News and Reviews....
The Wonder of CableCard 1.0 .... Sept. 2006
By Bob Lieto
For those of us that bought into the notion of "Cable Card" on our new TV, be it Rear projection, Plasma or LCD, I would like to clear things up. It started early 2006 when, I heard that most TV manufacturers were eliminating the cable card slot on many of the Tvs in their lines. The higher, upper price sets kept the slot, while the lower price point sets removed it. I wondered why, when the idea of the card was imposed by the government (FCC) to eliminate the unsightly CABLE BOX that every one dread. Justly so, it (Cable Box) was the first thing you saw when entering the TV space, it required the use of a second remote and seemed to be the culprit whenever the signal was lost. The first thing that customers noticed was that the price of the TV was about $1000 difference early on with the card, it later dropped to about $40 difference.
The Cable Card was suppose to make the set "Digital Cable Ready" and handle the customer ID, authorization and decode premium channels. The FCC actual banned cable companies from offering set-top boxes at some future date (The actual date keeps changing. For now, it's July 2007.) Complying TV manufacturers started making sets with tuners and CableCard. It was a PCMCIA Type II card that simply did not work on all cable systems. Some of the most important TV features such as, Pay per View (PPV), Video On Demand (VOD), and electronic programming guides did not work. It was a One way device that couldn't interact with your cable company.
The fundamental problem was that CableCard was a half-baked technology and federal mandating its adoption was pre-mature. The CableCard system that is in sets today is already OBSOLETE. A CableCard 2.0 standard is being prepared that will supposedly will fix many of the limitations and problems of the first offering. CableCard 2.0 is known as Interactive Digital Cable Ready. It should fix the non-interactivity problems. But TV's with the original CableCard Slots won't be compatible with 2.0's interactive features. Willing to take a chance on CableCard Part 2 ???.
The new standard is also a bad bet because it too will be obsolete, fast. Software standards known as OpenCable Application Platform and Downloadable Conditional Access System are being developed that may provide all the functionality, ease of use, and security that today's HDTVs need.
So the bottom line. Six million CableCard Ready TV have been sold, and fewer then 3% of the slots actually have cards. TV makers have started to delete the card slot with 80% fewer model having the port. Cable companies are dancing for they make mucho monies on PPV and VOD and CableCard didn't allow that.
The only up side for CableCard 1.0 is that it does work with some cable companies and it can be used for Home Theater PC Systems like Microsoft Vista Media center, with its Internet access and proprietary program guide. So what I think we have seen happen right before our eyes is another bump in the road on the transition of our Analog to Digital Cable System. Please let this be the last.
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