Cable Cards Not Catching On

[Konaguy]

Cable Cards Article

There are now more than 200,000 CableCARDs deployed by cable operators serving over 89 percent of the cable subscribers in the country, according to the latest quarterly report on the subject the NCTA filed with the FCC, on behalf of its members.

Cisco/Scientific Atlanta has joined Motorola as a source for multistream cards - cards that can work with so-called multistream devices, such as those running OCAP 2.0. MSOs should begin offering multistream CableCARDs in the next few months, the NCTA reported.

[mel]

Re: Cable Cards Not Catching On

Judging from the lack of response to this topic, it seems to confirm the title of your thread that "Cable Cards (are) Not Catching On." When I first saw this, I did not know what a cable card was! So I did a little research and found the following:

CableCARD: From the Wikipedia site:

CableCARD is the technology created by the United States cable television industry in response to government mandates by the FCC to separate the internal functions of integrated set-top boxes and allow third-party manufacturers to sell devices with built-in digital cable tuners directly to consumers. The rationale is similar to action the Federal government took in the 1970s when it required telephone companies to allow consumers to purchase their own telephones.

Existing integrated cable set-top boxes perform 4 basic functions:

1. Enable receiving and selecting digital cable channels
2. Uniquely identify the customer and authorize the features they have subscribed to
3. Decode scrambled digital channels and premium programming such as movie channels
4. Provide interactive 2-way communications for:
1. interactive programming guides
2. Pay-per-view
3. Video On Demand

Because of the FCC mandate, new digital televisions and other devices that are labeled DCR "Digital cable ready" contain:

* built-in support for function #1, receiving digital cable channels (via an internal QAM tuner)
* a slot for the current version of CableCARD (see photo here), which performs functions #2 and 3.

Oceanic / Time-Warner Cable: Their current web page on the CableCARD features offered and the cost:

The Time Warner CableCARD is a new technology that gives you the option to connect to cable TV without a set-top box on the new generation of Digital Cable Ready devices sold at retail.

The CableCARD provides you with direct access to digital and analog cable programming, HD (High Definition) programming, and subscription to premium cable channels like HBO, Cinemax, and more.

It will be a few years before I spend big bucks to upgrade to a digital HDTV set of any size. However I already have questions.

1. I know there was a mandate making TV set manufacturers to put in digital ready tuners into HDTV sets. I was looking forward to this, as I don't like the thought of paying extra for a digital cable company box.

2. It seems that with the CableCard you have to get that from the cable TV company in order to view content on your digital tuner equipped set.

Questions:

Does this mean that digital ready cable TV must use a cable card to get even the most basic content? What is the use of having a digital tuner if you still have to pay the cable company a monthly extra for the card?

I think it would be a good idea if the cable industry were deregulated to allow us to buy our own set top box or cable card instead of having to pay a monthly fee to the company.

With my all analog set up I don't have to pay extra for anything else except for the cable I already have coming into my home. This is what low end people like me want. Just a cable, screw it into the set and pay for only that. No extra boxes. No pay for use digital DVRs or anything like that.

I rather stick with analog until the feds outlaw it by 2009.

If TV signals were clear in my area I would dump cable in a heartbeat.

[GeckoGeek]

Re: Cable Cards Not Catching On

I rather stick with analog until the feds outlaw it by 2009.

I believe what will be outlawed is the transmission. There's no push at this time to remove it from cable. As far as I know cable is free to run it as long as they want. However, it will probably go away as they will want to do something else with those frequencies and the number of analog capable sets will be falling.

[mel]

Re: Cable Cards Not Catching On

With the demise of analog broadcast signals, does that mean we still will have to get digital cable to get our basic over the air channels like KHON and KGMB? Or will the cable company convert those back to analog on their end?