Vista Media Center Plus CableCard Equals No TV

notthatwillsmith writes "ATI's internal CableCard readers are finally available, and Maximum PC got hands-on time with a couple of Vista-powered systems built using the FCC-mandated technology. The short version? It doesn't work. From the article: 'The tech told me he'd receive training direct from Microsoft, but none of it covered internal tuners. We both agreed that the process should be the same, since the only difference is that the slots are inside the case, versus in an external box. The tech then proceeds to install the CableCards, connect the tuners to coax line, fire up the PC, and begin the software configuration. This step involves activating the TV Wonder with a product-activation code, and calling the Comcast office to exchange some information. We should have had a picture at this point, but we didn't.'"

Comments

Computer Industry is held hostage by the Cable Com

[evanreiser]

Article detailing how the cable companies are using a device called Cable-CARD to prevent you from recording HD TV shows to your computer. http://www.microsoftisawesome.com/2007/05/rouges-d o-it-from-behind.html

Re:Not Exactly

[rsmith-mac]

No, the grandparent has it right, it's more or less a structured denial system. Instead of using an open standard for security black boxes are used that still must be rented from the cable co (when the whole point was to prevent the cable co's from forcing customer rentals), and a cable co organization gets to decide who can be approved to use the black box (hint: open source systems need not even bother to apply), only to set the requirements so high that making the whole system work is damn near impossible.

This is all about denying the customer the ability to watch TV through anything other than a cable co device, it's just paying lip service to the law so that they're not obviously in violation of it. This will only get worse too once switched video gets deployed.

Re:summing it all up....

[HTH NE1]

Actually, by testing the cards before taking them to the field, they got married to the test hardware and could no longer be married to the device in the field. Either they needed to divorce the cards (through some deep secret kung fu no customer should ever know how to do) or get new cards that are still bachelors.

So this product test was invalid and says nothing about the machines being tested, only the cable company tech who screwed it up before driving out.

Hilarious!