaluating and building alternative solutions.
While the mundanes might not appreciate the DVR concept now, they
might latch onto "free cable" in the future.
Sandbagging Tivo with this cable card crap sent a lot of bright
people straight to all of the products that will be cable's undoing.
They have decided to make their premium option the most inconvenient one out there.
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I'm far from an uneducated consumer. I still pay Comcast to rent both my modem and my HD DVR (which, incidentally, uses a CableCard to handle decryption, protestations of incompetent Comcast support staff notwithstanding).
With the modem, I've come out behind financially, if you assume that the whole time I've been with Comcast I would have been able to use the same modem. But I doubt that, for two reasons. First, cable modems, like other cheap electronics, are prone to breakage. I've had one go south on m
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