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CableCARDs and HDTV
An anonymous reader writes: "HDTV is the next big thing. I attended the NAB conference in Las Vegas last week and everyone was pitching HDTV or asking about it. DesignTechnica has an interesting article on CableCARDS, which allows viewing HDTV through a CableCARD compatible HDTV set without needing a set top box. Cable companies are required to enable CableCARDs with card-compatible HDTVs by July 1, 2004. So here's some questions: Has anyone heard of CableCARD? Is anyone planning on buying a CableCARD compatible TV? How many people actually get HDTV in their area, and how many channels? HDTV is so hyped right now but seems that there is barely any deployment."
The FCC recently stated that all cables boxes that offer HDTV now must have working firewire outputs. This of course lets users now record the transport stream right off the cable box, and allows DVR's to do the same. The regular broadcast channels are required to be unscrambled at all times, but the premium channels are kind of up in the air at the moment and will probably require more decryption at the end. The question is, will DVR's such as Tivo, start coming with this cardcapable thing so that decryption can happen and let us record even scrambled shows?
It looks incredible. I download HDTV rips whenever I can because even heavily compressed, it blows away my standard TV signal.
There's maybe 3 or 4 high definition channels available right now. On my cable system in Oklahoma there are 6 full-time HD channels and 3 locals which carry a significant amount of HD programming. Just because you don't watch HD doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Go type in your zip code over at I Want MY HDTV.com and see how many channels are available in your area.
The problem with HDTV and digital broadcasting right now is there's very little HD content. Some examples..
PBS around here (San Jose/San Francisco) only broadcasts HD starting at 8pm. They however have pretty decent content and it's all HD when they say it will be. It looks great, it's just limited in what they show.
The rest of the broadcast networks have very little content. Maybe one or two shows a day at best and the occaisional sports event. NBC had the Kentucky Derby in HD yesterday, but it wasn't even advertised as such and I didn't know if it would be HD until I turned it on.
And one of the problems with some of the "HD" broadcasts is that a lot of the cameras they're using aren't even HD. They're standard definition that's then upconverted to either 720p or 1080i. Or if you're Fox, 480p 16x9. So a good bit of "HD" sports is actually just clean SD.
Then there's stuff like ESPNHD. They usually just take the ESPN feed and stretch it to 16x9 which is really lame. They have maybe 4 or 5 events in actual HD per week.
And then there's also the question of how do you get the content? I tried over the air with an antenna and that was just painful. Even a fairly high gain one didn't work too well for me. You can't get broadcast HD over any of the DBS services (Dish, DirecTV, Voom) except CBS. You have to generally get Cable TV for that. So I got Comcast out here and get all the broadcast stuff. But it's still more cost effective for me to have basic digital HD service on cable for HD broadcast content and also have Dish Network 200 service for all the other content.
And I hardly watch TV. Sigh. But I got a HDTV so I really want to watch HD content when I can.
The service I'm currently looking at switching to is Voom which is a DBS service from Cablevision that has something like 30 HD channels, many of which are their own content. It's about the same price as Dish Network, but has fewer channels. Luckily mostly the ones I watch from time to time. I'd have to keep cable for the broadcast channels.
Some people might say it's a waste of time. And they're probably right. But HD does look awesome so at least it's kinda fun.
I signed up for DirectTV HDTV about two months ago. I was an existing directTV customer but I still talked them into selling me the equipment for 99.00 (normally 399.00). The equipment consists of a Samsung HD DTV receiver and a new dish to pick up the HD channels. (also picks up all the international channels DTV offers)
.02
Channel Lineup:
ESPN
Discovery HD
HDMovies (Movie channel showing various movies from classics to recent favorites)
HDNet - pretty much a worthless channel showing repeats of recent Nascar Races, Horse, Races, and concerts. They also have some original series on it (I think).
CBSHD - I live in Utah and they allow me to pick up the CBS HD feed from LA. This is great because I can watch my shows an hour later in HD without needing the off air ant.
If you subcribe:
HBOHD - The regular HBO in HD.
SHOWTime HD - The regular showtime in HD.
Cost: Basis HD is 10.95 a month. HBO is 12.00 a month and Showtime is 10.00 a month.
Is it worth it?
Hmm.... I can tell you this. I am a big fan of Sopranos and Deadwood (HBO series) and love watching them in HD. I also enjoy watching Golf in High def on the weekends. You can tell a HUGE DIFFERENCE between the shows in HD and regular shows. People come over and just say WOW to the sporting events. Movies are not that much different.
So, its worth the money (10.95 a month) to me just to get golf in HD on CBS on the weekends. Basketball playoffs are also great. Its hard to watch golf/basketball in non-hd now.
Cons:
No STINKING TIVO!!!!!! I can't wait for the HDTivo to be affordable.
Just my
Man, that's a terrible site.
It just lists all the stations within ~200 miles of you, and says if they are providing HDTV or not... According to that list, I should be recieving about 30 TV stations, and about a dozen in HDTV. In fact, there are no HDTV stations available because of range, and that won't change until an HDTV re-broadcaster is installed around here.
For a MUCH BETTER TV look-up, try antennaweb.org.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I own a Hitachi HD widescreen RPTV and a Sony HS20 HD Front Projector. I have both OTA and DirecTV STBs; here are the channels available in my area:
Broadcast OTA:
WGBH-DT PBS 2-1 SDTV and 2-2 HD channel
WBZ-DT CBS 4-1 HD
WLVI-DT ABC 5-1 HD
WCVB-DT NBC 7-1 HD
WFXT-DT FOX 25-1 Widescreen SDTV
WSBK-DT UPN 38-1 HDTV (Enterprise is in HD, for what little that's worth)
WLVI-DT WB 56-1 HDTV (Smallville is in HD, for what little that's worth)
Over DirecTV Sat:
76 Discovery HD
78 HDNET Movies (lame movies no one remembers, in HD)
79 HDNET (some interesting stuff like quality reporting, some lame stuff like old Charlie's Angel's and Hogan's Hero's repeats, in HD)
85 Pay Per View in HD
88 HBO-HD
91 Showtime-HD
-------
Boston is a good area for OTA HD. Also, the local cable company Comcast has finally gone HD and will rent an HD box for $7/mo. If you only have an HD ready set and want a cheap STB, Comcast is definitely the way to go (I went Sat before Comcast rolled HD out). You can also pick up a cheap OTA STB these days for about $200. The Sat STBs are, IMO, not really worth it. If I were buying today, I would go cable or OTA only. Note that HD TIVO has recently been released and should be on store shelves now or very soon.
HD is broadcast in most major metropolitan markets now. And don't forget the advantage a widescreen TV offers for DVDs. It really is worth the money, IMO.
Cheers,
--Maynard
High definition channels, with widescreen programming:
ABC local affiliate
CBS "" (you haven't lived until you've seen CSI:Miami in HD
NBC ""
Fox ""
PBS ""
The WB ""
UPN ""
Discovery HD theatre
HBO-HD (Sopranos in HD, bada-bing, plus all the movies are upconverted to 1080i from their original film source msking them that much nicer than the DVD equivalent at 480p)
Showtime-HD (same as HBO)
INHD and INHD2 (an assortment of various HD programming, sports-looks like your are watching through a window in the luxury box, movies, specials, concerts, IMax movies)
HDnet HDnet Movies (various programming like INHD)
HDNets and INHDs are $6 mo. to subscribe. HBO and Showtime are included if you get them regularly. All the other channels are free with digital cable, so there is no additional fee to lease the HD set top box. The only downside is that once you've seen HD you can't go back. Other channels start looking like crap to you.
I imagine it is the same for all Time Warner Cable subscribers, but here in Austin, HDTV has enough channels to make it worth while. Half of our local broadcast stations are up {CBS,ABC}, 2 iNHD channels (movies, sports, etc), Discovery HD Theatre, Fox HD, HDNet, HDMovie, HBO HD and Showtime HD. Most of the programming is good, the box outputs any format you would want, up to 1080i. The HD Decoder box is the same price as the regular digital box. I haven't checked out the Firewire capability, but the port is there, I just don't own a cable.
I'm with you. There needs to be some standards so we can just plug cards into the back of TVs. Let me choose cable, satellite, or whatever I want.
Keep the Classic Slashdot.
Then there's stuff like ESPNHD. They usually just take the ESPN feed and stretch it to 16x9 which is really lame. They have maybe 4 or 5 events in actual HD per week.
I couldn't agree more; ESPN has really dropped the ball here. The major networks broadcast sporting events in HD most of the time. And HDNET usually beats ESPN for broadcasting HD sporting events too. Don't buy the DirecTV HD package for ESPN, that's all I have to say. --M
Suprised no ones mentioned this yet, but theres a new satelite provider, Voom, offering over 40 channels of hi-def programming. It seems to run about the same as standard services, $40 or so a month up to around $80 with all the premiums.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
I don't know about you, but I pay just $20/month more than you do here in Philly, and I have cable modem, HBO, Showtime, HDTV digital cable box, etc. Pretty happy really.
The FCC is going to require firewire on all cable boxes.
link
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
I watch DVDs and play games in HD.
There's more to using an HDTV set than just broadcast video
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
The HD DVD consortium has yet to approve a standard. It's expected that they will decide and manufacturers and content providers will have product on the market within the next year or two. Currently, JVC manufacturs an HD VCR (the JVC-HD3000 and newer HD4000). This takes standard and HQ digital VHS tapes. Some film distributors have released films on the new format, but not all, and the content is "protected" by an encryption system similar to DVD CSS. If you're looking for HD films on tape, it's available but limited. I'd say, wait for HD DVD if that's all you care about. But a Widescreen television is still useful for 480p DVD output. I looks wonderful. --M
I need something that has a CableCARD interface so I won't have to use a converter box. Hauppauge will tune over-the-air stations and not encrypted cable broadcasts (
The dogcow says "Moof!"
I bet you actually thought people actually agreed on something right? Wrong, the CableCard is not a simple smartcard a la DirecTV. The CableCard "slot" is extactly that, a standard "slot" with a standard CableCard "bus". The card issued to you will be more like the PCI, AGP PCI-X etc. expansion cards we are used to in computers exept that these will be fatter and look more like a SBAWE32 with the daughtercard and all the addional Soundfont ram installed.
All that said, its still better than a set-top, but a long way from actually agreeing upon a standard so that the card was JUST A SMARTCARD with account info on it.
General HD opinion from an owner of 2 years that catches it via OTA and cable:
Clear and crisp until something fast happens or a quick pan or scene transition. MPEG-2 really shows its age with HD.
HD will hit is mark when things are changed to MPEG-4. and Cable and the networks start playing nice so Cable will carry ALL of the stations you can currently get OTA (Over the air).
Best combo: VOOM and OTA. Best part. the VOOM box has got the OTA tuner built in.
Plus ANAMORPHIC Dvds look great on HDTVs. Other dvds that are in widescreen but not mastered properly (not in anamorphic) look aweful when using a tv zoom function.
I could talk for years on the subject
Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?
There's a good "FAQ" on this from the AVS Forum :
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http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s
"
The "copy flags" can have states of "always copy", "copy once" and "copy never".
"
Max.
The CableCARD is shaped just like a PCMCIA card and if you go to BestBuy, Circuit City, or similar right now, you can see Panasonic HDTVs with the slot right on the front. http://catalog2.panasonic.com/webapp/wcs/stores/se rvlet/ModelDetail?storeId=11251&catalogId=11005&mo delNo=PT-56TWD63
Only they are not "documented" as CableCARD because the service is not available yet, so the sales folks have no idea what the slot is for.
Nonetheless, it is there on those Panasonic sets. Probably others too.
Basically, what it does is make the TV DIGITAL CABLE READY, just like all TV sets made since the late 1980s are "Cable Ready" and do not need a STB for tuning regular unscrambled channels; "Expanded Basic" service.
However, if you want the premium channels, you needed a STB or descrambler, except for the fact most of the cable providers have moved most, if not all premium channels from Analog to Digital.
Now if you want to read more about CableCARD, there are several nice "White Papers" at www.motorola.com, or www.cablelabs.org.
These sites explain how the card works, and how, unlike Dish/DTV, the receiver should be able to communicate with the cable company via the cable itself, no phoneline connection required.
I went to the local Comcast tech center where I live and did find out that these cards are NOT transportable between areas, due to the fact they are authenticated to the physical street address where they are installed (basically they should work anywhere on that specific cable trunk, but not across town) and possibly to a specific serialized/addressable receiving device (TV, Tivo, PC Card etc.).
This will not be easy to "hack" for those who are already thinking about it, as the CableCARD is not just a PCMCIA memory card, but supposedly has an encryption ASIC on it which compliments the QAM Tuner chip in the receiver, which itself was designed from the start with encryption in mind. Never mind the Broadcast Flag, the whole thing is DRM'd up the butt.
An interesting note for the PC crowd....most SONY DTVs use ATI HDTV tuners, so hopefully we will see Digital Cable Ready cards for PCs.
This is a big deal because all of the current HDTV card providers have no problem with OTA HDTV tuning, but keep trying and failing at QAM tuning. My guess is that are not getting access to the right chipsets for this purpose, and are trying to make do with older/less capable technology...since the PCI Bus is unsecure, all that DRM would go away once the full transport stream exits the tuner onto the bus.
Since these TVs have the right chipsets and can do Digital Cable Ready, it seems like the problem is solved and just needs to be transplanted to the PC HDTV Tuner guys. Or we need to wait for that damn "Trusted Computing" (we big corporations don't trust you hacker/pirate consumers PCs) like the Intel "Sandow" platform.
Last, consider the price plunge we will see when DC Ready + CableCARD is available everywhere and 90% of the HDTVs have no slot in them. That is going to be some pricey inventory to discount when the only products selling have the slot so your new 50" 3" thick plasma will not need a phonebook sized STB sitting next to it.
Also consider how pissed off SciAtlanta and Motorola are about this...it means millions less sales of HDTV STBs to the cable companies...once all the TVs have CableCARD slots, the STB market is dead and only the chipset makers will be making money.
And pity the cable companies that have contracts to BUY STBs to lease to customers for $5-$10 per month...they will be sitting on piles of unused STBs and they will lose that extra revenue from the rental.
In this effort, each of the players has a deep financial interest in what technology goes where and when, and the fact that some companies will necessarily be screwed for "the good of the consumer" makes all of them less interested in making this stuff available rapidly or easily.
We'll see it soon, but not as soon as we should be.
And my bet is that it is not problem free in terms of interoperability, tech support, or performance.
But it is still pretty cool.