CableCARD In-Depth

Atvtg writes "Ars Technica has an excellent article on CableCARD, and where it's heading. After discussing the history of the initiative and some of the technical details, they cover how CableCARD may meet its end shortly after the launch of 2.0 (the bi-directional spec) because of DCAS. The real surprise, however, is that CableLabs, which controls the CableCARD spec, has to certify computers to use CableCARDs for DVRs and the like. Ars points out that the upshot of this is that it will not be possible to build your own DVRs using CableCARDs. Will this kill the DIY market?"

Comments

What the fuck is 'CableCARD'?

[Anonymous Coward]

Would it kill the Slashdot editards to include a brief description of just WTF is 'CableCARD'?

DIY

[Vellmont]

Will this kill the DIY market?

No, but all the DRM restrictions and nonsense about having a guy come to your house to provision the dam thing will probbably kill cableCard. The DIY crowd will just record off the analog out, it's really at the "good enough" state anyway. I read this article earlier today, and I still can't figure out why anyone would want this thing. It sounds like it was mandated by congress, but the cable companies didn't want to do it so they made a device that's so crippled no one will want it.

Re:DIY

[Lumpy]

Funny, my rear projection HDTV has the ability to record to a firewire hard drive from it's inputs INCLUDING the hdmi input. and yes it records off the HD pay-per-view channels quite nice.

Many more older high end HDTV's do this as well. they cant stop me from doing it as that will piss off a large section of the market, the early adopters. and if you piss off that group, you lose the ENTIRE market.

Re:DIY

[jonwil]

But is the data on the firewire links and on the firewire drive encrypted?

Short Answer, no

[Tweekster]

it wont kill DIY because the cable card will be certified to the capture device, aka the WinTV card or whatever other card you would purchase.

Re:Short Answer, no

[ottothecow]

And if they refuse to certify the capture cards, the capture card manufacturers can sue them for denying a perfectly valid product entry to the market.

Re:The reality is...

[Jordan Catalano]

The DIY market IS the market recording, ripping, and sharing. Are the torrents that are available 10-15 minutes after a show finishes airing the work of someone with their TiVo hooked up via coax to a 27" TV, or the guy with a DVB card in his PC, hacking a satellite stream, and dumping shows directly to his networked RAID?

Layer upon layer of encryption sounds so much...

[CyberLord Seven]

...like the uneducated people on the encryption newsgroups who don't understand that you cannot secure something by piling weak encryption upon other weak encryption until you've built a MOUNTAIN no one can climb.
Computers are getting faster -- I have a ...to hell with what I have...MY WIFE has a 1.4GHz box I built for her two years ago. I can now build her a 64 bit box with dual cores today.
This will not remain safe for one very good reason: It is more fun to show these people how STOOPID they are by breaking their multi-level encryption than it is to sit and watch the latest crap spewing out of televisions.
Entertainment, though not the kind the cable and satellite companies envisioned, has taken a GREAT step forward. :)

DIY still has the Over The Air channels..

[tji]

My MythTV box does a great job recording / timeshifting / removing commercials / transcoding broadcast HDTV stations. So, I think the DIY PVR boxes have a life left for the immediate future.. I can still record Lost, and The West Wing, along with many sporting events.

The biggest hurdle I have seen developing is with more sporting events. Events that would have been on broadcast TV in the past are often on ESPN ( e.g. next year Monday Night Football is on ESPN-HD, not ABC). If that trend continues, I have to decide whether to stop watching that program/event, or to go to a commercial PVR. Most shows I can easily live without.. the exception being ESPN-HD... when my MSU Spartans are playing basketball in HD, I am very tempted to go to the cable companies crappy PVR.

HDTV

[gr8_phk]

"Not for HDTV. The advantage of cablecard is that it allows the device to directly access the compressed digital signal."

My HD2000 gets me direct access to the compressed digital signal, but it's over the air. The HD3000 can tune unencrypted digital cable channels too. The only thing all this cablecard crap is really going to accomplish is DRM. Why anyone would want to run out and buy an expensive DRM system that only reduces their options is beyond me. As for protecting premium HD content - who cares. I just recorded the superbowl in HD for grins and it ate up 35GB (yes that GIGAbytes) of hard drive space. Nobody is going to be passing this stuff around the net, or archiving it, or much of anything, DRM or not, - it's just too darn big. It's going to take my computer 30-60 seconds just to delete that file!

Besides, only a few channels are available in HD from the local cableco. They market this stuff with the "future" in mind. But as the article shows, the future will involve something different than you can buy today. If you're going to buy this stuff anyway, I'd make sure it has some immediate value today and not believe a word about what they plan to do next year or even next week. Me? I've got HDTV DVR capability on my PC today, and it's really not that useful. It is fun to show people the picture quality of HD, but beyond that it's just too much data.

Re:Layer upon layer of encryption sounds so much..

[complete loony]

Re-encrypting the same message multiple times with different keys is the WORST kind of security problem. This is one of the clues the allies used to break enigma. By providing the same signal encrypted with different keys you will reduce the cracking time by many orders of magnitude.