New HD TiVo and Cable Incompatibilities

Lauren Weinstein writes "The rapid deployment of Switched Digital Video (SDV) by cable companies can cause major problems for buyers of the new HD TiVo, preventing any access to some channels."

Comments

Reason: Cable Card 2.0 standards dispute

[philam3nt]

This has been well known in the Tivo/Windows MCE/Non-Locked-in Cable-Box community for some time, and was blogged on engadget, which has a fantastic summary at Engadget: Cablecard 2.0 is ready . However, knowing most of you won't RTFA:

At this point you should be asking, what is stopping TiVo or Microsoft from creating two-way, multi-stream CableCARD devices? The answer is, some CE companies are not happy with the certification specification that CableLabs has decided on. As we previously discussed, the point of contention is the OCAP requirement...

...to put it in layman's terms, this would cut out the middle man, -- where the middle man is your cable company. With OCAP, TiVo couldn't deploy their software on a two-way host device without the cable company's approval, so the concept of going to the store and buying a TiVo that works anywhere wouldn't exist unless every cable company agreed to distribute and support TiVo's OCAP software -- this is how the long-awaited Comcast and TiVo agreement is going to work. The same might also be said for Vista Media Center, Microsoft would have to develop an OCAP VM in Vista Media Center and then work with each cable company to get them to deploy their user interface...

...In the end, we hope that the FCC steps in and requires CableLabs to certify two-way devices that do not require OCAP.

Charles doublerebel.com

Re:Control

[Pentavirate]

This actually isn't due to the cable companies' greed. There are several layers of software on a cable box. There's the firmware, Guide programming (ie TV Guide), and any additional software features like VOD software on top of that. The cable company doesn't write any of it. It's the incompatibility of the software that's the issue. For things like VOD and PPV and now SDV, third party companies provide video servers, the servers that interact directly with the set-top boxes and software that is on each set-top box that does all of the communication back and forth. CableCard 2 is a mandated standard on how this communication must take place so that other cable boxes with the cards can be used in lieu of the cable companies boxes. CableCard 2 covers VOD and PPV but SDV is new and so it doesn't cover it.

Cable companies aren't implementing SDV just to make it difficult for companies like TIVO. SDV is a tremendous way to better utilize the available bandwidth. SDV allows a cable channel in a network segment that isn't getting watched to not be broadcast until someone tunes into the channel. This makes channels completely dynamic instead of being associated with a specific frequency. This will allow cable companies to use a fraction of the bandwidth to provide channels than they use now. They can then use that extra bandwidth for additional channels or broadband.

I was a set-top box developer for one of these third party VOD companies and I was associated with the SDV demo we put together to pitch to some cable companies. Since there is no standard, we do it the best way we know how that works with our system. So there really isn't a conspiracy here. Just companies trying to do business as cost-effective as possible with standards and governmental organizations just trying to keep up.