# TiVo confirms SDV dongle for 2Q 2008



## cwoody222

I didn't see this mentioned elsewhere. It's great news! :up::up::up:

http://www.zatznotfunny.com/2007-11/the-ncta-tivo-confirm-sdv-dongle-for-2008/


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## CrispyCritter

Thanks for posting the link! Very nice news for lots of people. It seems like a very short timeframe, though, given cable companies past adherence to deadlines. But perhaps it will be a smoother deployment than I think.


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## SeanC

I don't understand why this isn't going to be sold as an accessory? Why force users to rent it from the cable company for yet another surcharge?


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## dig_duggler

Nice. Now if they can just stick to the deadline.


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## RoyK

SeanC said:


> I don't understand why this isn't going to be sold as an accessory? Why force users to rent it from the cable company for yet another surcharge?


It appears to me from the article that TiVo isn't the developer.


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## bizzy

I wonder if this will work for PPV content as well?


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## mikeyts

SeanC said:


> I don't understand why this isn't going to be sold as an accessory? Why force users to rent it from the cable company for yet another surcharge?


One reason would be because the various cable providers use different proprietary protocols for SDV. As I understand it, there are three in use already. It's the same deal with the CableCARDs themselves--a Moto CableCARD isn't going to work on an SA system.

Sheesh--we've just been saved from the potential bricking of our investment in Series3 TiVos and people are already complaining about the solution .


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## ncbagwell

So did we ever figure out if this will allow you to do OnDemand stuff as well or does it just fix the SDV problem?


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## NSPhillips

ncbagwell said:


> So did we ever figure out if this will allow you to do OnDemand stuff as well or does it just fix the SDV problem?


Seems like that would be a better incentive for the cable companies to support it. They can probably make more money on OnDemand than offering a few extra channels.


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## mikeyts

ncbagwell said:


> So did we ever figure out if this will allow you to do OnDemand stuff as well or does it just fix the SDV problem?


Access to VOD and IPPV could be added with a similar approach--an expansion of the capabilities of the dongle would do it. The content providers like to have presentation control for those channels, though. How do you specify the fancy background graphics, deep menu structure and inset video of the typical subscription VOD channel through a dongle?

They could come up with some generic menu presentation where they just downloaded the simple text for the menu tree and action codes to be returned to the system for end-node selections. It could include a QAM frequency and program number for the appropriate video stream to be displayed in inset. HBO-On-Demand would look identical to Cinemax-On-Demand, but it would only be for a small subset of customers using these dongles and it would better serve those customers, making subscription to the premium tiers more enticing. It would also open up a profit opportunity in Impulse Pay-Per-View and Pay-Per-Viewing-Period VOD.


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## ldudek

dig_duggler said:


> Nice. Now if they can just stick to the deadline.


Yep, that's always a concern. Cable companies are not exactly known for reaching speculated goals. Even TiVo has a problem with that from time to time and since this a joint effort it may be more then a bit of concern.

Don't get me wrong, I'm overjoyed by this news. I'm willing to pay whatever the cable company charges me. And that's a problem in itself -- they probably know that.

Let's just all hope for some fairness in price and a timely distribution.


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## mikeyts

In the announcement, I wonder whose "Fiscal Year" they're talking about. We're in the the U.S. Government's 1QFY08, now--hopefully they're referring to the government 2QFY08, which begins in January.


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## ldudek

mikeyts said:


> In the announcement, I wonder whose "Fiscal Year" they're talking about. We're in the the U.S. Government's 1QFY08, now--hopefully they're referring to the government 2QFY08, which begins in January.


Well, hope springs eternal but I get the feeling it ain't going to happen quite that quick. I think they are saying second quarter of 2008 which would put it in the April, May, June slot.

But I'm hoping your right.

:up: on your sig.


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## dswallow

mikeyts said:


> In the announcement, I wonder whose "Fiscal Year" they're talking about. We're in the the U.S. Government's 1QFY08, now--hopefully they're referring to the government 2QFY08, which begins in January.


I'm wondering what announcement you're reading that mentions fiscal quarters.



> Cable operators will make the new adapters available for TiVo customers in the second quarter of 2008. Cable operators and TiVo will work cooperatively to alert TiVo customers about availability of the new adapter.


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## pl1

ldudek said:


> Don't get me wrong, I'm overjoyed by this news. I'm willing to pay whatever the cable company charges me. And that's a problem in itself -- they probably know that.Let's just all hope for some fairness in price and a timely distribution.


Maybe they also see the benefits for them like PPV revenue.


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## pl1

bizzy said:


> I wonder if this will work for PPV content as well?


There is no reason to expect it wouldn't. SDV, PPV and VOD all require two-way communications.


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## Kablemodem

mikeyts said:


> In the announcement, I wonder whose "Fiscal Year" they're talking about. We're in the the U.S. Government's 1QFY08, now--hopefully they're referring to the government 2QFY08, which begins in January.


There is no reference to anyone's fiscal year in the article. It says "second quarter of 2008," which means April - June.


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## bizzy

pl1 said:


> There is no reason to expect it wouldn't. SDV, PPV and VOD all require two-way communications.


Sure. But they talk to very different systems back at the MSO.


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## dswallow

pl1 said:


> There is no reason to expect it wouldn't. SDV, PPV and VOD all require two-way communications.


Somewhere in all these discussions, it was stated that SDV is the only thing it's intended to address, at least initially. When you get into PPV and VOD you start needing to deal with much more information such as a directory of programming, costs and authorization methods, plus you have to deal with authorizations that may occur outside the receiver (buying PPV by phone, for instance), so I wouldn't go holding my breath that they'll address any of that the first time around.


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## ldudek

dswallow said:


> Somewhere in all these discussions, it was stated that SDV is the only thing it's intended to address, at least initially. When you get into PPV and VOD you start needing to deal with much more information such as a directory of programming, costs and authorization methods, plus you have to deal with authorizations that may occur outside the receiver (buying PPV by phone, for instance), so I wouldn't go holding my breath that they'll address any of that the first time around.


I could care less about PPV. If I want a movie there is Amazon.com. There is nothing else I would even think about as far as PPV.


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## mikeyts

Kablemodem said:


> There is no reference to anyone's fiscal year in the article. It says "second quarter of 2008," which means April - June.


Ooops--you're right. The announcement didn't mention a fiscal year, so it'd be 2nd quarter of the calendar year. Wishful thinking.


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## mikeyts

ldudek said:


> I could care less about PPV. If I want a movie there is Amazon.com. There is nothing else I would even think about as far as PPV.


All Amazon is offering is piss-poor quality SD video, which I never use except to catch up with the occasional missed TV episode. I never have and never would rent a movie from Unbox. Both the cable providers and the premium subscription content providers are starting to offer HD--locally, Cox has a pay HD VOD channel and just added Starz HD On-Demand, both of which would be handy to have. I'm not holding my breath for VOD or IPPV access by dongle, though.


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## pl1

mikeyts said:


> All Amazon is offering is piss-poor quality SD video, which I never use except to catch up with the occasional missed TV episode. I never have and never would rent a movie from Unbox. Both the cable providers and the premium subscription content providers are starting to offer HD--


Never hurts to let the cablecos THINK there is some real competition with Unbox.


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## bizzy

pl1 said:


> Never hurts to let the cablecos THINK there is some real competition with Unbox.


They often seem pretty dumb, but I doubt they are that dumb.


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## dbtom

I won't believe this thing will work until I see it with my own eyes. It's still a pretty big leap of faith.


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## Brad Bishop

I don't know how many have looked at it but the OnDemand stuff, as seemingly useful as it ought to be, is poorly organized and/or has a pretty bad interface. Back when I had a Comcast DVR I would try to use it and it's like going into a semi-organized library to look for a book you're not aware of.

Kind of hard to explain. Let's say you want to watch a horror movie but not sure which one, you go to your local Blockbuster and see the 'Horror' sign and know right away where to go. You can then peruse the Horror section in alphabetical order and it works pretty well.

Now let's say you went to the same store and in the Horror section it had, instead, this ill-advised sub-category tree. So you look at 'Horror' and then see:
- TBS
- Classics
- B&W
- Thriller
- USA Network
- MTV

and under any of those you'd have a different kind of sub-category tree (reiterating, yeah, just trying to explain how odd it is). So, your actual selections are really hidden until you get down to the lowest part of a branch and then you're given the dozen or so selections that actually (logically?) fit in that branch. You're not sure but want to see what else they have. So you return back up a to the parent branch and then back down and look at the next sub-category list. You keep doing this trying to remember what you may have wanted to see from the previous branches but it's all confusing enough to where you're unlikely to return.

Oh, and each time you bounce up to the parent branch or down to the child branch takes a few seconds to load. Not horrible if you were just going down one level but when you consider the amount of bouncing you have to do it adds up.

I don't have a good answer as to how they could make it better as a huge list of titles would be a 'too much information' kind of problem, but, as it is, it's kind of unwieldy/unusable, in my opinion.


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## ldudek

dbtom said:


> I won't believe this thing will work until I see it with my own eyes. It's still a pretty big leap of faith.


ROFLOL. Why is this such a big leap of faith? I don't know why there is any negativity at all. This is great news.:up:


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## AgentMunroe

I don't doubt that such a device exists and works somewhere, but what I'm terrified of is

a) when exactly my local TW affiliate in Rochester is going to be carrying these (I mean, who exactly is going to be making these - I assume Scientific Atlanta and Motorola, which aren't exactly known for being on-the-ball companies here, and don't even get me started on TW), and 

b) considering all the fun I had trying to talk Time Warner into getting CableCARDs, what the hell am I going to have to go through to get one of these from them? It sort of sounds like TiVo's going to be stepping in on our behalf to make sure all TiVo owners who need one get one, which would be helpful, but I'm certainly not counting on that.

Another, less pressing question - will this work for SDV-only channels, or will I be able to get the local digital simulcasts with this also? I notice the quality on the digital-only channels is much better, and if this would make it possible so that the analog channels (which are broadcast in digital over SDV) could be picked up digitally for the better quality and higher compression ratio, that would be a great bonus.

Anyway, we've got plenty of time to wait, so I'm not expecting to see any answers anytime soon, but I'm certainly cautiously optimistic. Buying a S3 in Rochester was a bit of a leap of faith, and I'm glad to see there's at least some effort to resolve this.


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## MickeS

Glad to see this news. I recently canceled my HD service from TWC since they added several new channels that I wanted to see, but they are all SDV so no go for me, yet I was supposed to pay for the whole HD package. Once this dongle is available, they'll probably get more money from me (unless I've been completely weaned off of the cable offerings by then - there's not much on there I miss anyway).


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## ah30k

ldudek said:


> ROFLOL. Why is this such a big leap of faith? I don't know why there is any negativity at all. This is great news.:up:


Talk about ROTFL, when is the last time you saw a 6-month in advance announcement of a product launch date hold true? Do you really think this will come out on time?


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## zaknafein

dswallow said:


> Somewhere in all these discussions, it was stated that SDV is the only thing it's intended to address, at least initially. When you get into PPV and VOD you start needing to deal with much more information such as a directory of programming, costs and authorization methods, plus you have to deal with authorizations that may occur outside the receiver (buying PPV by phone, for instance), so I wouldn't go holding my breath that they'll address any of that the first time around.


I would agree. The cable companies and CE manufacturers are currently mired in a battle over who will control the UI for bidirectional CCs, the cable headend or the CE device. I highly doubt they'd voluntarily give up that control here.


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## ewilts

ldudek said:


> ROFLOL. Why is this such a big leap of faith? I don't know why there is any negativity at all. This is great news.:up:


Until it ships, it's vaporware. Yes, it's extremely promising but it does absolutely nothing for those already affected by the SDV cutovers (thankfully I'm not one of them). For me personally, it's matter of which comes first - this solution, or SDV. As long as this solution is available before SDV hits this area, I'll be happy. If not, having an announced but not-yet-shipping product does me no good.

.../Ed


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## ewilts

Do we know if this adapter will be made available for free? Or will the cable companies see this as an opportunity to charge us more?


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## Interpol

This has now made news on Engadget:

http://www.engadget.com/2007/11/26/switched-video-on-cable-coming-to-tivo-in-2008/


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## bicker

Count on there being a separate rental fee for this adapter.


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## jmpage2

Single cable card rental is provided free by many Cable Co's as a 'good faith' item... I suspect they do this to try to demonstrate to the FCC that they are playing nice with CEs like TiVo.

I don't see that this would be any different... I expect it will be free or have a nominal rental charge.

Look at it another way.. why would the cable co want to lose a subscriber over their switch to an SDV system? The dongle becomes an appeasement tool to keep those high dollar subscribers.

I'm really surprised by the negativity. Even if the projected timeframe slips we are still almost certainly looking at some kind of solution to SDV in 2008. Meaning that we didn't make a bad purchasing choice with our TiVo boxes.


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## MickeS

ah30k said:


> Talk about ROTFL, when is the last time you saw a 6-month in advance announcement of a product launch date hold true? Do you really think this will come out on time?


TTG/MRV?


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## ldudek

MickeS said:


> TTG/MRV?


You forgot eSATA.


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## ldudek

jmpage2 said:


> Single cable card rental is provided free by many Cable Co's as a 'good faith' item... I suspect they do this to try to demonstrate to the FCC that they are playing nice with CEs like TiVo.
> 
> I don't see that this would be any different... I expect it will be free or have a nominal rental charge.


Wow I don't know what part of the planet you're on but I don't expect it to be free at all at least not with Comcast or TW! A nominal charge is what I'm hoping for.



jmpage2 said:


> Look at it another way.. why would the cable co want to lose a subscriber over their switch to an SDV system? The dongle becomes an appeasement tool to keep those high dollar subscribers.


Look at it this way. What have they got to lose? Either you pay for the dongle or you use their equipment. And personally I don't plan on giving up my S3.



jmpage2 said:


> I'm really surprised by the negativity. Even if the projected timeframe slips we are still almost certainly looking at some kind of solution to SDV in 2008. Meaning that we didn't make a bad purchasing choice with our TiVo boxes.


Dude, this is the TiVo S3 thread where negativity is king.


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## slyone

mikeyts said:


> Sheesh--we've just been saved from the potential bricking of our investment in Series3 TiVos and people are already complaining about the solution .


I agree 100%, I just bought an HDTivo this weekend and then started looking around here and found out anout the SDV rollout which is quite heavy now in my area!upstate NY-TWC. Glad to hear the news and will proceed to open and setup this afternoon!


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## ah30k

MickeS said:


> TTG/MRV?
> 
> 
> 
> You forgot eSATA.
Click to expand...

I was primarily thinking of cable company deployments, but since we're on it, when did they first announce the projected launch date for these and when did they come out? Did they announce five months ago that TTG/MRV would be available in Nov? It was more like three weeks in advance. Did they announce eSATA 6 months in advance? It was more like a hacker found it and posted the solution.

My point was that a 'dongle will be ready in Q208' announcement should not be read as too much of a real date.


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## ewilts

jmpage2 said:


> Single cable card rental is provided free by many Cable Co's as a 'good faith' item... I suspect they do this to try to demonstrate to the FCC that they are playing nice with CEs like TiVo.


Actually, the first CableCARD is not provided as a 'good faith' item - it's provided *instead* of a digital set top box. You don't get both (at least around here). It just so happens that the price they charge for the CableCARD and the STB is the same.



> I'm really surprised by the negativity. Even if the projected timeframe slips we are still almost certainly looking at some kind of solution to SDV in 2008. Meaning that we didn't make a bad purchasing choice with our TiVo boxes.


There are people already seriously impacted by the lack of a solution and they in fact did make bad purchasing choices. For them having a solution in 2008 is about a year too late.

.../Ed


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## BobCamp1

bicker said:


> Count on there being a separate rental fee for this adapter.


You forgot about the cost of the installation fee! I assume there's going to be a truck roll for installation.

I think the fee will be around $5-$10 per month. It most certainly will not be free.


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## classicsat

As far as TTG/MRV, I think this summer they were saying "November". They never said anything about eSATA (apart from that weirdly coded message from Shanan), it just happened.


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## freediverdude

I know this is going to sound like a really really stupid question, and I don't come here often, but I am wondering, is this SDV going to affect people like me who don't have a cable box currently, and only have the analog channels? Right now I have a series 2, with just the raw cable going in. I'm in the Tampa Florida area with Brighthouse (which I think is a fancy name for Time Warner). Is all this going to require me to get a cable box and then this dongle? I'm starting to get scared, lol. Please let me keep my $53 a month bill! hehe


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## vstone

SeanC said:


> I don't understand why this isn't going to be sold as an accessory? Why force users to rent it from the cable company for yet another surcharge?


Because it will actively interface with the cable infrastructure. The cable companies will want to control this and I won't blame them a bit.


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## dswallow

freediverdude said:


> I know this is going to sound like a really really stupid question, and I don't come here often, but I am wondering, is this SDV going to affect people like me who don't have a cable box currently, and only have the analog channels? Right now I have a series 2, with just the raw cable going in. I'm in the Tampa Florida area with Brighthouse (which I think is a fancy name for Time Warner). Is all this going to require me to get a cable box and then this dongle? I'm starting to get scared, lol. Please let me keep my $53 a month bill! hehe


Over time analog channels will make way for more digital services since the bandwidth is more efficiently used that way. But otherwise SDV has nothing to do with analog services.


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## davecramer74

> don't know how many have looked at it but the OnDemand stuff, as seemingly useful as it ought to be, is poorly organized and/or has a pretty bad interface. Back when I had a Comcast DVR I would try to use it and it's like going into a semi-organized library to look for a book you're not aware of.
> 
> Kind of hard to explain. Let's say you want to watch a horror movie but not sure which one, you go to your local Blockbuster and see the 'Horror' sign and know right away where to go. You can then peruse the Horror section in alphabetical order and it works pretty well.
> 
> Now let's say you went to the same store and in the Horror section it had, instead, this ill-advised sub-category tree. So you look at 'Horror' and then see:
> - TBS
> - Classics
> - B&W
> - Thriller
> - USA Network
> - MTV
> 
> and under any of those you'd have a different kind of sub-category tree (reiterating, yeah, just trying to explain how odd it is). So, your actual selections are really hidden until you get down to the lowest part of a branch and then you're given the dozen or so selections that actually (logically?) fit in that branch. You're not sure but want to see what else they have. So you return back up a to the parent branch and then back down and look at the next sub-category list. You keep doing this trying to remember what you may have wanted to see from the previous branches but it's all confusing enough to where you're unlikely to return.
> 
> Oh, and each time you bounce up to the parent branch or down to the child branch takes a few seconds to load. Not horrible if you were just going down one level but when you consider the amount of bouncing you have to do it adds up.
> 
> I don't have a good answer as to how they could make it better as a huge list of titles would be a 'too much information' kind of problem, but, as it is, it's kind of unwieldy/unusable, in my opinion.


must have been awhile since you had it? Seems pretty organized to me now.

HD 
HD movies
By Category
Premium channels
Free
New releases

Its quite organized actually and there is a reason they do the sub categories. Like when you goto premium channels, you can search on the channels you are subscribed to, etc. I use on demand to watch movies. Rarely do i even tune my movie channels. Its like a giant DVR. I'm amazed you found it unusable. Its one of the better features the cable companies have come out with in the last 10 years. The Main reason i havent got a tivo is because it doesnt support VOD. Im holding out hope that this new dongle will support all 2 way coms


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## bizzy

ah30k said:


> I was primarily thinking of cable company deployments, but since we're on it, when did they first announce the projected launch date for these and when did they come out? Did they announce five months ago that TTG/MRV would be available in Nov? It was more like three weeks in advance. Did they announce eSATA 6 months in advance? It was more like a hacker found it and posted the solution.
> 
> My point was that a 'dongle will be ready in Q208' announcement should not be read as too much of a real date.


I also am taking the date with a large grain of salt. We're waiting on the cable companies here, not Tivo.

How long have the Comcast MotoTivo's been 'soon to be available'?


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## Langree

The OD selection seems to differ from market to market, Sacramento had some selections I enjoyed on my visit in Sept. Came back to Houston and I didn't have half of what was offered in Sac.


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## vstone

mikeyts said:


> One reason would be because the various cable providers use different proprietary protocols for SDV. As I understand it, there are three in use already. It's the same deal with the CableCARDs themselves--a Moto CableCARD isn't going to work on an SA system.
> 
> Sheesh--we've just been saved from the potential bricking of our investment in Series3 TiVos and people are already complaining about the solution .


I agree. We must remember that in addition to the two major cable system providers(SA and Moto), there are others. The SA boxes have at least two different kinds of software. Some, maybe all, of the SDV equipment providers are NOT SA and Moto. Some systems are going all digital in 2008; others will wait. There will be a multitude of different system configurations.

Let's just be happy that a resolution is on the horizon.


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## vstone

NSPhillips said:


> Seems like that would be a better incentive for the cable companies to support it. They can probably make more money on OnDemand than offering a few extra channels.


I expect SDV to be more than a FEW extra channels. If it was only a few, they probably wouldn't do it.


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## jlb

I see nothing in that original article that says there will be a rental fee.

I know, I know, we all think most cable companies are evil and will charge. However, I think there is a real possibility that this will be free and possibly fall under the legal requirements to be able to have "access to all channels".

Heck, some systems, as noted in various threads, are going all SDV. Without this device, if you are a TiVo S3/HD owner, you lose access. Granted, it was a choice to get the TiVo, but I just don't see this being a $14.99 device.


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## bizzy

mikeyts said:


> I doubt that the lease cost will be any greater than that for the CableCARD itself.


I suspect, but can't say for sure, that there are some FCC restrictions on the monthly fees for CableCards. I don't think the same restrictions are in place for rental of the tuning resolver, and I honestly can't see most cable companies being generous when pricing the device that loses them a monthly HD DVR rental fee.

I predict the tuning resolver will cost as least as much as, if not slightly more than the monthly HD DVR rental fee.


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## mikeyts

BobCamp1 said:


> You forgot about the cost of the installation fee! I assume there's going to be a truck roll for installation.
> 
> I think the fee will be around $5-$10 per month. It most certainly will not be free.


I doubt that the lease cost will be any greater than that for the CableCARD itself.

It's also a great candidate for free user self-install since its protocols can seek any necessary registration or "activation" through communication back to the cable system. They could let you pick one up or mail one to you as is commonly offered as an option for cable modems..


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## MickeS

vstone said:


> I expect SDV to be more than a FEW extra channels. If it was only a few, they probably wouldn't do it.


Yeah, currently I'd describe it as a few, but no doubt they will want to add the majority of digital channels as SDV soon enough, to reap the benefits.

I also wouldn't be too surprised if the dongle would simply be included with the CableCARD rental, and not be a separate fee/item.


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## mikeyts

bizzy said:


> I predict the tuning resolver will cost as least as much as, if not slightly more than the monthly HD DVR rental fee.


We'll see, but that will cause massive negative publicity for the cable industry and appeals to the FCC to bring the pricing under regulation. The cost of these little devices will be trivial in comparison to an actual STB.


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## vstone

Langree said:


> The OD selection seems to differ from market to market, Sacramento had some selections I enjoyed on my visit in Sept. Came back to Houston and I didn't have half of what was offered in Sac.


Exactly! Out here on a minor Comcast systems we get Comcast ads for on Demand via Channel One (channel 1 here provides about one system mesage a year to us) and for HD On Demand, with only one of the five On Demand HD movies actually being available to us.


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## bizzy

mikeyts said:


> I doubt that the lease cost will be any greater than that for the CableCARD itself.


If I was a shareholder of a cable company that did this, I'd be calling for the chairman's head on a stick at the next shareholder meeting.

Providing this resolver at less than the cost of an HD DVR rental simply doesn't make financial sense for them.


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## MickeS

bizzy said:


> I honestly can't see most cable companies being generous when pricing the device that loses them a monthly HD DVR rental fee.


You could also see it as them GAINING a monthly hi-def programming fee.


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## acvthree

Why wouldn't they make the price the same as their own DVR?

The FCC made a recomendation that the price of cable cards be nominal, but, as far as I can tell, have not enforced any pricing constraints. We see a wide range of prices now. Verizon, for example, charges for all cable cards (no freebees) and just announced a price increase for the beginning of the year. They also don't plan on having M-cards before the end of Q1.

I have seen NO recomendation on price or requirement to carry the dongles from the FCC. Why would the cable companies price to dongles to give an advantage to their DVR competition? I just don't see it.

Al


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## CharlesH

acvthree said:


> Why would the cable companies price to dongles to give an advantage to their DVR competition? I just don't see it.


Only if they perceive that being "nice" with the resolver will forestall regulatory heat to open up the other two-way features (PPV, VOD) to third-party devices without the current OCAP requirements (that are not acceptable to the CE vendors such as TiVo).


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## ewilts

MickeS said:


> I also wouldn't be too surprised if the dongle would simply be included with the CableCARD rental, and not be a separate fee/item.


Perhaps they would be one per digital outlet, not one per CableCARD. After all, S3 users need 1 of these, not 2... Let's keep our fingers crossed that we don't get charged for however many we need.

.../Ed


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## ajwees41

vstone said:


> I agree. We must remember that in addition to the two major cable system providers(SA and Moto), there are others. The SA boxes have at least two different kinds of software. Some, maybe all, of the SDV equipment providers are NOT SA and Moto. Some systems are going all digital in 2008; others will wait. There will be a multitude of different system configurations.
> 
> Let's just be happy that a resolution is on the horizon.


The Moto's also have more than one software providers.


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## JoeSchueller

vstone said:


> I expect SDV to be more than a FEW extra channels. If it was only a few, they probably wouldn't do it.


In Cincinnati, on TWC, it started as one (ESPN2HD) but is now up to 7 and in my BBB complaint, TWC's response was essentially: "F you, not only is ESPN2HD not available to UDCP devices, but EVERY HD station we launch in the future is going to be on SDV."

Personally, this issue has been a major source of frustration since leaving D* and purchasing a TiVo HD this summer. As one poster stated, this does feel about 9 months late (if it is on time). Ironically, I was about to contact my municipal government about breaking the TWC franchise agreement based on their inability to rise to the level of customer satisfaction in our area. I still believe some actual competition is the key to solving these issues, but this announcement makes me feel like I won't have to succeed at that extreme action just to see new HD channels.

Unfortunately, it is just vaporware until one is hooked to my TiVo HD and actually working. Here's to hoping!


----------



## acvthree

CharlesH said:


> Only if they perceive that being "nice" with the resolver will forestall regulatory heat to open up the other two-way features (PPV, VOD) to third-party devices without the current OCAP requirements (that are not acceptable to the CE vendors such as TiVo).


Do you see any indications that the FCC is considering any type of pressure? Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't see the FCC as being very consumer oriented.

Al


----------



## Brad Bishop

davecramer74 said:


> Its quite organized actually and there is a reason they do the sub categories. Like when you goto premium channels, you can search on the channels you are subscribed to, etc. I use on demand to watch movies. Rarely do i even tune my movie channels. Its like a giant DVR. I'm amazed you found it unusable. Its one of the better features the cable companies have come out with in the last 10 years. The Main reason i havent got a tivo is because it doesnt support VOD. Im holding out hope that this new dongle will support all 2 way coms


I thought the same thing (that it would be like one great big DVR). I just found it clunky. I was exaggerating about the initial categories but if you subscribe to HBO, Skinemax, Showtime, etc. and are looking for a movie you really don't care which channel carries it just if you can get it.

To me it would have been better to do it this way:
- PPV
- Included with subscription
- All

and under each of those just common categories and -maybe- the alphabet:
- Comedy
- Drama
- Horror

The idea being that if you're looking for a movie you really don't care where it comes from (HBO, Cinemax, PPV (maybe because you're paying extra for it), etc.) you just want to find a movie to watch. The branding / affiliation gets in the way to me. If they want to put in paranthesis that it came from HBO, that's fine, but it being on HBO has no bearing except on whether I subscribe to HBO. If I do, just show it in the list. If I don't, I don't need to see it.

I think they keep it there so that you'll see, "Oh, HBO has some movies I may want to see..." It's kind of the same logic on them keeping all of the channels there in your guide regardless of whether you subscribe to them or not. I find it just gets in my way.


----------



## mikeyts

acvthree said:


> Do you see any indications that the FCC is considering any type of pressure? Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't see the FCC as being very consumer oriented.


I don't know how you could say something that ignorant. Consumer advocacy is a large portion of the FCC's reason for existence. Arguably, this forum wouldn't exist without the efforts of the FCC, because TiVo S3 and TiVo HD wouldn't exist because CableCARDs wouldn't exist. If the FCC hadn't created a requirement that they provide separable conditional access (back 1986), the cable industry would not have created CableLabs. If the FCC had not strongly pushed the cable and CE industries, they never would have completed the specification for CableCARD and CableCARD Host and if the FCC had not enacted regulations requiring the cable providers to stock and distribute cable cards I'm guessing that none of them would be doing it today.

Under an ill-conceived provision in the regs meant to help them counter increasingly effective competition from DBS and the telcos, many providers are wriggling out from under rate regulations. But if they get greedy and start charging arbitrarily high fees for something like this tuning resolver (which will probably cost them less than $30 each in relatively small lots) they will doom themselves to increased rate regulation.


----------



## zalusky

They should make it part of the digital outlet fee. They are competing against satellite after all with their latest increased HD offerings and this is the fastest way to get there.


----------



## Luke M

mikeyts said:


> I don't know how you could say something that ignorant. Consumer advocacy is a large portion of the FCC's reason for existence.


The FCC (like Congress, which tells the FCC what to do) responds to lobbying from big business. Sometimes consumers benefit - it's always nice when that happens - but don't confuse that with being pro-consumer.

Take a simple example, cable TV competition in apartment buildings. The FCC recently banned exclusive deals. A pro-consumer action, but why now? Why not ten years ago? Only because some very large companies (Verizon, AT&T) asked for it. Consumers are not in the picture.


----------



## bizzy

mikeyts said:


> (back 1986)


Ah, there is the rub. The FCC today, thanks to Kevin Martin, is a much different beast.


----------



## dig_duggler

Luke M said:


> The FCC (like Congress, which tells the FCC what to do) responds to lobbying from big business. Sometimes consumers benefit - it's always nice when that happens - but don't confuse that with being pro-consumer.
> 
> Take a simple example, cable TV competition in apartment buildings. The FCC recently banned exclusive deals. A pro-consumer action, but why now? Why not ten years ago? Only because some very large companies (Verizon, AT&T) asked for it. Consumers are not in the picture.


+1


----------



## acvthree

mikeyts said:


> I don't know how you could say something that ignorant. Consumer advocacy is a large portion of the FCC's reason for existence. Arguably, this forum wouldn't exist without the efforts of the FCC, because TiVo S3 and TiVo HD wouldn't exist because CableCARDs wouldn't exist. If the FCC hadn't created a requirement that they provide separable conditional access (back 1986), the cable industry would not have created CableLabs. If the FCC had not strongly pushed the cable and CE industries, they never would have completed the specification for CableCARD and CableCARD Host and if the FCC had not enacted regulations requiring the cable providers to stock and distribute cable cards I'm guessing that none of them would be doing it today.
> 
> Under an ill-conceived provision in the regs meant to help them counter increasingly effective competition from DBS and the telcos, many providers are wriggling out from under rate regulations. But if they get greedy and start charging arbitrarily high fees for something like this tuning resolver (which will probably cost them less than $30 each in relatively small lots) they will doom themselves to increased rate regulation.


I'm sorry you consider me ignorant (BTW, I don't remember calling you names), but I'm basing my statement on observation of recent (in)action. As to your statement on the cable cards, I believe it was Congress that enacted the regulation and the FCC allowed the cable operators 10 years to begin deployment. That's not exactly what I would call strong enforcement but maybe you disagree. We've had people reporting that in some areas two cable cards, and sometimes one cable card, costs more than the cable company DVR. I don't see any reason for the dongle to not be equivalently priced.

But then maybe I am ignorant (or so ignorant that I don't know I'm ignorant). Can you site an example where the FCC inforce a low price for cable cards? I'm willing to concede your point if you have examples.

Al


----------



## jercra

Brad Bishop said:


> I thought the same thing (that it would be like one great big DVR). I just found it clunky. I was exaggerating about the initial categories but if you subscribe to HBO, Skinemax, Showtime, etc. and are looking for a movie you really don't care which channel carries it just if you can get it.
> 
> To me it would have been better to do it this way:
> - PPV
> - Included with subscription
> - All
> 
> and under each of those just common categories and -maybe- the alphabet:
> - Comedy
> - Drama
> - Horror
> 
> The idea being that if you're looking for a movie you really don't care where it comes from (HBO, Cinemax, PPV (maybe because you're paying extra for it), etc.) you just want to find a movie to watch. The branding / affiliation gets in the way to me. If they want to put in paranthesis that it came from HBO, that's fine, but it being on HBO has no bearing except on whether I subscribe to HBO. If I do, just show it in the list. If I don't, I don't need to see it.
> 
> I think they keep it there so that you'll see, "Oh, HBO has some movies I may want to see..." It's kind of the same logic on them keeping all of the channels there in your guide regardless of whether you subscribe to them or not. I find it just gets in my way.


VOD category structures are mostly the way they are for 2 reasons. The first is that you need a way to restrict content based on subscriptions. The easiest, and often only way possible, is to segregate that content into seperate categories or virtual channels. The other primary reason is that the cable company does not have control over much of the category structure. HBO, Sho, etc will dictate to the cable co how they want their categories set up. It's less malicious than you may suspect but it still doesn't help solve your issue. A universal browse/search feature for VOD seems to be what you are after. This exists on Moxi boxes and that's about it.


----------



## MonroeEfford

JoeSchueller said:


> In Cincinnati, on TWC, it started as one (ESPN2HD) but is now up to 7 and in my BBB complaint, TWC's response was essentially: "F you, not only is ESPN2HD not available to UDCP devices, but EVERY HD station we launch in the future is going to be on SDV."
> 
> Personally, this issue has been a major source of frustration since leaving D* and purchasing a TiVo HD this summer. As one poster stated, this does feel about 9 months late (if it is on time). Ironically, I was about to contact my municipal government about breaking the TWC franchise agreement based on their inability to rise to the level of customer satisfaction in our area. I still believe some actual competition is the key to solving these issues, but this announcement makes me feel like I won't have to succeed at that extreme action just to see new HD channels.
> 
> Unfortunately, it is just vaporware until one is hooked to my TiVo HD and actually working. Here's to hoping!


Also have TimeWarner in Cincy. I informed them that I would be shortpaying my bill by $6.95 per month (the HD package) until they offer ALL the same channels with my Cablecard/S3 as they do on their own set tops. We'll see if they have the "bal*s" to turn off my service. I told them I don't want to cancel what I'm already getting...I just want everything that the "standard" customer gets who is paying the uplift. My guess is that they'd rather keep the $100 plus per month they are getting from me now. When they offer the dongle, they will get their $6.95/month back. It shocks me that more people do not stand up for what is right!


----------



## mikeyts

acvthree said:


> I'm sorry you consider me ignorant (BTW, I don't remember calling you names), but I'm basing my statement on observation of recent (in)action. As to your statement on the cable cards, I believe it was Congress that enacted the regulation and the FCC allowed the cable operators 10 years to begin deployment. That's not exactly what I would call strong enforcement but maybe you disagree. We've had people reporting that in some areas two cable cards, and sometimes one cable card, costs more than the cable company DVR. I don't see any reason for the dongle to not be equivalently priced.
> 
> But then maybe I am ignorant (or so ignorant that I don't know I'm ignorant). Can you site an example where the FCC inforce a low price for cable cards? I'm willing to concede your point if you have examples.


I didn't call you a name--I said that I considered your opinion of the FCC's purpose to be an ignorant one, which is not the same thing as name calling. Anyone can state an opinion belying ignorance now and then without being a generally ignorant person and I didn't mean to imply that you were one. You were obviously offended--I apologize. I was just dumbfounded by your blanket claim that the FCC was not pro-consumer.

The FCC like all other Federal commission for adminstration law is driven in part by current and past acts of Congress; it was created and empowered by acts of Congress, and when Congress wants something to change vis-a-vis a telecommunications-related industry, they task the FCC to do it. Their work which resulted in CableCARDs was driven by Section 304 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 (I said 1986, a typo). The FCC _did_ drive the process of forcing cable to get together with the CE industry to define CableCARD and the FCC _did_ enact regulations forcing the cable industry to provide them to consumers (specifically in the Appendix B of this document, beginning on PDF page 40). No direct act of Congress was involved after that piece of the Telecomm reform act, though various Congressmen did apply pressure to the FCC to "get 'er done" after separable security become intertwined with Plug-and-Play DTV-over-cable, precious to Congress as part of ensuring a smooth digital television transition, from which they hope to reap billions of dollars in auctioned-off bandwidth from the current analog channels.

I'm not trying to claim that they're exactly pro-consumer, but some of their charter quite definitely is. They've on-and-off regulated cable television rates throughout the existence of the cable television industry. (People talk about how the FCC is vulnerable to lobbying, but the cable industry itself is a multi-billion dollar concern with a powerful lobby and they've been pushed in many directions they didn't want to go by the FCC). The FCC is also chartered with goals which are pro-industry, and the draft much regulation intended to prevent cable, DBS or the telecos from dominating the others in any way that would result in financial ruin for any of them. If appealed to, I don't believe that they'd allow cable providers to charge usurious fees for the use of a piece of equipment of negible cost. CableCARD (and this tuning resolver) don't help the situation that the Telecomm Act of 1996 was trying to address if the cable providers are allowed to charge the same amount as they were charging for STBs for far less expensive pieces of equipment.


----------



## Brad Bishop

jercra said:


> VOD category structures are mostly the way they are for 2 reasons. The first is that you need a way to restrict content based on subscriptions. The easiest, and often only way possible, is to segregate that content into seperate categories or virtual channels. The other primary reason is that the cable company does not have control over much of the category structure. HBO, Sho, etc will dictate to the cable co how they want their categories set up. It's less malicious than you may suspect but it still doesn't help solve your issue. A universal browse/search feature for VOD seems to be what you are after. This exists on Moxi boxes and that's about it.


I don't think it's malicious, just dumb and cumbersome. It interesting enough to me when I first saw it that I said, "Ok, I can just watch any movie I want any time I want, hook me up with the premium package," to the cable company. Then I noticed, while I thought it was a great idea, that in use I'd rarely use it because it was just a pain to find things. I didn't know if 'Spiderman' was playing on Max, HBO, etc. I just wanted to watch it.

Even when they'd run their little 1/4 picture "What's OnDemand"-right now video in the corner I'd see something and they'd rattle off how to get to it and I'd get down a level or two and then forget where else I needed to go. By then they were rattling off about something else.

It just went from 'Wow - I may not really need a DVR' to 'this is too much trouble,' really quickly.

Thanks for your input, though. Could be that I just have a low-tolerance for these things as no one else seems to be complaining.


----------



## bicker

BobCamp1 said:


> I think the fee will be around $5-$10 per month.


Nah, not that much. It surely won't be more expensive than CableCard rentals.


----------



## bicker

bizzy said:


> Providing this resolver at less than the cost of an HD DVR rental simply doesn't make financial sense for them.


I disagree. They have to answer to the franchising authorities vis a vis pricing. They'll catch heck if they don't keep the pricing within certain bounds.


----------



## moyekj

I'm wondering now if there will need to be 1 dongle per CableCard? Hopefully not especially as S3s still don't support M-Cards.

Also other thing I'm curious about is the channel maps. Currently my cable company has different channel maps for CableCard versus digital set top box users. In anticipation of SDV rollout some channels are not defined in the channel maps for CableCard users but they are for digital set top box users. Will the cable company have to create a separate channel map for CableCard+dongle users now or have the ability to specify to use digital box channel maps instead for CableCard+dongle users?


----------



## weathertop

I wonder if this dongle will allow AT&T's U-verse service to play nice with HD Tivos...?


----------



## SCSIRAID

weathertop said:


> I wonder if this dongle will allow AT&T's U-verse service to play nice with HD Tivos...?


No. UVerse is IPTV. Completely different beast.


----------



## SCSIRAID

moyekj said:


> I'm wondering now if there will need to be 1 dongle per CableCard? Hopefully not especially as S3s still don't support M-Cards.
> 
> Also other thing I'm curious about is the channel maps. Currently my cable company has different channel maps for CableCard versus digital set top box users. In anticipation of SDV rollout some channels are not defined in the channel maps for CableCard users but they are for digital set top box users. Will the cable company have to create a separate channel map for CableCard+dongle users now or have the ability to specify to use digital box channel maps instead for CableCard+dongle users?


I was wondering about the channel map situation earlier today. The cablecard should already have all the info it needs for the linear channels. I would imagine that dongle would gather the info directly for the switched channels. Another interesting question will be whether the dongle will be able to override the analog mapping and allow me to receive the digital simulcast. Perhaps all the cablecard mapping will be replaced by the dongle. My luck, the digital simulcast will be copy protected.


----------



## mikeyts

I don't think that there's any need for more than a single dongle, whether you're using two S-Cards are a single M-Card; there wasn't a need for more than a single CableCARD to authorize and decrypt multiple service streams, once they defined the protocol in a sensible fashion.


SCSIRAID said:


> My luck, the digital simulcast will be copy protected.


My local cable system maps all of the analog channels to the digital simulcast and all of them are copy protected. Thus, I can use TTG with _Heroes_ on channel 707 (the rebroadcast of KNSD-DT NBC) but not with a recording of the digital simulcast of channel 7 . Luckily for me I'd pretty much never want to copy SD digital simulcast content off of the TiVo.


----------



## moyekj

SCSIRAID said:


> I was wondering about the channel map situation earlier today. The cablecard should already have all the info it needs for the linear channels. I would imagine that dongle would gather the info directly for the switched channels. Another interesting question will be whether the dongle will be able to override the analog mapping and allow me to receive the digital simulcast. Perhaps all the cablecard mapping will be replaced by the dongle. My luck, the digital simulcast will be copy protected.


 I was also told by a CSR that when SDV does rollout that CableCard users will be mapped back to analog versions of channels < 100 instead of the digital simulcast versions which are currently being mapped to (i.e. digital simulcast channels will be switched). So not only all future digital channel additions (SD & HD) would not be available, but I would also be reverted back to analog channels. Hopefully this "tuning resolver" solution will rescue me from that bleak future. (In my case none of the digital simulcast channels are copy protected so I much prefer them to the analog versions).


----------



## SCSIRAID

moyekj said:


> I was also told by a CSR that when SDV does rollout that CableCard users will be mapped back to analog versions of channels < 100 instead of the digital simulcast versions which are currently being mapped to (i.e. digital simulcast channels will be switched). So not only all future digital channel additions (SD & HD) would not be available, but I would also be reverted back to analog channels. Hopefully this "tuning resolver" solution will rescue me from that bleak future. (In my case none of the digital simulcast channels are copy protected so I much prefer them to the analog versions).


The S3 really does good with the analogs though so its not terribly bleak. TWC here doesnt give cablecards digital simulcast. Getting digital simulcast would save a lot of disk space though. I dont do much TTG so not a big hit but it would be nice to be able to do it if I wanted to.


----------



## moyekj

SCSIRAID said:


> The S3 really does good with the analogs though so its not terribly bleak. TWC here doesnt give cablecards digital simulcast. Getting digital simulcast would save a lot of disk space though. I dont do much TTG so not a big hit but it would be nice to be able to do it if I wanted to.


 I went a few months with my 2nd S3 without cablecards and the analog recordings (at best quality) were nowhere near as good as the digital simulcast versions recorded on my other S3 (with cablecards) even though they were 2x the size - it depends how clean you can get the analog signals and at some frequencies mine are pretty lousy. It's not a showstopper and nice to have analog versions available as fallback, but I'd much rather have the digital simulcast versions given a choice.
PS: Compared to my ReplayTVs the S3s at best quality do beat ReplayTVs at high quality for analog encoding so I agree S3 encoders are pretty good, but when encoding from analog, crap in = worse crap out.


----------



## ewilts

SCSIRAID said:


> The S3 really does good with the analogs though so its not terribly bleak.


It depends on the input signal. Here, I get a really crappy analog signal on some channels that renders them unwatchable. I am extremely happy that Comcast simulcasts the digitals and the analogs and that the CableCARDs tune to the digitals.

.../Ed


----------



## mfogarty5

CharlesH said:


> Only if they perceive that being "nice" with the resolver will forestall regulatory heat to open up the other two-way features (PPV, VOD) to third-party devices without the current OCAP requirements (that are not acceptable to the CE vendors such as TiVo).


I agree. In fact I think the real reason the "tuning resolver" is being made available is because the FCC is currently weighing the NCTAs Opencable(OCAP) proposal against the Consumer Electronics Associations(CEA) Digital Cable Ready Plus(DCR+) proposal.

In other words the NCTA is telling the FCC "We made the dongle available so that our customers can use third party devices to recieve linear channels and in exchange we expect you to endorse our OpenCable specification and not the CEAs DCR+."

And I think it will work.


----------



## acvthree

>>>You were obviously offended

Not so obvious. I was not offended. This is of my favorite forums and I just prefer the conversation to remain civil.

>>>The FCC did drive the process of forcing cable to get together with the CE industry to define CableCARD and the FCC did enact regulations forcing the cable 

A slow drive in the country.

>>>I said that I considered your opinion of the FCC's purpose to be an ignorant one

My opinion is based on observation and fits the facts as I see them.

>>>CableCARD (and this tuning resolver) don't help the situation that the Telecomm Act of 1996 was trying to address if the cable providers are allowed to charge the same amount as they were charging for STBs for far less expensive pieces of equipment.

For my cable provider the cable cards cost $6.00 for the pair (going to $8.00 next year).
The STB is less than $5.00

My provider is more reasonable than others on this forum in that they don't charge digital access fees in addition to the cable card fee. Even if the price of the dongle is a few dollars, the combined price of the cable cards and dongle are going to be more than an STB. I don't think the prices for cable cards will go down to meet the criteria you have set when the dongles arrive.

Al


----------



## doormat

zalusky said:


> They should make it part of the digital outlet fee. They are competing against satellite after all with their latest increased HD offerings and this is the fastest way to get there.


I dunno about you but when I bought a THD, I signed a 3 year contract for service.

Which means Cox can charge whatever they want and I pretty much have to pay for it if I want those channels. I cant take my S3 box to satellite.


----------



## mikeyts

acvthree said:


> >>>The FCC did drive the process of forcing cable to get together with the CE industry to define CableCARD and the FCC did enact regulations forcing the cable
> 
> A slow drive in the country.


In the end it was a forced death-march. The FCC lost patience with the bickering and infighting and gave the participants a deadline by which they would choose a set of standards for separable security; if they failed to meet that deadline, the FCC would choose for them. They got it done. Having monitored the progress of CableCARD through several years, there is no doubt in my mind that the cable industry was not interested in arriving at an acceptable solution. No matter how you do it, separable security in user-owned devices is going to screw with their business models and goals. Again, if they had their way there would be no CableCARD and no CableCARD devices and we wouldn't be having this discussion. The FCC is all that has kept them from having their way, despite their well funded and powerful lobby.


> >>>CableCARD (and this tuning resolver) don't help the situation that the Telecomm Act of 1996 was trying to address if the cable providers are allowed to charge the same amount as they were charging for STBs for far less expensive pieces of equipment.
> 
> For my cable provider the cable cards cost $6.00 for the pair (going to $8.00 next year).
> The STB is less than $5.00
> 
> My provider is more reasonable than others on this forum in that they don't charge digital access fees in addition to the cable card fee. Even if the price of the dongle is a few dollars, the combined price of the cable cards and dongle are going to be more than an STB. I don't think the prices for cable cards will go down to meet the criteria you have set when the dongles arrive.


My provider (Cox San Diego) charges an access fee whether digital access is done using CableCARDs or a leased STB (there's a "Gateway" fee of $6 and an additional "outlet fee" of $5 for every separate television in use). Lease of any STB is $5.25 and DVRs are an additional $10/month for "DVR service". CableCARDs are $2 each, with no currently announced hike (if one happens, I'd expect a similar hike in STB lease fees). The total of what I'd pay to use their HD DVR on a single television is $26/month; what I pay for use of 2 CableCARDs in a single device is $15 (they wanted to charge me an outlet fee for each--assuming 2 CCs meant 2 TVs--but I argued them out of it); they'd have to charge a whooping $11/month for use of the tuning resolver for it and 2 CCs to equal the cost of leasing a DVR from them. A year ago, I moved from a TWC San Diego and their fees were similar.


----------



## TiVoMonkey

jercra said:


> A universal browse/search feature for VOD seems to be what you are after. This exists on Moxi boxes and that's about it.


With Time Warner Cable's new Mystro Digital Navigator and OCAP Digital Navigator, it is possible to search for VOD movies and shows from the list of all available shows in the guide.


----------



## sooka

moyekj said:


> I was also told by a CSR that when SDV does rollout that CableCard users will be mapped back to analog versions of channels < 100 instead of the digital simulcast versions which are currently being mapped to (i.e. digital simulcast channels will be switched). So not only all future digital channel additions (SD & HD) would not be available, but I would also be reverted back to analog channels. Hopefully this "tuning resolver" solution will rescue me from that bleak future. (In my case none of the digital simulcast channels are copy protected so I much prefer them to the analog versions).


What you were told by the CSR was most likely correct, at least as it pertains to Cox Cable, because here in Fairfax - Northern Virginia where Cox has already implemented SDV, cable card users had all of their channels below < 103 mapped back to analog versions, leaving only the local NBC affiliate channel 4 as the sole digital simulcast channel on the low tier. Before SDV, all the channels below 103 here for cable card users were digital simulcasts with the exception of the local PBS affiliate which had been kept analog to allow for the embedding of TV Guide On Screen Programming Guide in the VBI for those people who have DVRs and TVs to continue to receive the Guide.


----------



## bicker

mfogarty5 said:


> I agree. In fact I think the real reason the "tuning resolver" is being made available is because the FCC is currently weighing the NCTAs Opencable(OCAP) proposal against the Consumer Electronics Associations(CEA) Digital Cable Ready Plus(DCR+) proposal.
> 
> In other words the NCTA is telling the FCC "We made the dongle available so that our customers can use third party devices to recieve linear channels and in exchange we expect you to endorse our OpenCable specification and not the CEAs DCR+."
> 
> And I think it will work.


I think you've hit the nail on the head, there.


----------



## pmiranda

ewilts said:


> It depends on the input signal. Here, I get a really crappy analog signal on some channels that renders them unwatchable. I am extremely happy that Comcast simulcasts the digitals and the analogs and that the CableCARDs tune to the digitals.


Yeah, I'm similarly happy with the way TW-Austin currently puts analogs 1-78 and the (SDV) simulcast up at 1701-1778.


----------



## BobCamp1

MonroeEfford said:


> Also have TimeWarner in Cincy. I informed them that I would be shortpaying my bill by $6.95 per month (the HD package) until they offer ALL the same channels with my Cablecard/S3 as they do on their own set tops. We'll see if they have the "bal*s" to turn off my service. I told them I don't want to cancel what I'm already getting...I just want everything that the "standard" customer gets who is paying the uplift. My guess is that they'd rather keep the $100 plus per month they are getting from me now. When they offer the dongle, they will get their $6.95/month back. It shocks me that more people do not stand up for what is right!


They'll cancel your service. Then when they botch that and realize you're still getting cable even though you've moved onto DirecTV, you'll have the police show up at your house with a search warrant for cable theft (which they half-heartedly executed), and after chasing off the collectors you will eventually end up in small claims court. You'll come to a settlement with them and get $200 for your troubles plus a free year of cable (remember I switched to satellite). That's what happened to me anyway. YMMV.


----------



## vstone

jercra said:


> VOD category structures are mostly the way they are for 2 reasons. The first is that you need a way to restrict content based on subscriptions. The easiest, and often only way possible, is to segregate that content into seperate categories or virtual channels. The other primary reason is that the cable company does not have control over much of the category structure. HBO, Sho, etc will dictate to the cable co how they want their categories set up. It's less malicious than you may suspect but it still doesn't help solve your issue. A universal browse/search feature for VOD seems to be what you are after. This exists on Moxi boxes and that's about it.


Another view is that "If you want a DVR bad enough, you'll get a bad enough DVR." The cable companies wanted a piece of the DVR pie, but were not willing to fund a fully developed GUI (or even TextUI). Better is the enemy of good enough and "good enough" is fairly flexible. Programmable VCR, anyone?


----------



## ToddNeedsTiVo

BobCamp1 said:


> They'll cancel your service. Then when they botch that and realize you're still getting cable even though you've moved onto DirecTV, you'll have the police show up at your house with a search warrant for cable theft (which they half-heartedly executed), and after chasing off the collectors you will eventually end up in small claims court. You'll come to a settlement with them and get $200 for your troubles plus a free year of cable (remember I switched to satellite). That's what happened to me anyway. YMMV.


Ouch, I'd love to read _that_ whole story! Gettin' over on the cable company? Do tell.


----------



## ldudek

moyekj said:


> I was also told by a CSR that when SDV does rollout that CableCard users will be mapped back to analog versions of channels < 100 instead of the digital simulcast versions which are currently being mapped to (i.e. digital simulcast channels will be switched).


lol

Since when does anyone ever believe anything that a CSR says about SDV?

Rule #1 Never believe anything a CSR tells you.

OK, seriously you can believe somethings but this is just pure science fiction. It doesn't make sense. Why would they take 100 analog stations which use much more bandwith then digital and use them for the "dual" purpose of broadcasting exculsively for CableCard users. The idea is to create more bandwith and one of the main ways of doing that is converting analog to digital. Now once you do that then you decide what is SDV and what isn't. Making the analog stations digital and available for cable cards makes more sense.

But since they are going to make the dongle available, there may be no point in doing that either.


----------



## cwoody222

TiVoMonkey said:


> With Time Warner Cable's new Mystro Digital Navigator and OCAP Digital Navigator, it is possible to search for VOD movies and shows from the list of all available shows in the guide.


Must be nice to have that with Time Warner.

I just spent time in another state and they have Sci-Alt boxes (like me) and are running the Passport software. It's SOOOO much nicer than the piece of crap SARA software I'm stuck with here.

I'd actually consider the Passport software an adequate alternative to TiVo. I wouldn't even recommend SARA as an on-screen channel guide.

Even the VOD menus of Passport look much better. My SARA screens look like they're from 1999. Hell, TW hasn't even put their logo on the screens since they took over from Adelphia here over a year ago. We just have a blank space where the Adelphia logos used to be. Pitiful.


----------



## moyekj

ldudek said:


> lol
> 
> Since when does anyone ever believe anything that a CSR says about SDV?
> 
> Rule #1 Never believe anything a CSR tells you.
> 
> OK, seriously you can believe somethings but this is just pure science fiction. It doesn't make sense. Why would they take 100 analog stations which use much more bandwith then digital and use them for the "dual" purpose of broadcasting exculsively for CableCard users. The idea is to create more bandwith and one of the main ways of doing that is converting analog to digital. Now once you do that then you decide what is SDV and what isn't. Making the analog stations digital and available for cable cards makes more sense.
> 
> But since they are going to make the dongle available, there may be no point in doing that either.


 Actually it makes perfect sense. The analog channels have to be broadcast anyway since something like 50% of Cox subscriber base is still analog only, so I don't see analog going away any time soon. Hence the digital simulcast (a digital duplication of the analog channels) are the ones taking extra bandwidth that not everyone is using, so it makes sense to make them switched. In fact Cox Fairfax VA apparently did this very thing once SDV was deployed which is further confirmation that it is likely to happen in Cox Orange County CA.


----------



## ldudek

moyekj said:


> Actually it makes perfect sense. The analog channels have to be broadcast anyway since something like 50% of Cox subscriber base is still analog only, so I don't see analog going away any time soon. Hence the digital simulcast (a digital duplication of the analog channels) are the ones taking extra bandwidth that not everyone is using, so it makes sense to make them switched. In fact Cox Fairfax VA apparently did this very thing once SDV was deployed which is further confirmation that it is likely to happen in Cox Orange County CA.


I would say it works the same way in my area as well. But I believe that the cable companies will give the boxes up to the analog people. Many cable companies have already done this in certain areas.

With the limited bandwith that cable has and the fact that D* is or has just recently put another bird up they are going to need all the bandwith they can get to compete. Right now D* is whipping cable something fierce in the HD market. They are going to have to do something to be as competitive and I say come 2009 they will have converted their analog customers.


----------



## bicker

ldudek said:


> Right now D* is whipping cable something fierce in the HD market.


Based on which metric?

I think it is important to remember that the only metric that *either *company cares about is profit.


----------



## ldudek

bicker said:


> Based on which metric?
> 
> I think it is important to remember that the only metric that *either *company cares about is profit.


I have no idea what that means but I'm talking about HD channels available.


----------



## bicker

Yes, I thought you were. However, my point was that "number of HD channels" is a metric that neither company _really_ cares about. And most consumers, in the final analysis, really don't care about that either. What most consumers care about is how many hours of programming that we watch does one company provide in HD versus the other. Therefore, the more HD channels a company provides, the less each one provides value (since, presumably, companies add HD channels in order of popularity -- a less popular HD channel provides less value to consumers than a more popular HD channel). Eventually, the cost of providing additional HD channels could exceed the value provided to consumers (i.e., the ability to provide profit to the service provider) from those (increasingly less popular) HD channels.

Does that make better sense now?


----------



## MickeS

bicker said:


> Yes, I thought you were. However, my point was that "number of HD channels" is a metric that neither company _really_ cares about. And most consumers, in the final analysis, really don't care about that either. What most consumers care about is how many hours of programming that we watch does one company provide in HD versus the other. Therefore, the more HD channels a company provides, the less each one provides value (since, presumably, companies add HD channels in order of popularity -- a less popular HD channel provides less value to consumers than a more popular HD channel). Eventually, the cost of providing additional HD channels could exceed the value provided to consumers (i.e., the ability to provide profit to the service provider) from those (increasingly less popular) HD channels.


I agree with this, and it seems to me that not much has changed in this regard with cable vs satellite. At least when I was looking, I'd frequently see more channels offered on satellite than I did on cable... however, the vast majority of those channels were of zero interest to me. Same with HD (for me) so far, what satellite has offered is not enough for me to switch to their service, so cable hasn't even needed to compete by offering more HD channels. For cable to add a lot of HD channels that aren't in much demand yet seems to me to be a bad strategy. They will eventually need to get more HD, but the majority of their customers right now could probably not care less.


----------



## ldudek

bicker said:


> Does that make better sense now?


Yes, it does. As a matter of fact most of the additional HD channels I now have don't mean anything to me. I mostly watch the networks however I'm pretty big fan of FX and Sci Fi, which I don't get in HD.


----------



## Grakthis

MickeS said:


> I agree with this, and it seems to me that not much has changed in this regard with cable vs satellite. At least when I was looking, I'd frequently see more channels offered on satellite than I did on cable... however, the vast majority of those channels were of zero interest to me. Same with HD (for me) so far, what satellite has offered is not enough for me to switch to their service, so cable hasn't even needed to compete by offering more HD channels. For cable to add a lot of HD channels that aren't in much demand yet seems to me to be a bad strategy. They will eventually need to get more HD, but the majority of their customers right now could probably not care less.


We just got NFL Network in HD. I seriously watch the NFL network maybe three times a year and I am a HUGE NFL fan. I don't understand why they did it... there are a dozen channels I would have rather had in HD.


----------



## cwoody222

Grakthis said:


> We just got NFL Network in HD. I seriously watch the NFL network maybe three times a year and I am a HUGE NFL fan. I don't understand why they did it... there are a dozen channels I would have rather had in HD.


Because sports channels - especially HD ones - make cable companies more comparable to satellite.


----------



## Bodie

Grakthis said:


> We just got NFL Network in HD. I seriously watch the NFL network maybe three times a year and I am a HUGE NFL fan. I don't understand why they did it... there are a dozen channels I would have rather had in HD.


+1 (also got the NHL network in HD )


----------



## JakiChan

I held off on the S3 for the price. I held off on the HD because of SDV but it looks like we're all good to go now. Good thing Xmas is coming.

However, I will say this: if they charge more than $2 for this dongle then I hope the FCC just nukes them. THEY (the cable "providers") are the ones who created the CableCard spec. Now they're changing their systems so that stuff we buy won't work with it. I think it's clearly their responsibility to make it right and charging us for it would simply add insult to injury.


----------



## mikeyts

JakiChan said:


> I held off on the S3 for the price. I held off on the HD because of SDV but it looks like we're all good to go now. Good thing Xmas is coming.
> 
> However, I will say this: if they charge more than $2 for this dongle then I hope the FCC just nukes them. THEY (the cable "providers") are the ones who created the CableCard spec. Now they're changing their systems so that stuff we buy won't work with it. I think it's clearly their responsibility to make it right and charging us for it would simply add insult to injury.


They created the CableCARD spec under tremendous pressure from Congress as exerted through the FCC. CableCARD, though it serves to provide some choice in equipment to consumers, does nothing for the cable industry except to tie their hands. They can expand the capabilities of leased boxes in any direction that they damned well please but there are severe limitations to what they can do within the framework of CableCARD, especially if they have to maintain compatibility with Version 1 (S-Cards in unidirectional hosts).


----------



## JakiChan

mikeyts said:


> They created the CableCARD spec under tremendous pressure from Congress as exerted through the FCC.


Welcome to regulation.  They could have had a standard imposed on them. They chose to create one and now it doesn't do what they want and I feel that's entirely their fault. I can't imagine no-one foresaw bi-directional communication when they were creating the standard.



mikeyts said:


> CableCARD, though it serves to provide some choice in equipment to consumers, does nothing for the cable industry except to tie their hands.


As satellite continues to eat their lunch it also gives them a way to compete better. Oh, and since they have monopolies in many areas then making FCC and the customers happy keeps them from being broken up like Ma Bell.



mikeyts said:


> They can expand the capabilities of leased boxes in any direction that they damned well please but there are severe limitations to what they can do within the framework of CableCARD, especially if they have to maintain compatibility with Version 1 (S-Cards in unidirectional hosts).


Anything that would degrade consumer-purchased equipment based on the spec they created should not be allowed without a work-around provided for, free of charge, by the providers. Just my opinion.


----------



## Alcatraz

doormat said:


> I dunno about you but when I bought a THD, I signed a 3 year contract for service.
> 
> Which means Cox can charge whatever they want and I pretty much have to pay for it if I want those channels. I cant take my S3 box to satellite.


You could always switch to Verizon Fios to use your cablecards...

I don't have it, but it's an option.


----------



## mikeyts

JakiChan said:


> Welcome to regulation.  They could have had a standard imposed on them. They chose to create one and now it doesn't do what they want and I feel that's entirely their fault. I can't imagine no-one foresaw bi-directional communication when they were creating the standard.


Oh, they did--I was pointing this out in a post in another thread this morning. (I give a pointer there to the HTML-based API for interactive services that they defined in the original V1 POD and POD Host specs).

I'm actually _pro_-cable regulation and have little to no sympathy for cable industry. They still have a healthy part-monopoly on the multichannel programming business with a 61% nationwide share that they wouldn't have if more consumers had a choice. Hopefully the telecos will expand their footprint quickly to bite them in their asses, since they haven't learned to stop acting like they don't have any real competition. I just point out that CableCARD was never their idea because your post made it sound as though "well, they came up with this spec, so they should be willing to live with it". They never wanted anything to do with it and I think that they believed that they could shine the FCC on for many more years. Unfortunately for them, the issue of separable security became intertwined with a much more vital effort to define a set of standards for supporting DTV rebroadcasts on cable that was seen as essential to the smooth transition from analog to digital television, something near-and-dear to the hearts of Congress as they expect (however unrealistically ) to reap billions of dollars from the auctioning off of the analog spectrum.


> As satellite continues to eat their lunch it also gives them a way to compete better. Oh, and since they have monopolies in many areas then making FCC and the customers happy keeps them from being broken up like Ma Bell.


How so? I don't see a single profit opportunity in the support of CableCARD. Not even a small one. As stated, it inhibits them from expanding into most new technology related to their business--they can't get into higher bandwidth modulation systems or more efficient media encodings. They're largely stuck with MPEG-2 over 256- and 64-QAM carriers. If course, the broadcasters are stuck with MPEG-2 as well.


> Anything that would degrade consumer-purchased equipment based on the spec they created should not be allowed without a work-around provided for, free of charge, by the providers. Just my opinion.


I agree, but I can also see it from their side. Unfortunately SDV is the only way that they're going to be able to compete with DBS on a bullet-point-for-bullet-point basis. I'd love to be able to blast them for resorting to it unnecessarily, but it's really the quickest and least expensive route to maintaining parity with their competition. Members of the FCC have said things indicating that they're quite in favor of its use. I do agree with you that they should supply these adapters as close to free of charge as possible, though.


----------



## bicker

ldudek said:


> Yes, it does. As a matter of fact most of the additional HD channels I now have don't mean anything to me. I mostly watch the networks however I'm pretty big fan of FX and Sci Fi, which I don't get in HD.


That's really it, for me, in a nutshell. As soon as Comcast provides those two, I'll be satisfied. (I already have USA HD and Discovery HD.) Lifetime HD, BBC HD, and ABC Family HD would be nice too.


----------



## JakiChan

mikeyts said:


> How so? I don't see a single profit opportunity in the support of CableCARD.


Simple. You do CableCard and allow consumers to bring their own hardware or the FCC takes your monopoly away. It's just like when Ma Bell made you lease phone hardware from them.



mikeyts said:


> Unfortunately SDV is the only way that they're going to be able to compete with DBS on a bullet-point-for-bullet-point basis. I'd love to be able to blast them for resorting to it unnecessarily, but it's really the quickest and least expensive route to maintaining parity with their competition. Members of the FCC have said things indicating that they're quite in favor of its use. I do agree with you that they should supply these adapters as close to free of charge as possible, though.


It's the cheapest way for them to compete, not the only way. The problem is that cable companies, especially mine, nickel and time you death. So since they're not willing to take the big leap and upgrade their infrastructure and since they knew this problem was coming when they created CableCard then I really feel it needs to be a 100% free solution.


----------



## Luke M

mikeyts said:


> How so? I don't see a single profit opportunity in the support of CableCARD. Not even a small one. As stated, it inhibits them from expanding into most new technology related to their business--they can't get into higher bandwidth modulation systems or more efficient media encodings. They're largely stuck with MPEG-2 over 256- and 64-QAM carriers. If course, the broadcasters are stuck with MPEG-2 as well.


"Cable ready" analog TVs are a competitive advantage for cable. That's why they still support analog, at great expense.

It's not clear to me why cable would not want to maintain and extend this competitive advantage with digital. If TV customers are effectively forced to buy a cable box with every TV - even if they don't subscribe to cable - isn't that an advantage for cable companies?

As far as 'inhibiting' new technology, they are equally inhibited by their own set top boxes, which would cost a fortune to replace.


----------



## mikeyts

Luke M said:


> As far as 'inhibiting' new technology, they are equally inhibited by their own set top boxes, which would cost a fortune to replace.


Not so much. They do it from time-to-time as technological advances offer new profit opportunities. For instance, there was no digital cable at all until 10 years ago. It took some years for the technology to take over, because it required the swapping out of millions of STBs, but it allowed them add a hundred or more new channels, large multi-channel subscription tiers and emergent technologies like VOD and IPPV.

They could go for expanding their physical plant to things like 3GHz tech and fiber-to-the-home, directions in which they'll almost certainly be forced, but all of that will require not only updating leased subscriber equipment, but updating the wiring in the ground. It will require years to complete, while D* waves its "150 HD Channels" banner the whole while and the telcos do who knows what. SDV is quick to implement, reasonably priced and allows them to pile on a buttload of new services immediately. It's impossible to argue with except in that it disenfranchises CableCARD users, whom they claim only number about 300K nationwide--in the noise.

Like bicker and ldudek, I'm pretty satisfied with what I have. Nothing in that mass of channels that D* added over the past couple of months impressed me. Either I already had it and wasn't watching it anyway or I had no interest in it. With only two programs that I regularly record that aren't on the national networks, I already store a difficult-to-keep-up-with 23+ hours of HD television each week. Give me national networks, TNT HD, the ESPN HD channels (mainly ESPN2 HD for tennis) and the new Sci Fi HD and I won't ask for more.

However, I clearly see how it's difficult for cable to compete with "up to 150 HD channels". If the telcos were to come on strong with similar offers, they'll be sunk if they don't respond in kind.


----------



## samo

bicker said:


> Based on which metric?
> 
> I think it is important to remember that the only metric that *either *company cares about is profit.


How about this for the metrics http://www.denverpost.com/search/ci_7545091
In case link doesn't work:


> Satellite-TV provider EchoStar added 110,000 new subscribers in the third quarter, down from 295,000 new customers for the same period a year ago. Cable company Comcast lost 65,000 basic-cable subscribers. Time Warner Cable lost 83,000 TV subscribers. ....
> But DirecTV Group, the nation's largest satellite provider, reported stronger third-quarter growth, adding 240,000 subscribers in the quarter, a 45.5 percent increase over the same quarter a year ago, when the company added 165,000 subscribers


----------



## cramer

mikeyts said:


> It's the same deal with the CableCARDs themselves--a Moto CableCARD isn't going to work on an SA system.


Incorrect. The cableCARD(tm) is a _very_ well defined standard. To legally sell them, they must be licensed by CableLabs who will make sure they conform to the specs and are 100% interoperable.

I'm only aware of one "standard" for SDV. SA and TW (the people who created it) claim it's an "open standard." However, even the might Google cannot find the actual document.


----------



## dswallow

cramer said:


> Incorrect. The cableCARD(tm) is a _very_ well defined standard. To legally sell them, they must be licensed by CableLabs who will make sure they conform to the specs and are 100% interoperable.
> 
> I'm only aware of one "standard" for SDV. SA and TW (the people who created it) claim it's an "open standard." However, even the might Google cannot find the actual document.


Even "open standards" might be subject to payment to obtain a copy.


----------



## cramer

pl1 said:


> There is no reason to expect it wouldn't. SDV, PPV and VOD all require two-way communications.


Ding. Wrong, but thank you for playing. The UDCP license is very specific about iPPV, and VoD... I'll summarize: *NO*


----------



## cramer

ldudek said:


> Why is this such a big leap of faith?


Simple. Plenty of people have enough trouble getting ther MSO to activate cableCARDs correctly. And many of those mis-represent CCs as a matter of policy -- "they don't make M-cards", then "we don't _rent_ M-cards" (they're reserved for their own STBs), "why do you need _TWO_ cards?", they know they have an 80% failure rate but still only bring ONE CARD to an install...

The "tuning resolver" is yet more technology for them to support. It's one more thing for them to screw up and lie about.


----------



## lrhorer

SeanC said:


> I don't understand why this isn't going to be sold as an accessory? Why force users to rent it from the cable company for yet another surcharge?


Because they can.


----------



## lrhorer

bizzy said:


> I wonder if this will work for PPV content as well?


No. In order to get a PPV or VOD event, the TiVo must know the event is imminent. Since the PPV schedules are not posted to the Tivo scheduke, there is really no way to schedule it.

Not only that, but the TiVo itself must be able to understand and request the content in question. A dongle by itself will not handle it. Of course, TiVo could write software routines which will interface with the CATV hosts, but since there is no uniform protocol throughout the industry, TiVo has to either write multiple sets of drivers for multiple systems or else not worry about it. We're back to the OCAP vs. proprietary protocols issue, again.


----------



## lrhorer

pl1 said:


> There is no reason to expect it wouldn't. SDV, PPV and VOD all require two-way communications.


Yes, there is. It requires a much greater level of communications and a much greater level of understanding on the part of the receiver to be able to request a specific content at a specific time and on a non-specific carrier than to simply request a well known symbol on a published carrier.


----------



## lrhorer

ldudek said:


> ROFLOL. Why is this such a big leap of faith? I don't know why there is any negativity at all. This is great news.:up:


From my perspective, mostly because it is a poor solution.


----------



## lrhorer

BobCamp1 said:


> I think the fee will be around $5-$10 per month. It most certainly will not be free.


Yet another reason I severely wish they would not be looking at a USB solution. That's an additional $30 a month if they go with the $10 per dongle. I really don't think I can stand a cable bill in excess of $200 a month.


----------



## Luke M

mikeyts said:


> Not so much. They do it from time-to-time as technological advances offer new profit opportunities. For instance, there was no digital cable at all until 10 years ago. It took some years for the technology to take over, because it required the swapping out of millions of STBs, but it allowed them add a hundred or more new channels, large multi-channel subscription tiers and emergent technologies like VOD and IPPV.


Digital cable was an add-on. They expanded cable bandwidth to 750Mhz or more and used the added bandwidth for digital channels. Existing services were unaffected.

Same with high-def. They aren't going to replace the old standard-def boxes. It's an add-on.


----------



## lrhorer

ewilts said:


> There are people already seriously impacted by the lack of a solution and they in fact did make bad purchasing choices. For them having a solution in 2008 is about a year too late.


I disagree rather strongly. First of all, I submit using the term "seriously" in connection with any topic revolving around television programming is ill-advised. Secondly, the fact a purchase does not provide everything which might be technologically possible does not mean it is a bad purchase. There are a number of excellent features provided by the Series 3 even on systems which are heavily laden with SDV material. Here in San Antonio is an example. There are hundreds of SDV channels on the local TWC system, but there are only three channels I do not receive which I wish I could. Given the hundreds of programs I do receive and record, that's not much of a loss. Finally, for most viewers the impact is not going to be huge for some months yet to come, and even the "worst" current scenarios won't have most consumers missing out on much. "A year too late" is a considerable overstatement.


----------



## lrhorer

vstone said:


> I expect SDV to be more than a FEW extra channels. If it was only a few, they probably wouldn't do it.


You guys are arguing at cross purposes. By far the majority of SDV channels will be VOD. VOD and SDV are a very, very long way from being mutually exclusive.


----------



## lrhorer

MickeS said:


> I also wouldn't be too surprised if the dongle would simply be included with the CableCARD rental, and not be a separate fee/item.


That wouldn't make much sense. The Series III / HD Tivo will be the only devices currently capable of using the dongle. The vast majority of cablecards won't be used with dongles for quite some time to come.


----------



## dswallow

My god people, chill out.

There's no incentive at all to place an excessive charge on this device. Before you go off condemning it for being too expensive, how about at least waiting to see how it's priced by the various cable companies. I suspect you doomsday prophets will be pleasantly surprised -- well, except for having to make up something new to complain about.


----------



## lrhorer

mikeyts said:


> I don't know how you could say something that ignorant.


Be nice.



mikeyts said:


> Consumer advocacy is a large portion of the FCC's reason for existence.


Not. The original charter had nothing to do with consumer advocacy. Indeed, "consumer advocacy" was not even a concept on the horizon when the FCC was created. 'Not by almost 40 years.

More to the point, however, is the fact the majority of the individuals employed in the FCC are - like all bureaucrats - most fundamentally concerned with drawing a paycheck while expending the least possible effort.



mikeyts said:


> Arguably, this forum wouldn't exist without the efforts of the FCC, because TiVo S3 and TiVo HD wouldn't exist because CableCARDs wouldn't exist.


Yes, but it is even more arguable that if the FCC had done its job we wouldn't be having this argument because all these issues would have been resolved in the 1980s. Some of the posters here are complaining the solution is a year late. It's closer to 20 years late, and the FCC is much to blame.



mikeyts said:


> If the FCC hadn't created a requirement that they provide separable conditional access (back 1986), the cable industry would not have created CableLabs. If the FCC had not strongly pushed the cable and CE industries, they never would have completed the specification for CableCARD and CableCARD Host and if the FCC had not enacted regulations requiring the cable providers to stock and distribute cable cards I'm guessing that none of them would be doing it today.


Waiting more than 5 years to publish an obvious declaration is "pushing hard"? Allowing the various companies to lolligag around for 21 years is "pushing hard"? I'd hate to see what you call lackadaisical.

I suppose, as they say, the thing about the dancing bear is not that he dances well, but that he dances at all. Perhaps you are impressed with the FCC's performance in this mess. I surely am not.


----------



## lrhorer

dswallow said:


> There's no incentive at all to place an excessive charge on this device.


Of course there is. It is in competition with their own DVR / STB rentals. It also represents additional expenditures in technical support and installation. Market pressures make it at least attractive and at most imperative to recover those costs with additional markup.



dswallow said:


> Before you go off condemning it for being too expensive, how about at least waiting to see how it's priced by the various cable companies. I suspect you doomsday prophets will be pleasantly surprised -- well, except for having to make up something new to complain about.


Unless it is free or almost free, it's going to be overpriced. Even at only $2 a month per dongle, that still amounts to $72 a year, for me. I really don't feel like paying an additional $72 a year to get channels for which I am already paying.


----------



## lrhorer

cramer said:


> Incorrect. The cableCARD(tm) is a _very_ well defined standard. To legally sell them, they must be licensed by CableLabs who will make sure they conform to the specs and are 100% interoperable.


You are correct about this, at least hypothetically. In practice there have been a number of interactivity problems, but nothing so far as I know has been insurmountable. There have been a number of problems with the Scientific Atlanta CableCards in Series III or HD Tivo boxes which were not experienced with Motorola CableCards.



dswallow said:


> I'm only aware of one "standard" for SDV. SA and TW (the people who created it) claim it's an "open standard." However, even the might Google cannot find the actual document.


Here you are incorrect. There are no fewer than 3 extant standards, and they are incompatible, albeit unsurprisingly somewhat similar.


----------



## mikeyts

cramer said:


> Incorrect. The cableCARD(tm) is a _very_ well defined standard. To legally sell them, they must be licensed by CableLabs who will make sure they conform to the specs and are 100% interoperable.
> 
> I'm only aware of one "standard" for SDV. SA and TW (the people who created it) claim it's an "open standard." However, even the might Google cannot find the actual document.


You are absolutely wrong (well, not absolutely, just somewhat--the card-to-host communication, authentication and encryption/decryption is very well defined and semi-open; decryption of a particular vendor's network content streams is not). The entire purpose of CableCARD is to be an adapter between proprietary conditional access systems used on the wire (i.e., Motorola's DigiCipher, SA's PowerKey and whatever else there might be out there) and the open CableCARD host interface. The host device uses its RF interface to demodulate channels and feed streams encrypted via proprietary methods to the CableCARD; the card will then re-encrypt the content using the open DFAST standard and feed it back to the host device for presentation. SA's cards contain the algorithms necessary to decrypt content streams on SA networks and Moto's cards understand Moto's proprietary encryption--they both speak DFAST back to TiVo and other DCR devices. If someone installed an SA card on a Moto-based cable system it wouldn't be able decrypt _anything_ because SA's algorithms won't work to decrypt streams as encrypted by a Moto network. If they were forcing the cable companies to all use the same security systems on their networks the cards would be completely redundant, since that standardized security system could be hard-coded in the television or STB.

Right now the cable providers favor doing away with CableCARDs and replacing them with DCAS (Downloadable Conditional Access System), a scheme involving a processor in the host in which algorithms for the proproprietary security systems used by the network could be downloaded and executed, a sort of built-in, dynamically re-programmable "point-of-deployment card".

As for how many SDV systems there are in use and in development, you can read an article from June here about Comcast testing various systems from multiple vendors, include C-COR, Motorola, SA and Harmonix. Currently BigBand Networks seems to be in the lead in terms of deployment of its brand of SDV (not sure why Comcast wouldn't be testing their stuff--there's a page on BigBand's solution here).


----------



## mikeyts

lrhorer said:


> Waiting more than 5 years to publish an obvious declaration is "pushing hard"? Allowing the various companies to lolligag around for 21 years is "pushing hard"? I'd hate to see what you call lackadaisical.


They were pushed very hard at the end (admittedly after the FCC was pushed by Congress) and it was only 11 years, since the act of Congress on which this was based came in 1996 and not 1986. Neither the FCC or Congress seemed to care that much about "separable security" until it became entwined with the effort to create a standardized "plug-and-play" system for DTV-over-cable, considered necessary for smooth completion of the analog-to-digital television transition.

The FCC regulations on the cable industry are full of things which advocate in favor of the consumer. There are rate regulations on so-called "lifeline service" and any equipment leased to access it which help no one except the consumer. There are requirements to place over-the-air broadcasts in the core basic tier and which forbid them to be encrypted by the cable providers or marked digitally such that recording of them is in any way prohibited which help no one except the consumer. These very regulations have been used by numerous participants in these forums and AVS Forums to force providers to back down from presenting over-the-air DTV in a fashion that required payment of extra charges and the lease of equipment to access them.

Other sections of FCC regulations on the manufacture of communications products (like STBs and televisions) require inclusion of features like SAP and closed caption processing which help no one except the consumer.


----------



## lrhorer

cramer said:


> Ding. Wrong, but thank you for playing. The UDCP license is very specific about iPPV, and VoD... I'll summarize: *NO*


'Well put. 'Very succinct.

The thing is, who cares? A DVR, and especially a TiVo makes VOD almost completely moot, and iPPV is pushed 'way down the list. With nothing but an STB, they're very nearly core features, but on a TiVo they are pretty much just bells and whistles. For me personally they are a bell I'll likely never ring and a whistle I won't blow. Of course no matter what, extra features are always nice, but the fact a Model T was only available in black did not prevent millions of people buying them despite the fact the vast majority would have preferred some other color.

I'm concerned a great deal more with the avenue the industry will take as it moves forward and compatibility with the technology on that avenue. The dongle makes that even more problematical.


----------



## mikeyts

cramer said:


> Ding. Wrong, but thank you for playing. The UDCP license is very specific about iPPV, and VoD... I'll summarize: *NO*


None of the involved license documents was written on stone and brought down from the mount by Moses--there are procedures for changing their terms encoded in the license documents themselves. Connection of this tuning resolver would seem on the face of it to modify a device such that it no longer qualifies as being "unidirectional" since it now has a capability, however limited, to speak back to the network. Does it invalidate its existing licensing to use DFAST? Since CableLabs is fully involved with this thing, in the end I think that they can do whatever they decide that they want to do, particularly since any modification of existing granted licenses would be to _ease_ restrictions and not add new ones; the licensees could hardly object.


----------



## lrhorer

mikeyts said:


> They were pushed very hard at the end (admittedly after the FCC was pushed by Congress) and it was only 11 years, since the act of Congress on which this was based came in 1996 and not 1986.


True enough, but the fact just illustrates my point. The basic idea was proposed in the late 1970s and serious intra-industry negotiations began in the early 1980s. They quickly became a series of pissing matches, however, despite strident promises from MSOs, CATV hardware manufacturers, and TV manufacturers that they would come up with a means of separable security within months. The SCTE publications were abuzz with glowing predictions which never panned out for so long it became a perennial joke.



mikeyts said:


> Neither the FCC or Congress seemed to care that much about it until it became entwined with the effort to create a standardized "plug-and-play" system for DTV-over-cable, considered necessary for smooth completion of the analog-to-digital television transition.


And again this illustrates my point. If the FCC were really anyone's advocate - or even just worthwhile - they would have stepped in without Congress' mandate and long before digital systems became heavily embedded. I would have been impressed if a (more acceptable) proposal similar to OCAP had been mandated by the FCC in 1987. In 2007, I would be nonplussed had they actually stepped up to the plate. As it is, I'm mostly disgusted.



mikeyts said:


> The FCC regulations on the cable industry are full of things which advocate in favor of the consumer. There are rate regulations on so-called "lifeline service"...


Yes, but none of that existed when the FCC was created. The OP used the phrase "large portion of the FCC's reason for existence". This suggests it is a major reason for its being created, which is to say they were there from its inception in 1934. They weren't. In addition, although this is perhaps splitting hairs, there is a difference between the charter of an organization and it's actions. The fact the FCC may have enacted regulations to an effect does not mean that effect is a major part and parcel of their reason for being.

That said, I don't want to throw out the baby with the bathwater. There is no question the FCC has had some positive influences on the situation at hand. It's just they are due plenty of criticism along with the acclaim, and their response has been anything but speedy.



mikeyts said:


> Other sections of FCC regulations on the manufacture of communications products (like STBs and televisions) require inclusion of features like SAP and closed caption processing which help no one except the consumer.


I dispute that. There is no question these regulations are at best paternalistic in this context, but I submit it is very likely the long term result is more receivers being purchased which in turn benefits the manufacturers. Far too often manufacturers are penny wise and pound foolish, and I think it very likely this is one of those times, or would have been assuming the manufacturers did not include those features without the FCC rulings.

Admittedly the point is largely academic, unless you happen to have a 100% accurate crystal ball on hand. Nonetheless, I think the case can be made for the notion that legislation which benefits consumers can have positive effect on the manufacturers despite it not benefitting them directy.


----------



## JakiChan

mikeyts said:


> Right now the cable providers favor doing away with CableCARDs and replacing them with DCAS (Downloadable Conditional Access System), a scheme involving a processor in the host in which algorithms for the proproprietary security systems used by the network could be downloaded and executed, a sort of built-in, dynamically re-programmable "point-of-deployment card".


It...annoys...me that after making us all go through this cable card mess (that THEY created) they want to do something else. I wonder if this will be a "dongle" type solution or if we'll need to buy "TivoHD2" in a few years...


----------



## bicker

samo said:


> How about this for the metrics http://www.denverpost.com/search/ci_7545091


That's a good metric, but watch which way it trends over time. Also, watch *which *customers are subscribing versus un-subscribing. Note that Comcast lost "basic-cable" subscribers -- that's not necessarily a bad thing if most of those were responding to increases in the price of lifeline cable, a money-loser for cable companies.

Another note about this: Ostensibly, I can interpret your message as an assertion that *competition is working*. Customers are choosing between the available competitors, based on their perception of relative value and the corresponding price at which each competitor offers service. There is no reason, therefore, to be concerned about pricing for the dongle: Let the market decide. Rest assured that companies will respond to customers taking their money away and giving it to the company's competitors.


----------



## bicker

dswallow said:


> My god people, chill out. There's no incentive at all to place an excessive charge on this device. Before you go off condemning it for being too expensive, how about at least waiting to see how it's priced by the various cable companies.


What a remarkable idea!


----------



## bicker

lrhorer said:


> The original charter had nothing to do with consumer advocacy. Indeed, "consumer advocacy" was not even a concept on the horizon when the FCC was created. 'Not by almost 40 years.


And it still isn't the FCC's job. The FCC's job (like that of many similar federal agencies) is to *strike a balance* between industry and consumers, NOT favor one or the other. And that balance is necessarily skewed in accordance with the prevailing political sentiment in this country. And as I've mentioned several times already, that's been distinctly pro-business for the last 28 years (Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush). Even the Democrats are pro-business these days. If you want the FCC to skew towards consumers more, then you're going to need to get people like Kennedy or Pelosi elected far more widely. I don't see that happening.



lrhorer said:


> Yes, but it is even more arguable that if the FCC had done its job we wouldn't be having this argument because all these issues would have been resolved in the 1980s. Some of the posters here are complaining the solution is a year late. It's closer to 20 years late, and the FCC is much to blame.


Perhaps, and if there is blame, surely it rests solely with the FCC. However, there may not even be any blame. This quagmire may be exactly what is appropriate given our citizenry's two-faced perspective: Folks generally want taxes to apply to everyone except themselves, traffic lights to always be green in the direction they're going, jails located in everyone else's neighborhood, and regulations to apply to all industries except the ones they invest in. That's why there really never was any consensus with respect to separable security -- folks knew what _some _folks wanted it to accomplish, but there was never a consensus that that end-result should be mandated in the first place. So the result is a necessarily vague and practically unenforcible regulation, which is useful for little more than a basis for angry indignation by consumers.


----------



## davecramer74

> The thing is, who cares? A DVR, and especially a TiVo makes VOD almost completely moot,


actually, its the other way around. You dont really need a dvr anymore with VOD. The only thing i record these days on my dvr is primetime shows which theyve been starting to add to VOD as well. I cant remember the last time i recorded a movie or anything on the dvr. no reason to, its on demand.


----------



## MickeS

davecramer74 said:


> actually, its the other way around. You dont really need a dvr anymore with VOD. The only thing i record these days on my dvr is primetime shows which theyve been starting to add to VOD as well. I cant remember the last time i recorded a movie or anything on the dvr. no reason to, its on demand.


Yeah I'm guessing that VOD is the way of the future. It certainly makes sense from a bandwidth perspective, if they would replace all channels with VOD and instead have a flat subscription fee a la Rhapsody.


----------



## HiDefGator

lrhorer said:


> The thing is, who cares? A DVR, and especially a TiVo makes VOD almost completely moot, ...


You might be out of step with most VOD users. I can't record every show on HBO, SHO, etc. But I can see them all with VOD. I would have to disagree that Tivo makes VOD useless.


----------



## Grakthis

Saying "you don't really need a DVR anymore" is ridiculous. Feel free to say "I don't really need a DVR anymore" if your viewing habbits are satisfied by VOD.

But *I* watch tons of live sports and I love being able to watch two games at once by going back and forth from tuner to tuner and rewinding to catch big plays I missed.

*I* watch tons of shows that are not offered on VOD.

*I* don't get VOD in HD here. It's in some kind of 480 resolution that looks worse than DVD.

*I* hate the VOD interface. It's unresponsive and litterally locks up about every 3rd time I use it.

*I* don't always wait till the next day to watch something. Oftentimes, I start watching a show about 30 minutes after it starts so I can FFWD through comercials.

So yeah... *you* might think VOD is a DVR replacement. But *I* don't.


----------



## mikeyts

davecramer74 said:


> actually, its the other way around. You dont really need a dvr anymore with VOD. The only thing i record these days on my dvr is primetime shows which theyve been starting to add to VOD as well. I cant remember the last time i recorded a movie or anything on the dvr. no reason to, its on demand.


On the systems I've been on there's been very little HD in VOD and the HD VOD that I have watched (2 or 3 movies, including _Shrek 2_ and _The Island_) were definitely PQ-compromised on VOD. Rarely more than 10 HD VOD titles have been offered at once, with half of them being IMAX stuff and obscure feature films. Until just recently, there's been no HD Subscription VOD--just Pay-Per-Viewing-Period stuff (Cox has added Starz HD On Demand a couple of months back). Also VOD response to commands has been extremely sluggish with only a single speed of FF and REW, being far too fast for pinpoint access to scenes. It just hasn't been "ready-for-primetime" IMHO.

Support for SD VOD is much better, with hundreds of programs available at all times and dozens of episodes of series on the SVOD channels (like _Dexter_ on Showtime On Demand), but I'm not interested in watching SD video. The only time I'd use that stuff if I had access to it is if I missed an episode of something and most of that is endlessly repeated during the week on the linear HD channel.

It may well have improved. The sluggish response is caused by distribution issues--if all VOD is served out of a central office servicing all real-time demands from all current VOD users it can't help but have response-time issues. The headend equipment providers sell equipment allowing VOD content to be automatically migrated to neighborhood boxes when ordered and served from there (and linger there until space is needed, so that it might already be there when ordered). It's been probably a 1.5 years since I last tried it, so it may all be much better now. Certainly the list of offerings supposedly currently available on Starz On Demand HD seems very interesting; if I leased a cable provider STB, I'd probably subscribe to Starz to be able to use that.


----------



## dswallow

HiDefGator said:


> You might be out of step with most VOD users. I can't record every show on HBO, SHO, etc. But I can see them all with VOD. I would have to disagree that Tivo makes VOD useless.


They're somewhat comparable means of doing the same thing, though each places control in a slightly different location.

Someone with TiVo probably has little use for VOD. Though TiVo does require the user to know in advance of the desire to see a program so that it can be scheduled to record, explicitly or by wishlist or season pass.

Someone with VOD doesn't necessarily have much use for TiVo -- except that one still needs to navigate through all the offerings as opposed to being able to "subscribe" to the programs of interest and receive suggestions based on individual preferences -- and VOD is useless for any content that isn't available via VOD, thus still making a TiVo necessary.

If too many people use VOD simultaneously it won't be able to support the demand and someone will not see what they want when they want. SDV also has a certain risk to it of the same thing happening.


----------



## HiDefGator

There is no reason to see them as mutually exclusive. The people I know with both, make full use of both Tivo and VOD.


----------



## Brad Bishop

HiDefGator said:


> There is no reason to see them as mutually exclusive. The people I know with both, make full use of both Tivo and VOD.


Yeah but I can certainly see someone think further about it: "If each channel offered it's own VOD service then I could just get whatever I wanted whenever I wanted..."

I get where they're coming from. I think people forget about filtering, though. After setting up TiVo to record your favorite shows you don't have to go back through a huge tree/list *everytime* you want to watch a show and go find the next episode. It's just there in your own personal list.

I've outlined my problems with VOD in a previous thread but the short of it for me was: Great idea. Poor interface/organization.


----------



## mikeyts

JakiChan said:


> It...annoys...me that after making us all go through this cable card mess (that THEY created) they want to do something else. I wonder if this will be a "dongle" type solution or if we'll need to buy "TivoHD2" in a few years...


(I responded to this earlier this morning but must have deleted it by accident. Oh well).

Since DCAS requires a special-purpose processor in the host, mounted in a physically and electronically secure fashion, it cannot be affixed with a bandage like this SDV tuning resolver. Don't worry--once they roll out DCAS, they'll still have to support CableCARD, so you won't have to buy "Tivo HD2" if you don't want one.

Again, though they paid for the R&D which developed CableCARD, the cable industry never wanted to agree to use it. They were forced by the FCC's final deadlines. Arguably without those deadlines they might never have found any solution to be to their liking, including DCAS, which took an additional couple of years for them to come up with.

Having mandated support of CableCARD in the regulations, the FCC also gave them a deadline of mid-2005 to stop buying new STBs with built-in security and start buying ones that require CableCARDs to enable use of conditional access services. Cable protested that they needed more time to complete the specification for OCAP and test it (M-Card was more or less ready on time) and, over the vigorous objection of the consumer electronics industry, they were granted a two year extension. When the end of that extension rolled around this year, they begged for more time so that they could complete DCAS and eventually be able to get rid of CableCARDs altogether, but the FCC turned down that request. Since July, cable has been expanding their stock of STBs with things like the new SA Explorer 8xxxC and 8xxxHDC boxes, which need M-Cards installed to work.


----------



## davecramer74

> Saying "you don't really need a DVR anymore" is ridiculous. Feel free to say "I don't really need a DVR anymore" if your viewing habbits are satisfied by VOD.
> 
> But *I* watch tons of live sports and I love being able to watch two games at once by going back and forth from tuner to tuner and rewinding to catch big plays I missed.
> 
> *I* watch tons of shows that are not offered on VOD.
> 
> *I* don't get VOD in HD here. It's in some kind of 480 resolution that looks worse than DVD.
> 
> *I* hate the VOD interface. It's unresponsive and litterally locks up about every 3rd time I use it.
> 
> *I* don't always wait till the next day to watch something. Oftentimes, I start watching a show about 30 minutes after it starts so I can FFWD through comercials.
> 
> So yeah... *you* might think VOD is a DVR replacement. But *I* don't.


I was replying to the other guy who said dvr makes vod useless. Sounds like your VOD is crap though. You dont get HD, it locks up on you, etc. I do see the advantage if your watching sports, thats a good point. But the rest of yours pretty much point to you have crappy cable with crappy content. Once all the primetime shows are on demand, i really wont have a use for one. And ya, that is *my* needs for a dvr. We all have different expectations and needs for a dvr.


----------



## JoeSchueller

lrhorer said:


> I disagree rather strongly. First of all, I submit using the term "seriously" in connection with any topic revolving around television programming is ill-advised.


Sorry, but I disagree. While I agree with the premise that the war or curing cancer are truly "serious," to many here, we take this stuff seriously in our own lives. Home theater and gadgets are one of my hobbies and activities that I choose to spend my hard-earned money on, and I like to feel like I'm getting the best service I can. In this case, the CableCo's using SDV to lock consumers to their devices felt like a very serious screwing over after I just forked over $600 for a new TiVo and service. The fact that in some markets TWC launched SDV using ESPN2HD on the day college football kicked off made that screwing hurt just a little more. I think a monopoly that uses public right-of-way's and franchising agreements to maintain their monopoly owes the public a little more than that sort of anti-consumer behavior. That feels serious to me. Not hunger or Middle East peace serious, but serious enough.


lrhorer said:


> Secondly, the fact a purchase does not provide everything which might be technologically possible does not mean it is a bad purchase. There are a number of excellent features provided by the Series 3 even on systems which are heavily laden with SDV material. Here in San Antonio is an example. There are hundreds of SDV channels on the local TWC system, but there are only three channels I do not receive which I wish I could. Given the hundreds of programs I do receive and record, that's not much of a loss. Finally, for most viewers the impact is not going to be huge for some months yet to come, and even the "worst" current scenarios won't have most consumers missing out on much. "A year too late" is a considerable overstatement.


 I agree the features make it an excellent choice over the CableCo's offerings, but my personal view is that this is seriously hurting my viewing pattern. DirtyJobs, DeadliestCatch, and MythBusters make up a significant chunk of my viewing and they are only available on SDV channels in my market. This is a major dissatisfier and it feels like I truly am "missing out on" quite a bit.

I respectfully disagree. I think this is too late, and TiVo is partly to blame. There's no communication about SDV and UDCP restrictions when you look at TiVo marketing for the device. Unless you're versed in this forum, consumers are going to get that new TiVo box installed (after great pain with their CableCo) only to find out they have access to substantially fewer linear HD channels than they did before.

I don't mean to be inflammatory towards TiVo (and kick off the firestorm that creates in TiVoCommunity)- I feel the CableCo's are the worst example of predatory monopolies we've seen in several generations. However, doesn't TiVo owe consumers some sort of "heads up" that this could be a big issue and won't be resolved for (at least) another 6 months?


----------



## davecramer74

> However, doesn't TiVo owe consumers some sort of "heads up" that this could be a big issue and won't be resolved for (at least) another 6 months?


Ya, i agree that tivo needs to put some kind of disclaimer out there. The cable companies have them on their websites.


----------



## moyekj

davecramer74 said:


> Ya, i agree that tivo needs to put some kind of disclaimer out there. The cable companies have them on their websites.


 I can sympathize with Tivo not doing so - why put up a red flag at the risk of losing sales when the issue is not very widespread yet (looking at the whole Tivo potential customer base, not focusing on certain markets)? I'm not saying I agree, but I do understand reluctance to do so. If/when they get bombarded with returns due to this issue then the disclaimer would probably become necessary.


----------



## PPC1

What are the thoughts of those here that have the ability to make intelligent guesses aobut these things as to how the tunning resolver will work with the dual tunners. Will the S3 still be able to record different channels at once?


----------



## acvthree

davecramer74 said:


> Ya, i agree that tivo needs to put some kind of disclaimer out there. The cable companies have them on their websites.


Cable companies are trying to discourage their use.


----------



## dswallow

PPC1 said:


> What are the thoughts of those here that have the ability to make intelligent guesses aobut these things as to how the tunning resolver will work with the dual tunners. Will the S3 still be able to record different channels at once?


One tuning resolver will provide all the necessary support for a Series 3 or a TiVo HD unit to control both tuners... provided both tuners are functional with active CableCARDs.


----------



## PPC1

dswallow said:


> One tuning resolver will provide all the necessary support for a Series 3 or a TiVo HD unit to control both tuners... provided both tuners are functional with active CableCARDs.


Groovey.


----------



## CrispyCritter

Conference call just said that the tuning resolver is expected to be free from the large cable companies, and that the large companies are expecting to install it themselves with truck rolls.


----------



## HDTiVo

CrispyCritter said:


> Conference call just said that the tuning resolver is expected to be free from the large cable companies, and that the large companies are expecting to install it themselves with truck rolls.


If that is so, then it is a fair offer considering the use of SDV allows cable to break the original one-way device standard for receiving this class of channels in return for significant business benefits from more programming which can also now be sold to one-way device users, all without compromising the investment consumers made in those one-way devices in reliance on the standard.

Who says the FCC doesn't broker fair deals sometimes?


----------



## davecramer74

> I can sympathize with Tivo not doing so - why put up a red flag at the risk of losing sales when the issue is not very widespread yet (looking at the whole Tivo potential customer base, not focusing on certain markets)?


ya, true. They also have 30 day money back guarantee dont they?


----------



## MickeS

acvthree said:


> Cable companies are trying to discourage their use.


Eaxctly, the reason the cable companies have the disclaimers isn't to inform the customers, it's to scare them into getting the cable-provided equipment. Fortunately for them, in this case it does both.


----------



## CharlesH

CrispyCritter said:


> Conference call just said that the tuning resolver is expected to be free from the large cable companies, and that the large companies are expecting to install it themselves with truck rolls.


So you need a truck roll to connect your cable to it, and plug the output of the resolver into the TiVo cable input and USB port?  Unlike the cable cards, this device can communicate with the head end to do any setup required at either end, so what else would the "installer" have to do?


----------



## CrispyCritter

CharlesH said:


> So you need a truck roll to connect your cable to it, and plug the output of the resolver into the TiVo cable input and USB port?  Unlike the cable cards, this device can communicate with the head end to do any setup required at either end, so what else would the "installer" have to do?


Testing, but I agree not a whole lot more.

It sounds like the (large) cable companies have agreed to do a whole lot more training on TiVo, and are promising to offer customers a complete TiVo oriented installation procedure.


----------



## mikeyts

CrispyCritter said:


> Conference call just said that the tuning resolver is expected to be free from the large cable companies, and that the large companies are expecting to install it themselves with truck rolls.


Cool. I figured that it'd be either free or at nominal charge. Probably most of the SDV offerings will be positioned in optional digital tiers. People who insist on using UDCR equipment (like us ) won't otherwise be able to buy those services, so giving them a trivial piece of hardware to aid in their purchasing those things is good business. Also it makes it appear to the FCC as though they care about the plight of consumers disenfranchised by their move to SDV; all of this preparation to roll out the tuning resolver is being made without a single regulation being enacted. Of course, without the FCC amending the regs to require them to offer these it seems unlikely that they'll be offered by smaller SOs at all, but what do I care? I live in the fourth largest system in the country .


----------



## SCSIRAID

CharlesH said:


> Only if they perceive that being "nice" with the resolver will forestall regulatory heat to open up the other two-way features (PPV, VOD) to third-party devices without the current OCAP requirements (that are not acceptable to the CE vendors such as TiVo).


Tivo agrees to OCAP!! With a few changes.....

http://fjallfoss.fcc.gov/prod/ecfs/retrieve.cgi?native_or_pdf=pdf&id_document=6519815501


----------



## HDTiVo

SCSIRAID said:


> Tivo agrees to OCAP!! With a few changes.....
> 
> http://fjallfoss.fcc.gov/prod/ecfs/retrieve.cgi?native_or_pdf=pdf&id_document=6519815501


Wow. A dual mode box. TiVo mode. Cable mode.

TiVo does not need to build an OCAP box for a while now that the dongle is coming. But now we know they will be able to if they decide its time.

I commend TiVo for having taken such a leadership and influential position on these matters.


----------



## mikeyts

As I said back in the SDV FAQ thread, I think that this is a very nice development. It'd be nice to own a TiVo that I could switch to "Cable Mode" and have access to the VOD channels that would come with my subscription premiums if I were using a leased STB.


----------



## JakiChan

Oh my...I wonder if this is something that people looking at getting TiVo should wait for?


----------



## mikeyts

I wouldn't expect a product out of it before next Christmas. Sounds like they still have some modifications to the OCAP spec to make.


----------



## bicker

Grakthis said:


> So yeah... *you* might think VOD is a DVR replacement. But *I* don't.


Indeed, and everyone will be different, but what matters is how the availability various options affect the likelihood that a vast number of consumers will choose one option of another. The availability of VOD is very likely to have a very substantial impact on consumers already reticent about renting (much less purchasing) a DVR. That option's most significant impact is decreasing the ability for stand-alone DVR makers (i.e., TiVo) to command a profitable price, because the only folks paying will be those for whom VOD is not sufficient. If it wasn't for VOD, then stand-alone DVR makers (i.e., TiVo) would face less competition, and have an easier time finding a profitable price-point.


----------



## bicker

davecramer74 said:


> Ya, i agree that tivo needs to put some kind of disclaimer out there.


They already have. I posted a link to it in the SDV FAQ thread a few days ago.


----------



## bicker

CrispyCritter said:


> Conference call just said that the tuning resolver is expected to be free from the large cable companies, and that the large companies are expecting to install it themselves with truck rolls.


How free? First one free? ... or all free?


----------



## bicker

Why would TiVo agree to OCAP unless they planned on starting work on developing such a box? 

I guess we now know the nature of the TiVo S4, eh?


----------



## BobCamp1

HDTiVo said:


> Wow. A dual mode box. TiVo mode. Cable mode.
> 
> TiVo does not need to build an OCAP box for a while now that the dongle is coming. But now we know they will be able to if they decide its time.
> 
> I commend TiVo for having taken such a leadership and influential position on these matters.


Also known as getting their head out of their you-know-where. OCAP was happening with or without them (and with or without the FCC). And the box is what some smart people  said it should be -- let Tivo do the basic functions, and the advanced future functions that will roll out near or after the S4 is released will be run in OCAP. Tivo just wanted clarifying language that states that the basic functions can be done through Tivo's GUI.

They need an OCAP box soon, though. I don't think the dongle allows them to do all the new features that cable has planned for near future. The dongle is a temporary band-aid.


----------



## Grakthis

HDTiVo said:


> Wow. A dual mode box. TiVo mode. Cable mode.
> 
> TiVo does not need to build an OCAP box for a while now that the dongle is coming. But now we know they will be able to if they decide its time.
> 
> I commend TiVo for having taken such a leadership and influential position on these matters.


I suggested this like 2 months ago in another thread on this forum and people seemed to think it was a silly idea at the time.

It just makes sense to me. Why can't TiVo have an OCAP sandbox that the OCAP interface runs in? The cable interface won't know the difference and it will give TiVo users access to all of the advanced features.


----------



## TiVo Troll

Grakthis said:


> *you* might think VOD is a DVR replacement. But *I* don't.


I don't either but VOD can save significant HDD space depending on what a viewer wants to watch.


----------



## dswallow

Grakthis said:


> It just makes sense to me. Why can't TiVo have an OCAP sandbox that the OCAP interface runs in? The cable interface won't know the difference and it will give TiVo users access to all of the advanced features.


Probably because the TiVo interface needs to be aware of how to share the resources with the OCAP side, and without these unspecified "modifications" to OCAP that appear to be part of what's been worked out between TiVo and the cable companies, it wouldn't be feasible.


----------



## BobCamp1

TiVo Troll said:


> I don't either but VOD can save significant HDD space depending on what a viewer wants to watch.


VOD **IS** a DVR replacement if done correctly, and makes sense for several reasons. But it won't happen, as the content providers have already blocked attempts to put everything on VOD. So the DVR will be around for a while.


----------



## TiVo Troll

'If done correctly' covers an awful lot of territory. 

DVR's will likely be around awhile, but eventually....


----------



## dswallow

TiVo Troll said:


> 'If done correctly' covers an awful lot of territory.
> 
> DVR's will likely be around awhile, but eventually....


Yeah, my main complaint is the latency in trying to control playback. It's just not there; now we all can know how it must feel to remotely operate robotic explorers on the moon or Mars.


----------



## PSXBatou

Maybe a dumb question, but will this dongle enable TiVo users to view VOD programming? Or does this just apply to recieving split digital signal channels? I am a bit confused reading through this thread. 

I'm not even sure if SDV is rolled out in my area tbh.

Thanks


----------



## dswallow

PSXBatou said:


> Maybe a dumb question, but will this dongle enable TiVo users to view VOD programming? Or does this just apply to recieving split digital signal channels? I am a bit confused reading through this thread.
> 
> I'm not even sure if SDV is rolled out in my area tbh.


The Tuning Resolver dongle, at least initially, will only be used to support SDV (Switched Digital Video). Some of the discussion here is about how such a device might also be used to provide access to VOD or PPV programming as well, but that'd require some sort of commitment by the cable companies to support some sort of standardized protocol to get at that information and initiate the programming.


----------



## TiVo Troll

dswallow said:


> Yeah, my main complaint is the latency in trying to control playback. It's just not there; now we all can know how it must feel to remotely operate robotic explorers on the moon or Mars.


Hopefully Comcast's MotoTiVo won't provide a similiar experience, like current Moto s/w versions do!


----------



## mikeyts

PSXBatou said:


> Maybe a dumb question, but will this dongle enable TiVo users to view VOD programming? Or does this just apply to recieving split digital signal channels? I am a bit confused reading through this thread.
> 
> I'm not even sure if SDV is rolled out in my area tbh.
> 
> Thanks


Dude, that question has been asked repeatedly by people popping into this thread over the past few days. Try scanning the last few pages of a thread before posting if you have a question like this.


----------



## moyekj

BobCamp1 said:


> VOD **IS** a DVR replacement if done correctly, and makes sense for several reasons. But it won't happen, as the content providers have already blocked attempts to put everything on VOD. So the DVR will be around for a while.


 Among many issues with VOD implementations, one major pitfall for the VOD concept is you can't offload recordings to portable devices for viewing on the move or during travel. While you could possibly argue that VOD done right would allow access from any network enabled device there are cases when you have no network access. So unless VOD done right also includes allowing permanent recordings to be made it will never suit my fancy just for that aspect alone.


----------



## MickeS

Grakthis said:


> I suggested this like 2 months ago in another thread on this forum and people seemed to think it was a silly idea at the time.


I don't think it would have worked with how OCAP was implemented before. Seems like the cable companies now are willing to make some changes to it in order to appease TiVo.

I wonder if this development is because TiVo has figured out all the really hard stuff when they were working on the Comcast TiVo?

Either way, yes I bet this is the Series 4. I just hope it does OTA too.


----------



## That Don Guy

mikeyts said:


> As I said back in the SDV FAQ thread, I think that this is a very nice development. It'd be nice to own a TiVo that I could switch to "Cable Mode" and have access to the VOD channels that would come with my subscription premiums if I were using a leased STB.


Hopefully, not too many people will complain that the TiVo in "Cable Mode" won't be able to record anything. (There are a number of things on VOD that disappear after a certain date.)

Of course, the response is, "That's one reason (a) your TiVo has more than one set of outputs and (b) DVD recorders exist."

-- Don


----------



## HDTiVo

MickeS said:


> I
> Either way, yes I bet this is the Series 4. I just hope it does OTA too.


Maybe it it is yet another Series 3 *Platform*. 



BobCamp1 said:


> They need an OCAP box soon, though. I don't think the dongle allows them to do all the new features that cable has planned for near future. The dongle is a temporary band-aid.


I am not convinced in the near term there will be much market for whatever cable has planned combined with what TiVo can do vs what TiVo can do with the SDV dongle and everything else.

But when that happens there is now a path to get there.



That Don Guy said:


> Hopefully, not too many people will complain that the TiVo in "Cable Mode" won't be able to record anything. (There are a number of things on VOD that disappear after a certain date.)
> 
> Of course, the response is, "That's one reason (a) your TiVo has more than one set of outputs and (b) DVD recorders exist."
> 
> -- Don


I already complained in the coffee house thread. 

Actually, I just describe letting the box write the PPV/VOD program to the hdd for playback in TiVo mode. TiVo already has some management for deleting things after a certain amount of time, etc. that could be extended for PPV/VOD.


----------



## mikeyts

That Don Guy said:


> Hopefully, not too many people will complain that the TiVo in "Cable Mode" won't be able to record anything. (There are a number of things on VOD that disappear after a certain date.)
> 
> Of course, the response is, "That's one reason (a) your TiVo has more than one set of outputs and (b) DVD recorders exist."
> 
> -- Don


VOD is one of the only business models (IPPV being the other) that the FCC allows cable providers to mark with "Copy Never" protection. If you can record it--even through SD analog outputs--it's probably only because your cable provider screwed up somehow. TiVo will not make a recording of Copy Never content at all, though they are allowed to keep an ephemeral up-to-90-minute trick-play buffer.

You can check out this FAQ to see how HBO/Cinemax feels about the matter .


----------



## SCSIRAID

That Don Guy said:


> Hopefully, not too many people will complain that the TiVo in "Cable Mode" won't be able to record anything. (There are a number of things on VOD that disappear after a certain date.)
> 
> Of course, the response is, "That's one reason (a) your TiVo has more than one set of outputs and (b) DVD recorders exist."
> 
> -- Don


I havent seen any detail to conclude that in Cable mode that the Tivo cant record anything.... I hope thats not the case but it is an interesting thought. I would hope that the 'mode' simple controls the user interface and what cableco software is and is not allow to launch in what mode and that dialogs can be used similar to today as to get permission to impact a 'background' TiVo recording while in cable mode.

EDIT: After posting and rereading... perhaps I misunderstood your statement. Perhaps you meant that cable mode didnt have any record capability.... not that being in cable mode disabled any TiVo background recording operation.....


----------



## dswallow

mikeyts said:


> From the letter:
> I'd imagine that recordings scheduled in the TiVo Mode would still happen if you were using Cable Mode; you just can't record anything using Cable Mode GUI or (I assume) use any kind of trick-play while watching programming using the cable mode interface, since that would be a DVR function. Of course, you'd get "trick-play" for VOD (PAUSE, FF, REW, etc), but as a streaming video functions and not DVR buffering. You might not be able to watch any programming at all in Cable Mode, if TiVo were scheduled to make recordings using both of its tuners.
> 
> The cable providers using OCAP GUIs on their boxes have versions for both DVR and non-DVR STBs, and the future TiVo's "Cable Mode" would run the non-DVR version.


It's still open to some interpretation; they could be referring to no DVR functionality as delivered on the cable company OCAP-compliant box, but the TiVo DVR capability may or may not continue operating.


----------



## mikeyts

SCSIRAID said:


> I havent seen any detail to conclude that in Cable mode that the Tivo cant record anything....


From the letter:


> a TiVo DVR with OCAP would have a "TiVo mode" displaying all linear channels (including switched digital video enabled by OCAP) with the TiVo user interface and full DVR functionality as well as a "cable mode" running OCAP and displaying all cable programming services with the cable user interface *without DVR functionality*


I'd imagine that recordings scheduled in the TiVo Mode would still happen if you were using Cable Mode; you just can't record anything using Cable Mode GUI or (I assume) use any kind of trick-play while watching programming using the cable mode interface, since that would be a DVR function. Of course, you'd get "trick-play" for VOD (PAUSE, FF, REW, etc), but as a streaming video functions and not DVR buffering. You might not be able to watch any programming at all in Cable Mode, if TiVo were scheduled to make recordings using both of its tuners.

The cable providers using OCAP GUIs on their boxes have versions for both DVR and non-DVR STBs, and the future TiVo's "Cable Mode" would run the non-DVR version.

As I posted before, I don't think that it matters much for VOD. The last time that I tried VOD was on a TWC system using Passport Echo on an SA Explorer 8300HD; it would not accept a request to record the program and trick-play was definitely the VOD system and not from any buffer in the DVR. I'm sure that it would have worked exactly the same had I been using the non-DVR Explorer 3250HD or the HD box from Pace that the provider was also distributing for lease.


----------



## mikeyts

dswallow said:


> It's still open to some interpretation; they could be referring to no DVR functionality as delivered on the cable company OCAP-compliant box, but the TiVo DVR capability may or may not continue operating.


(Sorry about "leap-frogging" your post. I was editing mine and I detest those little "last edited by ..." notations that this board software adds if you don't get your edits in within a certain window, so if my post is at the bottom, I'll delete and repost to avoid them).

I dunno. I really doubt that we'll see TiVo DVR functions merged with the OCAP inteface. Too complex--intercepting the relevant remote keys would require added communication between TiVo and OCAP. It's also stepping on the feet of the OCAP app developers with no real gain (except for maybe trick-play during IPPV use).


----------



## bdraw

I can't wait to see how this all shakes out. It's actually pretty exciting, but I can't see how TiVo can make the transition to "cable mode" (I'd like to call this place UI hell) seamless. 

As for VOD, yes if VOD programming becomes more accessible or more economical than it will replace DVRs. But considering holywood doesn't want to accept how many people use DVRs, I doubt they'll let big cable make their content more accessible. 

If you disagree, think about this for a second. Why would you need a DVR, if you could watch whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted with VOD?


----------



## dswallow

bdraw said:


> Why would you need a DVR, if you could watch whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted with VOD?


That's the big presumption though. It's not what you wanted, whenever you wanted. Not even all the networks provide their shows this way, and those that provide some, don't provide all. And of those, probably not even a half dozen are available in HD at all by VOD. And they don't even have entire seasons archived, usually.

So once they actually have all the content available this way... maybe it'll be comparable... but I just doubt that'll ever really happen.

And then there is the technical hurdle of how to handle VOD if every household has 1 or more VOD programs playing... that'd be a significantly larger investment in head-end equipment than has to happen now. And there's still the latency involved in controlling that playback when it's coming from central head-end servers.


----------



## mikeyts

The closest any of the national OTA networks has come to placing their content in VOD is TWC's "start-over" service, which just lets you start watching any program that you tune into the middle of from the beginning. The networks like it because it doesn't give you any ability to skip the ads; if they were to ever launch true free VOD channels, I'd expect that there would be non-skippable advertising involved, as with the watch-online option many of them are offering.

The problem is that some advertising is time-sensitive ("Come to Kohl's big sale this weekend!") and VOD wouldn't be a good media for selling that.


----------



## sfhub

vstone said:


> Because it will actively interface with the cable infrastructure. The cable companies will want to control this and I won't blame them a bit.


DOCSIS cable modems actively interface also, yet there is a spec, other manufacturers build products, users buy products in the stores, and everything interops.

They could potentially just define the hardware to be low-level QPSK modem or DOCSIS in DSG mode and load the custom firmware for the specific system using a bootstrap procedure. That way you can have a single hardware that the user purchases which works on various systems.


----------



## sfhub

mikeyts said:


> I'm not trying to claim that they're exactly pro-consumer, but some of their charter quite definitely is. They've on-and-off regulated cable television rates throughout the existence of the cable television industry. (People talk about how the FCC is vulnerable to lobbying, but the cable industry itself is a multi-billion dollar concern with a powerful lobby and they've been pushed in many directions they didn't want to go by the FCC).


Clearly they are not purely pro-consumer and they are susceptible to lobbying or we would never have heard of the broadcast flag.


----------



## sfhub

bicker said:


> I disagree. They have to answer to the franchising authorities vis a vis pricing. They'll catch heck if they don't keep the pricing within certain bounds.


Assuming of course they are still being regulated by the local franchise, which more and more are not because they filed for "effective competition" due to Dish and DirecTV and were granted that status.


----------



## sfhub

acvthree said:


> For my cable provider the cable cards cost $6.00 for the pair (going to $8.00 next year).
> The STB is less than $5.00
> 
> My provider is more reasonable than others on this forum in that they don't charge digital access fees in addition to the cable card fee. Even if the price of the dongle is a few dollars, the combined price of the cable cards and dongle are going to be more than an STB. I don't think the prices for cable cards will go down to meet the criteria you have set when the dongles arrive.


If your cable provider is still being regulated, I don't see how they can get away with that pricing in the long term. Their STBs must use CableCARD because of the deadline, so they are saying to you that an STB + CableCARD costs less than a CableCARD alone.


----------



## sfhub

ldudek said:


> OK, seriously you can believe somethings but this is just pure science fiction. It doesn't make sense. Why would they take 100 analog stations which use much more bandwith then digital and use them for the "dual" purpose of broadcasting exculsively for CableCard users. The idea is to create more bandwith and one of the main ways of doing that is converting analog to digital. Now once you do that then you decide what is SDV and what isn't. Making the analog stations digital and available for cable cards makes more sense.


The reason they would do that is the digital simulcast channels are SDV so they can't provide that to you, so they map you back to analog. Then over they start moving those 103 analog channels over to digital only, so today you may have 103 analog channels but next month you might just have 83 analog channels, and 6 months from now, you might just have 25 analog channels. The people with access to SDV digital simulcast channels won't notice any change.


----------



## acvthree

sfhub said:


> If your cable provider is still being regulated, I don't see how they can get away with that pricing in the long term. Their STBs must use CableCARD because of the deadline, so they are saying to you that an STB + CableCARD costs less than a CableCARD alone.


This is Verizon in Texas. You can check their prices this is right of their web site except for the information on the price increase. Again, I've not heard of any case of the FCC getting a cable provider to change prices.

Al


----------



## jercra

mikeyts said:


> The closest any of the national OTA networks has come to placing their content in VOD is TWC's "start-over" service, which just lets you start watching any program that you tune into the middle of from the beginning. The networks like it because it doesn't give you any ability to skip the ads; if they were to ever launch true free VOD channels, I'd expect that there would be non-skippable advertising involved, as with the watch-online option many of them are offering.
> 
> The problem is that some advertising is time-sensitive ("Come to Kohl's big sale this weekend!") and VOD wouldn't be a good media for selling that.


TWC's future "look back" is a follow up to Start Over. It will allow re-watching of content outside of the broadcast window. This is coming soon. Add to that the fact that AdVOD trials have already begun and the first releases of commercial versions are just starting to roll out and you can see the beginnings of everything on demand. It will take time, likely a lot of time, but once you consider that serivce group sizing is vastly shrinking due to SDV so VOD penetration rates can go way up at 0 cost, SDV is gathering a TON of data about consumer viewing patterns down to the individual STB and the ability to interface with an Advertising engine like Google for truly targeted advertising you can see that there will be waaaay too much money on the table for content providers to hold so tightly onto their content. This will drive the content owners to provide everything on demand. Of course, none of this will solve the latency issues in trick play so the experience won't ever be truly DVR like.


----------



## mikeyts

VOD with unskippable advertisements is definitely not going to seem much like using a PVR. I've used online episode playback at the network sites upon occasion when I missed recording one of my favorite series and there were no downloadable episodes of that series available for purchase; they usually have ads that not only can't be skipped, you often have to manually start playback again, so you can't just turn your back and zone out or walk away and come back when you hear the show start again. These usually end in a still or slightly animated ad that can get the message across at a glimpse as you search out and click the control to start the episode playing again. The only "good" thing about this is that there usually is only a single ad at every break and only a single product advertised during the program.

I'll admit that, even with those drawbacks, if every program was available that way it would greatly lessen the value of owning a DVR, though I probably still would.


----------



## bicker

sfhub said:


> Assuming of course they are still being regulated by the local franchise, which more and more are not because they filed for "effective competition" due to Dish and DirecTV and were granted that status.


In which case the market SHOULD decide what pricing should be.


----------



## cab2

So all I want to know is,

How can I be on the list to beta test this dongle! 

Austin TWC is one of the areas where there is a LARGE list of SDV channels including anything new in HD that they add. Love my S3, but there is a large list of channels I'm missing due to SDV.


----------



## dpratt

cab2 said:


> So all I want to know is,
> 
> How can I be on the list to beta test this dongle!
> 
> Austin TWC is one of the areas where there is a LARGE list of SDV channels including anything new in HD that they add. Love my S3, but there is a large list of channels I'm missing due to SDV.


Hear hear!

Who do I contact at Time Warner Austin or Tivo to let them know that I'd be an enthusiastic beta tester for this - I have a series 3 in my living room, and am waiting for the dongle to buy a Tivo HD for the bedroom. I'd love to test this out and I can offer untold amounts of feedback.


----------



## pmiranda

dpratt said:


> Hear hear!
> 
> Who do I contact at Time Warner Austin or Tivo to let them know that I'd be an enthusiastic beta tester for this - I have a series 3 in my living room, and am waiting for the dongle to buy a Tivo HD for the bedroom. I'd love to test this out and I can offer untold amounts of feedback.


The line starts behind ME  There are dozens of S3 owners in Austin on this board alone, not counting the hundreds that don't even know about it. I imagine the S3/THD owners that are TW techs will get to put the dongle through its paces before any of us, though. I expect deployment will go much more smoothly than the early S3 adopters had with cablecards, although the expected attachment of the dongle might cause some signal strength issues if you don't have a good signal at your house.
I'm hoping we get Speed in HD by the time the dongle arrives. Long live SDV!


----------



## vstone

sfhub said:


> DOCSIS cable modems actively interface also, yet there is a spec, other manufacturers build products, users buy products in the stores, and everything interops.
> 
> They could potentially just define the hardware to be low-level QPSK modem or DOCSIS in DSG mode and load the custom firmware for the specific system using a bootstrap procedure. That way you can have a single hardware that the user purchases which works on various systems.


I don't know what can be done with the average cable modem, but I can see some hacker monitoring the USB traffic between the Tivo and the dongle, then figuring out how to plug the dongle into his laptop and flood the system with bogus channel requests. Then he'll figure out how to reprogram the dongle to do who knows what. Then he'll put this on the Internet and those hundreds of cable card equipped TV's that can't get the new channels (and are therefore moderately unhappy that the equipment has just been obsoleted) will be buying a dongle just to screw with the cable company.

Yeah I know this is probably prohibited by that federal law about reverse engineering digital protection, but good luck with that.


----------



## dpratt

pmiranda said:


> The line starts behind ME  There are dozens of S3 owners in Austin on this board alone, not counting the hundreds that don't even know about it. I imagine the S3/THD owners that are TW techs will get to put the dongle through its paces before any of us, though. I expect deployment will go much more smoothly than the early S3 adopters had with cablecards, although the expected attachment of the dongle might cause some signal strength issues if you don't have a good signal at your house.
> I'm hoping we get Speed in HD by the time the dongle arrives. Long live SDV!


Quick correction for you - "Long Live SDV, but only after I actually have a tuning resolver dongle in my hands. Until then, SDV is a monstrosity that should be abolished."


----------



## davecramer74

about time for the ocap box. Its what ive been hoping for. That will get me onboard buying a tivo again. Ill be able to keep my viewing habits and have a tivo dvr.


----------



## yunlin12

Anyone seen this yet, just found it through ZatZ not funny:

http://connectedhome2go.com/2007/11...tched-digital-solution-for-cablecard-devices/


----------



## MickeS

yunlin12 said:


> Anyone seen this yet, just found it through ZatZ not funny:
> 
> http://connectedhome2go.com/2007/11...tched-digital-solution-for-cablecard-devices/


"Motorola started working with CableLabs in July on a technology solution, and as of two weeks ago in an Interop with TiVo, already had a prototype device ready and performing well."

Awesome.

"Motorola's tuning resolver will look an awful lot like the famous (in my book) and widely deployed DCT700."

Ack, I was hoping for something smaller.


----------



## acvthree

Ok, so is this something that can be placed on top of the HDTivo or Series 3?

It seems like the designs for the external storage and, now, the SDV cable tuner are purposefully designed NOT to fit into anyones technology stack.

Al


----------



## mikeyts

I was expecting something smaller, too. At 5.5W x 6.5L x 1.75H, the DCT-700 is _tiny_ for a cable STB, but kind of big for a plug-in accessory. I can see where they might have used the case for a proto of tuning resolver, but hopefully their final product will be smaller and USB powered, designed to tuck away behind things. We'll see, and (just like CableCARDs) Motorola's product probably won't be compatible with SA networks anyway.

As for external storage enclosures, the industrial designers working on those are all from the PC space. I haven't seen a single product that wasn't really designed to be tucked away on a desk top--WD's "My DVR Expander" is completely unchanged from their My Book PC expansion storage design.


----------



## keenanSR

It would nice if it was something like the DirecTV DVR's use for B-band conversion.


----------



## ah30k

MickeS said:


> "Motorolas tuning resolver will look an awful lot like the famous (in my book) and widely deployed DCT700."
> 
> Ack, I was hoping for something smaller.


If you want it cheap and quick, you look for something that already has 99% of the capability and is cheap to start with such as the DCT700. You can then remove the A/V ports and add a USB port. Viola! Done the hardware. Now just hack the software together to add the SW USB protocol.


----------



## mikeyts

I can see where they might be using that enclosure during development, but if you really want it cheap, you don't use the DCT-700's board. It's got everything you need for this application (except a USB port, but that could hardly be cheaper to add). You don't need a main processor with half the speed required to run an IPG or a quarter so much RAM of the DCT-700, not to mention its graphics and sound decoding chips and video RAMDAC. You don't need its IR receiver. Even its RF section is overdone, since you don't need to to receive the in-band part of the signal at all, just its OOB QPSK transceiver.

I've read that the DCT-700 sells for about $80 in quantity, which bodes well for how low the price of an actual tuning resolver should be.


----------



## cr33p

Not sure if anyone had stumbled on this yet today

http://www.zatznotfunny.com/2007-11/sdv-usb-dongle-details-emerge/


----------



## keenanSR

cr33p said:


> Not sure if anyone had stumbled on this yet today
> 
> http://www.zatznotfunny.com/2007-11/sdv-usb-dongle-details-emerge/


Bummer, another box to stuff in the rack.


----------



## JohnBrowning

Pages and pages of speculation....


----------



## cr33p

No doubt, I will be stickin it in the friggin wall LOL, I like the slim sleek no junk set up myself.


----------



## BobCamp1

mikeyts said:


> I can see where they might be using that enclosure during development, but if you really want it cheap, you don't use the DCT-700's board. .... I've read that the DCT-700 sells for about $80 in quantity, which bodes well for how low the price of an actual tuning resolver should be.


I'm confused. If the DCT-700 sells for $80, and you think the perfect tuning resolver should/could be the same price, why not just use a one-off of the DCT-700? Just don't mount the parts you don't need or put in cheaper compatible parts (yes, may not be that simple, but it wouldn't take long to figure out what could be done to reduce price). Even if just the case and power supply are the same, that would save some development time and cost. On the other end, even if nothing were removed and a few minor things added, it would be less than $100 and available relatively quickly.

It's the designer's holy triangle: you can have it cheap and fast, cheap and good, or fast and good. You can't have all three. It sounds like "fast and good" has already been chosen. Considering the low volume, "cheap" should be last priority.


----------



## mikeyts

cr33p said:


> Not sure if anyone had stumbled on this yet today
> 
> http://www.zatznotfunny.com/2007-11/sdv-usb-dongle-details-emerge/


It was the topic for the past several posts--you obviously didn't read any of the thread before making that redundant addition. Thanks anyway .


BobCamp1 said:


> I'm confused. If the DCT-700 sells for $80, and you think the perfect tuning resolver should/could be the same price, why not just use a one-off of the DCT-700? Just don't mount the parts you don't need or put in cheaper compatible parts (yes, may not be that simple, but it wouldn't take long to figure out what could be done to reduce price). Even if just the case and power supply are the same, that would save some development time and cost. On the other end, even if nothing were removed and a few minor things added, it would be less than $100 and available relatively quickly.
> 
> It's the designer's holy triangle: you can have it cheap and fast, cheap and good, or fast and good. You can't have all three. It sounds like "fast and good" has already been chosen. Considering the low volume, "cheap" should be last priority.


I think that the perfect tuning resolver should be no more than half that price. Any DOCSIS cable modem board could handle this task and has everything it needs for it and more (include USB-2 interfaces and redundant 100BaseT ports)--most of them _retail_ for $40 or less in single-unit quantities, most of them are smaller than the DCT-700 and Motorola makes several models (I see an RCA one e-tailing for $25). We have no idea what the volume will be. I expect that some current model UDCR televisions will be upgradeable to use it and that future ones will ship with firmware enabling them to use it, if the FCC finds the tuning resolver to be an acceptable alternative to the CEA's proposed "DCR+" solution (the NCTA is hoping that they will).

They could use the DCT-700's enclosure and PS if they want to; it's just lots bigger than necessary and more than half the function of the original board is irrelevant. I think that it's just probable that they used it for the prototype because the Moto cable modem group is a completely separate entity and the cable subscriber equipment group doesn't have any experience with their development environment. We'll see how it comes out in the end, as well as what SA's solution looks like.


----------



## dswallow

mikeyts said:


> I think that the perfect tuning resolver should be no more than half that price. Any DOCSIS cablemodem board could handle this task and has everything it needs for it and more (include USB-2 interfaces and redundant 100BaseT ports)--most of them _retail_ for $40 or less in single-unit quantities, most of them are smaller than the DCT-700 and Motorola makes several models (I see an RCA one e-tailing for $25). We have no idea what the volume will be. I expect that some current model UDCR televisions will be upgradeable to use it and that future ones will ship with firmware enabling them to use it, if the FCC finds the tuning resolver to be an acceptable alternative to the CEA's proposed "DCR+" solution (the NCTA is hoping that they will).
> 
> They could use the DCT-700's enclosure and PS if they want to; it's just lots bigger than necessary and more than half the function of the original board is irrelevant. We'll see how it comes out in the end, as well as what SA's solution looks like.


And it's also important to remember that while there's been talk about the cost to produce the tuning resolver dongle, the only actually comment about end-user pricing has come from TiVo during the conference call where, from at least the major cable companies, they said they thought it would probably be provided free.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/55669-tivo-f3q07-qtr-end-10-31-07-earnings-call-transcript

(Question asked by Todd Mitchell - Kaufman Brothers; this is a portion of the answer provided by Thomas S. Rogers of TiVo)



> And to your question on charges, our anticipation is that the large cable operators are not going to charge customers for this additional device or the installation of it. That's all part of the cable industry looking to make sure that after all, these are cable subscribers using cable cards who they want to leave happy and not be disgruntled in any way and TiVo boxes are certainly a way to hold on to those cable subscribers because they can enjoy the benefits of the TiVo service, so both cable and ourselves are incented to make sure this is a happy experience.


----------



## MickeS

mikeyts said:


> It was the topic for the past several posts--you obviously didn't read any of the thread before making that redundant addition.


In this forum, it's easier to just say "you smeeked."


----------



## pmiranda

While a hacked DCT700 is not the most elegant solution in the world, as far as I'm concerned the "dongle" could be the size of a ATX motherboard and draw 100W and I'd still want one


----------



## SCSIRAID

pmiranda said:


> While a hacked DCT700 is not the most elegant solution in the world, as far as I'm concerned the "dongle" could be the size of a ATX motherboard and draw 100W and I'd still want one


LOL!! Me Too.... :up:


----------



## mikeyts

From the SDV FAQ thread:


mel.simmons said:


> Light Reading has posted a list of SDV deployments in the US. No details on the number of channels that have been switched in each market, but this list gives an indication of the rapid movement to SDV. It's time for a dongle to appear. You might also notice that almost all of the listed projects are using the Scientific Atlanta platform, making that the priority for a dongle.
> http://www.lightreading.com/blog.asp?blog_sectionid=419&doc_id=139512


So far, TWC is the main offender, with 15 out of 23 of the SDV deployments. Of course, we've only heard about the Motorola tuning resolver prototype, when only 2 deployed SDV systems are on Moto networks .


----------



## classicsat

Who says its a DOCSIS modem?

I am in the camp that it is a modified two-way cable box, of course ground-up build (at least for the production unit.). 

Being it costs money to design and tool, using the DCT700 case molds is one of the better things they can do to save money, even if the board is half the size.

And since they essentially cannot build the DCT700 anymore, they might not need to design a dual purpose board.


----------



## sfhub

vstone said:


> I don't know what can be done with the average cable modem, but I can see some hacker monitoring the USB traffic between the Tivo and the dongle, then figuring out how to plug the dongle into his laptop and flood the system with bogus channel requests. Then he'll figure out how to reprogram the dongle to do who knows what. Then he'll put this on the Internet and those hundreds of cable card equipped TV's that can't get the new channels (and are therefore moderately unhappy that the equipment has just been obsoleted) will be buying a dongle just to screw with the cable company.
> 
> Yeah I know this is probably prohibited by that federal law about reverse engineering digital protection, but good luck with that.


You can already do that with Surfboard CableModems. People have been loading there own OS on those things. Don't see a huge issue with cable systems going down because of that. There are way more Surfboard CableModems out there than expected tuning resolvers.


----------



## Rob Helmerichs

mikeyts said:


> From the SDV FAQ thread:
> So far, TWC is the main offender, with 15 out of 23 of the SDV deployments. Of course, we've only heard about the Motorola tuning resolver prototype, when only 2 deployed SDV systems are on Moto networks .


It looks like Comcast Minneapolis is headed that way...I can't remember the details, but in the last bill they bragged about how we'll be getting tons of HD channels in 2008.


----------



## sfhub

So if I understand correctly, the current rumor about the SDV adapter is that TiVo will be going back to old school days of controlling an STB (stripped down DCT-700) using essentially a glorified serial cable (USB) and instead of recording the video using one of its svideo inputs, will get a channel # spit back at it over the USB connection, which it will then proceed to tune?

Well at least they aren't using an IR blaster


----------



## MickeS

sfhub said:


> So if I understand correctly, the current rumor about the SDV adapter is that TiVo will be going back to old school days of controlling an STB (stripped down DCT-700) using essentially a glorified serial cable (USB) and instead of recording the video using one of its svideo inputs, will get a channel # spit back at it over the USB connection, which it will then proceed to tune?
> 
> Well at least they aren't using an IR blaster


Yeah, it's pretty sad isn't it? All this work with CableCARDs and integrated solutions... and it's now come down to an external box again in order to watch all channels. And TVs with CableCARDs are as far as I can tell just SOL.
I guess we'll have to wait another decade and see if something integrated will work...


----------



## mikeyts

MickeS said:


> And TVs with CableCARDs are as far as I can tell just SOL.


That's true for most but not necessarily true for all. There may be a few UDCR televisions out there with USB connections (probably for loadng firmware and debug monitoring during development and just left there for the hell of it, or to support diags in repair or refurb shops). But mostly current model UDCR televisions are out of it so far as SDV services are concerned.

If the NCTA gets its wish the FCC will accept the tuning resolver as a solution to the CEA's complaints and reject their "DCR+" idea (requiring the definition of static interfaces for SDV, IPG, IPPV and VOD that they can hard-code and not have to include an expensive processor and memory capable of running a dynamically loadable Java VM). If "DCR+" is rejected, new models released in the coming years will definitely support this, shipping with USB connections and firmware to control tuning resolvers. That is, of course, small consolation to those who were counting on using their current UDCR TVs to watch all available programming.

(I'm not calling this thing a dongle anymore, if its gonna be the size of a small briefcase ).


----------



## classicsat

MickeS said:


> Yeah, it's pretty sad isn't it? All this work with CableCARDs and integrated solutions... and it's now come down to an external box again in order to watch all channels. And TVs with CableCARDs are as far as I can tell just SOL.
> I guess we'll have to wait another decade and see if something integrated will work...


Still though, the TiVos are tuning/recording the digital channel.

Should the API of the tuning resolver be made available to TV and other STB manufacturers, and their products have the processing power, necessary hardware, and system architecture and to support said device, there is no reason to believe TVs would be left out.


----------



## bicker

MickeS said:


> I guess we'll have to wait another decade and see if something integrated will work...


I think the lesson folks should draw from this situation is to purchase components separately; display separate from tuner, for example. The best high-end audio systems have always constructed as components, and so video should be the same.


----------



## bizzy

classicsat said:


> Should the API of the tuning resolver be made available to TV and other STB manufacturers, and their products have the processing power, necessary hardware, and system architecture and to support said device, there is no reason to believe TVs would be left out.


I expect chilly days in hell first. If you're looking for some entertaining reading, google for 'mitsubishi promise module' to see what sort of ongoing support to expect for your TV once you've coughed up the cash.


----------



## CharlesH

bizzy said:


> I expect chilly days in hell first.


When Verizon Wireless announced that they were opening up their network to 3rd party phones running arbitrary applications, there were comments in HowardForums about the unseasonably chilly weather in hell.


----------



## bizzy

I was shocked as well; but they are still quite evil. They don't allow me to install the AOL AIM client on my blackeberry from them; and amusingly enough, they have disabled the ability to recieve ringtones via bluetooth on my father in law's new RAZR.

So overall my perception of order in the universe was not challenged


----------



## demon

bizzy said:


> They don't allow me to install the AOL AIM client on my blackeberry from them


Off topic; but, get JiveTalk. It's a few bucks, but it's quite good. :up:


----------



## NickIN

Anyone know if TiVo was saying anything about the dongle at CES? Any news on what cable companies will offer it? And how about a more specific target date/time frame?


----------



## Grakthis

NickIN said:


> Anyone know if TiVo was saying anything about the dongle at CES? Any news on what cable companies will offer it? And how about a more specific target date/time frame?


I read a ton of CES coverage and saw no mention of it.

But it does look like we're gonna get OCAP + MultiStream CC TV's by the end of 2008.

I'm a tiVo loyalist, but in my bedroom, for example, I have no desire for a DVR (that's why my living room TV is for) so an OCAP capable TV would really be nice for what I want. I'm pretty stoked about that announcement.


----------



## QZ1

Grakthis said:


> I read a ton of CES coverage and saw no mention of it.
> 
> But it does look like we're gonna get OCAP + MultiStream CC TV's by the end of 2008.
> 
> I'm a tiVo loyalist, but in my bedroom, for example, I have no desire for a DVR (that's why my living room TV is for) so an OCAP capable TV would really be nice for what I want. I'm pretty stoked about that announcement.


Well, I am too, although Panasonic is releasing all of its LCDs and many of its Plasmas in ~April. That leaves only 58" and 65" Plasmas for ~Sept. (That won't work for me.) I don't know what Samsung has planned, but they didin't promise any TVs in '08. I don't care about LG.  Sony and Sharp have yet to sign on. If Sharp signs on soon, I would expect TVs (how small, I don't know) with tru2way in late Dec./early Jan. (as they like to bring products out, regardless if it is considered out of season.) I don't think we will have a large selection of tru2way TVs until ~April '09, unfortunately.


----------



## skaggs

mikeyts posted this link in the SDV forum:

OpenCable Specifications: Tuning Resolver Interface Specification


----------



## Joe3

skaggs said:


> mikeyts posted this link in the SDV forum:
> 
> OpenCable Specifications: Tuning Resolver Interface Specification


Just did a quick scan, I guess we have to assume that that recordings will not be interrupted with the message, if you are still watching press, OK.


----------



## MickeS

Great, just what I needed behind the cabinet... one more box and 3 more cables (power, RF, USB). But better than not getting all the channels, I guess.


----------



## morac

Joe3 said:


> Just did a quick scan, I guess we have to assume that that recordings will not be interrupted with the message, if you are still watching press, OK.


There are separate values depending on whether or not a user is watching, recording, etc..



> Type of tune request.
> 0x0  Live full screen video (no HDD recording)
> 0x1  Live full screen video (HDD recording)
> 0x2  Live PIP or POP video (no HDD recording)
> 0x3  Live PIP or POP video (HDD recording)
> 0x4  Recording only
> 0x5  Inactive
> 0x6  Speculative Recording
> 0x7  Reserved
> 
> In the resolve_tuning_req() APDU, the UDCP SHALL only report the tuner_use_status values associated with
> HDD Recording (0x1, 0x3 or 0x4) when a user-initiated, scheduled or timed recording is in effect that will always
> be followed by an udcp_status_update() APDU that reports 0x0, 0x2, or 0x5, 0x6 at the end of the recording.
> 
> In the resolve_tuning_req() APDU, the UDCP SHALL report tuner_use_status values associated with opportunistic
> or speculative recording that was not user-initiated as 0x6.


Note, suggestions have their own tune request type called "speculative recording". I'm assuming this is in order to prioritize recordings so suggestions can be canceled if another live user needs to use that stream.


----------



## bicker

That really addresses all the conflict we had earlier about this issue. By addressing it explicitly, they can, as you suggest, cancel a suggestion if someone else needs that stream for an intentional recording.


----------



## mikeyts

They could cancel the speculative recording in the middle, if necessary. Cool bit of design .


----------



## moyekj

A lot of those specs were probably inherited from existing specs for cable set top boxes. After all Cable companies have their own DVRs that are always in the "on" state that have to work properly with SDV as well (releasing the channel if not explicitly recording). The "speculative" one perhaps was a new addition..


----------



## CharlesH

Note that the specs say that the resolver provides the channel map, replacing the cablecard map. This means that

(1) the resolver is not a simple DOCSIS transmitter; it knows how to pick up the channel map off the cable;

(2) it deals with cable companies who want to provide a restricted channel map to cable cards, but will allow those with the resolver to get the additional channels (whether those channels currently use SDV or not).


----------



## mln01

So how much will this thing cost?


----------



## bicker

No word on that yet. I'm betting it'll be $2.50-$3.00 per month around here.


----------



## acvthree

If it is like cable cards, it will be different in every location. Some will be reasonable, maybe even free for the first one, some will be expensive, maybe as much as the DVR fee. In some locations there will be an extra digital outlet charge (wanna bet?). Published pricing will be loosely followed but only in a way allowed by the data entry program that may, or may not, recognize "dongle".

I don't think we can expect the FCC to suggest pricing.

Al


----------



## jsnow789

They are going to charge for it. And you can bet that the pricing is going to be higher than using the Cable Co. Box/DVR.

BrightHouse in Florida just launched new 5 new HD channels and of course they are not available without a box.


----------



## vman41

I'm glad to see the spec requires support for at least 2 tuners in the UDCP. It would be really great if one resolver could handle multiple coordinated DVRs.


----------



## mln01

And did I understand correctly in a post above that the dongle will be used in place of the cable card?


----------



## demon

mln01 said:


> And did I understand correctly in a post above that the dongle will be used in place of the cable card?


No, it will not; the CableCARD is still needed for authorization, and it sounds like the card-negotiated key can in fact be used for communication with the head-end via the tuning resolver device (by my reading of the tuning resolver spec put out by CableLabs, anyway). It sounds like its channel mappings will be used *in place of* those provided through/to the CableCARDs, but the cards will still be necessary.


----------



## mln01

Great. So we pay for the service, pay for the cable card, AND pay for the resolver. Time for a little OTA testing.


----------



## dswallow

mln01 said:


> Great. So we pay for the service, pay for the cable card, AND pay for the resolver. Time for a little OTA testing.


I'd suggest you simply wait for real info.

The only comment anyone in-the-know has ever made about the cost of the dongle is that TiVo stated they anticipate cable providers will provide it at no additional charge.

All the sky-is-falling guesses have come from naysayers around here.


----------



## m_jonis

mln01 said:


> So how much will this thing cost?


I thought Tivo claimed that they expected it to be free.

Although I think they're deluding themselves.


----------



## JohnnyO

Given the date on these specifications, is there any chance this device will be available in 2008? I would think that if the specifications are just coming out now, it'll be at least a year before devices are built, tested, UL Labs approved, documented, shipped to cable providers, tested some more, and finally distributed to users.


----------



## MickeS

JohnnyO said:


> Given the date on these specifications, is there any chance this device will be available in 2008? I would think that if the specifications are just coming out now, it'll be at least a year before devices are built, tested, UL Labs approved, documented, shipped to cable providers, tested some more, and finally distributed to users.


They said they were shooting for second quarter of this year.


----------



## JohnnyO

MickeS said:


> They said they were shooting for second quarter of this year.


That is what the base note references. That note was posted in late November 2007. If 2nd Quarter of 2008 includes April, May, and June, that note was released about 7 months before the anticipated release. Two months have passed, or almost 30% of their timeline. Has any updated information been released since late November to indicate whether they were still on track?

I'm anxiously awaiting the device, or knowing that the device -will- be available, since that will ease my shift away from DirecTV since they appear to have given up on TiVo.

Thanks,

John


----------



## morac

I happened to call my cable company for an unrelated matter and while on the phone I asked if they were adding any new channels this year and if so if they would be SDV. The answer I got was that they were going to be converting a lot of *existing* channels to SDV this year. I was told this won't happen for at least 6 months.

I then asked if the person knew anything about the tuning resolver and she said she never heard of such a thing. Not the most encouraging sign.

On a somewhat related note, she mentioned that SDV is in use in Cherry Hill, NJ which I knew because it is one of Comcast's test beds for SDV. I mentioned that Cherry Hill used SA boxes while my area uses Motorola and she said that Comcast is dropping support for SA in the near future and switching totally to Motorola. You can take this any way you want, but since Comcast chose Motorola for their SDV provider it might be true.


----------



## JoeSchueller

TWC in Cincinnati just reversed course on SDV and now provides all linear HD to UDCP devices. Interesting how soon after the dongle announcement this came around.


----------



## dswallow

morac said:


> I then asked if the person knew anything about the tuning resolver and she said she never heard of such a thing. Not the most encouraging sign.


I don't think it was even 5 months ago I called a Comcast CSR who kept thinking I was saying "cable cord" and hadn't a clue what a "CableCARD" was. So I wouldn't go taking that as any kind of sign.


----------



## George Cifranci

morac said:


> I happened to call my cable company for an unrelated matter and while on the phone I asked if they were adding any new channels this year and if so if they would be SDV. The answer I got was that they were going to be converting a lot of *existing* channels to SDV this year. I was told this won't happen for at least 6 months.
> 
> I then asked if the person knew anything about the tuning resolver and she said she never heard of such a thing. Not the most encouraging sign.


That means nothing. The 1st tier telephone support at the cable companies are often clueless about anything that isn't on their computer screens. They usually just follow a script. When I first got my Series 3 and ordered the Cable Cards they still wanted to know what make of TV I had (because to them Cable Cards went into TV's). I had to explain to them what a Tivo S3 was and that it took cable cards. So one of those phone support dimwits not knowing anything about a device intended for a small percentage of customers that isn't even due until Q2 of the year isn't surprising at all.

In any case, the cable card guru at my cable co was already aware of the "Tuning Resolver" when I told him about it last year. He also told me he has no idea when they are going SDV.


----------



## thehobster

I found I was unable to tune a number of "new" TWC channels (Austin), so I called TWC support. I learned a number of interesting things:

TWC has a callback mechanism so you can just put in your number, and they tell you when you'll get a call back from support
When callback comes, it's still from a Tier 1 person who puts you on hold to connect you to Tier 2 
Tier 2 answered and said the new channels I'm not getting are "swtiched." And since I know my HD Tivo does not support SDV, I'm screwed.

Any updated word on when/if those nifty adapters will come out? Announcement said Q2, and we're slowly approaching Q2...


----------



## mikeyts

thehobster said:


> I found I was unable to tune a number of "new" TWC channels (Austin), so I called TWC support. I learned a number of interesting things:
> 
> TWC has a callback mechanism so you can just put in your number, and they tell you when you'll get a call back from support
> When callback comes, it's still from a Tier 1 person who puts you on hold to connect you to Tier 2
> Tier 2 answered and said the new channels I'm not getting are "swtiched." And since I know my HD Tivo does not support SDV, I'm screwed.
> 
> Any updated word on when/if those nifty adapters will come out? Announcement said Q2, and we're slowly approaching Q2...


The estimate was that they'd be shipping by the end of calendar Q2, so they'll only be late if we get to July and they're still not available anywhere.


----------



## SleepyBob

mikeyts said:


> The estimate was that they'd be shipping by the end of calendar Q2, so they'll only be late if we get to July and they're still not available anywhere.


Even a month after that, since TiVo's fiscal year begins in February.


----------



## moyekj

Hopefully there is a Tivo beta program going on as we speak that is testing the hardware + updated Tivo software. Note that while certainly it is necessary for areas with SDV deployed to be represented, the solution can and should still be tested by people not affected by SDV as well.
I suspect, however, that end of Q2 was when Motorola projected having hardware available, but that still means a few months of beta testing by Tivo once the hardware is available and Tivo can get some units to distribute to testers. Then of course is the issue of when these may actually become available to and officially supported by your local headend (and no doubt having to wait for a truck roll for it to happen).


----------



## QZ1

SleepyBob said:


> Even a month after that, since TiVo's fiscal year begins in February.


Did the Tuning Resolver press release say Q2 of Tivo's fiscal year?
If not, then it would be understood to be Q2 of the calendar year.

Regardless, though, frequently consumer electronics fail to be introduced on time, anyway.


----------



## bareyb

bizzy said:


> I wonder if this will work for PPV content as well?


It better. That's the only reason I'd need one.


----------



## ah30k

QZ1 said:


> Did the Tuning Resolver press release say Q2 of Tivo's fiscal year?
> If not, then it would be understood to be Q2 of the calendar year.


Dude, no one really uses FY quarters when talking about release dates. Also, the FY is only one month off the CY so there is not much difference anyway.


----------



## QZ1

ah30k said:


> Dude, no one really uses FY quarters when talking about release dates.


Exactly my point.


----------



## mikeyts

bareyb said:


> It better. That's the only reason I'd need one.


Really? You don't care what channels your system adds as SDV that you won't be able to view with your TiVo without this device? You just care about PPV? You have a unique perspective.

Be prepared for disappointment, since there is no indication that initial versions of this will work for PPV. The specification make no mention of either PPV or VOD.


----------



## ADG

mikeyts said:


> Really? You don't care what channels your system adds as SDV that you won't be able to view with your TiVo without this device? You just care about PPV? You have a unique perspective.
> 
> Be prepared for disappointment, since there is no indication that initial versions of this will work for PPV. The specification make no mention of either PPV or VOD.


Not so unique. I, for one, agree that PPV and VOD are unimportant (to me). I simply want to be able to receive the same channels that are currently available to me.


----------



## gatzke

ADG said:


> Not so unique. I, for one, agree that PPV and VOD are unimportant (to me). I simply want to be able to receive the same channels that are currently available to me.


I thought the same thing for a while, PPV and VOD are not needed. Unbox + my HTPC work ok for me.

Now Time Warner is talking about tiered internet levels. You get a surcharge if you go over some cap. Some have mentioned the cap may be as low as 40GB per month, which you could hit easily if you like PPV and VOD from Unbox or iTunes.

So maybe we have to go DSL but stick with the TWC monopoly? Or move back to dialup  ?


----------



## morac

gatzke said:


> Now Time Warner is talking about tiered internet levels. You get a surcharge if you go over some cap. Some have mentioned the cap may be as low as 40GB per month, which you could hit easily if you like PPV and VOD from Unbox or iTunes.


I've seen 5 GB per month listed as one of the possible caps, which is good for maybe one or two movie downloads. It's a low level tier, but there were no prices listed with the tiers so it may be close to what you are paying now.


----------



## davezatz

mikeyts said:


> The estimate was that they'd be shipping by the end of calendar Q2, so they'll only be late if we get to July and they're still not available anywhere.


I assume we'll see a few variants of the "tuning resolver" - so the timing could vary dependent on manufacturer. If this item isn't offered in retail (likely), it may well push launch past Q2 given MSO QA/certification timing and such. Then again, they may not have made that announcement unless they were already far along in development...

Though it won't help many of us, the best solution is an updated TiVo HD with "resolver" technology built in.


----------



## Audiodynamics

I have Comcast in the New Haven CT area. I don't seem to be affected by SDV YET! Is anyone from my area aware if we're losing any channels to SDV?


----------



## mikeyts

ADG said:


> Not so unique. I, for one, agree that PPV and VOD are unimportant (to me). I simply want to be able to receive the same channels that are currently available to me.


The "uniqueness" of his perspective was an apparent statement that he didn't need the tuning resolver for anything other than PPV. I think that most of us want it because we're in cable systems where _every_ new HD channel, like TLC HD, Food HD and Sci Fi HD, is being added as an SDV service and therefore inaccessible by TiVo and other unidirectional CableCARD devices, to people whose subscriptions would give them those channels if they were using leased cable STBs. For most of the participants in this thread, PPV is a secondary concern at best.

I recently heard that my system is currently offering 55 movies for "rent" in VOD; during the first years that they offered HD VOD, they never got up over a dozen, and 3 or 4 of those would be hour-long IMAX pieces available to HDNet and INHD subs. There were times when they offered no more than 4. I'm considering leasing a non-DVR box just to have access to all this emerging HD VOD. It would be nice if they expanded the capability of the Tuning Resolver to support PPV and VOD, but it's not mission-critical.


----------



## bareyb

As far as I know, we don't have any SDV channels in my area at all. So far. So the ONLY reason I have a Comcast box is for ON DEMAND and PPV. If the tuning resolver was able to pass through PPV and ON DEMAND then that would finally free me from the Comcast DVR. I'm sure SDV is coming here at some point though, so a tuning resolver that would do both SDV and PPV would be the only thing that would allow me not to have to rent a Comcast box. So in my case, the only immediate interest in this dongle would be to get PPV. On Demand is something that people will realize once they have used it how great it is. We don't use it that much, but man, when there's nothing else on, or you missed one of your favorite network shows (many of these are free on ON DEMAND) it sure is a nice feature to have.


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## That Don Guy

bareyb said:


> As far as I know, we don't have any SDV channels in my area at all. So far. So the ONLY reason I have a Comcast box is for ON DEMAND and PPV. If the tuning resolver was able to pass through PPV and ON DEMAND then that would finally free me from the Comcast DVR.


The problem with getting the TiVo to work with PPV and OnDemand is, how do you get the remote control signals needed for the OnDemand/PPV menus to get from the TiVo remote to whatever drives the menus, without running the risk of having the TiVo think that the remote signals are meant for itself?

The only way I can think of doing this off the top of my head is to include some sort of IR receiver (sort of a "reverse IR blaster") on the tuning resolver hardware, and have some way for the remote to send signals that the TiVo would ignore, or at least use signals that the TiVo wouldn't use in a "normal" situation (for example, do the arrow keys or the Select button do anything when you're not in a menu and don't have the guide or info displayed?).

However, PPV might not necessarily be a problem if you're willing to call in PPV choices on the phone (or use a computer* to buy them online), at least if it's assigned to a particular channel (e.g. 801 for major live PPV events). I wonder why you can't do this now with a TiVo (by just tuning it to 801 at the right time) - for that matter, I wonder if you _can_ do this now.

*I had a _House_ lightbulb-over-the-head, rush-to-stop-the-surgery moment at this point. Why not have the OnDemand menus available online, so people with TiVos can use the service - when a program is selected, it would assign the program to a predesignated channel set aside for just that purpose?

-- Don


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## bareyb

That Don Guy said:


> However, PPV might not necessarily be a problem if you're willing to call in PPV choices on the phone (or use a computer* to buy them online), at least if it's assigned to a particular channel (e.g. 801 for major live PPV events). I wonder why you can't do this now with a TiVo (by just tuning it to 801 at the right time) - for that matter, I wonder if you _can_ do this now.
> 
> *I had a _House_ lightbulb-over-the-head, rush-to-stop-the-surgery moment at this point. Why not have the OnDemand menus available online, so people with TiVos can use the service - when a program is selected, it would assign the program to a predesignated channel set aside for just that purpose?


I can call in PPV and have them show up on "all boxes". However. TiVo S3's have DRM copy protection and it deletes them after 90 minutes if you don't watch them at the time they play. The Comcast box doesn't do that, so it's the main reason I keep one of their boxes. ON DEMAND is another feature that I can't give up, and it sounds like the Dongle isn't going to address that yet. Although ordering online would be a great work around and just have them show up on Channel 1 on the TiVo like they do on the Comcast box.


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## mikeyts

That Don Guy said:


> The problem with getting the TiVo to work with PPV and OnDemand is, how do you get the remote control signals needed for the OnDemand/PPV menus to get from the TiVo remote to whatever drives the menus, without running the risk of having the TiVo think that the remote signals are meant for itself?


If there were extensions to the Tuning Resolver protocol to deal with VOD, TiVo would know that you were viewing a VOD channel the same way that it would know that you're viewing a SDV channel--the channel tuning map that it used to access the channel would identify it as such. While viewing a VOD channel, the TiVo would interpret the playback control remote buttons differently, sending the appropriate commands to the network through the Tuning Resolver to control VOD playback.


bareyb said:


> I can call in PPV and have them show up on "all boxes". However. TiVo S3's have DRM copy protection and it deletes them after 90 minutes if you don't watch them at the time they play.


PPV and VOD are the only business models that the FCC's encoding rules allow to be marked with Copy Never protection. If TiVo is actually creating named copies of Copy Never content, whether it deletes them within 90 minutes of recording or not, they're making highly liberal interpretation of that protection mode. It's clearly intended to allow the creation of an up-to-90-minute-long trick-play buffer and not specifically to allow the retention of such contents in a general purpose recording file for 90 minutes. Since TiVo only keeps a 30-minute trick-play buffer, you should really only get 30 minutes to play around with it. It may be (probably is ) that the text of the regulation isn't precise enough to forbid the creation of a named recording, and making a named recording with a 90-minute retention time is within the letter of it.


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## morac

When I spoke to a Comcast rep a short while ago I was told by the end of the year that there would be around 1000 HD titles available by years end. He told me that obviously Comcast wasn't adding 980 HD channels so the vast majority of HD content will only be available via VOD. 

He also told me that they will probably add HD content to VOD for channels that aren't actually carried in the lineup, which would mean you'd need to be able to get VOD to "get" those channels. This isn't unprecedented as there are a number of fringe channels that Comcast doesn't carry, yet they have VOD content for. Boomerang and Anime Network are just two examples of "channels" that are only available on VOD in my area.

So it would be nice if the tuning resolver could eventually be updated to do at least VOD.


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## That Don Guy

bareyb said:


> I can call in PPV and have them show up on "all boxes". However. TiVo S3's have DRM copy protection and it deletes them after 90 minutes if you don't watch them at the time they play. The Comcast box doesn't do that, so it's the main reason I keep one of their boxes. ON DEMAND is another feature that I can't give up, and it sounds like the Dongle isn't going to address that yet. Although ordering online would be a great work around and just have them show up on Channel 1 on the TiVo like they do on the Comcast box.


If your PPVs are in SD, that's one of the reasons they invented DVD recorders...

As for VOD on Channel 1, I just thought of a flaw with my "access it online" method; you wouldn't be able to pause / rewind / fast-forward it without having to fix the same TiVo remote problem that would let you access the VOD menu directly in the first place.

-- Don


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## George Cifranci

For those who haven't seen this article yet (that came out yesterday)...

CableLabs Gets Tool to Test Switched Video for TiVos

http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6530272.html?nid=4262


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## ciper

Even thought the tuning resolver is meant to be used with any "one way" device I am damn happy Tivo was the company involved during testing. We can pretty much be guaranteed properly functionality once the dang thing is completed....


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## acvthree

>>>We can pretty much be guaranteed properly functionality once the dang thing is completed....

That is so cute


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## lew

George Cifranci said:


> For those who haven't seen this article yet (that came out yesterday)...
> 
> CableLabs Gets Tool to Test Switched Video for TiVos
> 
> http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6530272.html?nid=4262


I always thought a "SDV dongle" wouldn't be much bigger then a USB ethernet dongle.

Sounds like this is going to be as big as a set top box. Sounds like another monthly fee. I wouldn't be surprised if paying to rent cable cards and the SDV device will be almost as month as a cc DVR.


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## ciper

lew said:


> I always thought a "SDV dongle" wouldn't be much bigger then a USB ethernet dongle.


Its a USB cable modem. There are pictures floating around somewhere. If I remember right it looks exactly like an older Surfboard model from Motorolla but with a different color plastic.


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## MickeS

So we're back to having a set-top box again, albeit with no IR-blasters.
Everything old is new again...

At least these CAN be used with TiVos, the few people who have CableCARD enabled TVs seem to be left out in the cold. Of course, with how they have been treated by cable companies so far, getting the shaft again is probably just expected.


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## mikeyts

MickeS said:


> So we're back to having a set-top box again, albeit with no IR-blasters.
> Everything old is new again....


The prototypes are disappointingly large, but part of that is probably just an effort to recycle parts that they're already manufacturing. The typical DOCSIS cable modem has everything that this application needs and more, and is designed to retail for $40 or less. Making the board as tiny as it possibly can be and creating a tiny custom enclosure for it would cost unnecessary design time and delay time to market. So, it's a chunk, but at least it doesn't have to be positioned in a visible place.

I used to use generic wireless bridges for all the network-attached things in my HT system (5 and counting now, with HTPC, TiVo, HD-A30, Xbox 360 and PS3); I just stuck them behind the stuff whereever and I'll do the same with this.


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## morac

mikeyts said:


> I used to use generic wireless bridges for all the network-attached things in my HT system (5 and counting now, with HTPC, TiVo, HD-A30, Xbox 360 and PS3); I just stuck them behind the stuff whereever and I'll do the same with this.


I'm more concerned that this is just another thing that needs to be plugged into the UPS (TiVo, external drive and now tuner) which lowers the backup time in the case of a power outage.


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## mikeyts

morac said:


> I'm more concerned that this is just another thing that needs to be plugged into the UPS (TiVo, external drive and now tuner) which lowers the backup time in the case of a power outage.


Yeah, I feel ya'--I was more P.O.'d that they didn't make it USB-powered than with the potential size . It shouldn't be much of a draw, though.


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## sfhub

Completely agree, USB powered would be a much nicer design.


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## DCIFRTHS

MickeS said:


> ... At least these CAN be used with TiVos, the few people who have CableCARD enabled TVs seem to be left out in the cold. ...


I have a CC in my TV, but I never use it as I am always using TiVo.


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## DCIFRTHS

mikeyts said:


> The prototypes are disappointingly large, but part of that is probably just an effort to recycle parts that they're already manufacturing. ...


Are there any pics floating around?


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## DCIFRTHS

morac said:


> I'm more concerned that this is just another thing that needs to be plugged into the UPS (TiVo, external drive and now tuner) which lowers the backup time in the case of a power outage.


My concern is heat and then size. All of the Scientific Atlanta cables boxes I have encountered / used run very hot and need adequate ventilation.


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## mikeyts

DCIFRTHS said:


> Are there any pics floating around?


The one picture of a "prototype" that we saw was of a Motorola DCT700; it's an all-digital, standard-definition set-top cable tuner (no analog tuning) with no CableCARD slot, so it would be against FCC regs for US service providers to purchase for customer lease, though there are probably markets elsewhere where it's still a viable product. It's about the size of a typical cable modem; I doubt that it disappates anywhere near so much heat as their traditional pizza-box general purpose cable STBs do.

It also lacks a USB connection, so significant modifications to the board will be necessary, but the board design needed tweaking to minimize cost, anyway (it doesn't need all the A/V connections or IR receiver anymore, its graphics chip or graphics memory and no more than about a quarter so much main memory or ROM or even the ability to tune QAM carriers). I'd have started with a cable modem design (already has everything that it needs and fewer things that it doesn't), but no doubt cable modems and cable tuners at Motorola are created by separate engineering groups using slightly different tool chains, so this platform is as close as the the cable tuner group was going to come to a good starting point for the Tuning Resolver, in existing products totally familiar to them.

We haven't had any hints as to what S-A is using, but it's probably something very similar.


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## Audiodynamics

I don't care if the tuning resolver is the same size as my S3. As long as it allows my S3 to tune into SDV and not lose any functionality, I'll be happy.

I would reluctantly be willing to pay $30-$60 as a purchase fee for the tuning resolver. To me, this is a better alternative than parting with an S3 with lifetime on it.

I will not be pleased if there's another Comcast rental fee. This would cause me to finally abandon Comcast (and TiVo) and get U-Verse.


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## acvthree

It is hard for me to imagine that there will not be a monthly fee associated with what we have been calling a dongle. It is the size of a set top box. It looks like a set top box. Why would we not expect it to have a set top box rental fee?

Al


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## Audiodynamics

acvthree said:


> It is hard for me to imagine that there will not be a monthly fee associated with what we have been calling a dongle. It is the size of a set top box. It looks like a set top box. Why would we not expect it to have a set top box rental fee?
> 
> Al


I agree!

I just hope we're wrong.


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## ciper

So will the FCC set rules on the pricing of SDV dongles as well?

I can see it now, 4.95 each for two S-cards and 4.95 for the SDV dongle. At about 15$ a month its gettng quite pricey!


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## mikeyts

acvthree said:


> It is hard for me to imagine that there will not be a monthly fee associated with what we have been calling a dongle. It is the size of a set top box. It looks like a set top box. Why would we not expect it to have a set top box rental fee?


Partially because of politics. The OEMs objected to their use of SDV, stating that it was too expensive for them to build support for it into consumer products and could the FCC please force them to wait until they can specify an easier-to-accomodate set of protocols for core interactive functions??? The cable providers replied, "No!!!! We can take care of some of the complaints with this crappy little pieces of hardware that we've designed as a stop-gap." Now, if they choose to charge a lot of money for this box which only enables people to buy services from them provided as SDV, the OEMs are certain to come back and say, "See--this was just a disingenuous attempt to further rip-off consumers, whose 'digital cable ready' equipment they'd already devalued with SDV, after publically pledging to support it. They're charging an outrageous X dollars a month for it, which pays for the box in 3 months, after which it's all gravy. You (FCC) need to stop them from deploying SDV until they define a simple, cheap to implement standard for interactive services like we asked for before." If they intend for the Tuning Resolver to placate OEM and FCC concerns it better cost little or nothing or they're going to end up forced to implement the CEA's "Digital Cable Ready Plus" proposal, which will set their plans back and let DBS and the telcos chow down on another big helping of their lunch.

The thing may be the size of the tiniest available digital-only set-top box--which is probably less than 15% of the size of say, an Explorer 8300HD: about half as long, half as wide and a third so thick. However, it _is not_ a set top box, and will not cost the providers any significant fraction as much. It needs about 10% as much hardware on the board (and far less than 10% as much software) to do this, as it would take to tune, image and display digital cable channels. It's one of the stupidly simpliest things I've ever seen split off and put into a box all by itself. No one would have conceived of this tiny piece of a comm protocol split off and hosted in a separate box, if SDV hadn't evolved in the weird way that it has.

In the end, we have no idea what the final product's going to look like--we've just heard that Motorola is using their tiny digital-only set-top to prototype it (and we didn't hear that from Motorola--we heard it in the blog of someone with "inside Motorola contacts" ). If this is even true, they may refine it, they may not, but that set-top itself is designed to sell in quantity for about $15 and is largely overkill for this application. The size of the enclosure that the thing ends up in is irrelevant.

Why do we dream up BS disaster scenarios and sit around pissing and moaning about stuff that hasn't happened yet???


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## acvthree

And I hope you are completely correct in your specualtion and I'm completely wrong in my speculation.

My reasoning is from the deployment of the cablecard where we see a wide range of prices, some quite high and includes a digital outlet fee for each cablecard (in other words double cablecard and double digital outlet fee for the Tivo). 

The cablecard fees at least have a statement from the FCC that they expect the cost to the consumer for cablecard to to be reasonable.

With the dongle we've had no similar statement from the FCC.

There have also been no outcry from the CE industry about the cost+digital outlet fee being charged by some cable companies so I could assume the same for the "dongle".

My speculation seems logical to me, but, again, I hope I'm completely wrong.

Al


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## mikeyts

CableCARD is something that the FCC frog-marched the industry into, in a frantic attempt to define a standard for DTV-over-cable to help smooth out the DTV transition. The Tuning Resolver is something that the cable industry created on its own with no FCC prompting in an effort to apologize for disabling people's home equipment with their deployment of SDV. Apologizing while simultaneously profiteering isn't going to seem very sincere and will leave the use of SDV and the high cost of implementing OCAP open to further attack by the CEA.

The NCTA claims that there are only a few hundred thousand CableCARDs in use--only a subset of those are in devices (like TiVo) which can be upgraded to use the Tuning Resolver. A couple million dollars worth of equipment and installation effort should fix the current problem nationwide. Seems a small enough price to pay to patch up the situation. Just roll it into the line-item for the cost of deploying SDV.


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## acvthree

>>>CableCARD is something that the FCC frog-marched 

Frog-marched as in allowing the cable industry to initiate the idea of cablecard, define the standard and then delay deployment for 10 years?

Al


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## mikeyts

acvthree said:


> >>>CableCARD is something that the FCC frog-marched
> 
> Frog-marched as in allowing the cable industry to initiate the idea of cablecard, define the standard and then delay deployment for 10 years?


Congress "mandated" that the cable industry stop using integrated security mechanisms for conditional access services from leased cable equipment such the ability to access such services could be built into equipment for sale to the public which could be moved from cable system to cable system. That mandate was a tiny little part of the Telecommunication Act of 1996 and the FCC had been pretty chill about enforcing it, letting cable take their time, _until_ the issue got wrapped up with the plug-and-play-DTV-over-cable standards effort. That became an absolute frog-march in the end, with the FCC setting a deadline by which cable and the OEMs had to agree on something or they'd pick some set of the alternatives on the table and force it on them. Congress forsaw (and continues to forsee) a massive profit opportunity in the auction of the released digital cable spectrum at the end of the DTV transition, and anything whose purpose is to make that transition smoother is near and dear to their steely little hearts. Once cable television separable security became part of plug-and-play-DTV-over-cable, it acheived high priority status .

If separable cable access security had not become part of plug-and-play-DTV-over-cable who knows how long the FCC would have allowed cable to mull that issue over? I'm guessing that they'd still be at it today . The cable industry was never enthusiastic about CableCARD, and given how abortive CableCARD has been, it wouldn't necessarily have been a bad thing if they'd been allowed to keep grinding on it until they came up with DCAS. Twelve years ago DCAS wasn't even vaguely conceivable.


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## Luke M

mikeyts said:


> The one picture of a "prototype" that we saw was of a Motorola DCT700; it's an all-digital, standard-definition set-top cable tuner (no analog tuning) with no CableCARD slot, so it would be against FCC regs for US service providers to purchase for customer lease, though there are probably markets elsewhere where it's still a viable product.


It's still sold in the U.S. Some companies (e.g. Verizon) have a waiver.



mikeyts said:


> It also lacks a USB connection, so significant modifications to the board will be necessary, but the board design needed tweaking to minimize cost, anyway (it doesn't need all the A/V connections or IR receiver anymore, its graphics chip or graphics memory and no more than about a quarter so much main memory or ROM or even the ability to tune QAM carriers). I'd have started with a cable modem design (already has everything that it needs and fewer things that it doesn't), but no doubt cable modems and cable tuners at Motorola are created by separate engineering groups using slightly different tool chains, so this platform is as close as the the cable tuner group was going to come to a good starting point for the Tuning Resolver, in existing products totally familiar to them.


It makes sense to me that they would use a set top box as a base. These things probably won't be deployed in large quantities, so it's more important to minimize development cost and operational cost, than to worry about shaving a few dollars from the hardware cost of the box.


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## jebbbz

mikeyts said:


> ...
> Why do we dream up BS disaster scenarios and sit around pissing and moaning about stuff that hasn't happened yet???


Because the writers are still on strike?


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## sfhub

mikeyts said:


> FCC had been pretty chill about enforcing it, letting cable take their time, _until_ the issue got wrapped up with the plug-and-play-DTV-over-cable standards effort. That became an absolute frog-march in the end, with the FCC setting a deadline by which cable and the OEMs had to agree on something or they'd pick some set of the alternatives on the table and force it on them.


That's one interpretation. Another is the FCC let the cable industry manage separable security on their own for over 10 years and the transition was still moving at snails pace. Frustrated with the lack of progress they forced the issue because there didn't appear to be any hope for industry taking care of this on their own. Separable security is more about creating an environment for competitive products and removing the leased equipment requirement. It has a second or third order linkage to OTA bandwidth sales, where ATSC tuners would be first order linkage (which BTW they also had to mandate because industry was moving too slow)


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## mikeyts

Separable security was at best a consumer benefit--nice press, but no cash. It didn't become truly important to the government until there was money attached. The issue that they forced was _explicitly_ one of plug-and-play-DTV-over-cable, which was only in part about separable security. If separable security had not become wrapped up in that, it'd still be dangling with nobody in Congress pushing it.

ATSC tuners are of almost inconsequential importance in pushing the DTV transition. Less than 15% of television watchers will _ever_ use one.  American televisions viewers primarily get their television over cable and secondarily via satellite and now the telcos.


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## sfhub

mikeyts said:


> ATSC tuners are of almost inconsequential importance in pushing the DTV transition. Less than 15% of television watchers will _ever_ use one. American televisions viewers primarily get their television over cable and secondarily via satellite and now the telcos.


Umm, inconsequential? The government is auctioning off *air*waves, not cable bandwidth. 15% of TV watchers in the US still use OTA, but 100% of those will be affected by loss of analog. What percentage of cable users are affected by the auctioning off of airwaves?

DTV over cable transition will have worked fine with or without recent measures. We've had cable boxes forever and will have them through the future. If you feel 15% of television watchers is an inconsequential #, compare that to CableCARD users.


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## Luke M

sfhub said:


> If you feel 15% of television watchers is an inconsequential #, compare that to CableCARD users.


Good point. Cable TV users are consequential, but CableCard was a total flop. If you ask me, the cablecos are fools for not seizing the opportunity to entrench their technology. Some people seem to think that renting set top boxes is good business, but all it does is level the playing field with cable's competitors.


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## mikeyts

sfhub said:


> Umm, inconsequential? The government is auctioning off *air*waves, not cable bandwidth. 15% of TV watchers in the US still use OTA, but 100% of those will be affected by loss of analog. What percentage of cable users are affected by the auctioning off of airwaves?
> 
> DTV over cable transition will have worked fine with or without recent measures. We've had cable boxes forever and will have them through the future. If you feel 15% of television watchers is an inconsequential #, compare that to CableCARD users.


It's "inconsequential" in that providing ATSC tuners in new televisions doesn't smooth out the transition to digital television for very many consumers. In my mind requiring ATSC tuners in new televisions is about on par with the FCC's requirements for SAP and closed captioning decoders and will be used by just about as many people. I certainly did not mean to imply that separable security was any significant part of the solution either. It's just that it got rolled into the plug-and-play-DTV-over-cable solution.

The _real_ significant part of that plug-and-play-DTV-over-cable solution was the specification that digital cable shall be defined as specific MPEG-2 profiles transmitted in MPEG Transport Streams via 64- and 256-QAM carriers on 6 MHz bands, with PSIP loops in streams rebroadcasting over-the-air content. Prior to that definition, a few cable system were actually literally rebroadcasting the 8 VSB transmissions and OEMs couldn't manufacture equipment which could be guaranteed to be able to tune DTV rebroadcasts on cable. Far more people are going to use the clear QAM channel tuning capabilities that you find in almost all recent model televisions (and which is not required by the FCC) than will ever attempt to tune over-the-air ATSC broadcasts through an antenna.

Rolling separable security up into the set of standards to which various defined levels of "Digital Cable Ready" equipment had to comply was not particularly useful in making that equipment compliant with cable systems rebroadcasting DTV; channels which can be broadcast in a secure fashion aren't the FCC's main concern in any case. But once that existing requirement to provide a separable security standard became rolled up with the requirement to define a set of standards for rebroadcasting over-the-air DTV, the priority of separable security became elevated to the same level. Nailing down the standards for rebroadcasting DTV over cable was a very high priority indeed, for certain factions of Congress.


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## sfhub

mikeyts said:


> But once that existing requirement to provide a separable security standard became rolled up with the requirement to define a set of standards for rebroadcasting over-the-air DTV, the priority of separable security became elevated to the same level. Nailing down the standards for rebroadcasting DTV over cable was a very high priority indeed, for certain factions of Congress.


I do not understand this conclusion you are drawing. Rebroadcasting OTA DTV on cable is currently required to be on basic cable and basic cable cannot be encrypted, so separable security should have no bearing on OTA DTV rebroadcast on cable.

Separable security, on the other hand, is important if you want to replace the set top box.

If you want to base your interpretation on QAM and mpg standards being high priority for DTV transition I can understand that, but separable security being high priority because of DTV transition (and by that we mean OTA moving to digital and freed airspace being auctioned off), doesn't make sense, as described above.

I recognize you have one interpretation of the events regarding separable security. I just have a different interpretation that is also supported by comments from FCC Chairman Martin.

http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-274775A1.pd


> Today the Media Bureau (Bureau) has resolved various set-top box waiver requests, furthering both pro-competition and pro-consumer policies. *By these orders we are once again taking action to further Congresss goal of creating a competitive market for the set-top boxes that are used for watching cable television. In 1996, Congress explained: "Competition in the manufacturing and distribution of consumer devices has always led to innovation, lower prices and higher quality." I agree.*
> 
> A previous Commission required cable operators to separate their security functions putting them into a CableCARD, which can be used in televisions and set-top boxes made by other manufacturers. *By separating out security functions, the Commission hoped a viable market for truly cable ready televisions and set-top boxes could flourish.* Back then, Congress and the Commission envisioned consumers being able to walk into their local retail store and buy televisions and set-top boxes from any manufacturer that would work on any cable system. This is a goal that I share and believe we are a big step closer to with todays rulings. In a new era with a competitive set-top box market, consumers will enjoy greater choice and reap the benefits of exciting and innovative features  such as the ability to watch Internet videos or view slideshows of family vacations on their tv sets.


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## ZeoTiVo

sfhub said:


> 15% of TV watchers in the US still use OTA, but 100% of those will be affected by loss of analog.


I have a digital OTA antenna hooked up to my TiVoHd and record some HD with it. I do not expect to be affeted in nay way by the loss of analog.

so make that at least 99.9999999% though I suspect many other smart folks have already moved to digital OTA and more will this year as well.

I think the digital OTA tunrover will be right up there with Y2K. Sure it is a problem, but just a very few foolish people will be caught by it considering the long lead in time.

SDV seems to be far more of a problem for folks which is why I had opened this thread


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## mikeyts

Separable security _doesn't_ have any real bearing on the success of the DTV transition and I tried to say that in my previous post ("I certainly did not mean to imply that separable security was any significant part of the solution either"). However, the FCC set down to add stuff to their cable provider regulations which would define the technical details for the delivery of DTV over cable. The FCC asked the cable providers and the CE OEMs to sit down and create a proposal for what that set of standards would be; they required that part of what would be delivered in that proposal be a selection of a mechnanism to implement separable security. Cable and the CE industry contentiously debated this proposal for over two years and finally the FCC held a gun up to their heads, telling them to either come up with the proposal by a certain date or that they (the FCC) would choose a set of the stuff that they'd been discussing and make them live with it. The cable and CE industries came back with the proposal, this document, the famous plug-and-play DTV-over-cable "Memorandum of Understanding", delivered at the end of 2002. The FCC put it out for public comment, mulled those comments over and published their response in this, delivered near the end of 2003, which discusses the issues in detail, draws some conclusions and orders additions and modifications of various sections of the Code of Federal Regulations as overseen by the FCC, most notably CFR Title 47, §76.640, which specifies exactly how digital television shall be broadcast over cable, including requirements that leased cable boxes have DVI-or-HDMI/HDCP and 1394/DTCP connections and that the cable providers support CableCARDs and supply them to their subscribers on demand. (Other modifications to the regulations that came out of this were to CFR Title 47, Part 15, giving a schedule for the incorporation of DVI-or-HDMI/HDCP connections on televisions and defining the retail label "Digital Cable Ready" as meaning essentially clear-QAM-tuning + CableCARD-tuning + HDMI-or-DVI/HDCP-connectivity).

Separable security was not a particularly important part of this proposal, but it was a _required_ part of the proposal. The proposal itself was very important to Congress, since defining how DTV would be rebroadcast over cable (so that equipment could be manufactured and sold compliant to that definition) was seen as critical to making that smooth transition to DTV (at the time, some 65% of all television viewing in this country was over cable, down to 58% last year, due to market advances made by satellite and the telcos). Once separable security became a required part of that proposal it was elevated to equal importance as the standards for rebroadcasting DTV.

Martin's comments as quoted by you were just political sound-bite grandstanding BS. His commission (chaired by someone else at the time) was ordered by Congress to expedite the creation of a standard for separable cable security in 1996--six years later they got one and codified cable provider and CE manufacturer support for it into FCC regs a year after that. Basically, they only acheived this by attaching it as a requirement to something else that was by far more important. Four years into the "age of separable security" one could argue that it's had pretty much no effect on commerce, having been poorly supported by the cable industry and consequently nearly completely abandoned by the CE industry. (Of course, one good thing that came from it was that it made one of our favorite toys possible, TiVo Series3 ).


----------



## BobCamp1

mikeyts said:


> Four years into the "age of separable security" one could argue that it's had pretty much no effect on commerce, having been poorly supported by the cable industry and consequently nearly completely abandoned by the CE industry. (Of course, one good thing that came from it was that it made one of our favorite toys possible, TiVo Series3 ).


I agree with everything you said in your previous posts, right up until that last point. The S3 didn't need CableCards. Tivo could have come to agreements with cable companies, like they are right now, that would have put the proprietary interface inside the box. Maybe there would have been different flavors of the S3, or maybe the S3 would be the same but the dongle would be rented/purchased separately, or maybe it would simply be different versions of software all using the same hardware. (It's not like SDV, VOD, or PPV are new technologies. For the cable companies to be deploying SDV NOW, that means it was thought of a few years back when the S3 was being developed.)

Is that difficult to do? Yes, but not impossible. Most other CE companies simply gave up when it was clear no one really wanted CableCards. Mainly because they weren't profitable. And based on Tivo's financial health, they were right.

OCAP sounds promising, as it is at least field upgradeable and the CE companies don't have to be bothered with doing the upgrading. But unless D*, E*, AT&T, and FIOS also use OCAP, I suspect it won't take off either. CE companies have to charge consumers for putting that into their devices plus a little more for profit. Cable companies don't.


----------



## ZeoTiVo

BobCamp1 said:


> Is that difficult to do? Yes, but not impossible. Most other CE companies simply gave up when it was clear no one really wanted CableCards. Mainly because they weren't profitable. And based on Tivo's financial health, they were right.


 to be clearer - TV sets really did not need cable cards to sell the set. Most people were fine with the idea of hooking a box up to it since it was just a HDMI or component connection anyhow. That was part of the cable card low rate of use. Cable company could say we do not have many cards or else give a half hearted try on the TV and then offer a set top box - no loss of functionality on the TV save for figuring out remote control stuff, which only real geeks worried about too much anyway. so the TV makers dropped cable card slots or made little mention of them. Now the hardware for OCAP on the TV back when was enough cost to have the CEs push back and say why do we wnat that cost - give the customer a set top box. 
The only companies that really cared about cable cards or OCAP were DVR makers that wanted to record two things at the same time without a nasty and error prone rig setup. So TiVo has been working out how to run OCAP on some chips and bring the cost of including OCAP in a TiVo way down. It has learned how to deal with an OCAP like environment by using a subset of OCAP in the Comcast TiVo port. TiVo seems ready to line up with Comcast and support tru2way as the way forward to easy interoperability. Of course that is with nno initial regard to Sat. providers which TiVo really has no way to work with in a standardsbased way save for Direct or DISH proprietary. Dish and Direct have no incentiv right now to cretae some more open standard and have to compete directly with cable or FIOS in some easy to switch world for the consumer


----------



## sfhub

ZeoTiVo said:


> I have a digital OTA antenna hooked up to my TiVoHd and record some HD with it. I do not expect to be affeted in nay way by the loss of analog.


The context of that quote was analog OTA moving to digital OTA. You already have digital so aren't in that group.


----------



## sfhub

mikeyts said:


> Separable security _doesn't_ have any real bearing on the success of the DTV transition and I tried to say that in my previous post ("I certainly did not mean to imply that separable security was any significant part of the solution either"). However, the FCC set down to add stuff to their cable provider regulations which would define the technical details for the delivery of DTV over cable.


We are in agreement with about 90% of what you said. The main point of contention is the reasoning for the forced separable security. You feel the stated goal of competition and innovative products is grandstanding and I feel that was and is the purpose of the separable security.


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## GoHokies!

The statistic should have been more clear then. Is it "15&#37; of people currently use analog OTA" or "15% use OTA in any form"?

From where does this 15% number come from?


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## acvthree

Also, is the 15&#37; EXCLUSIVELY use OTA? 

Strictly annecdotal, but I've had several friends, who are middle to upper income, drop directTV/cable completely when they discovered the quality of OTA digital. These were not techno/audio/home theater-files, but regular folks. I don't know if this is indicative of anything, but I thought it was intesting. In one case, they had put up a small antenna in the attic to be able to use an under the kitchen cabinet LCD TV without a set top box (which would have been larger than the TV). They got better reception from OTA than cable for the shows they watch and dropped cable.

al


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## mikeyts

sfhub said:


> We are in agreement with about 90% of what you said. The main point of contention is the reasoning for the forced separable security. You feel the stated goal of competition and innovative products is grandstanding and I feel that was and is the purpose of the separable security.


It's a bit harsh to call it altogether "grandstanding". When an elegant solution to separable security is adopted (DCAS), it will become something of an aid to innovation and competition (to call unidirectional S-Cards such _was_ pure BS grandstanding ). A strong desire for that innovation and competition _was not_ the reason that they were forced to adopt a technology when they did, which was arguably premature. They were forced because Congress and the FCC wanted that DTV-over-cable agreementm primarily for all the _other_ stuff in it. If you really think that anyone in the FCC gave a damn one way or another when separable security was delivered (and to my mind, a workable, useful separable security system _still_ hasn't been delivered), then we'll just have to agree to disagree. Peace .


----------



## mikeyts

acvthree said:


> Also, is the 15% EXCLUSIVELY use OTA?
> 
> Strictly annecdotal, but I've had several friends, who are middle to upper income, drop directTV/cable completely when they discovered the quality of OTA digital. These were not techno/audio/home theater-files, but regular folks. I don't know if this is indicative of anything, but I thought it was intesting. In one case, they had put up a small antenna in the attic to be able to use an under the kitchen cabinet LCD TV without a set top box (which would have been larger than the TV). They got better reception from OTA than cable for the shows they watch and dropped cable.


That 10-15% is just something that gets bandied about in the discussion of the consequences of the upcoming analog television drop, which will hit people dependent upon legacy analog over-the-air television hardest.

Googling "percentage of households using over-the-air television" I found "Estimating TV over-the-air households", a mildly interesting read.


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## GoHokies!

Interesting read, thanks for the link.

Since it doesn't break out, one can safely assume that some percentage (and maybe a quite large one based on the HDTV blip at the end) are exclusive digital OTA.

Regardless, the cutoff will certainly leave a very small minority of folks out in the cold without a converter box. Both them and the portion of SDV-impacted Tivo users (also a very small minority) have the FCC to thank for a solution.


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## jrm01

GoHokies! said:


> The statistic should have been more clear then. Is it "15% of people currently use analog OTA" or "15% use OTA in any form"?
> 
> From where does this 15% number come from?


The Consumer Electronics Association published a report indicating that at the end of 2005 12% of US household use OTA only, and that 6% used satellite and OTA combined, making 18% total. However, another report (which I can't find now) indicated that 40% of these TV sets already had ATSC tuners, meaning the affected households would be closer to 11%. And that is 2005 data. I would imagine that the percent of TVs with ATSC tuners has grown since then.

I would bet that the affected population is less than 10%.


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## vstone

I can't imagine that 40&#37; of sets receiving OTA signals even now have ATSC tuners, but I have nothing to back that up.


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## GoHokies!

With nothing to back my opinion up, I don't find it all that unreasonable.

Having roughly half of the antennas on rooftops are hooked to new fancy HDTVs, getting that beautiful digital signal and the other half are hooked to 1970's era SDTVs? Sounds pretty fair to me.

Location has a heck of a lot to do with it too. I'm sure that there are more antennas connected to ATSC TVs up here, and more antennas hooked up to older TVs down there in Martinsville (not an insult, I love that part of the world).

I wonder how those numbers would change in 2008 when you add in a number of cable+OTA that seem to have been ignored in the 2005 study.


----------



## vstone

I would think that those replacing TV sets (other than for broken sets) would be the ones who want more from TV and thus have cable or satellite, especially (but not exclusively) sports. I put up a flying saucer antenna to get local HD before it was available from DirecTV or cable, but I don't see myself as the norm. I moved into my mother's house in 1984. This house was the last one on this 2 mile long street that still used an antenna and rotator. 

I know two others with antennas. One is a guy in his late 70's who will probably get a $49 Walmart converter this month. He dropped cable some time ago during one of their periodic rate hikes.His primary TV is so old it has no AV inputs. 

The other is my brother. He got DirecTV in 1994 (Roanoke was one of the first two rollout test markets) because cable didn't go out his rural road. He ended up replacing two TV sets in two years (2004 and 2006), but neither had an acceptable OTA ATSC tuner for his location. There are areas out in the county not served by the cable company because of sparse population.

I just can't see the OTA crowd as big movers to HDTV, although I don't disagree with reports that folks have put up antennas when they did get an HDTV.


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## bicker

sfhub said:


> I recognize you have one interpretation of the events regarding separable security. I just have a different interpretation that is also supported by comments from FCC Chairman Martin.
> 
> http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-274775A1.pd


Note that Martin's comments clearly indicate that the intention to open up a competitive market within which different manufacturers could sell boxes. It isn't necessarily consumer focused in the slightest.


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## jrm01

bicker said:


> Note that Martin's comments clearly indicate that the intention to open up a competitive market within which different manufacturers could sell boxes. It isn't necessarily consumer focused in the slightest.


How is the creation of a competitive market with additional choices not "consumer focused in the slightest"?


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## bicker

You left out the critical word in my message: necessarily. Please argue with me about things I've actually written, not what is simply easier to argue against.


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## jrm01

bicker said:


> You left out the critical word in my message: necessarily. Please argue with me about things I've actually written, not what is simply easier to argue against.


Even considering the word "necessarily" my point still stands. It is necessarily consumer focused, albeit not necessarily not resulting in consumer benefits.


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## bicker

Not necessarily. The statement addressed the establishing of opportunities for CE manufacturers.


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## wierdo

ZeoTiVo said:


> Of course that is with nno initial regard to Sat. providers which TiVo really has no way to work with in a standardsbased way save for Direct or DISH proprietary. Dish and Direct have no incentiv right now to cretae some more open standard and have to compete directly with cable or FIOS in some easy to switch world for the consumer


Dish already uses an open standard, they just refuse to supply an access card for a box they didn't make. If they did, there would be tens or hundreds of different options for boxes to use with their service. Some with DVR capability, some without.

DirecTV could have pretty easily switched to straight DVB from their not-quite-DVB system, but doesn't care to do so. (DVB wasn't quite finalized by the time they and USSB launched) They still could build boxes that can do standard DVB and their proprietary DSS and migrate to DVB once they had enough of those in people's homes. Before the HD transition would have been the time to make that decision, though.


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## sfhub

bicker said:


> Note that Martin's comments clearly indicate that the intention to open up a competitive market within which different manufacturers could sell boxes. It isn't necessarily consumer focused in the slightest.


It isn't necessarily not consumer focused in the slightest either.

Let's not play word games, this is what Congress said in 1996:

"Competition in the manufacturing and distribution of consumer devices has always led to innovation, lower prices and higher quality."

This is what Martin said:

In a new era with a competitive set-top box market, *consumers will enjoy greater choice and reap the benefits of exciting and innovative features*  such as the ability to watch Internet videos or view slideshows of family vacations on their tv sets.

Personally I don't feel re-interpretation of what was said is necessary.


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## bicker

Note how Martin said NOTHING about lower prices for consumers.

However, in a way, you're correct: None of what Congress or Martin *said *matters. What matters is the reality. And the reality is that our country has effectively turned away from the consumer-focused liberalism that spawned the regulations we're discussing, and therefore in their implementation they shall not achieve your personal vision for what you believe they should achieve for customers.


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## hddude55

After reading this page of the latest posts on this thread supposedly involving the arrival of the "dongle," I was hoping all of these new posts heralded some news on the dongle front. Thanks for nothing.

At the risk of stopping all of these fascinating squabbles -- could this all be Al Gore's fault? --does anyone have any news about the arrival of the dongle?


----------



## bicker

This happens a lot on online forums. From a rational standpoint, folks probably shouldn't *expect* to hear any real news about it at this point in time, but people are still concerned about it, trying to milk the ether for whatever dribs and drabs of even marginally-credible speculation there might be, just to have something to focus on while waiting for a resolution to their concern. It's perfectly natural.


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## NickIN

All I know is that I had DirecTV and dumped them for cable when the S3 came out. Now if the dongle doesn't come out soon I'm about to dump TiVo (and cable) to go back to DirecTV which has FAR more HD channels than my cable company will anytime soon. Brighthouse better hurry up the process a little. If June/July gets here and I don't have one in hand I can't see myself sticking around. I've never used the DVR the D* is offering up, but it can't be that bad.


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## JWThiers

NickIN said:


> I've never used the DVR the D* is offering up, but it can't be that bad.


Opinions vary, mainly ease of use from my understanding. I have a friend who had one for a week and told D* to give him a box to return it in or he was throwing it in the lake behind his house.


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## bareyb

NickIN said:


> If June/July gets here and I don't have one in hand I can't see myself sticking around. I've never used the DVR the D* is offering up, but it can't be that bad.


Don't be so sure. From all reports, the DirecTV DVR is pretty lame. At least compared to TiVo. I have heard the Dish DVR is relatively stable and does a good job though. If Comcast/TiVo pisses me off enough, I expect that will be my next DVR.

Keep in mind that Comcast already has a second gen Motorola Box that can run TiVo software and as far as I know, has all the capabilities that they S3 is missing. They are being tested back east, and should be more widely available later in the year. That may be an option for some people too. I know I plan to get one when the time comes just for PPV and ON Demand. I am currently using the 2nd Gen. Moto box without the TiVo software and let me tell you, it's head and TAILS better than the old one. So there are options available. I too loved DirecTV, but until they come up with a decent DVR I won't be going back.


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## ycrazyy

NickIN said:


> All I know is that I had DirecTV and dumped them for cable when the S3 came out. Now if the dongle doesn't come out soon I'm about to dump TiVo (and cable) to go back to DirecTV which has FAR more HD channels than my cable company will anytime soon. Brighthouse better hurry up the process a little. If June/July gets here and I don't have one in hand I can't see myself sticking around. I've never used the DVR the D* is offering up, but it can't be that bad.


As others have said, opinions vary on this DVR (HR20 or HR21, whichever flavor you get). I have 2 of these right now and just bought 2 TivoHD's for when I move next week and am having cable installed. The DirecTV DVR isn't bad, but coming from a TiVo and going to these as I did, you will notice a HUGE difference and miss many of the TiVo friendly features. You will get used to it and it is "adequate" though... but don't be so amazed at the HD content they are offering, it's not as wonderful as they claim...


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## Norgoth

Updated information:

http://gizmodo.com/391871/tivo-switched-video-tuning-adapters-appear-at-cablelabs


----------



## bareyb

Here's a snippet from the article and picture of Cisco's new adapter being submitted for CableLabs approval.



> NCTA and TiVo Announce Progress on Switched Digital Adapter for TiVo DVRs SDV solutions from TiVo, Motorola and Cisco currently undergoing CableLabs(R) testing Cisco and Motorola tuning adapters on display at the 2008 Cable Show TiVo HD DVRs with tuning adapter support on display at the CableNET and Motorola booths at the 2008 Cable Show
> NEW ORLEANS, May 19, 2008 /PRNewswire-FirstCall via COMTEX News Network/ - The National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA) and TiVo Inc. (Nasdaq: TIVO), today announced that after a series of successful informal interoperability tests TiVo and several manufacturers of switched digital external tuning adapters have submitted products for formal testing at CableLabs. The tuning adapter will enable TiVo Series3(TM), TiVo HD DVRs, and certain other one-way digital cable ready consumer electronic devices that utilize CableCARDs(TM) to access digital cable channels delivered using switched digital technology.
> 
> "The ability to turn concept into reality this quickly is a testament to how closely cable operators, CableLabs, TiVo and other cable vendors have worked over the last several months to develop this first-of-its-kind marketplace solution," said Kyle McSlarrow, NCTA President & CEO. "We are extremely grateful to TiVo for the critical role it has played throughout and are confident that customers will benefit from this solution enabling full access to switched digital channels."


----------



## davezatz

bareyb said:


>


Yah, that's one of the pics TiVo gave me. Here's another


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## ZeoTiVo

Norgoth said:


> Updated information:
> 
> http://gizmodo.com/391871/tivo-switched-video-tuning-adapters-appear-at-cablelabs


Nice quote in there. Good for you TiVo :up:


> "The ability to turn concept into reality this quickly is a testament to how closely cable operators, CableLabs, TiVo and other cable vendors have worked over the last several months to develop this first-of-its-kind marketplace solution," said Kyle McSlarrow, NCTA President & CEO. "We are extremely grateful to TiVo for the critical role it has played throughout and are confident that customers will benefit from this solution enabling full access to switched digital channels."


----------



## bareyb

davezatz said:


> Yah, that's one of the pics TiVo gave me. Here's another
> ]


Sweet. That looks like a snap to install. I think if these things get approval and work fairly well I'm a happy camper. So far SDV hasn't become an issue and it looks like TiVo may have beaten SDV to the punch around here. :up:


----------



## George Cifranci

Just got this in my email from Tivo...

Dear Valued Customer,

Your friends at TiVo want to inform you about some changes in digital cable that could affect your TV viewing experience. Some cable operators are in the process of introducing a technology called Switched Digital Video (SDV). You may be made aware of this technology in the context of your provider informing you about the migration of certain lesser viewed existing channels or the introduction of new channels using SDV.

Unfortunately, today's CableCARD devices including the TiVo HD and Series3 DVRs do not currently support SDV, but the good news is that TiVo is working with cable operators to develop the Tuning Adapter, a solution that is currently being tested by your cable provider and will be available in the near term.

The Tuning Adapter will enable you to access the full spectrum of HD channels that the cable provider offers and should be made available by your local cable provider later this year. Although the majority of cable customers currently are not affected by switched digital services, we will continue to work with the cable industry to try to minimize the impact to subscribers that are inconvenienced.

We will keep you posted on developments as they occur and we greatly appreciate your patience during this transition.

Sincerely,
The TiVo Product Development Team

PS. For further information please visit www.tivo.com/switched


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## acvthree

Doesn't cablelab testing typically take many months?

Al


----------



## AgentMunroe

George Cifranci said:


> Just got this in my email from Tivo...
> 
> Dear Valued Customer,
> 
> Your friends at TiVo want to inform you about some changes in digital cable that could affect your TV viewing experience. Some cable operators are in the process of introducing a technology called Switched Digital Video (SDV). You may be made aware of this technology in the context of your provider informing you about the migration of certain lesser viewed existing channels or the introduction of new channels using SDV.
> 
> Unfortunately, today's CableCARD devices including the TiVo HD and Series3 DVRs do not currently support SDV, but the good news is that TiVo is working with cable operators to develop the Tuning Adapter, a solution that is currently being tested by your cable provider and will be available in the near term.
> 
> The Tuning Adapter will enable you to access the full spectrum of HD channels that the cable provider offers and should be made available by your local cable provider later this year. Although the majority of cable customers currently are not affected by switched digital services, we will continue to work with the cable industry to try to minimize the impact to subscribers that are inconvenienced.
> 
> We will keep you posted on developments as they occur and we greatly appreciate your patience during this transition.
> 
> Sincerely,
> The TiVo Product Development Team
> 
> PS. For further information please visit www.tivo.com/switched


I just got the same e-mail; not sure if it was targeted at markets with SDV or if it was a general blast to S3 owners.

I live in Rochester, NY which was one of the first SDV markets; it's been mildly annoying to not get around half a dozen channels, but since the beginning of this year TW has added 15 HD channels (most of the major cable networks - Science, Discovery, Food, SciFi) that I can't tune. I hate the SA/Cisco DVR so much I stick with the TiVo, but my Tuning Adapter can't get here soon enough. 

(Seriously, I'll do anything... who do I need to bribe?)


----------



## mikeyts

I got the same e-mail here and TWC San Diego isn't using SDV yet (though I understand that they're set up for it ).


----------



## MichaelK

acvthree said:


> Doesn't cablelab testing typically take many months?
> 
> Al


actually it looks like it's just a week or so. Then several weeks wait for some board meeting to get the signatures. The problem is the testing is sceduled only every now and again. Tivo and the SDV people are all schedule for the next "wave" of testing.

If cablelabs wasn't so rigid, they could all probably test together tomorrow, be done in a week, get approvals signed by the first week of june and have units at cable providers offices by the second week of june.

But for whatever reason they schedule these "waves"


----------



## ZeoTiVo

MichaelK said:


> actually it looks like it's just a week or so. Then several weeks wait for some board meeting to get the signatures. The problem is the testing is sceduled only every now and again. Tivo and the SDV people are all schedule for the next "wave" of testing.
> 
> If cablelabs wasn't so rigid, they could all probably test together tomorrow, be done in a week, get approvals signed by the first week of june and have units at cable providers offices by the second week of june.
> 
> But for whatever reason they schedule these "waves"


because many of the people involved do this as aprt of a larger job at their Cable employer. Thus the need for scheduling so people can prepare ahead and plan the time they will spend on cablelabs items in advance.


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## thehepcat

has anyone seen how much TWC is gonna fleece us for the TAs??


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## hongcho

That's a rather big "dongle". 

Good to see the progress.

Hong.


----------



## mike_camden

hongcho said:


> That's a rather big "dongle".


That's what she said.

Sorry; I couldn't resist the Michael from The Office one liner.

Seriously though; it has grown from a tiny, little dongle to an entire box.

Also, with regards to the Motorola model, has anyone else here had significant reliability problems with the STB version of this (DCT700)? We've gone through three of them on our kitchen TV, and my in-laws are on the second in eight months. I hope it isn't a motherboard problem (bad capicitors, overheating, etc) that transfers over to the dongle (not sure if their using the same internal parts or not).


----------



## sfhub

mike_camden said:


> We've gone through three of them on our kitchen TV, and my in-laws are on the second in eight months. I hope it isn't a motherboard problem (bad capicitors, overheating, etc) that transfers over to the dongle (not sure if their using the same internal parts or not).


What do you think happens to all those DCT700's you are sending back?


----------



## m_jonis

How can that be? Tivo said they expected these to be available Q2 2008 and free. Why, Cable would NEVER be late and charge us for them, would they?

I think the Motorola boxes are "further" ahead that the Cisco boxes (at least they seemed to have their protoype available sooner than Cisco). Although I think I read somewhere that Cisco said they're target Q3, 2008 for release.

Although who knows when the cable companies will have them.

Guess we'll find out.

I wonder though if it would be possible to use say, a Cisco device on any SA/Cisco cable provider? Or is there something magical that the cable company has to "authorize" first (ie, you couldn't just go buy one on eBay or something and use it instead of waiting for your cable company to provide one).


----------



## MickeS

mike_camden said:


> Seriously though; it has grown from a tiny, little dongle to an entire box.


It was never a tiny little dongle, except in the minds of TCF members . The earliest rumors even assumed that it would use a box just like this.


----------



## bicker

thehepcat said:


> has anyone seen how much TWC is gonna fleece us for the TAs??


I think MSOs will apply a very reasonable fee for the Tuning Adapter; I'm going to guess $3-$4 per month each.


----------



## mattack

That's reasonable? on TOP of cable card prices?


----------



## m_jonis

MickeS said:


> It was never a tiny little dongle, except in the minds of TCF members . The earliest rumors even assumed that it would use a box just like this.


At this point (having over 100 SDV channels), I'll happily take one (if it's free, otherwise I'll just grudgingly take one) even if it was the size of a TivoHD.


----------



## acvthree

mattack said:


> That's reasonable? on TOP of cable card prices?


Reasonable to an MSO.

I predict that the combined price of the tuning resolver and cable cards will be at or just a little higher than renting a DVR from the MSO for most MSOs.

Al


----------



## mikeyts

bicker said:


> I think MSOs will apply a very reasonable fee for the Tuning Adapter; I'm going to guess $3-$4 per month each.


I think that it will be less. For one thing, in both HW and SW, this application is far less complex than a DOCSIS cable modem and those can be purchased at retail for $30-$40--in quantity, these should cost the cable providers less. For another thing, they didn't create these things to make money; they were created as a political gambit, part of an effort to convince the FCC to not force them to work on the CEA's proposed DCR+ standard, which they claim will cost them years of effort and hundreds of millions out of pocket. Producing the thing and preparing to distribute it without waiting for the FCC to draft rules to force them to do it is a show of unbelievable cooperation. Charging anything much to lease them will make it a complete waste of time, ending with the FCC siding with the CEA and pretty much putting nails in the coffin of their precious <tru2way> initiative. $4/month + $2/month for an M-Card is on approaching the cost of leasing a full tuning STB--the CEA would be all over that, arguing that the introduction of the Tuning Adapter, far from the apparent cooperative response to their plight of not being able to make an SDV-tuning low end product, was in fact a disingenuous money grubbing move and further proof of the need for DCR+, so that they can engineer low-end televisions and STBs that will free the masses from the perpetual tyranny of high cable equipment lease fees .

Of course I could be wrong. I personally wouldn't be happy with $3-$4/month + CableCARD lease, but I would grudgingly pay it. But I only have a single TiVo Series3. Others here with 3 or 4 or more CableCARD TiVos will have somewhat more cause for complaint.


----------



## bicker

mattack said:


> That's reasonable? on TOP of cable card prices?


Yes.


acvthree said:


> Reasonable to an MSO.


And to regulatory officials, the arbiters of what is reasonable to society in this realm.


mikeyts said:


> I think that it will be less.


Perhaps. Maybe as little as $1.99. Less than that, it wouldn't make sense to charge anything, IMHO, and while many MSOs will elect to just built it into the standard fees (and thereby make everyone subsidize the few of us needing this) some won't, and those will charge something significant, like $1.99 or more.


----------



## acvthree

>>>And to regulatory officials, the arbiters of what is reasonable to society in this realm. 

Is there any evidence that regulators were involved in this? You could be right, but from what I've read, the regulators have stay completely away from the SDV / cablecard issue. Past performance may not be an indicator of the future, but it is one data point.

Al


----------



## GoHokies!

They've stayed away from the SDV/CC issue, but the pricing of cablecards is squarely in the purview of the regulators.


----------



## classicsat

mike_camden said:


> Seriously though; it has grown from a tiny, little dongle to an entire box.


I don't think anybody actually said how big or small one would be, until the Motorola pictures were released. It was just wishful thinking it would be relatively small.


----------



## classicsat

m_jonis said:


> I wonder though if it would be possible to use say, a Cisco device on any SA/Cisco cable provider? Or is there something magical that the cable company has to "authorize" first (ie, you couldn't just go buy one on eBay or something and use it instead of waiting for your cable company to provide one).


It cannot happen. SA security uses a provider side key which is only provided to the specific customer that purchases the piece of hardware in question, and that customer is only cable providers. And yes, it probably has to be authorized on the system, and probably paired to a Cablecard or two.


----------



## classicsat

acvthree said:


> Is there any evidence that regulators were involved in this? You could be right, but from what I've read, the regulators have stay completely away from the SDV / cablecard issue.


Not so much. It is that the regulators have to be convinced that this solution will work, at least partly for most programming on low end boxes, or Cablelabs will have to have to work on DCR+.


----------



## milo99

considering cable cards cost $2/mo, there's no way Cable co's could charge MORE than that for the TA. 

and unlike their set top boxes, all this TA does is facilitate 2 way communications. Theres no way they can justify that this function should cost the consumer that much money. I'd say $1 or maybe $2 a month tops, or sell it outright since it complements a user owned piece of hardware, or give it out free, as unlikely as that may be.


----------



## acvthree

classicsat said:


> Not so much. It is that the regulators have to be convinced that this solution will work, at least partly for most programming on low end boxes, or Cablelabs will have to have to work on DCR+.


Ok, when we talk about regulators, I think FCC and not cablelabs.

The FCC has made statements on numerous occations that SDV does not break regulations around cablecard.

If SDV, in the words of the FCC, does not break cablecard why would they have any interest in fixing something that is not, in their opinion, broken.

You are making a lot of assumptions about presure from the FCC to produce this device that is not evident in any statement attributable to the FCC or Cable providers for that matter.

Al


----------



## Scyber

milo99 said:


> considering cable cards cost $2/mo, there's no way Cable co's could charge MORE than that for the TA.
> 
> and unlike their set top boxes, all this TA does is facilitate 2 way communications. Theres no way they can justify that this function should cost the consumer that much money. I'd say $1 or maybe $2 a month tops, or sell it outright since it complements a user owned piece of hardware, or give it out free, as unlikely as that may be.


The cablecard price depends on the cable company. Fios charges $3.99/month per cablecard on new installs. $2/month is not a set price and could change at the whim of the cable company.


----------



## MickeS

mikeyts said:


> I think that it will be less. For one thing, in both HW and SW, this application is far less complex than a DOCSIS cable modem and those can be purchased at retail for $30-$40--in quantity, these should cost the cable providers less. For another thing, they didn't create these things to make money; they were created as a political gambit, part of an effort to convince the FCC to not force them to work on the CEA's proposed DCR+ standard, which they claim will cost them years of effort and hundreds of millions out of pocket. Producing the thing and preparing to distribute it without waiting for the FCC to draft rules to force them to do it is a show of unbelievable cooperation. Charging anything much to lease them will make it a complete waste of time, ending with the FCC siding with the CEA and pretty much putting nails in the coffin of their precious <tru2way> initiative. $4/month + $2/month for an M-Card is on approaching the cost of leasing a full tuning STB--the CEA would be all over that, arguing that the introduction of the Tuning Adapter, far from the apparent cooperative response to their plight of not being able to make an SDV-tuning low end product, was in fact a disingenuous money grubbing move and further proof of the need for DCR+, so that they can engineer low-end televisions and STBs that will free the masses from the perpetual tyranny of high cable equipment lease fees .
> 
> Of course I could be wrong. I personally wouldn't be happy with $3-$4/month + CableCARD lease, but I would grudgingly pay it. But I only have a single TiVo Series3. Others here with 3 or 4 or more CableCARD TiVos will have somewhat more cause for complaint.


That's exactly what I was thinking too. I don't think $3-$4 is reasonable at all,and I don't think the cable companies will charge that much. I actually think they will provide these for free, knowing that the bigger subscriber base will make up for the costs.


----------



## MichaelK

ZeoTiVo said:


> because many of the people involved do this as aprt of a larger job at their Cable employer. Thus the need for scheduling so people can prepare ahead and plan the time they will spend on cablelabs items in advance.


just trying to understand-

so cablelabs does not have full time employees that handle such things?

They get lent employees from their member companies?


----------



## jtown

MickeS said:


> I actually think they will provide these for free, knowing that the bigger subscriber base will make up for the costs.


Bwahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!! OMG, you're killing me! Stop it! Seriously, I can't catch my breath.

You're talking about the same industry tries to charge us for two truck rolls to install two cable cards using the logic that they're installing two devices. The fact that a truck roll is required at all is absurd and an obvious money grab. Not to mention an obvious attempt to discourage the use of third-party equipment, putting pressure on their customers to pay additional fees to rent inferior equipment.

I predict that the SDV dongles will "require" a truck roll and will add $2-3 per month to the bill.


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## logicman1

jtown said:


> ... I predict that the SDV dongles will "require" a truck roll and will add $2-3 per month to the bill.


It appears the resolver would be as easy to install as any other STB. Since most cable companies allow customers to install STBs themselves, why should the resolver be treated differently?


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## mikeyts

acvthree said:


> Ok, when we talk about regulators, I think FCC and not cablelabs.
> 
> The FCC has made statements on numerous occations that SDV does not break regulations around cablecard.
> 
> If SDV, in the words of the FCC, does not break cablecard why would they have any interest in fixing something that is not, in their opinion, broken.
> 
> You are making a lot of assumptions about presure from the FCC to produce this device that is not evident in any statement attributable to the FCC or Cable providers for that matter.
> 
> Al


It's not an objection that SDV breaks CableCARD that the FCC is responding to, it's that creating products that tune SDV is expensive. The CEA made an objection to SDV on that grounds at the end of 2006, stating that the agreement was that cable would give them technology for built-in interactivity with CableCARDs, but that what cable came up with was <tru2way>. <tru2way> is a label for bidirectional-CC-interface plus M-Card support plus OCAP--implementing an effective OCAP requires enough memory and processing power for a high-end handheld computer, difficult to fit into the BOM of a $150 20" TV or low-end cable-tuning DVR. They suggested (as a complementary alternative to <tru2way>) a simple, cheap-to-implement set of protocols giving access to SDV tuning, Interactive Pay-Per-View and Video On Demand services which they were calling "Digital Cable Ready Plus". This is a very reasonable objection and the FCC had to take it seriously. They requested comments on the CEA's proposal and about 9 months later, in August of 2007, the National Cable and Telecommunication Association responded, saying that DCR+ was a _horrible_ idea, that would take years to implement and cost hundreds of millions of dollars, mostly out their pockets. They reasoned that access to VOD and IPPV services was not compelling for low-end products and that people who needed that could inexpensively lease cable STBs. They could not argue that access to SDV programming wasn't desirable for low-end televisions and STBs, but, working with certain members of the CE industry, TiVo among them, they had come up with a solution to that problem: the Tuning Resolver.

Without waiting for the FCC to state whether or not they felt tha the TR was an adequate response to the CEA's DCR+ ask, cable went ahead and developed standards for the device and pushed their suppliers to create the devices themselves in preparation to make them available to their subscribers who needed them. This was an amazing and unprecedented bit of cooperation on their part, but it really wasn't a very expensive effort. Certainly nothing like the "hundreds of millions" that they anticipated spending if the FCC forces them into supporting DCR+. They could give Tuning Adapters away at a huge savings over that.

If the FCC chooses to make them implement DCR+, it will probably kill <tru2way>. Who knows exactly what other services they planned to offer on <tru2way> besides IPG, IPPV, VOD and SDV tuning, but who cares? Given an inexpensive way to create products with built in access to IPPV, VOD and SDV tuning, very few CE OEMs would opt to field <tru2way>.

So, a lot is riding on the Tuning Adapter for cable. They want the FCC to agree with them that the TA is all that's really needed for low-end products and forget about DCR+. They've been incredibly cooperative in bringing this to market as quickly as possible (for the sluggish cable industry, which typically moves at the speed of flowing lava ); the FCC has to have been impressed by that. Trying to charge a lot for lease of a very inexpensive device which can only be used by people who are also leasing CableCARDs would make the effort seem disingenous and self-serving.


----------



## BobCamp1

jtown said:


> I predict that the SDV dongles will "require" a truck roll and will add $2-3 per month to the bill.


I agree. Except that the cable companies are using this box to squash DCR+. The more prevalent the box is, the stronger their argument that DCR+ isn't required. The less they charge for the box, the more prevalent it will be.

So I think if they charge less than $7/month for the box, they are taking a loss. Remember that somebody has to recoup for the R&D & test. But they can slightly raise everyone's rates to recoup. some of the loss. Or they can just eat it knowing they're saving money by not having to deploy DCR+.

Edit: mikeyts beat my response time by five minutes.


----------



## jtown

logicman1 said:


> It appears the resolver would be as easy to install as any other STB. Since most cable companies allow customers to install STBs themselves, why should the resolver be treated differently?


*Because they don't want people using their own equipment.*

A cablecard install involves sticking a card in a slot and reading some numbers over the phone. Why can't they just mail me the cards and let me make the call? Why did they attempt to charge $80 ($40*2) to send out a contractor to do this?


----------



## mikeyts

jtown said:


> *Because they don't want people using their own equipment.*
> 
> A cablecard install involves sticking a card in a slot and reading some numbers over the phone. Why can't they just mail me the cards and let me make the call? Why did they attempt to charge $80 ($40*2) to send out a contractor to do this?


Some companies actually do and most offer get-the-equipment-through-the-mail-and-self-install as an option for cable modem installation (for people stupid enough to lease them). CableCARDs were designed to be self-installed, but in practice many CableCARD units develop operational faults and installers often have to try multiple units to get one to work. Also, the unidirectional nature of the host interface requires human phone interaction with someone at the cable office, to read serial numbers, etc for operators to punch in to the system. Tuning Adapters ought to be able to speak on the RDC and say "Hi. I'm Cisco/SA Tuning Adapter Model so-and-so, serial number NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN. Is there someone out there who can register me?" There's really no reason that a truck-roll should be required, but I agree that many cable companies probably will require that they be installed by one of their techs.


----------



## mikeyts

There's a report on Gizmodo on Tuning Adapters at The Cable Show in New Orleans (here, posted by our old friend hookbill in the TiVo Serie3 thread at AVS Forum this morning).

Engadget posted this about CableLabs receiving Tuning Adapters for certification:


> The National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA) and TiVo have jointly issued a release to inform the public that "several manufacturers of switched digital external tuning adapters have submitted products for formal testing at CableLabs."


"Several"? Just how many people are manufacturing these things? Methinks by "several" they mean SA and Moto, though it's possible that lesser players in the cable subscriber equipment market like Pace are also fielding entries that we haven't heard about.


----------



## GoHokies!

MickeS said:


> That's exactly what I was thinking too. I don't think $3-$4 is reasonable at all,and I don't think the cable companies will charge that much. I actually think they will provide these for free, knowing that the bigger subscriber base will make up for the costs.


From the duplicate thread over in the Coffee House that is mysteriously still around:


BobB said:


> Here's a link to an article dated today: http://nab365.bdmetrics.com/NST-1-5...ewsletter&ocuid=NDExOTE2Nw==-3Deo2qOYOKg=&r=t





> Pricing for the adapters or the ability to use them hasn't been determined, but TiVo said it doesn't expect cable to charge for the adapters.


That sounds like wishful thinking to the extreme.

Looks like Tivo agrees with you, but I think that sounds like wishful thinking. Comcast, etc, are going to want their cut.


----------



## MichaelK

Scyber said:


> The cablecard price depends on the cable company. Fios charges $3.99/month per cablecard on new installs. $2/month is not a set price and could change at the whim of the cable company.


To be honest I have never been able to find the original place I saw it- but some time back I read that the FCC told cable in no so uncertain terms that they should not charge an unreasonable price for cablecards.

I think at one time one of the commissioners said something like "we dont have regulations in place to regulate cablecard pricing. But they shouldn't charge an excessive amount, you know like if they were to charge over 2 dollars or something then we might just create such a regulation"

That would seem to explain why the main cable providers all seem to stop at 2 bucks or less.

It seems that this threat might only apply in the case though when there is not effective competition and therefore cable is still regulated to a degree. FIOS is the competition so obviously it doesn't apply to them. And many markets have applied to be deemed to have effective competition so they would be immune too.

I forget the exact rules but IIRC basically if a certain percent of potential subs in a given area dont take cable then there is effective competition and cable can do what it pleases. Places with a second cable overlay like RCN probably have that. Many places with just high penetration of DBS have gotten that determination. And I'd guess anyplace that Verizon or ATT makes headway will also get unleashed.

My interpretation (so take it for what its worth) has been that the threat was meant to keep the cable from pricing cablecards so high as to keep out 3rd party tuners. If that's the case, and SDV is used on a large number of channels then the argument could be made that a tuning adapter is basically required for 3rd party devices to exist and so "excessive" (however the FCC decided to define that) pricing for Tuning adapters could lead to regulation of their costs.


----------



## MichaelK

logicman1 said:


> It appears the resolver would be as easy to install as any other STB. Since most cable companies allow customers to install STBs themselves, why should the resolver be treated differently?


is inserting a cablecard and reading 3 numbers back to a CSR that much more complext then installing a STB? They frequently require truck rolls for that...


----------



## mikeyts

MichaelK said:


> is inserting a cablecard and reading 3 numbers back to a CSR that much more complext then installing a STB? They frequently require truck rolls for that...


Again, the problem is a high rate of failure on CableCARDs, both when they get them from the factory and after they've been returned. Often installers have to try a few before they find one that works. I know that I would rather pay for a truck-roll than go through a self-install process with a high probability that I'll have to return the hardware and wait for another one (or take it back and get one). Send out a cable guy with a bunch of the damn things and lets get this over with.


----------



## MichaelK

mikeyts said:


> Again, the problem is a high rate of failure on CableCARDs, both when they get them from the factory and after they've been returned. Often installers have to try a few before they find one that works. I know that I would rather pay for a truck-roll than go through a self-install process with a high probability that I'll have to return the hardware and wait for another one (or take it back and get one). Send out a cable guy with a bunch of the damn things and lets get this over with.


I understand that's your perference. And there's nothing wrong with that.

But MY preference would be to save the 76 dollars and pick it up.

Also- maybe cable should get on moto and sa's butts for giving them so many defective cards - if they truly are defective.

Also just as often the installer comes with exactly the right amount and so when one fails he has to reschedule and you need to waste yet another day off work waiting for the guy to come and read a differnt set of 3 numbers over the phone.


----------



## ah30k

I don't have hard data on this but have a very strong suspicion that more often than not the high failure rate is due to CableCARDs not being entered into the conditional access system prior to trying to activate them. If the system tries to activate a card that had not yet been entered into the local system's inventory then it will fail. This is why you can't just go buy a STB and activate it on your local plant. It must be pre-entered into their inventory.

I've personally seen one success then four failures then a second success. I truly believe that someone could have as many as six failures.

There is simply no way that many can be hardware faults.

Again, just an educated guess.


----------



## mikeyts

MichaelK said:


> I understand that's your perference. And there's nothing wrong with that.
> 
> But MY preference would be to save the 76 dollars and pick it up.
> 
> Also- maybe cable should get on moto and sa's butts for giving them so many defective cards - if they truly are defective.
> 
> Also just as often the installer comes with exactly the right amount and so when one fails he has to reschedule and you need to waste yet another day off work waiting for the guy to come and read a differnt set of 3 numbers over the phone.


My install fee was more like $40--$76 would give me pause. With the price of gas today (and the inestimable cost of my precious time ), a couple of round-trips to the cable office to exchange faulty cards is not cost competitive with $40. YMMV.

Yeah, they should be more reliable, but 4 years into CableCARDs and they aren't. I'm guessing that they're probably a bit static sensitive and should be handled more carefully than the barely-trained monkeys that they hire as cable installer are capable of .


----------



## mikeyts

ah30k said:


> I don't have hard data on this but have a very strong suspicion that more often than not the high failure rate is due to CableCARDs not being entered into the conditional access system prior to trying to activate them. If the system tries to activate a card that had not yet been entered into the local system's inventory then it will fail. This is why you can't just go buy a STB and activate it on your local plant. It must be pre-entered into their inventory.
> 
> I've personally seen one success then four failures then a second success. I truly believe that someone could have as many as six failures.
> 
> There is simply no way that many can be hardware faults.
> 
> Again, just an educated guess.


Huh--I hadn't thought of that. You may have a point.


----------



## MichaelK

I agree- my opinion would be it is not hardware related in most cases but some sort of user failure- not entering data correctly or the like


----------



## MichaelK

mikeyts said:


> My install fee was more like $40--$76 would give me pause. With the price of gas today (and the inestimable cost of my precious time ), a couple of round-trips to the cable office to exchange faulty cards is not cost competitive with $40. YMMV.
> .


YMMV- absolutely- they should offer a CHOICE. If I want to risk it then allow me one try at self install before you wast my day waiting around for a guy to push a card into a slot and call in the 3 numbers.

I wouldn't force self install on anyone. But I do think it should be a choice. THere's no reason not to- I dont think they are getting rich on service calls to tell you the truth so why not let me have at it myself? I might save THEM a few bucks.


----------



## sfhub

I'd go with not a hardware issue as well.

If they were truly hardware issues it should affect the cable boxes that came out after the integration ban similarly.


----------



## GoHokies!

sfhub said:


> I'd go with not a hardware issue as well.
> 
> If they were truly hardware issues it should affect the cable boxes that came out after the integration ban similarly.


Absolutely. Not to mention, they would just stop working far more often after being placed in service. The "high failure rate" of cable cards is a myth.


----------



## mikeyts

sfhub said:


> I'd go with not a hardware issue as well.
> 
> If they were truly hardware issues it should affect the cable boxes that came out after the integration ban similarly.


It would only affect them if they installed cards in them in the field, which they never do. They could have changed the card out a dozen times before putting the box on the truck. Proves nothing.


----------



## sfhub

mikeyts said:


> *They could have changed the card out a dozen times before putting the box on the truck.* Proves nothing.


And you don't feel this is affecting the cable boxes similarly?

You feel the cable company would accept that level of hardware failure for equipment that affects one of their main sources of revenue w/o exerting pressure on their equipment provider and getting it resolved?

Please note, hardware failure is not the same thing as field install failure.


----------



## mikeyts

sfhub said:


> And you don't feel this is affecting the cable boxes similarly?
> 
> You feel the cable company would accept that level of hardware failure for equipment that affects one of their main sources of revenue w/o exerting pressure on their equipment provider and getting it resolved?
> 
> Please note, hardware failure is not the same thing as field install failure.


They may well be exerting pressure on their suppliers to help them fix the problem, whether it be one of hardware failure or simply one of failure to properly register incoming new cards into their systems. Making them reliant on CableCARDs to improve the reliability of them was the entire purpose of the FCC's ban on integrated security, which was originally supposed to go into effect in July of 2005, but got pushed back to last July (over the vocal protests of the CE industry) to allow the cable industry to finish the M-Card and OCAP specs. (Cable asked for a second extension so that they could finish DCAS and eliminate the need for the cards altogether, but the request was denied).


----------



## sfhub

At the volumes cable companies order boxes if there were significant *hardware* failures with the CableCARDs they would get that resolved right away. There is no way they would let something like that drag on for 9 months. Regardless of whether the end-user sees it or not, significant hardware failures for their main equipment will be felt by the cable company.

That *install* failures for standalone CableCARDs still happen is documented. Installation brings in a lot of areas besides hardware. To blame a significant number of the install failures on *hardware* failure of CableCARDs themselves doesn't make sense.


----------



## mikeyts

sfhub said:


> At the volumes cable companies order boxes if there were significant *hardware* failures with the CableCARDs they would get that resolved right away. There is no way they would let something like that drag on for 9 months. Regardless of whether the end-user sees it or not, significant hardware failures for their main equipment will be felt by the cable company.
> 
> That *install* failures for standalone CableCARDs still happen is documented. Installation brings in a lot of areas besides hardware. To blame a significant number of the install failures on *hardware* failure of CableCARDs themselves doesn't make sense.


Don't get upset--I'm willing to consider that there might be some other factor involved, like failure to register the cards properly in their systems.

But I certainly don't believe that it's not possible that it could be a persistent hardware failure. (It's not as if, if it _were_ a persistent hardware problem, they could easily switch to another supplier). Look at HDMI--cable has been required by FCC regs to support it and they still don't have that right. That's not costing them the kind of money that fussy CableCARDs would, but its been a sore point with consumers for a long time, so it's costing something. And yet, the cable box suppliers can't get it right while the rest of the CE industry isn't having nearly so much trouble with it.


----------



## sfhub

Not upset. I'm just pointing out the reasons I disagree.

I haven't actually heard of HDMI problems where the installer needs to bring 6 boxes and keep trying them until one works. Even if that was the case, as you have acknowledged, HDMI problems are not in the same category as a hardware CableCARD failure.

The latter is a showstopper and renders the box unusable and prevents revenues from getting collected. The former means they break out the trusty component, svideo, or composite cables.

If you want to use an analogy, think of a car rental company that gets cars from Ford with defective tires. The consumer doesn't see it because the rental company keeps changing out tires over and over again until they get a set that works. How long do you think they would let this situation continue?


----------



## bicker

acvthree said:


> You could be right, but from what I've read, the regulators have stay completely away from the SDV / cablecard issue.


Precisely. The way regulation works, regulators can do one of two things: (1) take action; or (2) not take action. They have pursued path #2 with regard to most CableCARD complaints folks have raised in these forums, and with regard to push towards SDV.


----------



## BobCamp1

sfhub said:


> At the volumes cable companies order boxes if there were significant *hardware* failures with the CableCARDs they would get that resolved right away. There is no way they would let something like that drag on for 9 months. Regardless of whether the end-user sees it or not, significant hardware failures for their main equipment will be felt by the cable company.
> 
> That *install* failures for standalone CableCARDs still happen is documented. Installation brings in a lot of areas besides hardware. To blame a significant number of the install failures on *hardware* failure of CableCARDs themselves doesn't make sense.


As long as the cards are being supplied at the agreed-upon price, why should the cable companies care how many CableCards have to be made in order to make that quota?

Does Motorola care? You bet. The company that invented six sigma would not stand for that many manufacturing defects. It's a good thing they're taking the good CableCard batches and putting them into their boxes, while letting the questionable batches go to Tivos. 

You could also partially blame the Tivo. You know, because it's the device these cards are plugging into. But common sense like that doesn't get you very far in this forum....


----------



## davezatz

BobCamp1 said:


> Does Motorola care? You bet. The company that invented six sigma would not stand for that many manufacturing defects.


The Motorola that invented six sigma no longer exists...


----------



## mikeyts

sfhub said:


> Not upset. I'm just pointing out the reasons I disagree.
> 
> I haven't actually heard of HDMI problems where the installer needs to bring 6 boxes and keep trying them until one works. Even if that was the case, as you have acknowledged, HDMI problems are not in the same category as a hardware CableCARD failure.
> 
> The latter is a showstopper and renders the box unusable and prevents revenues from getting collected. The former means they break out the trusty component, svideo, or composite cables.
> 
> If you want to use an analogy, think of a car rental company that gets cars from Ford with defective tires. The consumer doesn't see it because the rental company keeps changing out tires over and over again until they get a set that works. How long do you think they would let this situation continue?


Faulty CableCARDs is not that big of a problem. Changing bad tires on rental cars is an expensive, time-consuming and labor-intensive operation. Switching out faulty CableCARDs is not, particularly if you're doing on a lab bench in house while preparing boxes for deployment (the fact that they do this and don't install them in the field has been a bone of contention for the CE industry, since it removes some of the pressure to improve the CableCARDs and cable's field-installation process). So long as Motorola and SA are willing to replace faulty cards, it's more of a problem for them than it is for cable providers.

Again, it's possible that this is primarily a cable provider caused problem, with failure to properly register new cards in their system when they receive them. It could still also be a persistent hardware quality problem, or some admixture of both (probably). When I moved from a Cox neighborhood to a TWC one in mid-February, I got new CableCARDs installed in my S3, which took three trips because one of them would work right after they initialized it, but would stop working by the next day (on the second visit they merely initialized it again); on the third trip out they replaced both S-Cards with M-Cards.


davezatz said:


> The Motorola that invented six sigma no longer exists...


I'd say that that's definitely true. Xerox put us all through Six Sigma training when it was a popular buzzword. When I worked for Motorola at their Schaumburg, IL (a Chicago suburb) plant briefly some years after, there was no hint of Six Sigma in their R&D process.


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## milo99

davezatz said:


> The Motorola that invented six sigma no longer exists...


yea... it's sad isn't it?


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## sfhub

mikeyts said:


> Again, it's possible that this is primarily a cable provider caused problem, with failure to properly register new cards in their system when they receive them.


Much more likely.



mikeyts said:


> It could still also be a persistent hardware quality problem, or some admixture of both (probably).


My position is once CableCARDs went high-volume with the integration ban, *if* there were persistent hardware failures they would have been resolved ASAP.

If you feel otherwise, then we will just agree to disagree.


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## mikeyts

sfhub said:


> Much more likely.
> 
> My position is once CableCARDs went high-volume with the integration ban, *if* there were persistent hardware failures they would have been resolved ASAP.
> 
> If you feel otherwise, then we will just agree to disagree.


Yeah, we will have to agree to disagree. The fact that I myself experienced a problem with an S-Card that was obviously a hardware fault (it worked, but intermittently) just a couple of months back, 7 months into CableCARDs "going high-volume" and that I continue to hear of other people having problematic installations would suggest to me that there's at least some element of poor hardware.

I have 30 years experience as an engineer in product R&D and I've seen similar problems go on and on and on. (One very public case in point is the Xbox 360 "3 Red Rings of Death", which, 2.5 years into volume manufacturing of the product, is somewhat improved, but still not completely solved). Sometimes a hardware problem is so intrinsic to a design that it can't be easily fixed without changing the form-factor or redesigning to use parts that would greatly increase the cost of manufacture, or using some technology that's coming, but won't be available for several months. If the supplier can be replaced, the company manufacturing the thing loses the business. If you can't replace the supplier and you've gotta have what they're selling, you just have to live with it. If there is a persistent buggy hardware problem I've no doubt that it's costing the manufacturers much more than it's costing the cable service industry, since I'm sure that they'd be replacing faulty units at their own cost.

Remember, cable doesn't want to have to buy these things at all and never did. I'm sure that the OEMs are pouring their best people into the effort to complete DCAS so that they and their buyers can eventually wash their hands of them.


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## sfhub

mikeyts said:


> Yeah, we will have to agree to disagree. The fact that I myself experienced a problem with an S-Card that was obviously a hardware fault (it worked, but intermittently)





mikeyts said:


> When I moved from a Cox neighborhood to a TWC one in mid-February, I got new CableCARDs installed in my S3, which took three trips because one of them would work right after they initialized it, but would stop working by the next day (on the second visit they merely initialized it again); on the third trip out they replaced both S-Cards with M-Cards.


How is that "obviously" hardware fault? Without doing the full diagnosis and going just on symptoms, how can you rule out that the card initialization, by design, times out after a certain period and it didn't process the new EMM messages properly. The M-Card might just have new firmware that changed the logic or timing for EMM processing. Clearly your S-Card hardware was capable for decrypting because it did fine after re-initialization.

If you want to point out hardware failure it would be a much stronger case to use 2 of the same S-Cards and verify the firmware revision levels are the same. Basically isolate all variables so they are the same except for the physical card.

Out of curiosity do you consider firmware problems a hardware or software failure? When I talk about hardware failure, no amount of firmware updates will resolve the problem because the hardware is busted. When a chip burns out or a head crashes on a hard drive those are hardware failures to me.

Are you really comparing the complexity of what is essentially a PCMCIA card that decrypts incoming streams and encrypts outgoing streams to an XBOX360 system?

Nobody is arguing that a CableCARD can't be broken, hardware-wise. The hardware failures should be similar to other PCMCIA devices of similar complexity, which historically is very low. The expected hardware failure rate should fall somewhere between a PCMCIA LAN card and a PCMCIA WLAN card.

What we disagree with is whether the scenarios we see posted here where the installer needs to bring 6 cards to get 2 working is likely a hardware failure. 66% hardware failure *after* it has gone through Motorola or SA quality control, reached the cable company, and gone through their acceptance procedure, is just too incredulous to believe. Your example of changing out a dozen cards on an STB prior to putting it on the truck is an even worse percentage.

On the other hand, I can believe overall install failures, in the case of CableCARDs, can be much higher than install failures attributed to hardware failures because the overall installation involves so many other moving parts.


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## bicker

mikeyts said:


> Yeah, we will have to agree to disagree. The fact that I myself experienced a problem with an S-Card that was obviously a hardware fault (it worked, but intermittently) just a couple of months back, 7 months into CableCARDs "going high-volume" and that I continue to hear of other people having problematic installations would suggest to me that there's at least some element of poor hardware.


Yes, absolutely. No amount of product maturity can overcome fundamental lack of robustness in the underlying architecture, something that exists _to some extent _in every design.


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## MichaelK

my 2 cents-

the thing is solid state- how many solid state peicesof hardware just up and die? It'sgenerally no where near where we all seem to thing the card failure rate is.

How many pc cards, usb drives, usb wireless dongles, etc etc are out there and just work? 

Could certainly be bad firmware- but i really cant imagine that the hardware dies soo much. If it was only hardware then there would be as many failures in cable company boxes as in tivos (or at least delayed failures - as the inital ones maybe would get caught by whoever first pairs them)


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## bicker

Yes, it sure doesn't seem like the hardware "dies". Rather, there are apparently too many tenuous and heavy dependencies on environmental factors (including aspects of the installation, indeed) that are allowed to effectively interfere with consistent communications.


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## acvthree

Also, two different companies that came up with product designs that BOTH have extremely high (apparently greater that 50&#37 failure rates at the hardware level? 

Or are we saying that two different manufacturers have that level of manufacturing faults? 

I really have a hard time with that. It if were just problems with one company I might believe it, but ...

Al


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## bicker

Exactly! So what is common between the two companies? The *specification*. That's where the lack of robustness almost surely stems from.


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## lrhorer

MichaelK said:


> my 2 cents-
> 
> the thing is solid state- how many solid state peicesof hardware just up and die?


Whisker growth, susceptibility to cosmic radiation, improperly cleared etching solutions, polluted chemistry, improper grounding in the manufacturing plant, excessive mechanical shock while handling, dust or other particulates present in the assembly facility... There are lots of things which can cause higher than normal failure rates in solid state devices. I'm not saying it must beone of those things, but I know for a fact there have been at least two bad manufacturing runs of SA CableCards, with very high failures in those manufacturing lots.



MichaelK said:


> Could certainly be bad firmware- but i really cant imagine that the hardware dies soo much.


Anything's possible, but if it were firmware, I would expect that every single one would have a problem.



MichaelK said:


> If it was only hardware then there would be as many failures in cable company boxes as in tivos


How do you know there aren't?



MichaelK said:


> (or at least delayed failures - as the inital ones maybe would get caught by whoever first pairs them)


Exactly. Of course my 6 CableCard slots are hardly a statistical sample, but every one of the cards with which I had problems were DOA. I know there are some people in this forum who have reported failures long after installation, but I have no feeling for just how common such failures are, or how they compare to failures in the company-owned boxes.


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## lrhorer

jtown said:


> You're talking about the same industry tries to charge us for two truck rolls to install two cable cards using the logic that they're installing two devices.


Well, that's cute. Certainly they are going to try to charge for anything they can, but that's going over the line. OTOH, at least with my local CATV provider (TWC), their billing to me is almost always screwed up, frequently to their detriment.



jtown said:


> The fact that a truck roll is required at all is absurd and an obvious money grab.


No, that it is not. For most CATV companies, the amount they charge for a truck roll is less than the truck roll costs them. Of course many systems utilize contractors to reduce the cost of truck rolls, but at least in my case, the total amount of time for salaried employees expended in futzing around with my CableCard installations (not just TiVo CableCard installations) was at least 30 man-hours. At a burden rate of more than $45 an hour, they lost money big time.


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## lrhorer

mikeyts said:


> Yeah, we will have to agree to disagree. The fact that I myself experienced a problem with an S-Card that was obviously a hardware fault (it worked, but intermittently) just a couple of months back, 7 months into CableCARDs "going high-volume" and that I continue to hear of other people having problematic installations would suggest to me that there's at least some element of poor hardware.


I would have to agree. Indeed, as I mentioned before, I know for a fact SA had at least two bad production runs, producing batches of cards with nearly 100% failure rates. That said, I do also know of at least one case where the CATV company got a new batch of cards but had not bothered to upgrade the software in the headend to a version which supported the new cards. (Oops!)

I think people in this forum are wanting to point at a single reason for what they perceive to be an industry wide issue, and there just may not be one single cause. It also might not even be a persistent industry wide problem, people's perceptions notwithstanding. I'm not saying it isn't, either, just that our view of the overall picture is too limited to be certain of our perception.



mikeyts said:


> Remember, cable doesn't want to have to buy these things at all and never did. I'm sure that the OEMs are pouring their best people into the effort to complete DCAS so that they and their buyers can eventually wash their hands of them.


Good point.


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## lrhorer

sfhub said:


> Out of curiosity do you consider firmware problems a hardware or software failure?


It's a gray area, which is why it is called "firmware".



sfhub said:


> When I talk about hardware failure, no amount of firmware updates will resolve the problem because the hardware is busted. When a chip burns out or a head crashes on a hard drive those are hardware failures to me.


In a user serviceable device, the distinction may be relevant, but in a leased device, I don't see that it is. No matter what the exact root cause of the failure, the fix is going to be to replace the unit, and from the consumer's perspective it doesn't really matter whether the manufacturer is going to fix the unit (assuming they even try - low cost devices like these may just get trashed out of hand rather than making any attempt to repair them) by replacing a bad physical component or downloading new code to the unit.

What's more, sometimes software *can* be used to circumvent hardware issues. Indeed, several of the manufacturers whose equipment we use at work have on numerous occasions done just that, implementing software which worked around problems found in the hardware. It's done all the time, and it's a good thing, too. A company like ours can't simply rip out a few hundred million dollars of equipment to fix a hardware issue.



sfhub said:


> 66% hardware failure *after* it has gone through Motorola or SA quality control, reached the cable company, and gone through their acceptance procedure, is just too incredulous to believe.


I can tell you what the CATV company's acceptance procedure is. They sign the invoice and throw the case of cards into a corner of the warehouse until the installer signs it out. The QC on new equipment is zero.


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## mikeyts

MichaelK said:


> my 2 cents-
> 
> the thing is solid state- how many solid state peicesof hardware just up and die? It'sgenerally no where near where we all seem to thing the card failure rate is.
> 
> How many pc cards, usb drives, usb wireless dongles, etc etc are out there and just work?
> 
> Could certainly be bad firmware- but i really cant imagine that the hardware dies soo much. If it was only hardware then there would be as many failures in cable company boxes as in tivos (or at least delayed failures - as the inital ones maybe would get caught by whoever first pairs them)


Solid state parts are often the most problematic, particularly when they're cutting edge tech. Though the Xbox 360 has quite a few moving parts (fans, DVD drive, HDD), those haven't been the problem--it's overheating of its unique CPU and graphics processor when they're working hard. The problem is gradually being fixed, but some of the fixes have required a long wait for technological advances. like the move last year from 90nm SOI for the CPU to smaller 65nm SOI chips which draw less power and dissipate less heat; a similar modification is due for the graphics processor. All of these things require a several-month-long process to complete the chip design and get it into the manufacturing schedule of some external chip fabricator, as well as a redesign of the motherboard. You don't want really want to rush any of this, since rushing the product to market is probably what caused the first problem (in the case of the Xbox, I suspect that MS knew that they were going to have problems, but really, really needed to beat the PS3 to market by at least 6 months and didn't realize just how bad the problems were going to be). Any similar problem with operating temperature restrictions in a CableCARD might also require new chips and board redesign to fix and take the same amount of time.

I think that operating environment plays a large role in the 360's problems and probably also with CableCARDs. The same card that failed after several hours of being installed in my TiVo in its enclosed home theater equipment cabinet possibly wouldn't have failed if it had been installed in the slot on the back of my display panel, which is completely open to the air. I used a launch Xbox 360 for a year in a larger, more open cabinet without a single problem. Like most 360s, it was louder in operation than desirable, but reasonable. I had to change to a more compact cabinet when I moved, which is less open; 10 minutes of running a game in that new cabinet and the 360's fans are running at maximum speed--the thing sounds like it's got a Briggs and Stratton engine running in it . Consequently, I place a small floor fan in front of the open cabinet doors when I use the 360 for something computationally intensive (playing videos or poking around through their online store doesn't get it all that hot).

CableCARDs probably involve custom chips for some serious number crunching--they have to decode streams using one encryption algorithm (proprietary, Motorola's Digicipher or SA's PowerKey) and re-encode with a second algorithm (DFAST). It has to do it at a fair clip, and M-Cards have to be able to do it for up to six simultaneous streams. All this has to be done by chips operating in a tiny metallic case with no significant cooling. Not an easy problem.

The difficulty that I have with the problems being mostly due to some sort of persistent administrative problem that's gone on for years is that such a problem with process would seem a lot easier to diagnose and fix than many hardware problems.


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## bicker

lrhorer said:


> Anything's possible, but if it were firmware, I would expect that every single one would have a problem.


That's a good point: Software and firmware problems are more likely to be ubiquitous and consistent. Hardware problems are more likely to be intermittent and inconsistent.


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## morac

bicker said:


> That's a good point: Software and firmware problems are more likely to be ubiquitous and consistent. Hardware problems are more likely to be intermittent and inconsistent.


That's not necessarily true. Software/firmware glitches can be just as inconsistent depending on what triggers the bug. A perfect example is the current video freeze issue with TiVo HDs and the 9.3a software, which is so inconsistent that the TiVo software engineers haven't been able to track it down.


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## slyone

Has anyone heard when the SDV dongle will be available?


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## mikeyts

morac said:


> That's not necessarily true. Software/firmware glitches can be just as inconsistent depending on what triggers the bug. A perfect example is the current video freeze issue with TiVo HDs and the 9.3a software, which is so inconsistent that the TiVo software engineers haven't been able to track it down.


As a software engineer, I'd tend to agree. I've literally spent weeks tracking down something so elusive it was difficult just to determine how to reliably reproduce the bug so you could do it over and over again to figure out what's going on. Of course, the person who reported the bug can probably reproduce at will, but if it was reported from the field, contact with that person is rarely available to the engineer assigned to fix it .

No amount of unit testing, system testing and field testing will ever uncover every software bug. There are things that will only happen if you do things in a certain order and/or with certain timing. When you throw the product out into the wide world, people will do things with it that you could never imagine.


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## bicker

I think the difference is that whatever is causing such a software issue happens every time there is the same input, while hardware issues can be affected by something as variable as ambient temperature, humidity, etc.


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## mikeyts

slyone said:


> Has anyone heard when the SDV dongle will be available?


Products from both Cisco/SA and Motorola have been submitted to CableLabs for certification testing and both companies claim to have provided units for test and evaluation to cable providers. Assuming that they pass CableLabs cert without major incident, SA has stated that they expect their product to start becoming available from cable providers in the third calendar quarter (i.e., sometime this summer). Motorola may be even closer to release; unfortunately few providers who've deployed Switched Digital Broadcast channels are using Motorola networks.

Hopefully all will go well and I'll get it before my local TWC provider starts using their newly deployed switched digital broadcast stuff. I don't really so much care if they don't take away anything that I have now, unless one of the things they add as switched broadcast is Sci Fi HD.


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## acvthree

bicker said:


> I think the difference is that whatever is causing such a software issue happens every time there is the same input, while hardware issues can be affected by something as variable as ambient temperature, humidity, etc.


Yes, but there is consistency and consistency.

I once tracked down a bug in the OS that had been in the field for years. Then came a particular application that used a particular feature constantly and a signed overrun that should have been unsigned suddenly cropped up. There could have been system hang that took months to occur that no one could track down until this one application.

Software bugs can remain hidden and dormant until particular sets of circumstances occur.

Al


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## joelkfla

mikeyts said:


> Products from both Cisco/SA and Motorola have been submitted to CableLabs for certification testing and both companies claim to have provided units for test and evaluation to cable providers.


Thanks for the update, and special thanks for keeping it concise and to-the-point!


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## jebbbz

*Switched Digital Video arrives July 1 in Phoenix, AZ*

I just got a letter from Cox announcing SDV starting July 1. Here we use Cisco/SA equipment and Cablecards. So far, I will only lose CSPAN2 and CSPAN3 which I watch very occasionally. In all, they list 60+ channels via SDV: 21 Spanish-language, seven Public Safety, 20+ sports (Fox College, NBA League Pass/MLS Direct Kick, MLB Extra Innings/NHL Center Ice) and some odds and ends (Great American Country, DIY, BET Jazz, etc.)

For TiVo owners there is news. The letter mentions the Tuning Adapter will be available "later this year" (boo!!!) and will be provided "by Cox at no charge" (hooray!!!)


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## Combat Medic

jebbbz said:


> *Switched Digital Video arrives July 1 in Phoenix, AZ*
> 
> I just got a letter from Cox announcing SDV starting July 1. Here we use Cisco/SA equipment and Cablecards. So far, I will only lose CSPAN2 and CSPAN3 which I watch very occasionally. In all, they list 60+ channels via SDV: 21 Spanish-language, seven Public Safety, 20+ sports (Fox College, NBA League Pass/MLS Direct Kick, MLB Extra Innings/NHL Center Ice) and some odds and ends (Great American Country, DIY, BET Jazz, etc.)
> 
> For TiVo owners there is news. The letter mentions the Tuning Adapter will be available "later this year" (boo!!!) and will be provided "by Cox at no charge" (hooray!!!)


Keep that letter. That way when they try to bill you you can throw it back in their face.


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## mikeyts

TiVo has always said that they expected the Tuning Adapter to be provided at no charge (and given the cable providers' purpose for it, I've expected them to charge very little). Maybe they know something that we don't (certainly they do, having discussed the Tuning Adapter strategy in detail with various cable providers ).


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## jebbbz

I didn't mention this before but Cox is offering an STB for six months at the price of a cablecard ($2.00/month, here) to TiVo and other one-way cablecard device owners so they can avail themselves of SDV channels (and PPV and VoD -- the latter also rolling out here now). Cox seems pretty accomodating for now, at least.


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## mikeyts

CableLabs has certified both the Motorola and Cisco Tuning Adapters. You can see an article about it here.


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## MickeS

mikeyts said:


> CableLabs has certified both the Motorola and Cisco Tuning Adapters. You can see an article about it here.





article said:


> The SDV adapters are expected to be offered by MSOs including Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications and Cablevision Systems, to subscribers in areas where they are deploying switched digital video technology. The cable operators and TiVo have said they plan to work cooperatively to notify TiVo subscribers that they will need the new external adapter.
> 
> Initially, the cable industry had expected the SDV tuners to be ready to deploy in the second quarter of 2008.


I wonder when they will be able to get these to consumers?


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## mikeyts

I'm sure that's pretty much up to the providers. Both Moto and Cisco have high manufacturing capacity and could turn out millions of these simple gadgets a month, if there was a demand. Right now, they only need a total of a couple hundred thousand nationwide (only subs with TiVo Series3 and TiVo HD have any use for them, and some of them are non-subscribers or core basic cable subs who won't need them).

The providers have to stock these things, decide whether or not they'll allow self-install (probably not) and train both their sales CSRs and field techs on them. Unless they've done training using the pre-certification prototypes (possible), that'll take a while.


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## jmpage2

MickeS said:


> I wonder when they will be able to get these to consumers?


They won't be available directly to consumers, only available through your cable provider.

If cable card is any indication then we are going to see delays, programming screw ups and general incompetence from the cable companies regarding these SDV resolvers.


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## morac

jmpage2 said:


> If cable card is any indication then we are going to see delays, programming screw ups and general incompetence from the cable companies regarding these SDV resolvers.


I wouldn't expect as many problems from these as from cable cards. With CCs there is no way for the cable company to know if they are working or not since the TiVo can't tell the company head end when the cards are paired correctly.

With the tuning adapter, the cable company should instantly know whether or not something is wrong since the adapter can talk to the headend. So barring some kind of manufacturing or configuration glitch installing the adapters should be fairly straightforward.


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## jonginear

Here's a link to Cisco's adapter with pics.
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/video/ps9159/ps9195/ps9828/7013834.pdf


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## T-Shee

see this:

http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6579511.html?nid=4262


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## mikeyts

T-Shee said:


> see this:
> 
> http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6579511.html?nid=4262


I posted that link this morning, just six posts before yours, here. Scan a little of the thread before you post, huh?


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## Combat Medic

Now to call Time Warner and tell them that I want one.


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## redeyedfly

please post as soon as someone recieves one of these magic adapters.


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## mikeyts

According to this thread, Comcast plans to make Tuning Adapters available on Monday (at least in New Jersey). People will be able to come in a pick them up, or get a free truck roll for installation. Bravo, Comcast .


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