There has been a bunch of hoopla lately about CableCARDs finally coming to market this summer, so I decided to read about it a little more…
The CableCARD system basically lets you insert a PCMCIA card into your TV and then you don’t need a digital cable box to receive high definition signals. The CableCARDs are going to let things like digital video recorders work for high-def signals (TiVO, Windows Media Center, etc.) Anyway, after poking around the web on it, I realized that the whole CableCARD system is already obsolete and it hasn’t even been released yet. CableCARD 2.0 is going to follow about a a year later which will allow bi-directional data (you will have to wait for 2.0 for things like Pay Per View). But the really lame part is existing CableCARD TVs aren’t going to work with 2.0 CableCARDs (so you already need to buy a new TV… even if you have one that supports CableCARDs).
Then probably a year after CableCARD 2.0, cable companies are going to start switching to Downloadable Conditional Access Systems (DCAS). This will be much better than CableCARD (even 2.0) because it’s essentially a CableCARD that is downloaded automatically from your provider (no need to rent a CableCARD for each TV then).
I can’t imagine anyone reading this actually cares about any of this… but I don’t care. It’s more for my own archive purposes so I can look it up later, so piss off! 🙂
If you *do* actually care, here’s some reading for you…
Did you see anything about Windows MCE support for either of these?
CableCARD 1.0 will be supported by Windows Media Center for certain (although you will need to buy a new computer and a HDCP enabled monitor to use it for high-def). CableCARD 2.0 *should* be supported, but it’s not certain at this point.
Yeah it sucks. I specifically looked for this in a TV then realized it sucked after talking to my cable company.
im ok with that