Why Can't I Buy A CableCARD Ready Set-Top Box?

Al E Usse writes "Ars Technica does a write up of the problems that were not solved by the July 1, 2007 integration ban on integrated security in your cable box. The goal was to get everyone on the same page by requiring standardized technology. Just the same, the cable companies aren't really playing ball. 'The companies who make the boxes don't seem interested in selling to consumers [and] cable companies still push their own branded devices.' The article covers some deep background on the whole CableCARD mess, and concludes with the current state of the market: 'Based on June 2007 figures from the cable industry, 271,000 CableCARDs have been deployed. That's an astonishingly low number. 58 percent of all US households with a TV subscribe to cable, according to the NCTA, which means that 65 million households have at least basic cable.'"

Comments

Bullhockey

[palladiate]

I'm the inventory coordinator for a cable company. All of our new DVRs and Digital boxes run off of cable cards. If I pop open the card cover, inside is the exact same cable card we give customers. It's even handy when we want to test a new box, we just use an already addressed card instead of addressing a whole new box. It isn't cableCard technology that's the problem. It works with our system just fine. The problem happens to be crappy STBs that don't conform to CC specifications. Motorola, Cisco, and MS all make boxes that work just fine on our system with our on-demand and and program guide. Now, whether they have better access to documentation from Cable Labs, I'll never know. But it's BS that it's somehow the technology's fault.

Re:Bullhockey

[malfunct]

I don't know if the tech in my house had a clue or not (from Comcast in Seattle area) when he was installing my cablecards in my TivoHD (because 1 card was defective and the other just wouldn't activate the day I tried to self install) but he said that Comcast was implementing seprable security using a technology that WAS NOT CableCard. How is that any better than integrated security? I think the seprable security requirement, if it can be satisfied with a non standard system or even one that consumers aren't allowed to buy on thier own, is a total joke.

That said the other issue I have is that CableCards are only allowed in approved "closed" devices. There needs to be a way that I'm allowed to install a CableCard tuner in whatever device that needs it, my personal computer most of all, without having to do it exactly the way that the industry wants me to. I'm not a pirate, I just want to be able to watch at some future time on the PC of my choice (I know many people only have 1 but I have 4 or 5 in the house at any one time all capable of displaying the content if allowed) or on a mobile device. Heck I'm even fine if they somehow figured out how to force me to watch the commercials as long as I could watch them when and where I wanted to. It doesn't seem like the lack of cablecard tuners in unapproved pc's is slowing the piracy of TV much so why spend so much effort to do it?

Re:Bullhockey

[palladiate]

He had no clue. First, many techs, especially contractors, are clueless. Second, everything Comcast does is braindead.

You can have CCs in any device, no approval necessary. However, there is no guarantee your STB will work with one unless it's been certified. Tivos do work, but only uses them one way. There are only Cisco and Motorola devices that are two-way, and allow on demand or channel guides. One of those bad boys will set you back about a grand, or more for the HDs.

The article mentions that the biggest reason people aren't using CCs is because there are no good STBs. That's totally not true. There are plenty made by Cisco (Scientific Atlanta) and Motorola. They just cost between $800 and $1300 and come with your cable service. There's just no point in buying one, although we will sell them if you want them. As for consumer-grade options, I can't answer that, it just seems that no PC component company wants to make a CC interface, and the only consumer STB is Tivo.

I just wanted to point out there are tons of cable cards out there, and they are part of the digital boxes provided by the cable company.

Re:Bullhockey

[palladiate]

No, I did. I saw it on Ars earlier. I'm responding to the the summary that blamed us for not playing ball. It blames the cable companies for not playing ball. That's BS. We'll sell you any box we provide. Do you really want to spend $1200 on an SA HD-DVR? Nobody else does, that's why we aren't selling them.

The problem is that there are no GOOD consumer devices. There just aren't. We can't help that. We aren't in the STB business.

Re:Bullhockey

[EdelFactor19]

"we'll sell you any box we provide"

that is entirely the problem, and frankly if you wouldnt sell me any box you provide your business is retarted.

the point is that we as consumers shuold have a choice and viable alternatives to paying the outlandish fees that "you" charge while still getting the service we provide.

the whole pay you 6+ bucks a month for the box thing is getting old. the box should either be free or we should be able to buy it from and others. There are no good devices because everytime one was created YOU found a way to make it not work.

first there was cable ready tvs... wait i want my money so lets scramble everything so that they have to have a box
then there was the whole lets only scramble some channels thing which was slightly better..
then digital came out, and the whole one-way two-way problem was created.
its a load of bull crap.

and there is conveniant lockout to prevent other boxes from recording multiple things simultaneously without seperate boxes.

frankly the cable companies are right up there with M$ in my book.. except they are allowed to post fraudulent adds all the time... "no hidden charges just XX a month" oh wait but if you want to to actually watch it youll need a cable box a remote and to pay some other silly fees even though we said no hidden fees.

Re:Bullhockey

[palladiate]

that is entirely the problem, and frankly if you wouldnt sell me any box you provide your business is retarted.

the point is that we as consumers shuold have a choice and viable alternatives to paying the outlandish fees that "you" charge while still getting the service we provide.
We don't charge equipment fees. In fact, local law prohibits us from doing this, but none of our divisions do. We charge for DVR service, but so does Tivo. Some of that is licensing, some of it is infrastructure, some of it is profit.

There are no good devices because everytime one was created YOU found a way to make it not work.
No. We have done no such thing. I'm afraid I'm going to need some kind of citation for that accusation. Have we broken any Tivos? No.

then there was the whole lets only scramble some channels thing which was slightly better..
That's because HBO doesn't let you get their channel without paying.

then digital came out, and the whole one-way two-way problem was created.
Are you trying to imply that we could have put 600 channels and on-demand channels down the line without using a compressed, digital signal? Your Cable Card handles the digital signal just fine. There are no technical limitations there, and if you put one in a cablecard slot on your TV, it will work. It's because we need an addressable box on your end to authorize the service you purchased. It's like how you need a power meter for your house. That's necessary equipment too.

Re:Bullhockey

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason we blame you (cable companies as a whole) for playing not ball, is because of your inability to come to terms with modern customer demands and your CableLabs crew (and yes, YOURS...CableLabs was created and is funded by the big cable companies) and their issues. Part of it may be because their rules are regulated by what they feel are the content providers' demands, but they are complicit in this as well.

Okay, you could sell us a $1200 SA DVR. But why are there not more companies that just make a device that is just a tuner that takes a card? Why not go to Best Buy and pick up a 3rd party box for $80 like we can a DOCSIS cable modem? Why won't you allow bidirectional devices to be manufactured and sold? Because CL and the CO's artificially hamper the possibility.

As an example, I will give a list of the issues that have arisen since TiVo has released their S3/HD line of digital cable tuners, which are, as far as I know, the only mass-consumer CableCARD tuners out there (that aren't built into a TV):

1. CableCARDS have a high rate of failure. While there can be issues with the TiVo units, yes, this has gone back since HDTV's have begun adding CC slots. The CO's response? "It's your device." No, it isn't my device. If it was my device, then why, after going through a stack of 5-6 cards, does one finally work (in any of my CC-capable devices, even?) Either the CableCARD spec is poorly designed, or they are poorly manufactured and you don't care, or you are storing them under a leaky bucket in the back of the warehouse hoping that nobody will ask for one.

2. The TiVo obeys your copying and recording restrictions, as demanded by CL and the CO's, offering the copy-once, copy-many, copy-none flags and their ilk. Many of your cable boxes do not. That means that my TiVo, as purchased, does not provide me as much service as your box does, because it follows the rules that you require, even though you do not follow them yourself.

3. VOD/PPV/SDV all require bidirectional communications between the device and the head end to handle the channel assignments. Your cable boxes can all do this, because CableCARD is capable of bidirectional communications, and so is your device. My HDTV and TiVo cannot handle these things, because they are not bidirectional, because CableLabs refuses to certify a third-party device with bidirectional communication capability.

4. So why do they have to be certified? See the initial hostility to the S3's release. There are forums filled with people who were told that the cable company would never provide CableCARDS for the TiVo at first until people started pointing out FCC regulation (with TiVo's help on 3-way calling sometimes!) that required them to allow access to certified devices, which the S3 certainly was!

5. Initially, many cable companies (and some still do) would charge over-the-top fees for the S3, because it required two CableCARDS. Their argument? "It has two tuners, it is two devices, so you have to pay an additional Digital Outlet Fee." The problem? Those same cable companies provided their own dual-tuner DVR that did not require an additional Outlet Fee.

Also, those $1200 DVR's that you could sell us? I have never seen one that wasn't slow, buggy, temperamental, and covered with ads that took up over half of my channel guide every time I tried to pick something to watch. The TiVo is a good consumer device, one that has already been hampered by the cable providers' desire to not play fair, as demanded by FCC regulation. Sure, it has its bugs, but has been a far better device than any cable-provided DVR or tuner that I've seen. And if you really want to wonder why people aren't making devices that work like your STB units, even if they are cheaper, look at the OCAP requirements for "two-way cable devices".

(The TiVo is also a hell of a lot cheaper than $1200)

Re:Bullhockey

[DCheesi]

If these boxes cost so much, how are you subsidizing the cost for all the boxes rented to customers? $10 or $15 bucks a month wouldn't allow you break even in a reasonable amount of time.

Re:Bullhockey

[mzs]

They are not allowed to do this. I was surprising how quickly comcast disabled the encryption of the channels that were available as OTA network in my area when I called. One day I alled, the next day they were back. It was the only decent experience I had with that company.

Re:Bullhockey

[palladiate]

No, we don't verify your device or anything.

There may be restrictions on what kind of device you call sell, regarding patents and licensing, but we don't check your equipment beyond "it works to your satisfaction." I don't write the software or build the hardware. But I do know we don't check to see if your device is approved. There are far too many CC-ready TV models for us to verify.

Why not TiVo?

[Krellion]

TiVo's set-top Series3 and TiVoHD both work with CableCARDs. Why not use one of them?

(Yeah, yeah, I realize that the TiVo service subscription will put off people, but it's worth it.)

Re:Why not TiVo?

[LordKazan]

Not everyone wants to pay tivo $16/month - mythtv users can buy a YEARS worth of listings for $20 - plus i already have 4 tuners (3 analog, 1 qam256/atsc) and 500GB of harddrive

Re:Why not TiVo?

[HTH NE1]

Tivo service is $17/month at its most expensive plan and less than $9/month at its cheapest monthly price in the 3year prepaid plan. Actually, TiVo service can be as low as $6.95 a month with an existing unit with service in the same home, even if that existing service is an old Series1 with Lifetime (no monthly fee) service.

Even better, there's the occasional offer to transfer existing lifetime service to the latest hardware, and a free year of service on the legacy unit, which can then be unsubscribed.

(Of my eight TiVos, two are lifetime, 5 are $6.95/mo, and one is a never-subscribed Series1 20hr unit. Two of the monthlies are also Series1 that I could let lapse and still be able to do manual recordings.)

Re:Why not TiVo?

[glindsey]

mythtv likes firewire tuners, comcast's boxes have firewire outputs. Comcast disables FireWire output for a huge number of digital channels on a whim -- in Illinois, at least. I have friends who say that 75% of their programming at any given time disables the FireWire port on their STB.

Re:Why not TiVo?

[madsenj37]

One is not just paying for the TiVo service, one pays for the TiVo experience. The User interface is loads better in my opinion. I can use Yahoo to set-up recordings. I can download shows to my computer. I have never had delay from TiVo when I press the guide button, while Comcast's Motorola DVR freezes several times a week. Setting up a series recording at any time is so easy on TiVo, not for Comcast. The way TiVo can tell first run from new is far superior to Motorola as well. To you, that may not be worth the extra cost. Less hassle and a better experience are worth it to me.

Re:Here's some cheese

[Wolvie MkM]

Yea.... speaking of which (rolleyes)

At least there's Tivo

[amigabill]

The title of the OP makes it sound liek you can't buy anything from anyone. I just bought an HD Tivo that takes cablecards. It's going to replace the Verizon FIOS DVR box that I think is a POS, even after being replaced with another.

This is just like

[MeditationSensation]

the cell phone companies. There's no real techincal reason that we can't have cool, open OSes for our phones. They just want to lock us in so that we have to buy their stupid wallpaper, ring tones, etc.

Maybe it's not the technology...

[Seakip18]

The technology is out there for this. I think the main problem lies with those who are peddling(or in this case NOT) telling people what they need. From my personal Experience:
My dad bought a 58 inch LCD open box from best buy a month or so ago. No rep explained it's functionality to him really. I forget the make now, but it had a cable card slot and a Hard drive for DVR. Off he goes to get HD from Time Warner. They say "hey, you need a box." They didn't ask what TV he had or if it was Card ready.

Moral of the story?
Come thanksgiving, I'm putting a Cable card in the TV for him and hope there is no ensuing SNAFU that prevents him from getting his HD channels. By himself, he would have had no clue what he needed. His only hope *I* see would have been to get an company cable installer who would see the situation and get him the card.

Analog cable for me....

[jjh37997]

Personally, I don't see the appeal in digital cable. It costs more, requires me to have a cable box, and suffers from pixalization. To me it just seems like a scam for the cable companies to offer me more useless stations at a higher cost. Now if digital cable meant HD too I'd understand why people might be interested but subcribing to HD channels is usually an additional fee added onto the increased digital cable fees, which does not even count the box fees.

Analog cable and a Tivo with lifetime service (buy one on eBay). That's the way to go.

Re:Analog cable for me....

[daveywest]

You can only pack so many analog channels on one cable line. You have to go digital to get more channels. Cable really is a cooperative entertainment venture. You pay for some of the channels I watch, and I pay for some that you watch. When the group as a whole wants to exceed that analog channel limit, everyone has to go to digital.

Re:Analog cable for me....

[taustin]

You can only pack so many analog channels on one cable line.

So, instead of having 99 channels full of crap, and one with something interesting once in while, you have 999 channels full of crap, and one with someting interesting once in a while. And you pay more.

Color me a little skeptical.

The reason to go digital is to get the DVR in the msot convenient way (as opposed to rolling your own).

Re:hackable?

[jandrese]

You lease the cards from your cable company, so hacking the card itself is probably out. It's just a reencrypter anyway. The boxes themselves could very well be hackable though, and without the cable company giving you the scare tactic of "if this screw ON OUR EQUIPMENT is touched when you return the box we will fine your ass off." Theoretically the umpteen encryptions that happen through a cablecard box should render it unhackable, but my guess is all of the complexity from all of the different encryption steps the cable companies insisted on will leave holes open that hackers can exploit.

I think the more fundimental concern the companies have is the lack of control they would have over the whole system if they don't own it. People could set up services for free that would work better than the ones the cable company would try to sell (because they always halfass features like that).

The more critical question for PVR builders

[Lead Butthead]

Is why can't we buy tuner cards with CABLECARD support?

Re:The more critical question for PVR builders

[Wesley Felter]

There is one CableCard tuner card from ATI; by Googling you can find a ton of articles explaining why CableLabs won't allow you to buy it (unless you buy a complete PC).

Why would I want it?

[Steve525]

Most of the article describes how difficult it is to replace your cable company's basic STB with your own basic STB. It admits that there are options for DVRs (Series 3 and HD Tivo) and you can get cable card enabled TV.

My conclusion is the reason you can't replace the cable company's box with your own is that no one would want to. This isn't a great conspiracy, it's just that the STB manufacturers aren't going to try to sell a product that no one wants. Why would anyone want to replace one box with another box that does the same thing? The only motivation I could envision is cost, but the rental fees for the boxes aren't usually that high.

For a consumer, using the cable card to use a better DVR or to get rid of the STB entirely is worthwhile. So, the market has responded by providing these options. However, there's no motivation for someone to choose a different basic STB than the one the cable companies provide.

Re:Try buying a TV that supports CableCard

[smooth wombat]

Trust me, 200+ channels is a pain to flip through trying to find something to watch.

No it's not. If I had such a service (and I have no intention of doing so), I'd do what I do now with my ~70 basic cable: block out channels. Religious channels? Begone! Shopping channels? Don't see them. Ad channels? Yeah right. Golf? Get real.

By the time I had blocked out all the channels I didn't want in the first place, I'd probably be down to about the same number I have now. 200 channels? No problem.

Unless you're now going to tell me that using digital cable/set top boxes/whatever, that one can't block channels. If that's the case, then there is absolutely no way I'll be getting any such service.

Re:Well, analog is good enuf...

[slaingod]

Just get an HDHomeRun which will decode unencrypted QAM signals on most cable and stream it to any system on the network.

Ebay All Day

[Kancer]

I got mine from e-bay and I just got the cable cards from my Comcast billing center. I pay $5 a month for the card.

No one reads the Firehose Related Stories links?

[HTH NE1]

The current offering from Time Warner Cable of their "mystro" software prevents me from using all the features of the TiVo connected to it.

If I dare try to change the channel at precisely the time that guide data is updated on the channel I am leaving, the box may fail to change channels, change to the wrong channel, or even crash. Every recording I make has to be padded by at least one minute start and end to avoid this bug, even back-to-back recordings on the same channel. (Networks shifting start and end times by a minute is exacerbating the problem.)

This requires me to disable the TiVo's Suggestions feature as they cannot be padded.

I can't use TWC's cable box at all with the Series1 units as they lack the ability to trim their recordings in response to a neighboring-in-time padded recording: one or the other recording would not be recorded.

I've been subjected to these boxes for more than a year now (I'm in one of their beta-test cites) and the company has thumbed its nose at local officials demanding a resolution to and restitution for the problems.

The only thing that has alleviated the problem is getting a CableCARD-enabled TiVo, though it too has had difficulty with cards that lose the signal and will not reacquire it without a restart or (disliked by TWC) ejecting and re-inserting the offending card which I've had to do three times so far. And of course it's the card in CableCARD slot 1.

This is 2007...

[technopinion]

It really is inexcusable that there is no way for me to get HDTV into my HTPC without using a goddamn OTA card with a big antenna on the roof.

Re:Try buying a TV that supports CableCard

[amigabill]

Besides, when you use our set top, you get more features. We give away an on-screen programing guide that wouldn't be available with third-party hardware. Trust me, 200+ channels is a pain to flip through trying to find something to watch.

I don't know your system, but here's why I'm trading my Verizon HD DVR box for an HD Tivo:

1. Verizon's guide is wrong about what show is on more often than Tivos was with Comcast cable in my area. neother is wrong significantly often, but Verizon annoyed me more often than Tivo on Comcast ever did.

2. Verizon's box has a habit of turning off when I'm watching stuff. in the first 3 weeks I had it this happened 3 or 4 times. Verizon replaced the box, but did say that this was a known and common problem, which they suspected was somehow related to the new software rollout just about that time. When it turns off, it's totally off as if I'd unplugged it, and I had to wait a few minutes for it to boot up again. I missed the end of a movie because of that.

3. Verizon's DVR refused to play back a number of recordings, giving an error message that they were "Bad Recording"s. There was a different error message I can't remember on one show that wouldn't play back. it suggested perhaps they were from channels I don't subscribe to. Sorry but wrong, I do indeed get the CW and Comedy Central channels as part of my default triple-play package channel lineup. I missed a few episodes of Smallville because of this, as well as South Park and a couple other shows. I do know that a standard box won't play back an HD recording. This problem is about standard shows (Comedy Central is not an HD channel) and also affects playback on the DVR box itself connected to my HDTV. This problem is not at all acceptable. Period.

OK, by tossing this box I lose on-demand, I lose Verizon's own guide, and pay-per-view becomes a phone-order item instead of a push-button item. And I won't get the future torrent support or cellphone scheduling.

I don't care.

What do I hope to get from Tivo? I expect it will be able to play back my recordings. This is by far the most important feature of a DVR box, and Verizon's box is failing to do that way too often for me to keep paying for it.

I'm not losing out on having a guide, I just get Tivo's instead. I'm happy to do that.

I never used on-demand, so I'm not missing that.

Will I miss torrents that I never had? No. Unbox is a good enough thing to replace both future-torrent and on-demand. I'm not even sure I'll use unbox.

The only thing I can think of that I'll actually miss is the other-room playback of recordings. That's kindof nice. Tivo says they would like to offer that in the future, it sounds like a political problem not a technical one. But I do still have my series 2 Tivo for the other room which can duplicate the standard def recordings there, and this feature is not worth paying for the Verizon box which may not allow me to play back a recording even on itself.

And future-cellphone scheduling, well, Tivo allows me to schedule over the net. That's just as good.

For people scammed by their TV manufacturer or ignorant salesman, their particular situation may suck. But I am extremely happy that cablecards exist, and that the cable industry is required to allow something better than their own piss-poor box to be used. That possibility is more important to me than the "convenience" of just using my cable operator's box. The lack of an alternative to what I'm seeing in Verizon's HD DVR box would be very unfriendly to the consumer, and I very much thank congress or the FCC or whoever did it for mandating the possibility of 3rd party alternatives.

but oddly enough, shows work fine from bittorrent

[jollyreaper]

I swear, these companies have got to get their shit together. Make it easy and people will come. Right now, it's still less of a headache to pirate shit and have total control of how it's used. That, and don't be dicks about what you're charging for the service. Back 5 years ago, hunting down a full run of a show took ages. Want an anime? Try hunting down 26 episodes of mixed format, quality, and availability. Good luck. But it's worth the time if the jerkwads are charging $250 for the series. But some shows are out on DVD now for as low as $40 or $50 for an entire run. Wow! And for live action TV, I've seen some going for as low as $25 for a season. Nice. But just try and buy that stuff electronically, it's DRM'd out the ass and the prices are no cheaper than for physical media. WTF? No distribution cost, no shelving fee, no gas involved, and we're paying full freight? I don't think so.

Re:hackable?

[oni]

Each card has a public and private key. The cable company's signal is also encrypted, but there's a public band somewhere where the cable company can communicate will any cablecard that happens to be listening. So you plug the cable card into the TV (or tivo or whatever) and then go to the setup menu and read off a string of numbers. That string represents the card's public key.

The cable company takes its encryption key and encrypts it with the card's public key, then transmits that over the public band. Every cable card device sees this, but only the target card (your card) is able to read it, and use the card's private key to decrypt it.

So now the card has been given the cable company's encryption key, and can decrypt the signal and let you watch all the sweet sweet porn.^H^H^H^H^H discovery HD. The cable company periodically changes its key, and it keeps a list of all the cable cards that are authorized and sends the new key to all those cards.

IF you had all of this working in software, then you could copy the cable company's key into as many other devices as you want. That way, you could pay for one TV, but have other TVs authorized. But, you would have to keep copying the key to all the other devices. You absolutely could not get perpetual free cable. The best you can do is pay for one but actually have many. Hardly even seems worth it.

Re:but oddly enough, shows work fine from bittorre

[Grishnakh]

BitTorrent is the way I watch TV almost exclusively now. I don't have to pay for cable service (only cable internet), and I just download the shows I want to see, in full HD glory, and watch them on a computer connected to my HDTV. My wife really loves it because we can pause and rewind, and best of all we don't have to sit through obnoxious commercials. And of course, it's all free, except for the internet service.

Cable companies have had their chance to offer TV shows in a convenient and cost-effective format, and they've completely blown it. I'm not going to waste my time and deal with the hassle of conforming to their stupid DRM schemes, and ridiculous pricing (usually over $100/month for HD service, with terrible compression), when I can just get what I want on BitTorrent. Besides, most of the worthwhile shows are on the main networks and PBS anyway; for cable, the only channels with worthwhile programming are Discovery and Sci-Fi. $100/month for two HD channels? And I have to watch it on their schedule and with commercials? I don't think so.

Re:FCC is useless, Congress is useless, see a pate

[dal20402]

Quit bitching and get out and vote.

We did that in 2006. It had no effect.

As long as the bulk of voters are easily manipulable through expensive TV ads, the ultimate loyalty of politicians will be to those who fund the expensive TV ads.

FCC Fails Again - Vote with your Wallet

[CCMCornell]

[Note, I left this same reply on TFA's comments but thought I'd copy it here cuz slashdot is cooler.]

This reminds me of a deadline a few years ago set by the FCC to include working firewire ports on set-top boxes. This would allow a digital connection to certain TV's as well as to recorders like D-VHS or computers (using D-VHS emulators.)

http://www.engadgethd.com/2006/02/01/does-your-cable-box-have-a-firewire-port

That mandate deadline came and passed without compliance as well. Boxes never had ports, or had ports removed even though OEM's like SA and Moto included them, or had ports that weren't functional.

The FCC has been a joke since it was created. Like most of government, despite any good intentions, it has proved ineffectual in enforcing many of its own mandates that has resulted in loss to the consumers while effectively enforcing protections for certain corporations like the Cable Cos resulting in loss to competition.

For me, I've given up. I've basically voted with my feet and stopped subscribing to cable. If I hear about something of interest, I can usually download it or have a friend record it or wait for it on DVD and rent it. The result is that I watch less TV, which may be a good thing or maybe I miss things I would enjoy or maybe it doesn't make a real difference except that the Cable Cos, as well as the content creators, advertisers other related businesses and the FCC (through included taxes), are not getting my money because of this stupidity. You may want to consider the same.

Re:but oddly enough, shows work fine from bittorre

[jollyreaper]

BitTorrent is the way I watch TV almost exclusively now. I don't have to pay for cable service (only cable internet), and I just download the shows I want to see, in full HD glory, and watch them on a computer connected to my HDTV. My wife really loves it because we can pause and rewind, and best of all we don't have to sit through obnoxious commercials. And of course, it's all free, except for the internet service. Interestingly enough, Microsoft is sort of blowing it with their xbox live service. I picked up a 360 recently for the games, I didn't even know they were doing all that other stuff with it. And it's really a cool service -- naturally, it was developed by a third party at Microsoft's request. But they do enough stupid shit there that they ultimately make it not entirely worth my while. Yes, you can download shows "to own" but they provide no mechanism to move them off the built-in hard drive. The bigger drive, 120gb, costs $179. You can't even buy the movies, just rent them. You can stream movies off a Windows Media Center computer but only if all the DRM is happy. FUCK THAT. I can hook up a laptop to the TV and do the same thing, no skin off my nose. There are also wireless removes for laptops now and I could plug that in if I don't want to have to keep getting up off the couch to change shows.

Microsoft is like 90% of the way towards not just owning but pwning the entertainment center machine market. But what's holding them back, that last 10%, is the market droid bullshit. I guess that's a good thing for the rest of us, just like Vista's suckitude is providing the impetus for more open source development, cuz what need would there be for Linux if Windows did everything we needed and was mostly harmless, mostly enjoyable?

Cable companies have had their chance to offer TV shows in a convenient and cost-effective format, and they've completely blown it. I'm not going to waste my time and deal with the hassle of conforming to their stupid DRM schemes, and ridiculous pricing (usually over $100/month for HD service, with terrible compression), when I can just get what I want on BitTorrent. Besides, most of the worthwhile shows are on the main networks and PBS anyway; for cable, the only channels with worthwhile programming are Discovery and Sci-Fi. $100/month for two HD channels? And I have to watch it on their schedule and with commercials? I don't think so. I came to that same realization a few years back. I'd purchased a satellite system and it was really cool but I realized that the shows I wanted to watch only came on a few times per month. What was the point in paying so much money for so little utilization?

I would totally support a system that included micropayments at a reasonable fee for shows I was interested in seeing. But as is, they're charging an arm and a leg rate and DRM us so much, it feels like they should be paying us to deal with this bullshit.

Cable companies moving towards DCAS

[StandardCell]

CableCard is expensive to deploy and difficult to do correctly, as many consumers have had problems and the finger pointing between the Consumer Electronics companies and the cable companies continues. Couple that with fragmentation on emerging standards (e.g. unidirectional multi-stream cable card vs. bidirectional M-card and its head-end equipment implications) and you can see that this is a huge problem.

The real path in digital cable is ClearQAM (i.e. unencrypted digital cable) that will eventually transition to DCAS, with CableCard being the lame horse in the race. The Downloadable Conditional Access System (DCAS) is better to the cable companies because:

1. They don't have to deal with any kind of external hardware in terms of inventories and so on.
2. Nobody from the cable company needs to go and activate the hardware (i.e. tens of billions in deployment costs for personnel, vehicles and equipment), because it's all done from the head end.
3. The Conditional Access system is inherently downloadable, meaning it can be renewed if cracked (similar to BD+ on Blu-Ray).
4. The Conditional Access system is embedded inside the chip with special design methods that prevent it from being hacked from the outside. Before you go off on me on this one, note that it's part of the contract when you license the IP that the hardware has a very specific path to transfer information that can't be addressed by additional logic and subjects you to an economic death penalty if you do - no more peeking into internal registers or external memory since all of that has to be encrypted from the inside and done so by design from the beginning.
5. Even if you do go to the extent of de-lidding the chip and attempting to find the secrets, the cable companies can send electronic bullets to disable a cracked device if so found.
6. Content recording and sharing is automatically DRM protected from the head-end's instructions, so only compliant devices within a particular approved secure media sharing framework can transfer the content.

It's a content producer's and cable company's simultaneous wet dream. The cable guys are interested ultimately in selling gravy (i.e. programming), not leasing or selling hardware that needs to be maintained, stocked, etc.. Even the satellite guys that I've talked to have said as much. When you also consider that Broadcom, the very dominant player in Set Top Box chips, is itself pushing DCAS, you can see where this is going. Heck, even Verizon last year tried to throw a monkey wrench in the works by writing a letter to the FCC so it could use DCAS for its new Fiber-to-the-Premises IPTV network. The poor bastards who get the shaft now are the companies providing digital TV chips with cable box functionality embedded, although this is also why Broadcom is intent on pushing this through as a first-mover advantage in the DTV chip market.

Don't fret too much on this one - it's all already essentially been decided for you. The unfortunate aspect of this is that the early adopters are going to get the shaft.

Re:Try buying a TV that supports CableCard

[Tintivilus]

Unless you're now going to tell me that using digital cable/set top boxes/whatever, that one can't block channels. If that's the case, then there is absolutely no way I'll be getting any such service.

That's exactly what I'll tell you. The reason my digital cable box is now plugged into my Myth backend is that it had no provision for deleting unwanted channels or making a channel list like my TV can for analog (and clear-QAM for my new TV) stations. It's amazing that they'd omit such a commonly-used feature so people might be more likely to watch their shopping channels.

If Comcast had just made their STB just -][- this much more user-friendly I wouldn't be using a DVR to skip all their commercials right now.

Re:Why can't I buy a digital-to-NTSC set-top box?

[mattack2]

Googling ATSC tuner, then going to the cheaper alternative listed from Amazon found this:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000NW7A2G

Under $100 standalone ATSC tuner.