# SDV FAQ



## bdraw

*
What is SDV?*

SDV stands for Switched Digital Video, a scheme where not all TV channels are broadcast out from the cable headend to the homes that it serves all of the time. This is attractive to cable companies, because they can offer more TV channels than their cable plant has the bandwidth to broadcast. For example, your cable company may have 10 different channels in your lineup, but only 5 physical channels to send them from the headend to the houses they service. This requires a cable box that can communicate back upstream to the headend and say "I would like to watch ESPN2HD now" and then headend would take that request, assign it to a frequency and then tell the cable box "ESPN2HD is available on xxx,xxx kHz"










*
What does this mean for the Series 3, Tivo HD and TiVo Premiere?*

With out an additional Tuning Adapter supplied from the provider, the Series 3, Tivo HD and TiVo Premiere is not able to communicate upstream to the cable headend, so it cannot send the request for channels that are assigned to SDV. Users of the S3 and THD will not be able to watch or record any of these channels.

*Which channels will be converted to SDV?*

Traditional methods send every channel to everyone, and if no one on your head-end is watching that channel, the bandwidth is effectively wasted. SDV allows them to turn off that channel when it's not being watched so that another channel can occupy that bandwidth. If a channel is always being watched it will probably never be converted to SDV. So the less popular a channel is, the more likely it will be converted to an SDV channel. See this Multi-Channel news article. That being said, there are some providers who use SDV to deploy a very large number of channels, though.

*
The solution
*
The NCTA and TiVo worked together for over a year and finally the first working solution has reached TiVo owners in NJ on Comcast. The device from both Cisco and Motorola are called Tuning Adapters (formerly known as Tuning Resolvers) and connect via USB to the TiVo (9.4 or higher) and feature pass-through coax connections, so a splitter is not needed. So when you attempt to tune a channel delivered using SDV, the TiVo sends a signal via USB to the Tuning Adapter which sends the signal via coax upstream to the providers head-end. This turns the channel on and returns the tuning information back to the TiVo.

_In a demo at the Cable Show a few years ago I had a chance to play and was not able to notice any difference in speed when changing channels that were deployed with traditional QAM or SDV._

Depending on the head-end there are two solutions, Motorola and Cisco (formerly Scientific Atlanta). If your operator hands out Cisco set-top boxes, then odds are they'll use a Cisco TA.

The Cisco STA1520









The Motorola MTR700









Some providers are offering these for free, but some charge at first or after a few months.

Here is TiVo's FAQ that address the Tuning Adapter.

Here is Time Warner's FAQ about the Tuning Adapter.

San Antonio TWC customers can pre-order their Tuning Adapter from here.

Here is some of the history of the Tuning Adapter, formerly known as the tuning resolver:
http://www.tivolovers.com/2007/05/10/mr-tivo-goes-to-washington
Here is TiVo's official info on the adapter.
http://tivosupport2.instancy.com/LaunchContent.aspx?CID=CBECF1B9-88DE-4B74-82C1-754C3260112A
CableLabs press release about USB dongle
http://cablelabs.com/news/pr/2007/07_pr_dcr_devices_112607.html
NCTA and TiVo press release
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/s...11-26-2007/0004711019&EDATE=#linktopagebottom
Of if you want to do something about it, report your missing channels to the FCC.
http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/complaints_general.html

*
What about FIOS?*

Right now, because of the fact that FIOS uses fiber optic cable to your house, FIOS has no plans to deploy SDV - they have instead chosen to invest in expanding their QAM RF overlay infrastructure and use IPTV for PPV and VOD.

*Where is SDV located right now?*

SDV deployments are changing very rapidly and impossible to track, in fact even most of the CSRs don't know if their company uses SDV and even if they do, not which channels.

*Tuning adapters are here to stay*
TiVo has asked the FCC to modify the rules pertaining to 3rd party CableCARD devices and eliminate Tuning Adapters. The proposed solution was to allow the TiVo to communicate via IP to the operators servers to perform the requests that are currently handled by the TA. This would've require that you have internet service from the same provider, but would eliminate a set-top box from the equation.

TiVo claimed it was necessary to increase reliability and would reduce costs for the operators. The NCTA and its members claimed that the TAs are well accepted and supported and it is not necessary to make any changes.

The FCC determined that it would rather not mandate a specific solution, but instead mandated the SDV channels work for CableCARD users and will be making it easier to report issues so that consumers could help enforce the mandate.


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## That Don Guy

bdraw said:


> Unfortunately for Series3 owners, Switched Digital Video (SDV) channels are being deployed on cable systems all over the US. I did a few searches and wasn't able to find one thread that we could reference with a list of confirmed SDV channels. So I'll start it up and edit the first post, if it's useful then it will stick around, otherwise it will fall to the bottom.
> 
> *Bright House Networks*
> Tampa FL
> 
> Ch 694 Golf/Versus
> 
> If this is a lame post and this thread already exists, please post a link and perhaps this will act as a good pointer to the resource.


Pardon me for asking, but could you confirm that this is, in fact, the "complete" Versus and Golf Channel sharing your channel 694 (in which case, how do you choose between the two), as opposed to the Vs/Golf HD channel (which is a single channel that shows some Golf Channel shows and some Versus shows)?

-- Don


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## bdraw

Honestly I don't know since I can't watch it, but according to BHN's website it's the Versus HD+ (7pm-12pm) everyday but Thursday/Friday when it's (12am-12pm). Then it's the Golf Channel HD+ (12pm-7pm) everday but Thursday/Friday when it's (12pm-12am) .


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## That Don Guy

bdraw said:


> Honestly I don't know since I can't watch it, but according to BHN's website it's the Versus HD+ (7pm-12pm) everyday but Thursday/Friday when it's (12am-12pm). Then it's the Golf Channel HD+ (12pm-7pm) everday but Thursday/Friday when it's (12pm-12am) .


That's not SDV - it's two networks airing at different times on the same channel.

SDV allows for more than one station to be accessible through a single channel (although just one at a time). The problem as far as TiVo is concerned is, there needs to be a way for the tuner to tell the cable system which of the multiple channels to air at any particular time - something a TiVo cannot do.

Pardon me for going off on a slight tangent, but does anybody out there know more specifics as to how SDV would work? Would each SDV channel have an on-screen menu of some sort, and the viewer would select which station to watch on a particular channel, or would different channel numbers be mapped to the same physical channel somehow?

-- Don


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## bdraw

Don,
You can't tell it's an SDV channel if you have a standard digital cable box. I know it's SDV cause I called BHN to ask why I wasn't receiving the channel and they told me that the channel doesn't work with CableCARDs since they are one way (in many more words).

The fact that the channel splits it's time between two networks has nothing to do with the fact that it's an SDV channel.


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## GoHokies!

Since Ben hasn't been able to keep up with the SDV reports in the OP, I'm going to keep this post updated with reports from the forums:

*TWC Cincinnati:*
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=5460259&&#post5460259


JoeSchueller said:


> SDV just went in to effect here in Cincinnati today. They introduced ESPN2HD and placed a lovely asterisk next to it indicating that it was "Not available on one-way cable cards." I'm about to file my FCC comment now.


*TW Hawaii:*
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=364085


HiKent said:


> TWC Hawaii moving all HD to SDV
> We got a letter-bomb from TWC Hawaii today saying all the HD entertainment channels are moving to SDV on Sept 24. All that's left (HD-wise) are network programming, HBO and Showtime. They also got rid of a couple of dozen SD channels for good measure.
> 
> While I love my series 3, I certainly would not have purchased it to get only HBO & Showtime. As for the network programming, here in hawaii most HD programming is broadcast SD -- we don't even get all the networks in HD.
> 
> SDV Fear, uncertainty and doom -- replaced with doom.


*TW Myrtle Beach:*
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=5327449&&#post5327449


vstone said:


> I think MHD & A&EHD are SDV on TWC in Myrtle Beach, SC (which probably means all of TWC in SC) , but I can't confirm that.


*TWC Albany:*
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=5424033&&#post5424033


miller890 said:


> TWC in Albany, NY has started using SDV. Here is the list so far that no longer can be tuned in by the Series-3 with CC's.
> 
> 746 Showtime West
> 747 Showtime 2 West
> 748 Showtime 3 West
> 749 Showtime Extreme West
> 750 Showtime Beyond West
> 754 Showtime Next West
> 755 Showtime Family Zone West
> 756 Showtime Women West


*COX Fairfax (VA):*
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=5468367&&#post5468367


precarious said:


> Just got off the phone with a well-informed "customer loyalty specialist" from Cox Fairfax who told me which channels will go SDV effective on September 10th and which those of us with S3s using cablecards, will not be able to access as they will no longer receive a dedicated frequency.
> 
> 157 - Nasa Channel
> 158 - Jewelry Television
> 159 - Cable Marketplace II
> 164 - CSPAN 3
> 223 - BET on Jazz
> 227 - Ovation
> 233 - AML - American Life TV
> 239 - CMP - Country Music Prime
> 
> All the PPV channels
> 
> All of the Spanish Language from 400-430
> All other "Premium" foreign language channels from 271-276
> 
> He said that this could of course change after Sept. 10th, but this was the latest
> info he had. All of the other channels he felt would not be affected. He didn't seem
> to know very much about the "tuning resolver" talked about as a solution. Hope this helps anyone who is a Cox subscriber in Fairfax using a S3 with cablecards.



I actually started writing a post in notepad a few days ago on this exact topic (including what SDV is for those that aren't sure). One of the mods said that he would sticky it if there was value.

_SDV FAQ moved from here into the OP.  _

Here's the full text of the URL for the OP:
http://www.tivolovers.com/2007/05/10/mr-tivo-goes-to-washington


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## SugarBowl

searching the Time Warner Raleigh website for "Switched Digital" gives 1 hit. And that hit is a graphic for cable cards saying that cable cards can't get switched digital channels. I haven't tried, but I suspect if I call customer service and ask about these SDV channels, they will have no clue what i'm talking about.


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## bdraw

If you have links, please submit them.

GoHokies,
If you don't mind I'll copy your great SDV synopsis into my first post.


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## GoHokies!

bdraw said:


> If you have links, please submit them.
> 
> GoHokies,
> If you don't mind I'll copy your great SDV synopsis into my first post.


Not at all, you beat me to the punch. 

I'll post up some of the links that I found the info from also.


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## MickeS

bdraw said:


> If you have links, please submit them.
> 
> GoHokies,
> If you don't mind I'll copy your great SDV synopsis into my first post.


The link to http://www.tivolovers.com/2007/05/10/mr-tivo-goes-to-washington/ doesn't work in your copy of GoHokies post, since you just copied the text (that doesn't copy the actual URL), so you need to edit that URL to make it work.

Thanks for the writeup.


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## jrm01

Good idea to get all of this into one post. However, in your definition of SDV you describe it as the switching ocurring at the cable company head-end. I thought most of the switching has been done at a "neighborhood junction box" of some kind, e.g. the cable company runs fiber to some point in a neighborhood, then coax to houses, and the switching was done at that junction.


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## bdraw

Jim,
Exactly, and that junction box is sometimes called a headend, but I see what you mean, maybe someone in the cable industry and clarify.


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## GoHokies!

bdraw said:


> Jim,
> Exactly, and that junction box is sometimes called a headend, but I see what you mean, maybe someone in the cable industry and clarify.


That's what I thought that it was called, and I hoped that someone would come along and correct some of my mistakes.  I had the right idea, and the wrong terminology.

Looks like I have a little bit more learning to do


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## bdraw

I've always called it a headend as well. The illustration calls it a distribution hub, which is new to me. Either way there are 500-2000 people all using it.


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## vstone

Go to the scientific Atlanta web site and search for SDV and you'll find several articles talking about SDV and SA's equipment. I assume it's roughly parallel to Motorola's eq.

AIR, the SA docs can be read to say that the control info is routed via TCPIP. If so, an S3 fix might be relatively easy.


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## bdraw

vstone,
Technically, I'm sure the fix is really easy; but politically, not so much.


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## classicsat

That Don Guy said:


> Pardon me for going off on a slight tangent, but does anybody out there know more specifics as to how SDV would work? Would each SDV channel have an on-screen menu of some sort, and the viewer would select which station to watch on a particular channel, or would different channel numbers be mapped to the same physical channel somehow?
> 
> -- Don


Simply each SDV channel will have a channel number like any other channel, and from the users perspective, work like that too. It is just underneath, the box knows instead to tune that channel, it has to ask the headend (or node if you will) for it, which the node controller will place the channel on the node, if not yet selected by another user on the node, and tell the box which channel/subchannel to tune to get it.


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## vstone

bdraw said:


> vstone,
> Technically, I'm sure the fix is really easy; but politically, not so much.


I couldn't agree more!


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## vstone

In some, perhaps many, places, cable plants used to populate the datastream with enough information to tell you that, for example, you tune to channel 707 to get the local HD CBS broadcast. This information is being deleted from the data stream. It could be that they are doing this to make clear QAM tuners look bad. They could also be doing this because of SDV. Any thoughts?


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## sfhub

I believe the FCC regulations state they must pass through any PSIP from the OTA when they rebroadcast OTA on cable.

Other than that, I don't believe they are required to populate PSIP info.


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## vstone

From ATSC standard (which is enacted in CFR by reference):

STT - System Time Table
CVCT - Cable Virtual Channel Table
TVCT - Terrestrial Virtual Channel Table
MGT - Master Guide Table

The rules governing the transport of PSIP tables for cable are:
 Requirement 6: The required tables for a cable system are: the STT,either the CVCT or
the TVCT, and the MGT. For any region that makes use of the capability to change the
RRT, that RRT shall be included in the TS if any content_advisory_descriptor in use refers to
that region. An RRT defining the rating system for a given region shall be included in the
TS if any content_advisory_descriptor in use refers to that region, unless that region has
explicit standards that define the rating system and the meaning of the values in the
content_advisory_descriptor.
 Requirement 7: The PSIP tables shall describe all of the digital channels multiplexed in
the Transport Stream. For convenience, the tables may optionally include information
about analog channels as well as other digital channels available in different Transport
Streams.

Comment: Its hard to decipher, but I think it also requires RRT (Rating region Table) for US & possessions. ATSC also used outside US.

From ATSC:

IN CVCT:
virtual channel  A virtual channel is the designation, usually a number, that is recognized by the user ...

Comment: I'm hard pressed to believe that cable companies expect me to remember that 116-1 is WSLS HD. That is not what their channel lineup says. However, I'm going down to the local cable company to ask them what channel is what?

I haven't noticed that cable folk are required to populate tables, but I guess I'm naive - I think its implied.


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## sfhub

vstone said:


> Comment: I'm hard pressed to believe that cable companies expect me to remember that 116-1 is WSLS HD.


That's not what I said. If WSLS-HD OTA had PSIP VCT (which it should), your cable company is required to propogate (and adjust the channel freq/modulation/etc for cable specific info)

I also said I didn't believe there was any requirement for the cable company to add its own PSIP VCT/CVCT info (when it wasn't present originally) One common example where this would come into play is if your system has ADS (digital simulcast) channels.

Basically while you can expect some of your digital channels to have PSIP VCT/CVCT it likely will not cover the range of all the digital channels you can receive.

Maybe I misunderstood what you meant by "populate" and took it to apply to more channels than you intended.

I looked at the transport streams on my system and the OTA digital sourced stuff does have both VCT and CVCT info for the OTA digital sourced channels I checked. The ADS channels have no VCT or CVCT. My head-end used to be misconfigured to not propagate the VCT info correctly. I say my head-end rather than my cable system because the surrounding areas did have proper VCT, just not my head-end. They finally fixed that 6 months ago.


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## Justin Thyme

It is not that FIOS's IPTV approach has the bandwidth so that it doesn't need SDV. It is simply that IPTV is even more efficient than SDV. The reason why is that SDV channels that are allocated do not fully utilize the bandwidth. You have a segment of a variable encoded movie that is all or nearly black, and with SDV, you still have 6 MHZ sitting there carrying no real data. With IP, during such low data periods, you are transmitting smaller packets and so the bandwidth can be used for other stuff- like your unbox downloads.  But seriously- it allows a channel to be "Bursty". With SDV you have to allocate enough for the peak Mbps needed during an action scene even though most of the time you are using half that much data.

By the way- that Graphic is originally from Wikipedia's article on switched video, it isn't TivoBlog's.


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## jrm01

bdraw said:


> I've always called it a headend as well. The illustration calls it a distribution hub, which is new to me. Either way there are 500-2000 people all using it.


In reference to the diagram: The switching is not done at the head-end, nor the distribution hub, it is done at the Optical Node, the point where fiber ends and coax begins.


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## monkeydust

Thanks. I saw the acronym being thrown around here recently but I didn't know what it meant.


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## davecramer74

> It is not that FIOS's IPTV approach has the bandwidth so that it doesn't need SDV.


fios doesnt use iptv, att does. Fios has traditional setup like comcast, etc does.


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## ah30k

davecramer74 said:


> fios doesnt use iptv, att does. Fios has traditional setup like comcast, etc does.


Broadcast video is traditional cable QAM while interactive (VOD etc) stuff is IP. This is where the QIP name comes from.

AT&T uses IP for the whole thing.


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## aymanme

I can't believe nobody has mentioned TWC in Austin, TX yet. It was the guinea pig for SDV. 

In Austin, CMAXHD, STARZHD, all Digital channels with an analog simulcast, All pacific feeds, fox reality, speed, and probably a dozen others that I forgot are all now switched.

On that topic, is there any hope that the S3 will show some of these? In what time frame? Here, they move channels often to SDV; As the months pass, fewer and fewer channels are available w/o their box. I like fox reality and wish I still got it. 

The Tivo interface is superior, I love using it to see what's on the channels I can't get anymore.


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## jrm01

aymanme:

Just curious: It sounds like you are saying that the SDV channels still show up in the Guide. true? What happens when you try to switch to that channel?


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## aymanme

jrm01 said:


> Just curious: It sounds like you are saying that the SDV channels still show up in the Guide. true? What happens when you try to switch to that channel?


It will give you a gray screen for a while and then tell you "not available". I do not believe the Tivo service knows which channels are unavailable to the current generation of cable cards / hosts. So all the channels still show up in the guide unless you manually take them out.


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## vstone

Interesting visit to TWC in Myrtle Beach, SC yesterday. I was asking for a channel lineup for clear QAM tuners. The CSR said they don't have one and when SDV was activated, these tuners wouldn't get ANY stations anyway. I was happy to hear a CSR admit that she had even heard of SDV, but not too happy with her message (assuming it's true). I would have thought that the basic tier, often called the Broadcast Tier, would remain available. CFR says the basic tier must be unscrambled/unencrypted. I suppose that SDV technically doesn't violate this, which must make the cable folk happy that they can get one past the FCC.


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## MichaelK

vstone said:


> Interesting visit to TWC in Myrtle Beach, SC yesterday. I was asking for a channel lineup for clear QAM tuners. The CSR said they don't have one and when SDV was activated, these tuners wouldn't get ANY stations anyway. I was happy to hear a CSR admit that she had even heard of SDV, but not too happy with her message (assuming it's true). I would have thought that the basic tier, often called the Broadcast Tier, would remain available. CFR says the basic tier must be unscrambled/unencrypted. I suppose that SDV technically doesn't violate this, which must make the cable folk happy that they can get one past the FCC.


I'm voting that's a line cable isn't stupid enough to cross.

doing that surely will get the FCC off it's butt about SDV and force an open standard.

I suspect cable may do everything but the rebroadcast locals in SDV though.

in the scheme of things it does them little harm to leave the big 4 on all the time anyway- on any given primetime a large fraction of the tv's are tuned to those 4 so it would be virtually impossible for a node not to have the big 4 on at any given time. So they only really would be thowing a bone to the second tier broadcasters and besides PBS how many of them are HD? In most markets you could use a couple QAM 256 fot the big 4 and then one QAM256 slot for eveything else.

3 Qam slots for locals and 122 for switched video, vod, ppv, internet and voip on a 750mhz system. Why wake the giant over 3 qam slots? So far the fcc isn't doing a darn thing about it so leave the status quo and throw them the locals in the clear on qam.


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## moyekj

If my cable co. ever goes as far as including all the locals & HD locals in SDV then it will be time to dump them completely and go OTA only since my S3s would be useless with cable anyway. I suspect SDV is coming to my headend sometime this year but don't know the scope yet...


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## TiVoMonkey

moyekj said:


> If my cable co. ever goes as far as including all the locals & HD locals in SDV then it will be time to dump them completely and go OTA only since my S3s would be useless with cable anyway. I suspect SDV is coming to my headend sometime this year but don't know the scope yet...


There is absolutely no reason that cable companies will put locals onto SDV.

SDV is about bandwidth savings. When you have channels that are watched by the majority of all users in a cable system, there is no bandwidth savings for those channels, if the SDV servers are ALWAYS switched to the locals.

The channels will remain unswitched, just as any other popular channel would be. If you watch We and Discovery Science a lot, expect those to be switched. But ABC, NBC, CBS, main HBO? No way.


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## cwoody222

bdraw said:


> *Time Warner Cable*
> Rochester NY
> 
> 
> Ch 534 Boomerang
> Ch 331 Sleuth
> Ch 955 Starz Comedy
> Universal HD
> NY Legislative Channel
> A&E HD
> MTV HD
> Logo
> Family Choice Tier
> Start Over
> Season Sports Packages


Do you have any info about TWC Buffalo?


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## sfhub

TiVoMonkey said:


> There is absolutely no reason that cable companies will put locals onto SDV.
> 
> SDV is about bandwidth savings. When you have channels that are watched by the majority of all users in a cable system, there is no bandwidth savings for those channels, if the SDV servers are ALWAYS switched to the locals.
> 
> The channels will remain unswitched, just as any other popular channel would be. If you watch We and Discovery Science a lot, expect those to be switched. But ABC, NBC, CBS, main HBO? No way.


I wouldn't say there is absolutely no reason. Instead I would say there are reasons why they wouldn't place locals on SDV.


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## vstone

I think MHD & A&EHD are SDV on TWC in Myrtle Beach, SC (which probably means all of TWC in SC) , but I can't confirm that.


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## TiVoMonkey

sfhub said:


> I wouldn't say there is absolutely no reason. Instead I would say there are reasons why they wouldn't place locals on SDV.


And again, I would say absolutely no reason.

It's a waste of resources to switch channels that most of their subscribers watch. If someone out of a particular node is always watching a local channel, then there is no reason to switch that channel.


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## moyekj

TiVoMonkey said:


> And again, I would say absolutely no reason.
> 
> It's a waste of resources to switch channels that most of their subscribers watch. If someone out of a particular node is always watching a local channel, then there is no reason to switch that channel.


 That thinking is the conventional wisdom (and what is led me to my 1st S3 purchase in the 1st place even though I knew all about SDV), however just because something makes sense doesn't necessarily mean that's the way it will be implemented. The SDV motto is go big or don't go at all. Sure if a cable company is just experimenting with SDV it won't happen, but if there is all out deployment of SDV once testing phase is over I wouldn't be too surprised to find a cable headend implementing ALL digital channels on SDV. I say be ready to deal with the worst case scenario when it comes to this issue which leaves a lot of upside if it doesn't materialize into much.


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## sfhub

TiVoMonkey said:


> And again, I would say absolutely no reason.
> 
> It's a waste of resources to switch channels that most of their subscribers watch. If someone out of a particular node is always watching a local channel, then there is no reason to switch that channel.


Umm, keeping in mind bandwidth is the most important resource, what bandwidth are you wasting? At worst, you are break even minus a small amount of overhead.

How do you know a local channel is really always being watched? There are scenarios where a local channel could be static for certain events, but switched otherwise.

Conventional wisdom has it that foreign language tier should be switched. In some areas that might be reversed. In heavily hispanic areas, telemundo, HBO-spanish, etc. could be way more popular than some of the locals. I don't pretend to know what every mix of population in the US tends to watch. Switching everything lets the system sort everything out on its own.

I'm not arguing for switching locals. As I mentioned earlier there are many reasons why it should *not* be switched. I just don't agree there are no reasons why it should be switched.


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## JimSpence

Interesting topic. One question comes to mind. What happens if you request a channel and there isn't a free frequency from the "hub" you're attached to?


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## mfogarty5

Good question Jim.

I have wondered this myself. I heard from a friend of mine here in Charlotte that one time he tried to watch an OnDemand channel, but couldn't because there wasn't any bandwidth available.

I think that the cable companies will start with small SDV implementations so that if there are any bandwidth issues that very few people are affected, but after that initial implementation I think that SDV will be implemented quickly because the more channels that are switched the more valuable it is.

ESPN Classic was recently removed from the analog tier(probably as part of the TWC agreement to get ESPNU and ESPN2 HD) here in Charlotte. My guess is that it was removed to make way for SDV because that one analog channel could support 6 simultaneous SDV channels.


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## sfhub

JimSpence said:


> Interesting topic. One question comes to mind. What happens if you request a channel and there isn't a free frequency from the "hub" you're attached to?


I've heard there is a spike in support calls.

Some implementers are of the opinion you should never be consistently over 80% (or some percentage) of capacity allocated to SDV. Basically just like the phone company doesn't actually have switching capacity to handle every phone call (as evidenced by circuits being down during a natural disaster), but 99% of the time you don't get an all circuits are busy message.


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## BobCamp1

sfhub said:


> Umm, keeping in mind bandwidth is the most important resource, what bandwidth are you wasting? At worst, you are break even minus a small amount of overhead.
> 
> How do you know a local channel is really always being watched? There are scenarios where a local channel could be static for certain events, but switched otherwise.
> 
> Conventional wisdom has it that foreign language tier should be switched. In some areas that might be reversed. In heavily hispanic areas, telemundo, HBO-spanish, etc. could be way more popular than some of the locals. I don't pretend to know what every mix of population in the US tends to watch. Switching everything lets the system sort everything out on its own.
> 
> I'm not arguing for switching locals. As I mentioned earlier there are many reasons why it should *not* be switched. I just don't agree there are no reasons why it should be switched.


I agree. I mean, who is watching PBS? Or that new UPN+WB channel? Or PAX? These would otherwise appear to be prime candidates for SDV, but it's probably less hassle to leave them alone for now. The cable companies don't want to press their luck by entering the gray areas of the law.


----------



## MichaelK

sfhub said:


> I've heard there is a spike in support calls.
> 
> Some implementers are of the opinion you should never be consistently over 80% (or some percentage) of capacity allocated to SDV. Basically just like the phone company doesn't actually have switching capacity to handle every phone call (as evidenced by circuits being down during a natural disaster), but 99% of the time you don't get an all circuits are busy message.


'zactly the bean counters figure out what they need to provide to get a bunch of nine's for reliability.

I suspect it's not so tough to go bulletproof though once you go whole hog though. Figure 125 qam slices on a 750mhz system. Take out the slots for the always on locals and internet and voip and you still probably have like spots for 200 HD channels. (or 1,000+ SD).

I think Ive read a typical switched node has 150 houses. Lets assume 3 tvs per house (made up WAG). 450 tvs per node. IF I understand the ratings- during the most watched time of the day  primetime- when the most possible tvs are on then 25% of the tvs are tuned to the big 4 (which are always one). So that leaves 337 tvs left to be serves by the remaining 200 HD channels. If I understand correctly, HBO, Disney, ESPN and a couple other big gun cable channels peel off another 20% of cable households. So that gets you down to like 270 tvs with 190+ possible pipes. No statistician but Id feel pretty comfy that with the tvs that are off and the fact that each node is likely serving a similar socioeconomic class (with similar tastes probably) that you can easily assure everyone the slice of bandwidth that they need.

Again not a bean counter myself But Id suspect you could easily make 20 channels fixed and then do 180 switched slots and provide an unlimited amount of channels to each node.

And all that assumes 100% HD with SD viewers giving you like 6 times the headroom.


----------



## CharlesH

TiVoMonkey said:


> It's a waste of resources to switch channels that most of their subscribers watch. If someone out of a particular node is always watching a local channel, then there is no reason to switch that channel.


What does it really cost for them to have a channel be switched? If it is effectively always in use, then when someone tunes to that channel, there will be a request from the set-top box to the SDV controller for its node, who will respond with the existing frequency assignment for that channel. Why bother trying to figure out which channels are in use at what time in which nodes; just switch *everything* and let the actual usage pattern sort it out.


----------



## bdraw

Using SDV for popular changes doesn't make any sense, there is a worse case and then there is unplausable. 

Here's a question, if you try to tune to a SDV channel on your S3, that someone else on the same node is currently watching, can you see it? I would suspect no, since the CableCARD doesn't tell the TiVo what QAM channel it is on. The reason I think you might though, is because I've been able to watch VOD and PPV with my PC QAM tuner before.


----------



## bdraw

CharlesH said:


> Why bother trying to figure out which channels are in use at what time in which nodes; just switch *everything* and let the actual usage pattern sort it out.


They bother, cause it's the entire point, to save bandwidth. There was a post on the Official Moto blog about trying to figure out what channels to go SDV with, but it was pulled, here is the text.



> Nielsen ratings measure the most popular television programming. Preparing for switched digital video (SDV) requires exactly the opposite. No cable operator is going to move content to a switched system that is never going to be switched off. The best channels for SDV are the ones at the tail end of the popularity curve.
> 
> This has two major implications. First, cable operators need a very accurate system for measuring which channels will give them the most bandwidth return when moved to a switched network. I was on a call last week where Motorolas Bill Bradley described the monitoring technology that Motorola uses with operators. Its wild. The software actually shows a running feed of which channels consumers tune to in any given service group. (Ill post a screen shot when I have one.) Operators run the software to determine which channels to switch initially, but also continue running the software so they can make changes dynamically based on subscriber viewing habits.
> 
> Second, the current kerfuffle going on about whether consumers with retail CableCARD devices will be able to access SDV channels seems to deflate a bit in light of what will actually be available in switched form.


http://connectedhome2go.com/2007/07...rt-1-choosing-your-switched-digital-channels/


----------



## moyekj

bdraw said:


> Using SDV for popular changes doesn't make any sense, there is a worse case and then there is unplausable.
> 
> Here's a question, if you try to tune to a SDV channel on your S3, that someone else on the same node is currently watching, can you see it? I would suspect no, since the CableCARD doesn't tell the TiVo what QAM channel it is on. The reason I think you might though, is because I've been able to watch VOD and PPV with my PC QAM tuner before.


 Currently with CableCards my S3 actually has 80 VOD channels assigned (VOD1->VOD80 and distributed over 8 256 QAMs). At any point in time I can channel up and down to find currently active channels. There is no discernable pattern to the assigned channels, they are spread out across the entire range. However, the only reason I can see them is the VOD channels are unencrypted. I would imagine that most channels on SDV would have encryption and therefore even if I knew which frequency (or frequency range) to check it wouldn't do me much good, not to mention the fact that it can skip to a different frequency at any moment anyway just as happens with VOD channels.


----------



## bdraw

cwoody222 said:


> Do you have any info about TWC Buffalo?


Nope, sorry, if you can get it, I'll update the post.


----------



## sfhub

bdraw said:



> Why bother trying to figure out which channels are in use at what time in which nodes; just switch everything and let the actual usage pattern sort it out.





bdraw said:


> They bother, cause it's the entire point, to save bandwidth. There was a post on the Official Moto blog about trying to figure out what channels to go SDV with, but it was pulled, here is the text.


Doesn't switching everything and allowing the system to sort itself out at worse use the the *same* bandwidth (minus some small switching overhead) as having a mix of static/switched channels? They do need to make sure they have enough unused SDV capacity to handle peaks, so total SDV bandwidth usage should not be above some number, let's say 80% of total SDV bandwidth allocation.

I'm not seeing why bandwidth would be the reason a cable company decided not to switch everything. Could someone explain this, since it appears multiple people have this opinion.

On the other hand, I could understand keeping UDCP CableCARD users happy being a reason not to switch popular channels.

In the TW Austin article in your first post, there were 2 examples given
http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6454447.html
1) deploying a popular channel on SDV could end up eating up all your SDV bandwidth
This seems just like a configuration issue. If you have room for 20 channels on SDV and decide to move a potentially popular channel to SDV, you should allocate room just freed up from the static channel into your SDV pool, so that it now has capacity for 21 channels. It seemed the TW Austin moved a popular channel to SDV but instead of expanding SDV capacity, they left it the same.

2) popular PPV channels on SDV
It seemed the problem they were describing was a problem with the SDV client updates not being distributed to all their customers causing a flood of support when the event occurred. This seems like a short term deployment issue, rather than a long term reason why all channels wouldn't be on SDV.

Again, I'm *not* arguing to have all channels on SDV. I'm trying to understand why it makes absolutely no sense as some folks are asserting. I can see pros and cons of doing that, while others are saying there are only cons.


----------



## kjmcdonald

sfhub said:


> Umm, keeping in mind bandwidth is the most important resource, what bandwidth are you wasting? At worst, you are break even minus a small amount of overhead.
> 
> How do you know a local channel is really always being watched? There are scenarios where a local channel could be static for certain events, but switched otherwise.
> 
> Conventional wisdom has it that foreign language tier should be switched. In some areas that might be reversed. In heavily hispanic areas, telemundo, HBO-spanish, etc. could be way more popular than some of the locals. I don't pretend to know what every mix of population in the US tends to watch. Switching everything lets the system sort everything out on its own.
> 
> I'm not arguing for switching locals. As I mentioned earlier there are many reasons why it should *not* be switched. I just don't agree there are no reasons why it should be switched.


Another Reason for Locals to be SDV'd... Reducing bandwidth isn't the only benefit.
One of the biggest vendors of SDV equipment is my ex-employer BigBand Networks Inc, they're also one of the leaders for doing what they call individually addressed advertising... This means that instead of sending differnet ads only to different neighborhoods (Optical Node) the cable companies would be able to sell and target advertising on a home by home basis, and according to demographics for each account. Cable Companies know that this is something that advertisers will pay much more money for, and so they will want this ability on the channels watched most often...(The locals) It's the SDV infrastructure that makes this possible.

Extrapolating, BigBand would love it if the MSO's had only SDV and DOCSIS data traffic on thier networks.

-Kyle


----------



## bdraw

Dividing up QAM channels for programming isn't always easy, different channels have different bandwidth requirements. A football game in 1080i requires more bits than a movie in 1080i. SDV isn't IPTV, each QAM channel can hold 38Mbps so if they put 3 channels on it, 2 that use 15Mbps and 1 SD that uses 4Mbps, they are wasting the other 4. Sure it might be possible to dynamically splice it up on the fly, with a sort of SUPER-statistical-multiplexing, but ultimately it adds a layer of complexity that just isn't there right now and while anything is possible, at this point no one is talking about trying to do that. 

At this point the cable companies want to figure out how to please more people most of the time. So with SDV, they can add lesser watched programming (like HD channels unfortunately) without dedicating 100% of the normal bandwidth required 100% of the time.


----------



## aymanme

One of the reasons not to switch locals and other popular channels is that it defeats the purpose. These are amongst the most watched channels so they are always going to be consuming space in the SDV pool. The idea is to have the SDV pool able to accomodate all of the less popular, not "always on" channels (PPV, etc) are good candidates as are the premium tiers like foreign channels, etc.

Second to answer the question about running out of space. It is possible that the SDV space is fully allocated and then the next person is just out of luck. However, the way it is supposed to work is that the headend is monitored and if the usage inches too far north of some high water mark, then they will either do a node split or reconfigure the channels for that group (i.e assign some to a single channel rather than 2 adjacent, bandwidth shape, etc.


----------



## HiDefGator

aymanme said:


> One of the reasons not to switch locals and other popular channels is that it defeats the purpose. These are amongst the most watched channels so they are always going to be consuming space in the SDV pool. The idea is to have the SDV pool able to accomodate all of the less popular, not "always on" channels (PPV, etc) are good candidates as are the premium tiers like foreign channels, etc.
> 
> Second to answer the question about running out of space. It is possible that the SDV space is fully allocated and then the next person is just out of luck. However, the way it is supposed to work is that the headend is monitored and if the usage inches too far north of some high water mark, then they will either do a node split or reconfigure the channels for that group (i.e assign some to a single channel rather than 2 adjacent, bandwidth shape, etc.


You are assuming

1. They know which channels would always be in use by someone in every neighborhood. Keep in mind each neighborhood may have different types of homeowners so the list would vary from node to node.

2. The cost of addiitonal SDV channels is significant.

I believe both of those asumptions are wrong. If they can put in 200 SDV channels for the same price as 175, then it makes more sense to switch everything and let it keep some channels stay locked in if need be. This strategy doesn't use any more bandwidth than not SDV'ing the channels you believe to be always on. And in most cases it will free up more bandwidth.


----------



## bdraw

HiDefGator said:


> You are assuming
> 
> I believe both of those asumptions are wrong. If they can put in 200 SDV channels for the same price as 175, then it makes more sense to switch everything and let it keep some channels stay locked in if need be. This strategy doesn't use any more bandwidth than not SDV'ing the channels you believe to be always on. And in most cases it will free up more bandwidth.


If they really wanted to do this, then why would they lie to the media and tell us that they only want to use SDV for less popular channels?

You're pretending they have one big pool for 200 channels, but that isn't how it's divided up. On a 900Mhz system, there are 150 38Mbps (QAM channels) not including overhead. They have to figure out which channels to put on each QAM channel, based on the bandwidth requirements of each channel, it isn't a simple one to one relationship, there's alot of planning required to efficiently use all the bandwidth. Why would they bother to engineer such a system when 80% of the channels would be sent 100% of the time, with no net gain?


----------



## Combat Medic

bdraw said:


> If they really wanted to do this, then why would they lie to the media and tell us that they only want to use SDV for less popular channels?
> 
> You're pretending they have one big pool for 200 channels, but that isn't how it's divided up. On a 900Mhz system, there are 150 38Mbps (QAM channels) not including overhead. They have to figure out which channels to put on each QAM channel, based on the bandwidth requirements of each channel, it isn't a simple one to one relationship, there's alot of planning required to efficiently use all the bandwidth. Why would they bother to engineer such a system when 80% of the channels would be sent 100% of the time, with no net gain?


How can there be that much planning? It isn't some guy with a slide rule trying to figure out how to get all of the channels to fit, its a computer program that does it all in less then a second.


----------



## sfhub

bdraw said:


> Dividing up QAM channels for programming isn't always easy, different channels have different bandwidth requirements. A football game in 1080i requires more bits than a movie in 1080i. SDV isn't IPTV, each QAM channel can hold 38Mbps so if they put 3 channels on it, 2 that use 15Mbps and 1 SD that uses 4Mbps, they are wasting the other 4. Sure it might be possible to dynamically splice it up on the fly, with a sort of SUPER-statistical-multiplexing, but ultimately it adds a layer of complexity that just isn't there right now and while anything is possible, at this point no one is talking about trying to do that.


My question regarding this is how is this issue any different between static channels and SDV channels? Let's say NBC sometimes broadcasts movies and sometimes sports. In a static allocation, you need to allocate enough bandwidth for the worst case NBC sports broadcast, otherwise you won't have enough. Now when NBC broadcasts movies, that extra bandwidth is permanently lost to the system.

BTW what you are describing is the classic fragmentation issue for hard disk filesystems.

As a first approximation, they could completely avoid fragmentation simply by doing what many operators are doing today with their static systems, namely having separate pools for HD SDV and SD SDV. HD pools gets assigned 2 channels per QAM256. SD pools get assigned 8 channels per QAM256. Since each channel is given the same constant bandwidth, there is no fragmentation.


----------



## ah30k

bdraw said:


> If they really wanted to do this, then why would they lie to the media and tell us that they only want to use SDV for less popular channels?


Where did you see this statement that they only want to switch less popular channels?


----------



## HiDefGator

bdraw said:


> Why would they bother to engineer such a system when 80% of the channels would be sent 100% of the time, with no net gain?


Once again I believe your assumption is wrong. 80% of the channels are not always on in a given neighborhood. There is no channel that will "always" be on. It may only be not requested for a few minutes a day or even a few minutes a week. But during those few minuites they can not deliver it if it is switched.


----------



## bdraw

ah30k said:


> Where did you see this statement that they only want to switch less popular channels?


Here is a link from the first post.
http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6454447.html



> Todd Bowen, director of digital systems for Time Warner Cables Austin, Texas, division, delivered a key piece of wisdom for those deploying switched digital video: Be sure to get the right channels in the mix.
> 
> The most important decision youre going to make is which channels to switch, Bowen said. If you dont pick the right channels, its going to bite you.
> 
> Thats because if those channels are too popular -- that is, if theyre being watched by someone virtually all of the time -- those will potentially eat up all of the space set aside for the SDV pool, defeating the whole purpose of the technology.


Obviously anything can change, but lets not pretend they don't have a plan and they aren't going to try it. At this point, there is no reason to be a chicken little.


----------



## bdraw

Combat Medic said:


> How can there be that much planning? It isn't some guy with a slide rule trying to figure out how to get all of the channels to fit, its a computer program that does it all in less then a second.


By planning I mean, to engineer the software that could do it in less than a second. I assume it would take a pretty complex data warehouse application that can accurately and efficiently analyze the real time requirements of hundreds of channels and switch them.


----------



## vstone

BobCamp1 said:


> I agree. I mean, who is watching PBS? Or that new UPN+WB channel? Or PAX? These would otherwise appear to be prime candidates for SDV, but it's probably less hassle to leave them alone for now. The cable companies don't want to press their luck by entering the gray areas of the law.


I watch PBS. Plus, the FCC may require them to be in an unswitched basic tier along with CW (UPN + WB) and Pax (which is now I or something).

Unrelated to the above: Viewing patterns now change in the summer: major networks largely in reruns, A&E, FX, TNT, TBS, Food Network, etc. showing new shows to take advantage of reruns.


----------



## vstone

CharlesH said:


> What does it really cost for them to have a channel be switched? If it is effectively always in use, then when someone tunes to that channel, there will be a request from the set-top box to the SDV controller for its node, who will respond with the existing frequency assignment for that channel. Why bother trying to figure out which channels are in use at what time in which nodes; just switch *everything* and let the actual usage pattern sort it out.


Without knowing anything about the equipment, its possible that switching or unswitching a particular channel may cost the same. I think it's unlikely, but possible.


----------



## vstone

bdraw said:


> If they really wanted to do this, then why would they lie to the media and tell us that they only want to use SDV for less popular channels?
> ...


So we don't squawk about SDV until its too late.

"why would they lie to the media" - wouldn't be the first time!

How much attention do you think non-cable media or even the FCC and Congress are paying to this? Do you think anyone in the local franchise authority(usually city/county govrenement) is even considering this?


----------



## snowbunny

Please note that many of the upper-tier digital channels are mapped onto their analog counterparts. This results in watching an inferior analog channel and defeats the purpose of having a digital TV.

The rest are truly switched digital channels with no existing analog channel to map onto; you simply cannot receive these channels.

I hope this list is long enough to motivate those of you in Time Warner markets to protest NOW over the increased use of SDV in your Area.

Time Warner Austin-area SDV use:

24 / 270	QVC	(digital channel mapped onto analog)
25 / 273	HSN 
27 / 215	Oxygen 
28 / 213	WE 
29 / 217	Soap 
30 / 545	E! 
33 / 258	Travel 
36 / 234	Animal Planet 
37 / 160	ABC Family 
38 / 170	ION 
39 / 180	Hallmark 
40 / 520	TVLand 
41 / 120	Nickelodeon 
42 / 101	Disney East RTE 
43 / 110	Cartoon Network 
44 / 355	News 8 Doppler Radar 
55 / 450	Golf 
57 / 540	CourtTV 
64 / 555	Turner Classic Movies 
70 / 590	CMT 
72 / 570	MTV 
73 / 585	BET 
74 / 219	Style 
75 / 623	Telemundo 
76 / 622	Galavision 
77	TWC77	(the following are all switched video channels with no analog backup) 
78	Infor 
102	Disney West RTE 
111	Boomerang 
125	Nick Toons 
261	LOGO 
274	TV Superstore 
275	Shop NBC 
277	Revenue Frontier 
278	Men's Channel 
279	Healthy Living 
281	Beauty and Fashion 
284	iShop 
285	The Mall Channel 
286	Resort and Residence 
287	PREVU Channel 
295	The Word Network 
348	News 8 Traffic 
358	News 8 Weather 
359 / 609	News 8 Weather Spanish 
408	News 8 NonStop Sports 
527	FoxReality 
431	Fox Sports Atlantic	
432	Fox Sports Central 
433	Fox Sports Pacific 
434	Fuel 
435	NBA TV 
438	CSTV 
455	Tennis Channel 
460	Speedvision 
490	Outdoor Channel 
601	CNN Espanol
602	Canal 24 
604	DocuTVE 
606	CanalSur 
609 / 359	News 8 Weather Spanish 
611	Toon Disney Spanish 
612	Cartoon Spanish 
613	Boomerang Spanish 
614	Sorpresa 
617	Fox Sports SW Espanol 
626	TVE International 
629	La Familia 
630	SiTV 
632	Infinito 
633	HTV 
634	Video Rola 
635	Puma 
636	MUN 2 
637	MTV Tres 
640	CineLatino 
644	Discovery Espanol 
645	HITN 
649	EWTN Spanish 
708	HBO WEST	
709	HBOPLUS WEST 
710	HBOSIG WEST 
711	HBFAMILY WEST 
712	HBCOMEDY WEST 
713	HBOZONE WEST 
714	HBLATINO WEST 
723	CINEMAX WEST	
724	MORMAX WEST 
725	ACTNMAX WEST 
726	THRILMAX WEST 
738	SHOW WEST	
739	SHO TOO WEST 
740	SHOWCASE WEST 
741	SHOW EXT WEST 
742	BEYOND WEST 
743	SHOW NEXT-W 
744	WOMEN WEST 
745	SHOW FAMILY WEST 
748	TMC WEST	
749	TMC XTRA WEST 
761	Encore West	
901	Sport PPV-1 
902	Sports PPV-2 
903	Sports PPV-3 
904	Sports PPV-4 
905	Sports PPV-5 
906	Sports PPV-6 
910	NBA	
911	TEAM1 
912	TEAM2 
913	TEAM3 
914	TEAM4 
915	TEAM5 
916	TEAM6 
917	TEAM7 
918	TEAM8 
919	TEAM9 
930	Game 1	(hockey, baseball etc)	
931	Game 2 
932	Game 3 
933	Game 4 
934	Game 5 
935	Game 6 
936	Game 7 
937	Game 8 
938	Game 9 
939	Game 10 
940	Playboy Enhanced
941	Ten
942	TenBlox 
943	Ten Clips 
952	IND 2 
1639	Fox Sports HD
1660	A&E HD 
1664	Music HD 
1675	Cinemax HD	
1684	Starz HD


----------



## cwoody222

Wow, that's a lot.

I totally understand the business reasons behind this. Reading the lists and understanding that a lot of the stations using SDV are "niche" stations brings up an interesting point... are minority groups going to resent being "forced" to buy/rent different equipment to have full access to stations that cater to them?

Sure, it'd be a weak argument because there are plenty of "majority interest" stations like NBC TV and Men's Channel (whatever that is) but I can see the argument being made.

Right now I don't know what stations use SDV in my area but with an S3, I'd be upset if I couldn't view LOGO. Of course as a gay man I couldn't really complain if Playboy Enhanced was also on SDV... TWC is screwing both the homos and the heteros!


----------



## bdraw

Wow, that is alot of channels, those are confirmed huh?

I sure hope you filed a complaint with the FCC.


----------



## jrm01

vstone said:


> So we don't squawk about SDV until its too late.
> 
> "why would they lie to the media" - wouldn't be the first time!
> 
> How much attention do you think non-cable media or even the FCC and Congress are paying to this? Do you think anyone in the local franchise authority(usually city/county govrenement) is even considering this?


My franchise authority is considering this because I met with the head and brought it to his attention. I then composed a letter for him to write to Comcast with this (and 10 other concerns). We got a non-commital letter back indicating only that they are considering all options and will notify the public when they are going to make any changes. Their franchise agreement is up for renewal next year and I have requested being on the negotiating committee for the authority.


----------



## snowbunny

cwoody222 said:


> Right now I don't know what stations use SDV in my area but with an S3, I'd be upset if I couldn't view LOGO. Of course as a gay man I couldn't really complain if Playboy Enhanced was also on SDV... TWC is screwing both the homos and the heteros!


Well, the Playboy Unenhanced is apparently not on SDV. I suppose it features those who haven't had plastic surgery? 

I fully intend to complain to the FCC as well as the City Council. TWC's franchise agreement is a bit more restrictive than most although they have left the 20-odd channels they have to provide to the City and County and other local groups, off the SDV list.


----------



## bdraw

I updated the first post and while that is certainly alot of channels, the only ones I would even care a little about is.

1639 Fox Sports HD
1660 A&E HD
1664 Music HD 

And at this point, there hasn't been anything on any of these that I would watch.


----------



## mike_camden

jrm01 said:


> My franchise authority is considering this because I met with the head and brought it to his attention. I then composed a letter for him to write to Comcast with this (and 10 other concerns). We got a non-commital letter back indicating only that they are considering all options and will notify the public when they are going to make any changes. Their franchise agreement is up for renewal next year and I have requested being on the negotiating committee for the authority.


Interesting. I believe that your franchise authority is somehow tied into ours (we're in Wheeling, WV, but we're considered part of Comcast Pittsburgh). Im very interested in knowing how this turns out.


----------



## vstone

bdraw said:


> I updated the first post and while that is certainly alot of channels, the only ones I would even care a little about is.
> 
> 1639 Fox Sports HD
> 1660 A&E HD
> 1664 Music HD
> 
> And at this point, there hasn't been anything on any of these that I would watch.


Not sure of your musical tastes, but there might be some decent stuff on Music HD. I'm not much into Country Music, byt the CMT show Crossroads is also shown on MHD. I saw Vince Gill & Alison Krauss, Bruce hornsby & Ricky Scaggs, Lionel Richie & Kenny Rogers. You might some decent stuff in there.


----------



## MickeS

bdraw said:


> I updated the first post and while that is certainly alot of channels, the only ones I would even care a little about is.
> 
> 1639 Fox Sports HD
> 1660 A&E HD
> 1664 Music HD
> 
> And at this point, there hasn't been anything on any of these that I would watch.


The link to http://www.tivolovers.com/2007/05/1...-to-washington/ still doesn't work in your copy of GoHokies post, since you just copied the text (that doesn't copy the actual URL), so you need to edit that URL to make it work.

http://www.tivolovers.com/2007/05/10/mr-tivo-goes-to-washington


----------



## bdraw

MickeS said:


> The link to http://www.tivolovers.com/2007/05/1...-to-washington/ still doesn't work in your copy of GoHokies post, since you just copied the text (that doesn't copy the actual URL), so you need to edit that URL to make it work.
> 
> http://www.tivolovers.com/2007/05/10/mr-tivo-goes-to-washington


Doh!


----------



## bdraw

vstone said:


> Not sure of your musical tastes, but there might be some decent stuff on Music HD. I'm not much into Country Music, byt the CMT show Crossroads is also shown on MHD. I saw Vince Gill & Alison Krauss, Bruce hornsby & Ricky Scaggs, Lionel Richie & Kenny Rogers. You might some decent stuff in there.


Actually I have enjoyed a few shows on there, but nothing I'd really miss if I didn't have it.


----------



## ah30k

bdraw said:


> Here is a link from the first post.
> http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6454447.html
> 
> Obviously anything can change, but lets not pretend they don't have a plan and they aren't going to try it. At this point, there is no reason to be a chicken little.


Not switching too popular is not the same as only switching unpopular. There us a huge middle ground.


----------



## aymanme

HiDefGator said:


> You are assuming
> 
> 1. They know which channels would always be in use by someone in every neighborhood. Keep in mind each neighborhood may have different types of homeowners so the list would vary from node to node.
> 
> 2. The cost of addiitonal SDV channels is significant.
> 
> I believe both of those asumptions are wrong. If they can put in 200 SDV channels for the same price as 175, then it makes more sense to switch everything and let it keep some channels stay locked in if need be. This strategy doesn't use any more bandwidth than not SDV'ing the channels you believe to be always on. And in most cases it will free up more bandwidth.


I concur that they could switch everything, but they still have to support and not alienate the more than 1/2 still analog households. Here many of the analog channels are also switched so there is some additional bandwidth cost to support both.

I never made a statement regarding #1. And in general the CC does know which channels are most popular (otherwise ESPN wouldn't charge the high per-subscriber rates they do).

There is no reason they cannot switch everyhing. However, SDV's value proposition is that a CC can use their existing infrastructure to support the analog units while reducing the BW needed for their digital tier. At the same time, the BW recouped can be used for digital phone, cable modem, etc. For them not having to upgrade the equip in the houses is a big deal.

Of course when everything is digital or a box is required for cable then you can switch everything.


----------



## sfhub

aymanme said:


> I concur that they could switch everything, but they still have to support and not alienate the more than 1/2 still analog households. Here many of the analog channels are also switched so there is some additional bandwidth cost to support both.
> ...
> There is no reason they cannot switch everyhing. However, SDV's value proposition is that a CC can use their existing infrastructure to support the analog units while reducing the BW needed for their digital tier. At the same time, the BW recouped can be used for digital phone, cable modem, etc. For them not having to upgrade the equip in the houses is a big deal.


We are talking about 2 different things.

When folks are talking about switching "everything", they are talking about pros and cons of switching every existing "digital" channel.

It is a complete separate discussion whether analog should be scrapped in favor of static or switched digital, which is what you are bringing up. At least that is what I think you are bringing up because that is the only way any of this could possibly alienate an analog user, which is your comment.


----------



## bdraw

We also should pretend like they wont turn off all the analog channels, Comcast has already announced just this in Chicago. 

As for switching everything, the big 5 networks won't be switched, the FCC won't even let them encrypt these channels, never the less convert them to SDV. Then there is the assumption that all the STBs in use are even capable of SDV.


----------



## LoREvanescence

So, if 80 plus percent off all channels go to SDV and are unable to be tuned in via CableCards devices and Tivo where does that leave us? I thought the whole point of the cable card was to make available all channels minus vod / paper view to third party devices with out the need of a cable box? Doesn't this fly in the face of what the FCC ruled?

I just spent a lot of money on a Series 3 and I would not be very happy if in a couple of months I can get only a hand full of networks, and those networks being locals which are available with out a cable card and mapping by just plugging into the cable system.


Where does that leave us Tivo users if were were to be shut out? Is there anything we can do to put up a fight or get a work aroung to get are third party devices compadible?


----------



## cwoody222

There is no way that in "a couple of months" you will only get a "handful of networks".

Calm down.

Will the S3 work with SDV? No. Does SDV suck? Yes. Will Cable companies continue to explore it? Yes.

Will any of this happen quickly? No.


----------



## bdraw

Yes, if it happens and if there is no workaround, then yes we are left holding the bag, personally I don't think it'll come to that. 

But just to make sure, I filled a complaint with the FCC because I am not able to watch a SDV channel with my Series3. TiVo has also submitted comments to the FCC, and I believe the FCC will require CableLabs to certify two-way devices without the OCAP requirement, but maybe it's just wishful thinking. Either way, in the meantime I will enjoy my Series3.


----------



## LoREvanescence

This is rather interesting. I didn't know a CableCard 1.0 was capable of two way communication. If they are, is there anyway tivo could be updated to accept SDV?



> CableCARD 1.0
> The early cable removable security cards were called Point-of-Deployment (POD) modules. CableLabs later coined the term CableCARD and began describing the removable security devices as CableCARD security modules. The SCTE standards (ANSI/SCTE-28 and ANSI/SCTE-41) still use the term POD module. These are two names for the same thing.
> 
> From the very early specifications and draft standards, the CableCARD module has been a two-way device. That is, it included the functionality to enable two-way communication on the cable plant. This two-way communication is necessary for a variety of advanced cable services including video on demand (VOD), switched digital video (SDV), interactive services and applications.
> 
> The media has frequently reported that first-generation CableCARD 1.0 modules are one-way devices1. This is simply not true. CableLabs had always intended to develop the CableCARD module and host receiver standards with two-way capability. However the manufacturers of digital TVs requested that a host standard be developed that only had one-way capability. This one-way cable-ready receiver was defined by the FCC's Plug & Play order and by the Joint Test Suite (JTS). It is the definition of this one-way receiver that lacks the ability for two-way functionality, not the CableCARD module. While the FCC defined the elements of the one-way cable-ready receiver, CableLabs continued to define specifications for two-way receivers.
> 
> When a CableCARD 1.0 module is used with a two-way receiver (e.g., Samsung HLR5067C) that card supports all the necessary two-way functionality for VOD, SDV, and other interactive services.


http://www.opencable.com/primer/cablecard_primer.html


----------



## sfhub

bdraw said:


> We also should pretend like they wont turn off all the analog channels, Comcast has already announced just this in Chicago.
> 
> As for switching everything, the big 5 networks won't be switched, the FCC won't even let them encrypt these channels, never the less convert them to SDV. Then there is the assumption that all the STBs in use are even capable of SDV.


For Comcast, I think it is a safe assumption that limited basic will have analog versions for a longer period of time but extended basic analog could be dropped in favor of the digital versions earlier. This could potentially relieve some pressure to go to SDV by making more bandwidth available to the operator. The FCC did however dangle waivers from the July 1st CC deadline if an operator had gone all digital, so I depending on how the political winds blow, they could be friend or foe for folks who want or expect analog or partial analog to stay longer.

I think it is reasonable to believe the FCC at some point would step in and prevent SDV of the big 5 networks (and the networks themselves could protest via their contract renewal terms)

That is however slightly different than some of the earlier discussion which centered on whether there were absolutely no reasons why a cable company might want to put the locals on SDV (which included more than the big 5) and instead focuses on whether the cable company would be prevented from doing so. Whether you are for or against SDV of all digital channels, I think it is a good idea to understand all the pros and cons from different perspectives and come up with counter arguments to support your position, and that information is hopefully what we would eventually end up with on this thread. It is not about chicken little, at least not from my perspective.

I think it is a safe assumption that any STB that is capable of VOD is capable of SDV via minor firmware update. The mechanisms are very similar.


----------



## bdraw

Comcast in Chicago is already turning off analog for everything except local broadcast channels.

http://www.engadgethd.com/2007/04/07/comcast-begins-digital-transition-in-chicago/

I would go on to wager that after the analog shutoff these channels will be moved to all digital as well.


----------



## HDTiVo

The FCC Chairman's current proposal is for dual must carry, but relief from that for systems that go all digital.

The FCC appears interested in pushing all digital, contemplating future two way CC devices, but talks little about legacy one way CC devices.


----------



## sfhub

LoREvanescence said:


> This is rather interesting. I didn't know a CableCard 1.0 was capable of two way communication. If they are, is there anyway tivo could be updated to accept SDV?


There are 2 modes of operation for 2-way CableCARD.

One is OOB mode. In this mode, the 2-way functionality is split between the CableCARD and the Host device. The logical full-duplex modem is a function of the CableCARD (ie it processes, demultiplexes, multiplexes, and distributes all the messages) but it requires a special channel to circuitry on the host that handles RF processing and QPSK modulation/demodulation. If that low-level circuitry does not exist on the Host device, the CableCARD will not be able to provide 2-way services in this mode.

2nd is DSG (Docsis Set-Top Gateway) mode. Here the Host device provides the complete high speed modem implementation and is responsible for the full communications. Any "2-way" information from the CableCARD will travel across the HOST/POD interface.

People have said the TiVo S3 host device does not include the support mechanisms needed on the host device to support either of these methods. People have also theorized that a Docsis modem could added via USB and the TiVo software configured to present it in DSG mode to the CableCARD. People have also theorized that another mode of operation might be created to address SDV where the DSG mechanism is replaced with an IP tunnel through the ethernet port.


----------



## Saxion

Yeah, what sfhub said. 

The simplest answer is that no it's not possible for the S3 to become a 2-way device; it lacks the hardware and the licensing. There is the possibility of some sort of workaround for SDV only...the NCTA and TiVo have hinted to Congress that they are trying to come up with a fix for this. No guarantees of course.


----------



## jlib

Here is how I look at the bandwidth and SDV issue. I pretty much get all the HD content I could want (with the one possible exception of no ABC) from my local Comcast now. Getting rid of analog will allow a 200% increase in available digital bandwidth. If Comcast applied that extra bandwidth to SDV while keeping their current lineup as is they could keep me happy as a cable card user and still offer the dozens of new HD stations they seem to want in the future. 

They do not make any money from the analog only customers anyway. The profit they make from me and other full-boat subscribers like me would more than pay for the set top boxes needed for all the little old ladies with old TVs they might be required to support on lifeline service. They should just accelerate the demise of analog and the bandwidth issue becomes less important.


----------



## SugarBowl

jlib said:


> Here is how I look at the bandwidth and SDV issue. I pretty much get all the HD content I could want (with the one possible exception of no ABC) from my local Comcast now. Getting rid of analog will allow a 200% increase in available digital bandwidth. If Comcast applied that extra bandwidth to SDV while keeping their current lineup as is they could keep me happy as a cable card user and still offer the dozens of new HD stations they seem to want in the future.
> 
> They do not make any money from the analog only customers anyway. The profit they make from me and other full-boat subscribers like me would more than pay for the set top boxes needed for all the little old ladies with old TVs they might be required to support on lifeline service. They should just accelerate the demise of analog and the bandwidth issue becomes less important.


But of course your monthly rate would go up every year as they added these new channels that you can't watch.

They'll probably even raise the cablecard rental rate.


----------



## VinceA

I didn't see it mentioned here but Cablevision in the NYC metro area has been using SDV on their systems. Right now it's limited to bringing the international channels to users but their looking at it as the best use of the bandwidth . So, I'm hoping that TiVo comes up with something before something I want gets relegated to the SDV 'shadow zone'.


----------



## FoxFireX

If you guys are still looking to keep the list of affected channels and areas updated, chow down on this for Time Warner Cable, San Antonio, TX:

http://www.timewarnercable.com/SanAntonio/Products/Cable/cablecard/notwithcablecard.html

I talked to a customer service guy who actually knew a lot about the whole SDV setup, and he told me that 125 (ESPN2 HD) was also switched, and therefore unavailable. He actually thought that the S3 might support the v2.0 CCs that have quietly entered their hardware stream, but it looks like that was wrong (at least as far as working with SDV goes). Here's hoping there's a solution to be had somewhere.


----------



## bdraw

Thanks FoxFireX,
It looks like Time Warner/Bright House Networks (loosely affiliated) are the SDV leaders and Texas is the worst.


----------



## HDTiVo

VinceA said:


> I didn't see it mentioned here but Cablevision in the NYC metro area has been using SDV on their systems. Right now it's limited to bringing the international channels to users but their looking at it as the best use of the bandwidth . So, I'm hoping that TiVo comes up with something before something I want gets relegated to the SDV 'shadow zone'.


Are they not using SDV for all those Voom(?) HD channels they are adding?


----------



## DCIFRTHS

HDTiVo said:


> Are they not using SDV for all those Voom(?) HD channels they are adding?


No. They are not.


----------



## VinceA

Thank God for that. I was happy when I saw Wilt mention that on the CV mailing list. I'm looking forward to seeing Monsters HD when I finally get some sort of HD DVR.


----------



## DCIFRTHS

VinceA said:


> Thank God for that. I was happy when I saw Wilt mention that on the CV mailing list. I'm looking forward to seeing Monsters HD when I finally get some sort of HD DVR.


Monsters HD is pretty good...

Are you referring to the Yahoo! CV mailing list?


----------



## VinceA

Yes, that's the mailing list I'm referencing.


----------



## megazone

MickeS said:


> The link to http://www.tivolovers.com/2007/05/1...-to-washington/ still doesn't work in your copy of GoHokies post, since you just copied the text (that doesn't copy the actual URL), so you need to edit that URL to make it work.
> 
> http://www.tivolovers.com/2007/05/10/mr-tivo-goes-to-washington


After a few days of getting the 404 errors reported to me I just put a redirect in my .htaccess file to make the bad URL work so I wouldn't see the errors in my reports. ;-)

Oh, and this may be of interest.


----------



## HDTiVo

megazone said:


> Oh, and this may be of interest.


Yes, good stuff.

But, its really just NCTA saying hey look Tom Rogers said this and everything is ok because we are working on it. It doesn't add anything, but maybe gives a little more credence to Rogers' comment being realistic.

The OCAP stuff is just cable saying hey look ... everyone is making OCAP devices. Everything is A ok. Everyone is happy. Which isn't so.


----------



## JoeSchueller

So honestly, you're a consumer that does most of his/her HD recording/viewing on the big 4, ESPNHD, HBOHD, and kids' channels. You long for the TiVo interface over the SA8300HD box TWC makes you live with. VOD and one-click PPV aren't things you need/desire.

With all due respect to those who plunked down the $800 for a S3, should you be worried about dropping $300 + $300 for 3 years of service on a TiVo HD? If you're a TWC customer, do you forsee HD channels being moved to SDV? Is it reckless to dive in to this right now or is 3 years a reasonable window to see how things play out?


----------



## TexasGrillChef

So let me ask this question then.

If lets say a cable company has 10 channels to offer. but bandwidth for only 5 channels so that all 10 channels are "Switched". So that they only broadcast teh 5 channels that are in "demand" and being watched.

What happens, if lets say I had 10 STB's &/or DVR's and each STB/DVR was swtiched to a different channel. So that all 10 of my units were watching each & everyone of the 10 stations. Or at least wanting too.

First Question: 
WHAT WOULD HAPPEN? Would 5 of the STB/DVR's not get the channel they wanted?

So now in REAL life... lets say our cable company decided to SDB 6 of the available channels they had. Lets also say I have 6 TVs with STB/DVR's (Currently I have 4, so adding 2 more isn't a far streatch for me)

So If I then had each of my STB's swtiched to all of the 6 channels that are SDV, what would happen? Whats the LEGAL repsonsibility from the cable company to provide me with that signal?

TexasGrillChef


----------



## bdraw

The problem with your question is that they can fit more than 10, it's more like hundreds. So the odds of them running out of channels is much less. But if they did run out of channels they'd probably stop offering VOD. 

It's easier to tell someone they can't buy something right now, than to deny them something their already entitled to.


----------



## TexasGrillChef

Ok.. so what if I bought 100 STB's or got 100STBS and put one on each channel? Then what?

Or.. I got a colition of everyone in my neighborhood. to get one STB/DVR each (their are 185 of us) and we all put t on 185 different channels that have are all SDV's

What would happen? Would some people not get channels? Would that force them to stop offering some channels?

What I am trying to ask is what happens on the cable side if every single channel they offere is being requested by their "Customers" to view? Especially if they are in the same neighborhood?

Understand my question now? If every single channel that was being SDV was requsted and wanted to be viewed. What would happen? And what would the legal ramifications be from a user/Cable company be?

TexasGrillChef


----------



## bdraw

I got your point the first time, obviously when you over-allocate you risk running out, but that is why they only plan to use SDV for the un-popular channels.

Also we are talking about more than 100 channels, a 900Mhz system can hold 150, 6Mhz QAM256 channels. Assuming they waste half of them on analog channels that leaves 75. Each channel can carry 38Mbps, so to make it simple lets pretend they're all HD channels which they cap the bandwidth for each channel, so they can fit 3 HD channels, for a total of 225 HD channels. Unfortunately for them, there is overhead and other services so lets just say 200 channels. Now everything isn't HD, so if we wanted to look at just SD channels then they can fit about 9 SD channels per QAM channel or (75*9=675 channels). Keep in mind that this is all per distribution feed. 

So in order to avoid what you are talking about, they can limit the amount of over-allocation to the number of VOD channels they have, then when they are at 120% (guess), they will just stop offering VOD or PPV. If the problem persists they will analyze which channels are being watched and split your neighborhood to prevent the issue permanently. 

This works for them because they can use the bandwidth that would be otherwise wasted -- 'cause no one was watching one of those great new HD channels that shows almost no HD -- and use it to sell more PPV, etc.


----------



## cableguy763

TexasGrillChef said:


> Ok.. so what if I bought 100 STB's or got 100STBS and put one on each channel? Then what?
> 
> Or.. I got a colition of everyone in my neighborhood. to get one STB/DVR each (their are 185 of us) and we all put t on 185 different channels that have are all SDV's
> 
> What would happen? Would some people not get channels? Would that force them to stop offering some channels?
> 
> What I am trying to ask is what happens on the cable side if every single channel they offere is being requested by their "Customers" to view? Especially if they are in the same neighborhood?
> 
> Understand my question now? If every single channel that was being SDV was requsted and wanted to be viewed. What would happen? And what would the legal ramifications be from a user/Cable company be?
> 
> TexasGrillChef


You will get a "Channel Not Available" message. The thing is, are all 185 of you in the same node, or same SDV service group? If you are, then you could probably max out the available bandwidth. Bandwidth usage is strictly monitored to maximize the effectiveness of SDV. If the bandwidth usage is constantly over say 70%, they would probably segment your node/service group so that customers wont get this message.


----------



## TexasGrillChef

I understand that cable co's use SDV on channels that as a whole are watched infrequently by their subscribers. So it works out for them and makes them look better in being able to offer more channels.

I guess my point as consumers go, if it would make things difficult for them. If there were always at least ONE STB/DVR always watching every single channel they have to offer. Would it cause them problems? What would they do about it? What could they do about it?

Forgetting about consumer cost for a minute. If they did offer 200 channels, some HD, Some SDV and I had 200 STB/DVR's and each on a seperate channel. Would it cause the cable co problems?

TexasGrillChef


----------



## cableguy763

If you had two-hundred boxes, then you would have your own node and sdv service group. The cost of that would be covered quickly by the rental fees for two hundred boxes.


----------



## vman41

What's the 'lease period' for an SDV channel request? Does the system provide for smoothly migrating a channel to a stream on another frequency? If the point of SDV is bandwidth management, migration capability is desireable so you can defragment your allocation map if needed.


----------



## DCIFRTHS

cableguy763 said:


> Y ... Bandwidth usage is strictly monitored to maximize the effectiveness of SDV. If the bandwidth usage is constantly over say 70%, they would probably segment your node/service group so that customers wont get this message.


Please define "they". Specifically, what cable companies have this policy in place - to split a node - when "the bandwidth usage is constantly over say 70%".


----------



## TexasGrillChef

cableguy763 said:


> If you had two-hundred boxes, then you would have your own node and sdv service group. The cost of that would be covered quickly by the rental fees for two hundred boxes.


so on my own node & SDV service group would still be 200 boxes each on the 200 channels they offer. So wouldn't it still present a problem for that node & SDV service group?

TexasGrillChef


----------



## cableguy763

DCIFRTHS said:


> Please define "they". Specifically, what cable companies have this policy in place - to split a node - when "the bandwidth usage is constantly over say 70%".


Here is they:
http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6454447.html

I was guessing at the 70%, but going off of traditional VOD guidelines, this is where you need to start looking at the number of boxes in a service group so that you have adequate bandwidth for all of the boxes.


----------



## cableguy763

TexasGrillChef said:


> so on my own node & SDV service group would still be 200 boxes each on the 200 channels they offer. So wouldn't it still present a problem for that node & SDV service group?
> 
> TexasGrillChef


Still going off of this:
http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6454447.html

If you had 200 boxes on 200 different channels what matters is how many qam's does the cable co have devoted to sdv. An example of say Chicago, which just did away with analog, they can have a LOT of channels doing SDV. I don't know if Chicago is doing a 750, 900 or 1 gig system, but they can put up to 10 sd channels on a single 6mhz qam. I haven't done the math, but that's a lot of static, non switched channels in itself. Now if they switched all of their channels, the limit of channels is a lot. I'm rambling here, but to answer your question you could cause problems it the cable co didn't allocate enough freq's in their sdv qams.


----------



## DCIFRTHS

cableguy763 said:


> Here is they:
> http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6454447.html


What article, on that page, are you referring to?



cableguy763 said:


> I was guessing at the 70%, but going off of traditional VOD guidelines, this is where you need to start looking at the number of boxes in a service group so that you have adequate bandwidth for all of the boxes.


Ah. I believe that this is where the problem lies. Based on stories I have read, and my own experiences with cable companies, most cable companies do not want to split nodes because it's expensive. For the most part, a customer has to put up with sub par service, for a long time, before a cable company will split a node.

We are dealing with monopolies, and they usually don't move too fast. Of course, if you live in Verizon FIOS country, your experience will be different (better).

I have yet to see a cable company divulge how many people they will service on a node before they split it. Even more scarce is how many people a particular model of node is capable of handling. If you have this data, or know where I can find it, please let me know.

EDIT: I want to add that currently, I am happy with my cable company (Cablevision). They have done an outstanding job of keeping their services at a very respectable level, and their customer service has _really_ improved over the last year and a half.

So far, all of the channels they put on SDV, have been specialty channels. My personal feeling is that this is an acceptable compromise because if I want a specialty channel, then I'll use "special" equipment. When / if they start adding core channels to SDV, then I will consider alternative solutions to cable delivery.


----------



## cableguy763

I just noticed that the link has kinda disappeared...used to go to the scte conference where the director of digital systems in austin explained how they did sdv...sorry, looking for that article now since I just copied it from the OP


----------



## cableguy763

DCIFRTHS said:


> I have yet to see a cable company divulge how many people they will service on a node before they split it. Even more scarce is how many people a particular model of node is capable of handling. If you have this data, or know where I can find it, please let me know.
> 
> 
> 
> Here is one article:
> http://www.cable360.net/ct/strategy/businesscases/22263.html
Click to expand...


----------



## cableguy763

DCIFRTHS said:


> We are dealing with monopolies, and they usually don't move too fast. Of course, if you live in Verizon FIOS country, your experience will be different (better).
> 
> QUOTE]
> Now that wouldn't be a monopoly then, would it?


----------



## DCIFRTHS

cableguy763 said:


> DCIFRTHS said:
> 
> 
> 
> We are dealing with monopolies, and they usually don't move too fast. Of course, if you live in Verizon FIOS country, your experience will be different (better).
> 
> QUOTE]
> Now that wouldn't be a monopoly then, would it?
> 
> 
> 
> That's my point. When there is no competition, the customer is at the mercy of a monopoly. Unfortunately. the majority of the US is serviced by a cable _monopoly_.
Click to expand...


----------



## TexasGrillChef

I am lucky enough to be in an area that doesn't have SDV. Thank god. 

I like to cause troubles for cable co's when they do things we don't like.

Since MRV isn't around yet for HD, and since VOD and certain other 2 way services still require their DVR. I have at least one TWC DVR. I regulary return it. In hopes that I will get a newer box when they have one available. They don't like me very well at the local office! LOL

Since I own an Apartment complex with 800 units. I was just wondering about the feasability in causing them issues should they start SDV in my area. I live pretty close to the complex I own. 

I am highly opposed to SDV. So it might be worth my investment to cause them issues should that happen. Just a thought.

Always looking for ways to make it more difficult for them when they do things that go agains't our needs.

Thanks for your education. I do appreciate that.

TexasGrillChef


----------



## txagfan

TexasGrillChef said:


> I am lucky enough to be in an area that doesn't have SDV. Thank god.
> 
> I like to cause troubles for cable co's when they do things we don't like.
> 
> Since MRV isn't around yet for HD, and since VOD and certain other 2 way services still require their DVR. I have at least one TWC DVR. I regulary return it. In hopes that I will get a newer box when they have one available. They don't like me very well at the local office! LOL
> 
> Since I own an Apartment complex with 800 units. I was just wondering about the feasability in causing them issues should they start SDV in my area. I live pretty close to the complex I own.
> 
> I am highly opposed to SDV. So it might be worth my investment to cause them issues should that happen. Just a thought.
> 
> Always looking for ways to make it more difficult for them when they do things that go agains't our needs.
> 
> Thanks for your education. I do appreciate that.
> 
> TexasGrillChef


So you are against a company that is trying to bring more HD, more channels, and more choices for the MAJORITY of its customers. To put this bluntly, cablecard customers only make up about 1% of the cableco's customer base. The other 99% want the new channels and more HD. Plus the cable co's are a business, they have to compete with the 300+ channels D* is advertising. What do you expect them to do? Not offer anything new to 99% of their customer base so that the handful of cablecard customers can get SOME hd channels? Without SDV, cablecos cant offer any new HD channels unless doing something drastic like comcast did in Chicago. How this affects Chicago will be interesting because every customer will have to get a box on every outlet, kinda like D*. I like my S3 and want all of the HD channels I can get, but I understand where the cable co's are going. I want my S2DT to continue to work as a DUAL tuner and not need a box for my garage TV, so I would like for analog to stick around for awhile.


----------



## TexasGrillChef

txagfan said:


> So you are against a company that is trying to bring more HD, more channels, and more choices for the MAJORITY of its customers. To put this bluntly, cablecard customers only make up about 1% of the cableco's customer base. The other 99% want the new channels and more HD. Plus the cable co's are a business, they have to compete with the 300+ channels D* is advertising. What do you expect them to do? Not offer anything new to 99% of their customer base so that the handful of cablecard customers can get SOME hd channels? Without SDV, cablecos cant offer any new HD channels unless doing something drastic like comcast did in Chicago. How this affects Chicago will be interesting because every customer will have to get a box on every outlet, kinda like D*. I like my S3 and want all of the HD channels I can get, but I understand where the cable co's are going. I want my S2DT to continue to work as a DUAL tuner and not need a box for my garage TV, so I would like for analog to stick around for awhile.


You do make several good points that I haven't considered.

Since I love my HD. I don't watch or record anything that isn't broadcast in full HD. Of course there are a couple of shows I will watch that aren't (Star Trek) and a few other exceptions of course. But 99% of my viewing is in HD. I do have to admit I WANT more HD. I know it's coming. HBO/Cinemax will be broadcasting all of their Movie channels in Full HD by 2-17-09. At least that is their plan.

While maybe only 1% of their customers are on cable card. That number will be rising quickly now that even new deployment of thier STB/DVR's must now use cable card as well. So that number will be increasing quite fast over the next few years. SDV STB/DVRs can still use Cable cards.

In my area TWC is currently upgrading & in some areas have allready upgraded to Fiber. Hopefully in my area they will never go SDV.

Verizon Fios doesn't have this problem. Then again they are on fiber. So as Cable Co's upgrade to Fiber the need for SDV won't be needed.

Full digital & HD are coming. Analog TV is on it's way out. There are some parts of the country where analog cable will be discontinued in the next few years for 100% digital.

I do understand it is fully a Catch 22 situation for everyone. I do know that eventually it will all work itself out. The Switch from Analog to Digital/HD TV has been and will continue to be painfull for everyone involved.

What makes it so painfull is that new equipment is needed by everyone at all stages levels. From the content providers to the consumers. Everyone at all levels need new equipment to handle Digital / HD TV which is expensive. It is this expense that makes it so painfull to everyone & SLOW!.

So I do understand the points you made. There is no easy CHEAP easy solution that will satisfy everyones current needs. That is the sad fact.

Whatever decesions that are made about SDV someone gets screwed anyways. Just like in OTA when 2-17-09 comes around. Those without Digital &/or HD TVS will be screwed unless the spend money on a new TV set, or Converter box.

Sometimes I grasp at straws in desperation as well.

TexasGrillChef


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## bdraw

txagfan said:


> How this affects Chicago will be interesting because every customer will have to get a box on every outlet, kinda like D*.


Although 95% of customers will need a STB, it isn't fair to say every customer at every outlet. Many new TVs include QAM tuners, which will be capable of watching the local broadcast channels.


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## vstone

TexasGrillChef said:


> ...
> In my area TWC is currently upgrading & in some areas have allready upgraded to Fiber. Hopefully in my area they will never go SDV.
> ...


Fiber to your house or fiber to the pole? Fiber to the house is essentially FIOS. Fiber to the pole will likly go SDV. The coax to your house carries analog & digital channels + internet + out of band communications.


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## bdraw

Even with FIOS everything is carried over COAX. I just had FIOS installed Saturday and the fiber terminates at the box outside the house and only a coax cable runs inside the house. 

They gave me a router that included a coax input and on the cable side everything is the same as BHN. I already had a CAT5 outside too, but they told me that they don't use it.

They also offer ~23 analog channels and don't use SDV.


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## vstone

I stand corrected, but now I'm intrerested in how they avoid doing something like SDV. After all, the tuner is still looking forsomething in the channel 2-135 (or 180) frequencies.


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## bdraw

The key is 23 analog channels, cutting back from 75 to 23 analog channels increases the available throughput by almost 2Gbps, or ~156 HD channels. 

It isn't coax that's limiting cable, it's all those analog subscribers.


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## vstone

Then why are cable companies that are going all digital also implementing SDV? I believe Comcast in Chicago is in this category.


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## bdraw

vstone said:


> Then why are cable companies that are going all digital also implementing SDV? I believe Comcast in Chicago is in this category.


Comcast in Chicago is definitely all digital, not sure about the SDV part.

But either way you're right, why bother with SDV if you have plenty of bandwidth.


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## bdraw

Just ran across this article when I was trying to figure out if Chicago Comcast was using SDV. It mentions all the ways a Cable co' can increase it's throughput, including SDV, cutting back on analog and upgrading from a 750Mhz to 1Ghz system.
http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6439357.html


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## vstone

Comcast here in SoVA just moved HGTV and dropped some Spanish (music?) channels. Wouldn't be surprised if they were gearing up for more HD channels. We are an old Adelphia system, but we were just upgraded to fiber in 2002-2002.


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## GoHokies!

txagfan said:


> So you are against a company that is trying to bring more HD, more channels, and more choices for the MAJORITY of its customers. To put this bluntly, cablecard customers only make up about 1% of the cableco's customer base. The other 99% want the new channels and more HD.


No, I'm opposed to the cable companies (by way of their lobby) convincing the FCC to selectively "enforce" the provisions of an over 10 year old law that SHOULD allow me to purchase my own hardware, connect it to my cable TV service and get all of the same features that everyone else gets. The problem is that the cable companies don't want this to happen, which is why CC only represents the small portion of customers that it does today.

It is the cable companies that got us into this mess, and now that the problem is "too hard" to solve, they're going to have to find a way to make it work for EVERYONE, in accordance with the wishes of Congress (which, at least the last time I checked, were the ones that made the rules around here).


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## txagfan

GoHokies, I agree with a lot that you are saying. For arguments sake, let's say that the FCC goes ahead and stops cable from implementing sdv. This will effectively stop most cable companies from bringing new services to their customers. Things like more HD, more bandwidth for phone and internet. Things their customers want. All while letting the sat companies do as they wish because they got waivers for open integration. Why do they(sat co's) still have waivers and are not even worrying about open systems? You can't really use the argument that sat. is not a competitor to cable. They are. So why force cable to stop innovation and let their competitors run wild with new services? I would love to see a two-way solution emerge sometime soon, but I'm not holding my breath  .


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## megazone

vstone said:


> I stand corrected, but now I'm intrerested in how they avoid doing something like SDV. After all, the tuner is still looking forsomething in the channel 2-135 (or 180) frequencies.


They could also be using a broader frequency band. Many cable systems are still using 750MHz - even 650MHz or 550MHz in some areas, which limits their total channel capacity. 860MHz is fairly common on more modern systems - but 1GHz is also being used now, and there is talk of going higher than that, but I don't know if any MSOs have.


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## vman41

txagfan said:


> For arguments sake, let's say that the FCC goes ahead and stops cable from implementing sdv. This will effectively stop most cable companies from bringing new services to their customers. Things like more HD, more bandwidth for phone and internet. Things their customers want.


The cable companies want to increase the number of high margin services like PPV, and don't care how much it inconveniences the majority of low margin customers.
Walk me through how SDV is going to make Time Warner charge $25/month for their phone service instead of the $40/month they want now.


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## txagfan

I guess competition is how twc will have to lower their phone rate. How sdv plays into that I don't know.


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## DCIFRTHS

txagfan said:


> So you are against a company that is trying to bring more HD, more channels, and more choices for the MAJORITY of its customers.


You extrapolated something that no one here is saying. At least none of the posts that I have read came across that way.



txagfan said:


> To put this bluntly, cablecard customers only make up about 1% of the cableco's customer base. The other 99% want the new channels and more HD. Plus the cable co's are a business, they have to compete with the 300+ channels D* is advertising. What do you expect them to do? Not offer anything new to 99% of their customer base so that the handful of cablecard customers can get SOME hd channels? Without SDV, cablecos cant offer any new HD channels unless doing something drastic like comcast did in Chicago. How this affects Chicago will be interesting because every customer will have to get a box on every outlet, kinda like D*. I like my S3 and want all of the HD channels I can get, but I understand where the cable co's are going. I want my S2DT to continue to work as a DUAL tuner and not need a box for my garage TV, so I would like for analog to stick around for awhile.


Even though you weren't directly addressing me, I will respond as bluntly as you did.

Why not kill off analog? It would make the network much more efficient, and free up bandwidth for more channels (SD and HD). Well, it's because subscribers, that don't want to use a digital tuner/cable company decoder, are holding back the cable companies from making their networks more efficient by switching to an all digital delivery system. Stop clogging up the network with analog "garbage" just because you want your equipment to continue to function... Oh wait. Isn't that what you said CC users were doing? To be fair, you did say that CC users are the minority, so I guess they really don't count...

I applaud Comcast in Chicago. At least they are moving forward. I don't have a problem if the cable companies make their networks more efficient with the kludge - err, solution, called SDV. What I do have a problem with is that they haven't published a standard so that CE companies can produce compatible equipment that will work with SDV.

No one ever guaranteed me that my S3 would continue to work for a specified period of time, and I am not _demanding_ that it does. Now, on the other side of the coin are the analog cable TVs, VCRs and "TiVo like" devices that are in use. Just like with the S3, I don't recall ever getting a guarantee that my all of my TVs or S2 boxes would continue to work if the cable company changed their signal delivery scheme. I believe we all took it for granted that they would work for ever, but I never got a guarantee. Did you?

If CC technology wasn't deliberately _crippled_, and it was offered as an alternative to an STB, at the time you placed an order for cable service, I would bet that 99.9% of people would prefer to use a CC over an STB. It's the spotty support from the cable industry that has hampered installation of CCs. When I first inquired about CCs, the cable company told me that there was no such thing. I had to PUSH to get them.

BTW, I would suck it up, and buy a new TiVo that supported SDV/VOD if it were available. If I couldn't afford it, which is my current situation, I would be mad, deal with it, and be forced to use a cheaper alternative.

SDV/VOD is *AN* answer, but it's not necessarily the* RIGHT* answer.


----------



## bicker

Again we see more claptrap about monopolies, despite the fact that courts have definitively determined that the cable companies are not monopolies. I know it makes the Angry Young Man in us feel better to say nasty things about The Man, but it does nothing other than obfuscate the discussion. :down:


----------



## bicker

GoHokies! said:


> It is the cable companies that got us into this mess, and now that the problem is "too hard" to solve, they're going to have to find a way to make it work for EVERYONE, in accordance with the wishes of Congress (which, at least the last time I checked, were the ones that made the rules around here).


Congress could pay some lip service to this, and then just allow things to work out naturally, though market forces, given the competitive environment fostered by cable versus satellite versus new technology such as IPTV. That's where I would put my money, if we were betting.


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## bicker

vman41 said:


> The cable companies want to increase the number of high margin services like PPV, and don't care how much it inconveniences the majority of low margin customers.


The only customers that are entitled special treatment are those selecting lifeline cable. Other customers are in competition with each other for the affection of the cable and satellite companies -- whichever customers offer the companies the opportunity for the most profitability should win.


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## DCIFRTHS

bicker said:


> The only customers that are entitled special treatment are those selecting lifeline cable. Other customers are in competition with each other for the affection of the cable and satellite companies -- whichever customers offer the companies the opportunity for the most profitability should win.


Discussing this issue with you is the same as banging my head against the wall and then sticking it in a 550 degree oven.

With that said: Let the cable companies follow the path you think is the righteous one, and most of us that have the option will end up with FIOS or AT&T's offering.

A friend of mine just had a FIOS installation this weekend. He is saving money, has faster internet with lower latency, and receives all of his channels on his CC S3. It may take 15 years, but unless the cable companies wise up, and start becoming customer centric, they will lose a *lot* of customers.

I was always under the impression that companies offering a product or service that another company also offered, were the ones that were at the "mercy" of the customer. Did someone change this rule, and I missed the memo? Rarely is it the case that, and I quote your words, "Other customers are in competition with each other for the affection of the cable and satellite companies." This is only the case when an alternative service is not available. Many of us *have no other options*, and are at the *mercy* of the cable company. This is why they are considered by many as monopolies. Unfortunately, for some unknown reason, you refuse to admit that.

It's time to break up the monopolies, and I can't wait until Verizon and AT&T have the infrastructure in place to do it. Someone mentioned that Time Warner was charging $40.00 per month for phone service. Are they out of their minds? In the areas that I know of where FIOS is available, the cable company charges $14.99 for unlimited phone service. Now that's competition, and what we all should be hoping to see.

For the record, I am very happy with my cable company, and I have no axe to grind with them.


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## bdraw

While we are on the subject of monopolies and cable, I would like to ask a question.

Why is it that a company has ownership of a cable running through my property and through public property (arguably, also mine)? 

Sure, they paid to lay the cable, but how long does that right last? Currently it lasts forever, if that cable (whether it be coax or fiber) had a limited ownership, -- assuming they paid to lay it in the first place -- then it would be harder for companies to hold on to their monopolistic business.


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## SMWinnie

bicker said:


> [C]ourts have definitively determined that the cable companies are not monopolies.


I find this surprising. Could you point me to a citation? (An appellate decision would be nice, though an FTC or DOJ announcement is probably more relevant in practice.)

Seriously, I have no axe to grind here. I've had both econ and law professors hold up CATV as an example of a natural monopoly and both a _de jure_ (prior to the meaningless _Boulder_ decision in 1982) and a _de facto_ municipally-licensed monopoly as well. I would love to have a counterargument handy.


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## vstone

I think my view of SDV is different from most. I think most of us understand that SDV is a great technology, but monopolistic pressures, combined with an absentee landlord FCC and Congessional indifference has resulted in a poor deal for consimers. Tivo aside, Congress has ordered the cable companies to open up their systems. The FCC has allowed the cable companies to delay and is now probably allowing them to do a technological end around by acquiesing to cable labs delays. I believe the FCC should have required the cable companies to develope open solutions meeting the intent of the 1996 legislation (as I understand it anyway).

But most of all the FCC has required all TV's to have ATSC tuners, although most TV's will NOT be used with antennas. Effectively that's a tax designed to lower the cost of tuners. I could live with that if they had they required all TVs to have cablecard tuners. While an clear QAM tuner is the technical euiqvalent to the analog "cable ready," tuner found in every US TV for the past 20 years, it will likely not result in an equivalent channel lineup. The consumer electronics industry has seized upon "Digital Cable Ready" for their cablecard TVs. This could result in a roughly equivalent channel lineup, or not, depending on how SDV is implemented.

Why do I beleive this channel lineup issue is important? Because even the educated consumers on this forum can't buy a TV for the kitchen or bedroom now with a guarantee that they won't have to have a cable box in a few years (not necessarily corresponding to Feb, 2009). If you try to discuss this with the general populace (or Congress, for that matter) their eyes will glaze over.

The CEA is taking various positions designed to put money in their pockets.

With the hundreds of models of TVs now out their, the only possible models that MAY allow me to live without a cable box are some Samsung models that were/are available and I don't even know if they will work with SDV.

Practical lesson: Two years ago My brothers & I wanted to buy out 86 year mother a new TV. I was adament about not her not having to deal with a cable box. Now my mother is a smart lady - double major in English & Math at Duke circa 1942 - worked in cryptography in communications in the Navy building during WWII. But she had never had a cable box and never used the VCR we got for her. One of my brothers said he didn't think it would be a problem. The next year he got the cable company's SA8300HD DVR. They showed how to use it. I showed his wife how to use. But every time I'm there, they are watching analog channels, even when HD is available.

Ijust think the consumer should have reasonable options to replace what he has and enough information to know what the cable companies have planned. With SDV hanging up there as a big unknown, the federal government has let its citizens down.

End of rant. We now return you to your well reasoned programming.


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## txagfan

DCIFRTHS said:


> You extrapolated something that no one here is saying. At least none of the posts that I have read came across that way.
> 
> Even though you weren't directly addressing me, I will respond as bluntly as you did.
> 
> Why not kill off analog? It would make the network much more efficient, and free up bandwidth for more channels (SD and HD). Well, it's because subscribers, that don't want to use a digital tuner/cable company decoder, are holding back the cable companies from making their networks more efficient by switching to an all digital delivery system. Stop clogging up the network with analog "garbage" just because you want your equipment to continue to function... Oh wait. Isn't that what you said CC users were doing? To be fair, you did say that CC users are the minority, so I guess they really don't count...
> 
> I applaud Comcast in Chicago. At least they are moving forward. I don't have a problem if the cable companies make their networks more efficient with the kludge - err, solution, called SDV. What I do have a problem with is that they haven't published a standard so that CE companies can produce compatible equipment that will work with SDV.
> 
> No one ever guaranteed me that my S3 would continue to work for a specified period of time, and I am not _demanding_ that it does. Now, on the other side of the coin are the analog cable TVs, VCRs and "TiVo like" devices that are in use. Just like with the S3, I don't recall ever getting a guarantee that my all of my TVs or S2 boxes would continue to work if the cable company changed their signal delivery scheme. I believe we all took it for granted that they would work for ever, but I never got a guarantee. Did you?
> 
> If CC technology wasn't deliberately _crippled_, and it was offered as an alternative to an STB, at the time you placed an order for cable service, I would bet that 99.9% of people would prefer to use a CC over an STB. It's the spotty support from the cable industry that has hampered installation of CCs. When I first inquired about CCs, the cable company told me that there was no such thing. I had to PUSH to get them.
> 
> BTW, I would suck it up, and buy a new TiVo that supported SDV/VOD if it were available. If I couldn't afford it, which is my current situation, I would be mad, deal with it, and be forced to use a cheaper alternative.
> 
> SDV/VOD is *AN* answer, but it's not necessarily the* RIGHT* answer.


DCFirths, you make very good arguments. I hate to see the analog go away on one side, but would love for it to go away for all of the benefits that would come out of it. Good point. I think the cable co's are finally coming around with SOME good support for CC, at least in my area. The new stb's don't count, because all of those are staged just like any other box.


----------



## yunlin12

CC is one extreme end, and analog is the other extreme end. Cable co can provide more bandwidth if they screw either or both of these extremes. I have both an S3 and a S2DT, so I'm impacted on both ends. CC should be the future, and analog is the past. So if I had to pick an end to lose to get more HD, I'd lose my S2DT.


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## ah30k

vman41 said:


> The cable companies want to increase the number of high margin services like PPV, and don't care how much it inconveniences the majority of low margin customers.


 And your point is??? Every company that answers to share holders does this.


vman41 said:


> Walk me through how SDV is going to make Time Warner charge $25/month for their phone service instead of the $40/month they want now.


I don't recall anyone talking about lower prices. The talk is of offering more services which SDV will certainly do.


----------



## vstone

DCIFRTHS said:


> ...
> At least they are moving forward. I don't have a problem if the cable companies make their networks more efficient with the kludge - err, solution, called SDV. ...


Actually I consider SDV quite an elegant solution. I just wish that the FCC had made cablelabs comply with the intent of the 1996 law.

In the beginning, local cable here in Martinsville had OTA stations from our SoVA market and the adjacent market in NC (or 7 stations total, including PBS). When the ABC station in NC went Fox, it was dropped. The OTA HD channels are from our market; none from NC. SDV is a technical way of weeding out extraneous stations.

It's fine for us with outr fancy electronics to complain about our brand new obsolete equipment, but the limited income folk will likely be forced to rent a cable box if all analog stations go away. The FCC doesn't seem to be allowing cable companies to have a cheap cablecardless box for those folk.


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## CharlesH

vstone said:


> The FCC doesn't seem to be allowing cable companies to have a cheap cablecardless box for those folk.


They won't allow the cable company to provide a cheap clear-QAM(no cablecard) -> NTSC converter? Not that the cable companies would want to do this, since it excludes the $$ extras.


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## txMonkey

Hi.

Never having owned a TiVo, I've been eagerly awaiting the arrival of the new HD model and it's lower cost. Imagine my horror of learning about SDV while researching from the comforts of home in... Austin, TX (argh!).

I have a couple of questions that are probably pretty simple but ones which I haven't seen clear answers to:
1. The listing of SDV channels for Austin shows some w/ multiple numbers for digital and analog. If this is the case will the TivoHD be able to view those in analog mode via the CC? (The wife's addicted to E!.)

2. According to TWC-Austin's site, they are introducing 'Open Cable CableCARD' by 1Q08 which allow viewing of SDV channels. Does anyone know whether TiVoHD will be able to utilize these cards (a) out of the box?; (b) with a firmware update?; or (c) nope--outta luck?​
Thanks for all the great info! 

_Todd


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## txagfan

txMonkey said:


> Hi.
> 
> Never having owned a TiVo, I've been eagerly awaiting the arrival of the new HD model and it's lower cost. Imagine my horror of learning about SDV while researching from the comforts of home in... Austin, TX (argh!).
> 
> I have a couple of questions that are probably pretty simple but ones which I haven't seen clear answers to:
> 1. The listing of SDV channels for Austin shows some w/ multiple numbers for digital and analog. If this is the case will the TivoHD be able to view those in analog mode via the CC? (The wife's addicted to E!.)
> 
> 2. According to TWC-Austin's site, they are introducing 'Open Cable CableCARD' by 1Q08 which allow viewing of SDV channels. Does anyone know whether TiVoHD will be able to utilize these cards (a) out of the box?; (b) with a firmware update?; or (c) nope--outta luck?​
> Thanks for all the great info!
> 
> _Todd


Your tivohd with cablecards will get the channels with multiple numbers in analog form (my S3 does). Your TivoHD will never be able to do SDV. I know, someone will mention something about a possible usb addon, but I am certainly not holding my breath.


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## ah30k

txMonkey said:


> 1. The listing of SDV channels for Austin shows some w/ multiple numbers for digital and analog. If this is the case will the TivoHD be able to view those in analog mode via the CC? (The wife's addicted to E!.)​


IF the digital simulcast goes to SDV and an analogue version is available you should still be able to TiVo that. That is the intent anyway, no guarantees.



txMonkey said:


> 2. According to TWC-Austin's site, they are introducing 'Open Cable CableCARD' by 1Q08 which allow viewing of SDV channels. Does anyone know whether TiVoHD will be able to utilize these cards (a) out of the box?; (b) with a firmware update?; or (c) nope--outta luck?​


Current CableCARDs allow viewing of SDV. This is how the July 1st deadline is being met by the cable operators who must now ship CableCARD set top boxes. There is much discussion about how CE devices such as TiVo may or may not be able to take advantage of the two-way features. Open Cable and OCAP are at the heart of this discussion. Just try to separate out the capabilities of the CableCARD itself from the host devices that will accept the card. It sounds like they may be referring to the infrastructure required to support OCAP host devices.


----------



## GoHokies!

txagfan said:


> DCFirths, you make very good arguments. I hate to see the analog go away on one side, but would love for it to go away for all of the benefits that would come out of it. Good point. I think the cable co's are finally coming around with SOME good support for CC, at least in my area. The new stb's don't count, because all of those are staged just like any other box.


I think that a mandated "analog shutdown" on the cable side of things just like OTA would have been a perfect chance. Just like you can't sell a TV with an OTA analog tuner without also including the digital tuner, force the inclusion of a digital cable tuner and cablecard (or whatever security device decided upon) to be included in all new TV sets.

Yes, it would have impacted a lot more people, but sometimes, that's the price of progress.

I'm not real sympathetic to cable in this situation, because the problem is of their own making. If they had put in a fraction of the effort they have expended in trying to get waivers and push back on CC into developing a solution that gave them the bandwidth they need we wouldn't be in this situation. The insistence on bi-directional products being OCAP-certified has one intent: to keep the power on the side of the cable company. Remove that requirement and publish a 2 way cable card standard that allows the OS of a users choice to be run, and all these problems go away.


----------



## bdraw

The least they could do is require a QAM tuner and then the cable co's could continue to offer a basic tier like they have for years, of just clear QAM channels. A stb that works for both OTA and QAM could be purchased with grama's $40 voucher and she'd be covered both way. 

But instead most TVs don't include QAM even though they have ATSC, and retailers don't even know to tell customers they can just plug it in and get basic digital cable.


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## vstone

CharlesH said:


> They won't allow the cable company to provide a cheap clear-QAM(no cablecard) -> NTSC converter? Not that the cable companies would want to do this, since it excludes the $$ extras.


I think the cable companies wanted to deploy a very cheap barebones digital box to all of the analog TVs in the kitchen & bedroom. I don't know the particulars, but presume one could be a digital tuner with coax output, etc.


----------



## vstone

bdraw said:


> The least they could do is require a QAM tuner and then the cable co's could continue to offer a basic tier like they have for years, of just clear QAM channels. A stb that works for both OTA and QAM could be purchased with grama's $40 voucher and she'd be covered both way.
> 
> But instead most TVs don't include QAM even though they have ATSC, and retailers don't even know to tell customers they can just plug it in and get basic digital cable.


Actually I think clear QAM is starting to show up in new TV sets for which its not even in the listed specs. I think its included in newer chip sets, but nobody wants to talk about them because of all of the problems folks have had.

I would be happy if clear QAM channels would approach the equivalent of today's basic cable tier, but I fear it will actually end up being the equivalent of the FCC's mandated basic tier, which is the unadvertised, but universally available broadcast tier. This tier usually has local broadcast channels, local govt and access channels, and maybe ESPN. ESPN will probably go bye-bye, as well as local broadcast channels from adjacent markets.

Additionally cable companies are making it hard to find channels on clear QAM tuners. For instance local analog channel 7 transmits 7.1 and 7.2 on the freq for channel 18. These channels show up on the cable box as 7, 707, and 185. Without a cablebox or cablecards they show up as something like 7, 116-1 and 116-2, and the cable company won't provide a clear QAM channel listing to help you figure it out.


----------



## jrm01

SMWinnie said:


> I find this surprising. Could you point me to a citation? (An appellate decision would be nice, though an FTC or DOJ announcement is probably more relevant in practice.)
> 
> Seriously, I have no axe to grind here. I've had both econ and law professors hold up CATV as an example of a natural monopoly and both a _de jure_ (prior to the meaningless _Boulder_ decision in 1982) and a _de facto_ municipally-licensed monopoly as well. I would love to have a counterargument handy.


I'm no lawyer, and I don't know about your other points, but the municipal franchise agreements do not grant exclusive rights to one cable company. I was involved in negotiating our community's agreement, and assisted on several others. There was nothing that made it exclusive, except the high cost of a new company coming into the municipality. There are two communities in PA that have actually negotiated an agreement with a second cable company. Unfortunately I can't remember which ones.


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## txMonkey

@txagfan & ah30k,

Thanks for the quick replies. Sounds encouraging enough to give the TiVoHD a shot, even if it's not the solution for the next ten years. Anything to get away from that 8300 box.

Cheers,
_Todd


----------



## bicker

DCIFRTHS said:


> Discussing this issue with you is the same as banging my head against the wall and then sticking it in a 550 degree oven.


I feel the same way about discussing it with you. My only solace is that the way I'm describing things is actually they way they work. If you want to go though life continually disappointed because you refuse to acknowledge reality, that's your business. How about, instead of polluting thread-after-thread with squabbling, you just have your say, and you let me have mine?


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## TexasGrillChef

Just keep in mind. A friend of mine that works for TWC here in the DFW area, recently informed me of a plan that 98% of the cable companies here in the USA have plans to DROP all ANALOG service by 2012. Some cable companies even sooner than that.

So those people who are using analog cable ready TV's (without the cabel card) will so no longer be able to receive Cable TV unless they get a Cable Card ready TV &/or a STB/DVR that is cable card ready as well, or one from the Cable company.

He further informed me, that one of the MAIN reasons that MOST of the cable companies are considering dropping analog service is to allow more bandwidth for more HD channels and other services. At this time TWC in DFW has no current plans to switch to SDV. That could change though.

Here in the DFW area, TWC is upgrading it's system to 1ghz. Some areas of DFW are allready on the 1ghz system. (I am getting 15mbs on my cable modem now). Other areas are still on 750mhz and a few older areas on the older 550mhz.

SDV as much as I hate the concept, Is a inexpensive work around to issues that the cable co is having. It is all about their bottom line. They are in buisness to make money for themselves & their STOCK holders. For example, as much as I hate TWC, I also own TIME WARNER Stock. (Keep in mind all the companies Time Warner owns!)

The truth is it's all a catch 22 situation for everyone. Everything could easily be done if we all wanted to sink 250 Billion dollars into the system. However.... Most of us are cheap Bast**ds and don't want to spend more money on services, or pay more tax dollars for government help or support.

Where the solution is? I have no idea. Whatever the solution is will require some sacrafice of some sort from someone. Thats the real truth.

TexasGrillChef


----------



## bicker

As well-meaning as folks might be, generally, it isn't clear that you should take anyone's word about what 98% of an industry will do in the future as gospel. Having said that, what is being asserted here is one of those "of course" pronouncements. Many folks with some significant insight into this issue is predicting, with very substantial levels of confidence, that analog will be history, on cable, by 2012 or 2013. 

One of the main reasons for the conversion to analog is to make room for more and enhanced services; more VOD; more HSI bandwidth; etc.


----------



## jrm01

bicker said:


> One of the main reasons for the *conversion to analog * is to make room for more and enhanced services; more VOD; more HSI bandwidth; etc.


When they complete that conversion your "open" cable network will be even more open.


----------



## bicker

Oops. I meant "conversion to digital" of course.


----------



## jblake

This may have already been asked and answered, what happens when every channel is requested at once in an SDV environment?


----------



## jrm01

jblake said:


> This may have already been asked and answered, what happens when every channel is requested at once in an SDV environment?


Yes, you're right. It has.

It's kind of like designing a highway for rush hour traffic. What happens if everyone gets up at 6:30 and gets on the highway at 7:30 in the morning. It won't happen, so you don't design for it. You monitor the traffic flows and adjust accordingly.

If the impossible happens for SDV, you don't get traffic jams and road rage, you get a message saying "We're sorry for the inconvenience, but the channel you have requested is not available at this time. Please try again later". Then "home rage".


----------



## jblake

jrm01 said:


> Yes, you're right. It has.
> 
> It's kind of like designing a highway for rush hour traffic. What happens if everyone gets up at 6:30 and gets on the highway at 7:30 in the morning. It won't happen, so you don't design for it. You monitor the traffic flows and adjust accordingly.
> 
> If the impossible happens for SDV, you don't get traffic jams and road rage, you get a message saying "We're sorry for the inconvenience, but the channel you have requested is not available at this time. Please try again later". Then "home rage".


Well, don't use that example because most roads are clogged daily around here 

If you have thousands of users on a node, serving hundreds of available channels, with half the capacity, the cable cos are setting themselves up for a very bad problem


----------



## DCIFRTHS

bicker said:


> I feel the same way about discussing it with you. My only solace is that the way I'm describing things is actually they way they work. If you want to go though life continually disappointed because you refuse to acknowledge reality, that's your business.


You are the only person who is right. We all know that. For the record, I couldn't care less what your opinion of me is.



bicker said:


> How about, instead of polluting thread-after-thread with squabbling, you just have your say, and you let me have mine?


If you look back at the posts in this thread, your first contribution to it was directly below my post that contained the words *cable* and *monopoly*. It seems that you just do a search on these words, and then post you own _pollution_ when you get a hit.


----------



## bicker

Maybe if folks stop posting anti-business diatribes, I won't have the need to reply. No one is entitled an unrebutted soap-box to spread anti-business rhetoric, or anything else. You post a controversial message, like you have, and you had better expect a reply.

For the record, my reply was *not* in reply to the message you linked to, but rather to your earlier message, #115.


----------



## DCIFRTHS

bicker said:


> Maybe if folks stop posting anti-business diatribes, I won't have the need to reply. No one is entitled an unrebutted soap-box to spread anti-business rhetoric, or anything else. You post a controversial message, like you have, and you had better expect a reply.


I am for competition being introduced into areas where the consumers only choices for Pay TV, and high speed internet, are the cable companies. Please tell me how this earns me the label of being "anti-business" and on a "soap-box".



bicker said:


> For the record, my reply was *not* in reply to the message you linked to, but rather to your earlier message, #115.


A reference to the post you are responding to can go a long way in helping the reader to understand what you are responding to. I expect no less from someone who doesn't like to read obfuscating posts.


----------



## bicker

DCIFRTHS said:


> I am for competition being introduced into areas where the consumers only choices for Pay TV, and high speed internet, are the cable companies. Please tell me how this earns me the label of being "anti-business" and on a "soap-box".


Tactics. The right way to support competition is to break down the barriers that keep new companies from building their own networks. One great example of this is the Massachusetts Cable Choice and Competition Act.



DCIFRTHS said:


> A reference to the post you are responding to can go a long way in helping the reader to understand what you are responding to. I expect no less from someone who doesn't like to read obfuscating posts.


Typically, when I don't include a quote, my intention is for my statements to stand on their own, even if in response to a specific message.


----------



## DCIFRTHS

bicker said:


> Tactics. The right way to support competition is to break down the barriers that keep new companies from building their own networks. One great example of this is the Massachusetts Cable Choice and Competition Act.


Based on your statements, you obviously feel that the cable companies should NOT have access to the phone companies networks, and they should build their own.


----------



## bicker

Absolutely. The Massachusetts Cable Choice and Competition Act will accelerate cable competition in Massachusetts. It will allow video providers to apply to the Department of Telecommunications and Energy for permission to offer cable TV service, rather than negotiate a license with each individual town - a lengthy process that delays competition. In addition to streamlining the process for new competitors, the bill will enable current cable providers to apply for licenses to expand their reach by entering new markets.


----------



## DCIFRTHS

bicker said:


> Absolutely. The Massachusetts Cable Choice and Competition Act will accelerate cable competition in Massachusetts. It will allow video providers to apply to the Department of Telecommunications and Energy for permission to offer cable TV service, rather than negotiate a license with each individual town - a lengthy process that delays competition. In addition to streamlining the process for new competitors, the bill will enable current cable providers to apply for licenses to expand their reach by entering new markets.


Just so that I'm sure I understand what you are saying.

Should the phone companies be *required* to allow access to *any* of their equipment? This includes the "last mile" of copper (or fiber) that is currently connected to most US businesses and residences.

A yes or no answer would go a long way in helping me understand your point of view.


----------



## vman41

The phone company wants to do cable, but will hypocritically lobby against the cable company being able to provide phone service. Vice versa for the cable companies WRT phone service.


----------



## bicker

DCIFRTHS said:


> It will allow video providers to apply to the Department of Telecommunications and Energy for permission to offer cable TV service, rather than negotiate a license with each individual town - a lengthy process that delays competition. In addition to streamlining the process for new competitors, the bill will enable current cable providers to apply for licenses to expand their reach by entering new markets.
> 
> 
> 
> Just so that I'm sure I understand what you are saying.
> 
> Should the phone companies be *required* to allow access to *any* of their equipment?
Click to expand...

No, I'm saying that they should be required to allow access to *NONE* of their equipment, and similarly the cable companies should be required to allow access to *NONE* of their equipment. Each company should be able to build their own networks, without unreasonable interference with such competition.

(Reasonable interference is, of course, okay. I really hated to add that sentence, but I suspect that if I didn't you'd almost surely have misread THIS message, just as you misread the previous message.)


----------



## DCIFRTHS

bicker said:


> No, I'm saying that they should be required to allow access to *NONE* of their equipment, and similarly the cable companies should be required to allow access to *NONE* of their equipment. Each company should be able to build their own networks, without unreasonable interference with such competition.
> 
> (Reasonable interference is, of course, okay. I really hated to add that sentence, but I suspect that if I didn't you'd almost surely have misread THIS message, just as you misread the previous message.)


Do you consider *pricing* unreasonable interference?


----------



## bicker

What do you mean?


----------



## MichaelK

I stumbled upon these 2 links with some interesting info on the subject:

first one is Big Band networks ad for SDV- says they can get a cable company to 100HD channels in 90 days by going SDV. Has a nice primer on the subject- with a pretty color graphical explanation that really simplifies it for people who don't quite get what's going on:

http://www.bigbandnet.com/index.php/rapid_switched_video.html?promotile=90-days

second one is an interesting article from cable360 talking about how to respond to Directv's 150 HD channels. Has an interesting quote about HD and SDV:



> A second option and particularly "hot topic" is switched digital video (SDV). SDV enables our operator to take advantage of the old 80/20 rule by reassigning the bandwidth from programs that no one watches to programs that someone watches. *However, as most HDTV set owners will attest, HD programs are not the programs that no one watches and are therefore less likely to give up their bandwidth in a SDV environment. A system with any number of HD channels is less likely to recognize enough of a bandwidth benefit from SDV to solve the problem completely*.


(bold added by me)

can be found at this link:

http://www.cable360.net/ct/strategy/businesscases/23790.html

the cable360 article seems to imply that MPEG4 is the final answer (or part of the final answer)- try explaining that to the cablecard crowd though- maybe tivo's could handle it (assuming a standard was agreed upon that the tivo chipset could handle) but I'm guessing there's not a single TV with a cablecard slot with an MPEG4 decoder in it. Hec- probably not a single non-Tivo cablecard device with an mpeg4 decoder. (maybe a moxi?)


----------



## philipl411

So let me understand this, Since I am going to be moving to Austin, and TWC appears to be the only cable I can get, my series three tivo is going to be crippled?

Tivo was well aware of SDV and made no option for a series three to work?


----------



## lrhorer

TexasGrillChef said:


> Just keep in mind. A friend of mine that works for TWC here in the DFW area, recently informed me of a plan that 98% of the cable companies here in the USA have plans to DROP all ANALOG service by 2012. Some cable companies even sooner than that...
> 
> He further informed me, that one of the MAIN reasons that MOST of the cable companies are considering dropping analog service is to allow more bandwidth for more HD channels and other services. At this time TWC in DFW has no current plans to switch to SDV.


Another big reason is the FCC is requiring CATV operators to provide a la carte programming. 100% digital lineups are the only practical way to provide this.



TexasGrillChef said:


> SDV as much as I hate the concept,


Why? It increases the number of channels the CATV provider can deliver almost without limit. Note SDV has been implemented here in San Antonio, but there is only 1 channel I don't get which I would like to get. In the rest I have no interest.



TexasGrillChef said:


> For example, as much as I hate TWC, I also own TIME WARNER Stock. (Keep in mind all the companies Time Warner owns!)


Time Warner has been trying to get rid of their CATV holdings for some years. No one seems to want to buy at the price TW wants, and plans for an IPO fell through, but they're still looking for a way to get rid of non-core businesses. CATV is definitely non-core for Time Warner.



TexasGrillChef said:


> Everything could easily be done if we all wanted to sink 250 Billion dollars into the system.


Oh, a great deal more than that has been sunk into the issue, and a great deal more than that will be in the future.


----------



## lrhorer

jblake said:


> If you have thousands of users on a node, serving hundreds of available channels, with half the capacity, the cable cos are setting themselves up for a very bad problem


They don't. The local CATV company has fewer than 500 customers per node. If by some miracle every customer had their TVs on and every TV had a different show playing, then they would be in trouble. However, even with VOD and Video Re-Do, it's going to be rare for there to be more than 200 different video streams to be requested. By making certain the number of customers does not greatly exceed the total bandwidth they could possibly select, the CATV company can avoid such issues except in very rare cases. I doubt many people will complain if it happens once a year, or so. The odds of it happening to the SAME customer again and again is extremely low.


----------



## lrhorer

bdraw said:


> Comcast in Chicago is definitely all digital, not sure about the SDV part.
> 
> But either way you're right, why bother with SDV if you have plenty of bandwidth.


Because consumers love things like Video On Demand and Video Redo. SDV allows the consumer to pick from essentially thousands of program streams. Remember, the program stream for Desperate Housewives starting at 20:00 is different from the very same show starting at 20:10.


----------



## lrhorer

Folks, chill out a little. There are a number of ways the TiVo can be made to work with 2.0 CableCards and SDV. Which way will be for the near future to tell:

1. It already works. It's possible the Series III already has the capability. I haven't seen anyone with any authority try to answer this question. Certainly one of the reasons for the delay of the introduction of the Series III was the delay in implementing CC 2.0. While I suspect TiVo simply couldn't wait any longer and just deployed the Series III without upstream capabilities, I would not be overly surprised to learn the CATV module in the Series III is 2-way.

2. Swap out the CATV RF receiver module for a transciever. If any of you have looked inside your Series III boxes (I am *NOT* recommending you do this - it voids the warranty), you will have noticed the RF receivers are monolithic units separate from the TiVo motherboard. As long as the board traces will support the proper communications to the transceiver, swapping out the CATV receiver for a transceiver is simple and inexpensive. While I imagine TiVo may not have implemented a 2 way transceiver, I find it unlikely they would not have implemented a means to interface to a transceiver - assuming the interface is at all different. It well may not be.

3. Replace the motherboard. This is also simple and not terribly more expensive than replacing the receiver. The cost to TiVo would be fairly small, especially since they can recycle most of the components.

4. Implement 2-way communications via the Ethernet connection. This may require some fancy-schmancy firewall agreements between TiVo and the CATV companies, but it's doable. Making the TiVo into a VPN endpoint for the CATV company is not technically difficult.

5. A hang-on accessory. There are several ways this could be accomplished internally, and the easiest might involve moving the CableCards out of the TiVo and into the dongle, but it would not be difficult. It would interface with the TiVo both via RF and Ethernet. If TiVo doesn't do it, there are plenty of 3rd party manufacturers out there who would be interested in taking this on.


----------



## lrhorer

philipl411 said:


> So let me understand this, Since I am going to be moving to Austin, and TWC appears to be the only cable I can get, my series three tivo is going to be crippled?


Technically, I suppose, yes. You won't be able to get Pay Per View, but then you can't get PPV now. You won't be able to get VOD, but then you can't get VOD now. There may be some channels you would like to receive that you cannot yet receive. How many, I don't know. I don't live in Austin.



philipl411 said:


> Tivo was well aware of SDV and made no option for a series three to work?


It's unknown, but I doubt they have not. I find it unlikely TiVo has no strategic plans for implementing SDV capability. The hardware may already be capable, or not. The software to handle SDV is not complex.

You might have to send your Series III in for an upgrade, or they may sell an outboard solution. Or they may just implement software to activate the Tx section of the transceiver, if they went with a 2-way hardware solution from te get-go.


----------



## bicker

philipl411 said:


> Tivo was well aware of SDV and made no option for a series three to work?


What are you suggesting that they should have done?

I think you should go back and read this thread; there is a lot of important information that you perhaps haven't read over or didn't adequately understand.


----------



## bicker

lrhorer said:


> Another big reason is the FCC is requiring CATV operators to provide a la carte programming.


The FCC is not requiring CATV operators to provide a la carte programming.


----------



## sfhub

lrhorer said:


> Another big reason is the *FCC is requiring CATV operators to provide a la carte programming.* 100% digital lineups are the only practical way to provide this.
> ...
> Time Warner has been trying to get rid of their CATV holdings for some years. No one seems to want to buy at the price TW wants, and *plans for an IPO fell through*, but they're still looking for a way to get rid of non-core businesses. CATV is definitely non-core for Time Warner.


When did the FCC start requiring a-la-carte? This was the last I heard:
http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6434492.html

What's this? http://finance.yahoo.com/q?d=t&s=TWC


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## sfhub

lrhorer said:


> There may be some channels you would like to receive that you cannot yet receive. How many, I don't know. I don't live in Austin.


Just look at the first post. It lists the SDV channels in Austin, which appear to be the most extensive we have seen of any provider.
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=357703&page=1&pp=30


----------



## philipl411

bicker said:


> What are you suggesting that they should have done?
> 
> I think you should go back and read this thread; there is a lot of important information that you perhaps haven't read over or didn't adequately understand.


Yes I read it and understand it. I also understand that as more HD channels come online more channels will go SDV.

As to what they "should" have done? They should have made sure they could add the ability to the series 3 or waited to release it until they knew.

When I bought my Series three, I knowing accepted that I would not get PPV or VOD. No big loss, I have never used it anyway. (Well may $12.00 or so in PPV). But as of right now, 3 channels that I or my wife watch are SDV.

I have tried three other recorders other than Tivo, and most performed better at some function than Tivo. But I keep Tivo for the remote and the Menus. So I wont go to another system, simple because I like Tivo.

Now what "should" they do, just let me know if they are working on it. Thats all just communicate with me.


----------



## MichaelK

philipl411 said:


> Yes I read it and understand it. I also understand that as more HD channels come online more channels will go SDV.
> 
> As to what they "should" have done? They should have made sure they could add the ability to the series 3 or waited to release it until they knew.
> ....


1) no one know that they DONT have the ability to add 2-way communication to EITHER the S3 or the Tivo HD. It could be as simple as enabling it on hardware already in the boxes or more complex by adding a dongle of some sort
2) wait to release until they knew what the end game was would mean no S3 and no Tivo HD even today. The current party line from cable is that to do 2-way you need OCAP and that essentially means no tivo UI- likely there's a compromise to be had (that Rodgers and cable have spoken about to congres and the FCC) that means there is a something they can do.



philipl411 said:


> ...
> 
> Now what "should" they do, just let me know if they are working on it. Thats all just communicate with me.


The CEO told congress they are working on a compromise with cable and they hope cable will do the right thing. What more can they say really? I guess they can be more specific and say "we have a solution that we proposed to cable and cable is mulling it over" but getting into a pissing match with cable at this juncture doesn't really help tivo much since tivo is essentially powerless and the FCC doesn't seem to be in the mood to force cable to do the right thing.

I dont really think Tivo has ANY good options except to hope cable does the right thing...


----------



## jrm01

On my local (Pittsburgh) Comcast AVS forum I received this reply from a person who supposedly has "inside sources at Comcast":



> According to my source, they (Comcast) want to keep TiVo Series 3 customers happy. So, if they are not NOW mapping to all digital on CableCards (for ADS systems), the plan is that they WILL...eventually. I asked about SDV, and that is also a plan, but again, they know they don't want to piss-off TiVo Series 3 customers.
> 
> This is all especially true because: 1.) Verizon supports TiVo Series 3 with Cable Cards, 2.) Verizon is "all-digital" from the get-go., and 3.) Verizon does NOT use SDV.
> 
> So Comcast views not supporting CableCards as akin to holding the door open themselves for Verizon to come and take customers away...


Oh were it only true.


----------



## GoHokies!

philipl411 said:


> Yes I read it and understand it.


Obviously not, as you would have understood the impossible nature of what you were asking.

Tivo has communicated many times that they are working on a solution, you're just not listening.

I'm glad that the S3 was released as is a year ago (almost). I've had 11 months of trouble free, HD bliss.


----------



## philipl411

GoHokies! said:


> Obviously not, as you would have understood the impossible nature of what you were asking.
> 
> Tivo has communicated many times that they are working on a solution, you're just not listening.
> 
> I'm glad that the S3 was released as is a year ago (almost). I've had 11 months of trouble free, HD bliss.


You seem to have some anger issues. You make want to check with your health care provide to see if they can recommend the proper counseling. It would really help and who knows, you might have more people enjoy being around you.


----------



## GoHokies!

philipl411 said:


> You seem to have some anger issues. You make want to check with your health care provide to see if they can recommend the proper counseling. It would really help and who knows, you might have more people enjoy being around you.


Wow, 3 posts here and you're already an expert on my mental health!

Try keeping the posts a little more on topic, we generally prefer on topic, less personally attacking posts around here. Maybe if you paid a little closer attention to the content of the posts around here and a little bit less on my posting style, you would understand wouldn't ask questions that have obvious answers.


----------



## lrhorer

bicker said:


> The FCC is not requiring CATV operators to provide a la carte programming.


They are not requiring it *YET*. They are making lots of noises to the effect, and while it could just be saber rattling, the FCC can be very capricious.


----------



## lrhorer

sfhub said:


> When did the FCC start requiring a-la-carte?


I worded that badly. I should perhaps have said "encouraging", or "threatening". The point is, it's looming on the horizon. Whether it ever actually becomes a mandate or not, SDV will poise the CATV companies to provide it f need be.



sfhub said:


> What's this? http://finance.yahoo.com/q?d=t&s=TWC


I'm not sure of your point. The aborted IPO was several years ago. Time Warner divested themselves of us when our stock was up, as well. We used to be owned by them, too.


----------



## lrhorer

philipl411 said:


> So let me understand this, Since I am going to be moving to Austin, and TWC appears to be the only cable I can get, my series three tivo is going to be crippled?


Oh, by the way, depending on where in Austin you live, Grande might be an alternative to TWC. I believe they have a significant amount of plant in Austin. (I could be mistaken.)


----------



## lrhorer

philipl411 said:


> Yes I read it and understand it. I also understand that as more HD channels come online more channels will go SDV.


Personally I would find it difficult to care very much less. Having viewed 1080i content for a while, I find it rather difficult to watch 480i material. In San Antonio there is only 1 channel I cannot get I really wish I could, and that is A&E HD. Of course you aren't going to be in San Antonio, but even in Austin most of the SDV channels are 480i. It does look like you're out of luck with Fox Sports HD, A&E HD, Music HD, Cinemax HD, and Starz HD. For me, I would only care about A&E HD and StarzHD. Of course, your mileage may vary, and for some reason you might actually want some of those SD channels, but the list leaves me pretty non-plussed.


----------



## bicker

philipl411 said:


> As to what they "should" have done? They should have made sure they could add the ability to the series 3 or waited to release it until they knew.


Thereby depriving themselves of a year's worth of sales.  And they still don't know, so they still wouldn't have an HD product in the marketplace. I cannot believe you actually, seriously, think that's a smart idea, given their tenuous financial situation.


----------



## bicker

lrhorer said:


> They are not requiring it *YET*.


And they may never, which is why I corrected your earlier misstatements to that effect.


----------



## jrm01

Actually I think the buzz about ala carte pricing is coming more from Congress and their committees, rather than from the FCC.


----------



## bicker

jrm01 said:


> Actually I think the buzz about ala carte pricing is coming more from Congress and their committees, rather than from the FCC.


Well, I think you will hear specific FCC commissioners (like the chairman) blathering on about it, but the commission itself, obviously not.


----------



## lrhorer

bicker said:


> Well, I think you will hear specific FCC commissioners (like the chairman) blathering on about it, but the commission itself, obviously not.


A lot of consumers think it would be a good idea, as well. When I was in the business, I heard a lot of complaints from customers about having to pay for channels they didn't watch, and I sympathize. For some customers it might indeed be cheaper. For most I suspect not, but one never knows.


----------



## bicker

That really points out the no-win situation that a la carte is, especially if it is to be driven by consumers wanting it. They'll go from complaining about "having to pay for channels they don't watch"  to complaining about how all the channels now cost $3-$4 each.


----------



## MichaelK

bicker said:


> That really points out the no-win situation that a la carte is, especially if it is to be driven by consumers wanting it. They'll go from complaining about "having to pay for channels they don't watch"  to complaining about how all the channels now cost $3-$4 each.


exactly-

everyone seems to assume that because the package divided by channels is like 50 cents a channel or something now that if you went a la carte it woudl be the same. As you point out the reality is the "the channels they do watch" will now cost 3 or 4 or maybe even 8-10 (espn or disney perhaps) and the crap channels will cost a nickel.

Another possibility is the "a la carte" that sirius and xm have said they would do if they are allowed to merge. I forget the details but in the end there's very little to be saved- you buy the base package of 50 channels for a bit of savings but the "premium" content can't be included and would be much more to get so in the end it would just be cheaper to get the whole giant package as today- since a good percentage of their subs, join up for that "premium" content there would be little to no savings for most.

all that said- I'm not sure how SDV really matters for A la carte? Once you are all digital couldn't you just do a la carte anyway even if it's using old fashioned broadcastng techniques?


----------



## miller890

TWC in Albany, NY has started using SDV. Here is the list so far that no longer can be tuned in by the Series-3 with CC's.

746 Showtime West
747 Showtime 2 West
748 Showtime 3 West
749 Showtime Extreme West
750 Showtime Beyond West
754 Showtime Next West
755 Showtime Family Zone West
756 Showtime Women West

TimeWarner Cable Channel Lineup for NY


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## jmaditto

How are you guys finding out what is on SDV? I have a SA8300HD box from TWC and can access the service menu...is there a way to tell in there?


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## cableguy763

If you know what freq's they are using, you can find out that way.


----------



## miller890

jmaditto said:


> How are you guys finding out what is on SDV? I have a SA8300HD box from TWC and can access the service menu...is there a way to tell in there?


I found out the other night on TWC when using a S2+cable_box when I changed to Showtime West, there was a popup from the cable_box saying something like "please wait accessing channel SDV". Then I went to to the S3 with the CC's and went to the same channel and it was black with a tivo message saying "cant tune to channel, no signal".


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## jmaditto

cableguy763 said:


> If you know what freq's they are using, you can find out that way.


I have the freq avail to me in the service menu but I don't know which freq corresponds to SDV.


----------



## cableguy763

The cable co will use a set of frequencies that are SDV. Just an example is say freq's from 561mhz-601mhz are being used for SDV. If Showtime West is switched, it can tune to any one of those freqs to get the stream. If it is 561 in your node, across town it could be on 585. If you run across a cable service tech in your area, he could probably tell you those freqs. Or, if you know which channels are switched you can pull up the diags on your box and tune to each of those channels and note the freqs they are using.


----------



## jmaditto

Ok - I think I got it figured out. I went to the diagnostics menu on my SA 8300HD and then hit the page down button on my remote and on page two at the top was a title SDV Info. For SDV channels it displayed a freq number but for non SDV channels it showed 0000. Pretty simple if my assumptions are correct. The bad news is I have SDV in Columbia, SC so no TiVoHD for me right now. Can't stand the TWC DVR interface but I can't give up HD channels. Oh well, I'm sure it won't be too long before TiVo provides a box that can get SDV.


----------



## timstack8969

Does anyone know if Comcast plans on using "SDV" in N/E Philly anytime soon??? I'm thinking about buying the new "TivoHD" this week but will it still work when comcast starts using "SDV".


----------



## jmaditto

The short answer is No, TiVo will not tune SDV channels at this time.


----------



## dig_duggler

Recent engadget and ars technica reports are making me so damn nervous. I knew it was coming but I don't want to let go of my shiny shiny tivo box.


----------



## vstone

Comcast is going with Arris for SDV. The Arris equipment dependis on megabit IP streams. In an IP environment, it may be possible to parallel docsis modem upstream traffic with IP traffic. You may be interested in the following documents:

http://www.arrisi.com/product_catalog/_docs/_specsheet/070620_D5_Universal_Edge_QAM.pdf

http://www.arrisi.com/investor_relations/presentations/070508_NCTA_Technology_Bfast.pdf


----------



## sfhub

lrhorer said:


> I'm not sure of your point. The aborted IPO was several years ago. Time Warner divested themselves of us when our stock was up, as well. We used to be owned by them, too.


My point was the information you provided and I highlighted wasn't current information as they did eventually do the IPO of Time Warner Cable. I didn't even realize at the time you were talking about an incident from a while back as I thought you were trying to make a point about current conditions.


----------



## lrhorer

bicker said:


> That really points out the no-win situation that a la carte is, especially if it is to be driven by consumers wanting it. They'll go from complaining about "having to pay for channels they don't watch"  to complaining about how all the channels now cost $3-$4 each.


Well, it shouldn't be that high, but your point is valid, nonetheless. Assuming the CATV companies are not gouging the customer (I think they are in some cases, but we'll assume not for the moment), they're going to have to come up with the same amount of revenue some how, so on average the customer is going to have to wind up paying the same. Some customers, however, do only want three or four channels. I myself for the most part only want PBS and HD movie channels. I can do without the networks, sports channels, etc.


----------



## lrhorer

MichaelK said:


> everyone seems to assume that because the package divided by channels is like 50 cents a channel or something


I suppose some do, but most don't. A lot of customers only want a specific handful of channels. Current CATV pricing policies, however, can wind up costing a customer $100 just to get a single channel of interest. It's rare, but it can happen. Many customers, only want Spanish channels, for example, or don't want any Spanish channels, as a counter-example. I personally don't want any sports channels at all, yet two of the tiers I am required to purchase to get the programming I want are heavily laden with sports channels, as yet another example. Nonetheless, the CATV company has to make its money somehow, so prices almost certainly will go up per channel. On yet the other hand, the CATV company pays the content providers per customer, and I can guarantee you they are not going to report any customers whose a la carte lineups do not include the vendor in question, so there can be some significant savings for the CATV company whihc could hypotheticaly be passed on to the consumer. Whether they will or not is another matter.



MichaelK said:


> As you point out the reality is the "the channels they do watch" will now cost 3 or 4 or maybe even 8-10 (espn or disney perhaps) and the crap channels will cost a nickel.


What you consider "crap" and what someone else considers "crap" may be two very different things.



MichaelK said:


> all that said- I'm not sure how SDV really matters for A la carte? Once you are all digital couldn't you just do a la carte anyway even if it's using old fashioned broadcastng techniques?


Yes, but if the CATV company is going to convert to digital from analog, they may as well go with SDV, since the costs are not much greater. More importantly, an "ordinary" digital stream is broadcast to every consumer in the network, and eats up bandwidth whether anyone is paying for it or even watching it, or not. With SDV, they can offer a channel only 20 people in the entire viewing area will purchase. The 20 people represent additional revenue, and since its is SDV, they don't significantly increase the CATV company's overhead. In short, it doesn't eat up an entire channel. The decreased cost of operations for a slightly watched channels make a la carte much more profitable with SDV than without.


----------



## CharlesH

lrhorer said:


> With SDV, they can offer a channel only 20 people in the entire viewing area will purchase. The 20 people represent additional revenue, and since its is SDV, they don't significantly increase the CATV company's overhead.


Since SDV works at a node granularity, I would think that it would be a real winner where there are neighborhoods where most of the residents speak a particular foreign language, and many of them would like to have programming in their language. In other neighborhoods where that language is not spoken, few if any people would want those channels.


----------



## vstone

lrhorer said:


> Well, it shouldn't be that high, but your point is valid, nonetheless. Assuming the CATV companies are not gouging the customer (I think they are in some cases, but we'll assume not for the moment), they're going to have to come up with the same amount of revenue some how, so on average the customer is going to have to wind up paying the same. Some customers, however, do only want three or four channels. I myself for the most part only want PBS and HD movie channels. I can do without the networks, sports channels, etc.


I vote for a middle ground, where all of the expensive channels (NFL, ESPN, etc. are ala carte. This would still allow them to provide a breadth of programming without killing off minor channels.


----------



## bicker

I definitely like that idea. Require any channel charging more than a certain amount per subscriber to be a separable fee (both in terms of the contract between content owner and distribution service, and between distribution service and the end-customer), while still allowing the deal to offer a lower price for those channels (again, at both levels) if included in a package.


----------



## moyekj

If you haven't already seen this thread it's a must read for those concerned about SDV for Tivo CableCard devices (a proposed solution to the problem is apparently in the works using a USB device):
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=363784


----------



## dig_duggler

moyekj said:


> If you haven't already seen this thread it's a must read for those concerned about SDV for Tivo CableCard devices (a proposed solution to the problem is apparently in the works using a USB device):
> http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=363784


Here's a direct link for the relevant article.

Finally there is some sort of roadmap being paved...


----------



## skylab

Lets hope it works. Until then I will be filing a complaint with the FCC as it is a violation of Section 629 of the Communications act of 1996 for TWC to require us to use a leased set top box to receive non-interactive programming (including HD stations on sdv).


----------



## bicker

Good luck with that. Let us know how it goes.


----------



## bdraw

I was very satisfied with my cable companies reaction to my FCC complaint.


----------



## moyekj

If you are still updating 1st page of this thread a couple more additions:
http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6470803.html


> In Northern Virginia, where Cox has about 240,000 subscribers, the SDV system will go live systemwide in about 30 days, according to Kelso. Later this year, Cox plans to roll out the system in its Phoenix and Orange County, Calif., systems.


Also TWC Hawaii:
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=364085

Looks like things are certainly heating up with SDV this year - we need that USB dongle solution already!


----------



## snowbunny

Tonight my mother couldn't tune 225 (Discovery Health) on the S3, but I could on my S2. I checked, and she was right; there was another channel, TXCN, that was also missing.

My mother (who's visiting) was haranguing me over how a TiVo box could be the difference between watching on one TV vs the other.  "Can't they fix it?" she said.

I was hoping that tuning to 225 on the S2 would bring the signal to the house and that the S3 could then pick it up in the same way that PPV works, but apparently it doesn't work that way.

I'm very tired of this problem.


----------



## cdp1276

bdraw if you can add ESPN2 HD to your Rochester, NY list on the first page. Now my question is, I've been told by others in my area that have the 8300 HD TW box that they can see in the SARA software that SDV isn't deployed here. So all these channels that TW isn't allowing me to get on my S3 are being selectively blocked to CableCard's.

Doesn't these seem like a violation? I've done the FCC form already but any other suggested routes of escalation?


----------



## bdraw

It would be a violation to selectively block any channel from CableCARD customers. I'd bet your friend are mis-interpreting what they see in the SARA software. 

What channel is ESPN2 HD?


----------



## cdp1276

bdraw said:


> It would be a violation to selectively block any channel from CableCARD customers. I'd bet your friend are mis-interpreting what they see in the SARA software.
> 
> What channel is ESPN2 HD?


No, he didn't misread it and someone else in our area talked to the head engineer at our location and he says SDV hasn't been deployed here and wont until later this year or early 2008. The Sara software clearly shows no SDV server connection.

So given that, what do people suggest I do?

ESPN2HD - 1053


----------



## jmaditto

Its pretty easy to tell from the diagnostics screens what is SDV and what isn't. Just have to go one page from the default and there it is.


----------



## ddubois

I'm in Hawaii (Oahu) with my Series3, and I'm spitting mad. I don't get it?! Aren't cable companies required by FCC/law to support cablecard devices or something? Who do I complain to? Am I supposed to fill out FCC Form 475? Because it looks like the wrong form, dealing with telephone stuff, not cable stuff.

Channels we're apparently losing:

46 C-SPAN3
47 C-SPAN-2
102 Jewelry Channel
117 CNBC World
118 Bloomberg TV
120 Pentagon Channel
121 The Weather Channel
130 KAOM
132 AZN TV
134 Imaginasian
212 The Outdoor Channel
241 Fuel
242 NBA TV
243 The Tennis Channel
244 Fox College Sports - Atlantic
245 Fox College Sports - Central
246 Fox College Sports - Pacific
247 College Sports TV
349 Ocean Network
410 Inspirational TV
587 Country Music TV
589 VH1 Classic
597 BET On Jazz
599 Fuse
608 Ovation
689 Galavision
690 Fox Sports World Espanol
691 CNN Espanol
690 Fox Spors World Espanol
691 CNN Espanol
692 Discovery en Espanol
693 ESPN Deportes
699 Chinese Channel
1216 HD Gold/HD Versus
1226 HD FSN
1347 HD National Geographic
1355 HD Net
1603 HD Net Movies
1561 iNDemand HD
1222 ESPN HD
1224 ESPN2 HD
1605 HD Universal

That's the entire "HD Entertainment Pak" lineup. I didn't spend $2500 on a widescreen TV, and $800 on a Series3, so I could have no HD content whatsoever.


----------



## pashasurf7873

ddubois said:


> I'm in Hawaii (Oahu) with my Series3, and I'm spitting mad. I don't get it?! Aren't cable companies required by FCC/law to support cablecard devices or something? Who do I complain to? Am I supposed to fill out FCC Form 475? ..... I didn't spend $2500 on a widescreen TV, and $800 on a Series3, so I could have no HD content whatsoever.


I'm so PO'd also. this is crazy! I really hope someone will figure out a solution. Has TIVO even acknowledged this issue publically yet?


----------



## HiKent

I complained to the FCC earlier this month about SDV in Hawaii. I got a letter back saying they don't handle cable matters anymore, talk to the local regulator.


----------



## skylab

People are also filing complaints in proceeding 97-80 (cablecard issues -- the CEA has proposed a ban on temporary ban on SDV). To view other comments and complaints go to http://fjallfoss.fcc.gov/prod/ecfs/comsrch_v2.cgi and put 97-80 in the box for proceeding.

To file a comment in 97-80 put 97-80 in the proceeding box, fill in the required fields, and you can type in a brief comment at the bottom. Here is the site: https://gullfoss2.fcc.gov/prod/ecfs/upload_v2.cgi

The more people that fight on this the better. We need to ask for an outright ban on SDV.

We need to get the word out!


----------



## txagfan

skylab said:


> People are also filing complaints in proceeding 97-80 (cablecard issues -- the CEA has proposed a ban on temporary ban on SDV). To view other comments and complaints go to http://fjallfoss.fcc.gov/prod/ecfs/comsrch_v2.cgi and put 97-80 in the box for proceeding.
> 
> To file a comment in 97-80 put 97-80 in the proceeding box, fill in the required fields, and you can type in a brief comment at the bottom. Here is the site: https://gullfoss2.fcc.gov/prod/ecfs/upload_v2.cgi
> 
> The more people that fight on this the better. We need to ask for an outright ban on SDV.
> 
> We need to get the word out!


Are you kidding me with your temporary ban stuff? Cablecard customers from cable make up about .001% of their customers. The rest of their customers want more channels, more HD, just like you. SDV makes this possible. SDV also makes it possible to compete with D* and their new offerings. So, do you make your .001% angry by implementing SDV or make the rest happy by giving them more channels. I know some will flame me for the 1996 telecom act and all but really all I want is more HD and less crying from people that didn't do their research before they bought a Tivo. I can't wait for the new dongle or whatever, but I'm not holding my breath for to come out any time soon.


----------



## bicker

And in my experience, your perspective ("want more channels" rather than CableCard) is more typical. I have a TiVo S3 using CableCards. I'll be disappointed if my cable system deploys SDV and the TiVo cannot handle it, however I won't deny my personal accountability having made the decision to purchase the TiVo. No one is entitled to expect that their TiVo will work beyond the parameters that the box is built for. If a solution comes about, great, but otherwise, people should accept their own responsibility rather than cravenly looking for scapegoats for their disappointment.

I wrote this in another thread (about TiVo service pricing) yesterday, but it applies just as well, here, today: Folks should always make decisions based on what they have explicit assurances of (whether written or otherwise). If you make your decisions based on anything else -- i.e., assumptions based on your own perceptions or the best guesses of others -- then YOU are personally accountable if those assumptions turn out not to be correct.


----------



## GoHokies!

txagfan said:


> Are you kidding me with your temporary ban stuff? Cablecard customers from cable make up about .001% of their customers. The rest of their customers want more channels, more HD, just like you. SDV makes this possible. SDV also makes it possible to compete with D* and their new offerings. So, do you make your .001% angry by implementing SDV or make the rest happy by giving them more channels. I know some will flame me for the 1996 telecom act and all but really all I want is more HD and less crying from people that didn't do their research before they bought a Tivo. I can't wait for the new dongle or whatever, but I'm not holding my breath for to come out any time soon.


If that's what it takes to get the Cable Companies to get in line and follow the law, then that's what it takes.

The cable companies have had *10 YEARS* to come up with something that would work. If they hadn't been dragging their feet like my 4 year old when he doesn't want to go to bed, this wouldn't be a problem.


----------



## JoeSchueller

SDV just went in to effect here in Cincinnati today. They introduced ESPN2HD and placed a lovely asterisk next to it indicating that it was "Not available on one-way cable cards." I'm about to file my FCC comment now.

Others concerned about this may want to consider contacting their local cable franchise authority.

Here's the complaint I'm filing


> Time Warner Cable of Cincinnati recently implemented a switched-
> digital-video (SDV) scheme to limit consumer choice and abuse their
> monopoly position afforded them by the local franchise agreement.
> 
> Time Warner Cable's decision to make ESPN2HD available ONLY to two-
> way cable devices (of which they are the SOLE supplier) is in violation
> of both the spirit and the letter of the CableCard mandate
> and the 1996 Telecommunications act. This is a clear move to force
> customers to pay higher rates for their STB and DVR rentals in
> addition to maintaining their primary advertising vehicle for PPV
> and VOD services.
> 
> As a consumer, I have no interest in these services, simply open
> access to the cable service provided on public rights-of-way on
> franchise rights handed out by my government. I have no interest
> in Time Warner's inferior DVR nor their higher rental fees. I only
> want them to comply with the CableCard ruling and stop this end-
> run around consumer choice by holding channels "hostage" on SDV
> schemes.
> 
> Please do not allow this anti-consumer, anti-competition,
> monopolistic behavior to continue. Please force Time Warner Cable
> of Cincinnati to open ESPN2HD to ALL CableCard customers, not only
> to those willing to subject themselves to their proprietary
> technology and advertising stream.


----------



## pashasurf7873

I'm one of the bummed Tivo 3 owners in Hawaii ( http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=364085 )
So unless the USB Dongle comes out before sept 24th (unlikely) I will need to get a piece of junk SA8300 HD box to watch HD.
My question is about the Cablecards, If I return them on the 24th(they cost me $24.00 a month) will I need them back whenever the USB Dongle comes out?? TWC says they are phazing the CableCards out, so I am worried down the road they may not re issue them. 
Anyone out there have any suggestions? Thanks


----------



## Arcady

"Phazing the CableCards out" is illegal. Write to the FCC.


----------



## pashasurf7873

Arcady said:


> "Phazing the CableCards out" is illegal. Write to the FCC.


'Phazing out' may have been the wrong term. they told me that they won't be issuing them after the 24th. A fellow hawaii forum member wrote to the local fcc regulator and they responded to contact the local regulatory commission or something because the fcc no longer deals with cable issues.


----------



## CharlesH

pashasurf7873 said:


> 'Phazing out' may have been the wrong term. they told me that they won't be issuing them after the 24th.


I'm sure that the cable-card support group at TiVo would like to hear about this. The FCC may not deal with prices anymore, but the cable card rules are certainly still in effect.


----------



## JoeSchueller

I feel like I just lost on a horrible $600 bet. I come to find that ESPN2HD is SDV in Cincinnati on the day AFTER my 30 day window expires. I honestly feel sick over this and just how helpless we really are. All this comes after we must have invested like 20+ hours in getting our signal right (still isn't) and cable cards installed.

Between this and the pixelation, I think I'm done. I don't have the energy to fight the monopoly. I think it may cost me my marriage after how much time my wife put in getting the CC's working, but this feels like a slippery slope where TiVo and the CableCo's play cat & mouse, and we're caught in the middle.


----------



## txagfan

JoeSchueller said:


> SDV just went in to effect here in Cincinnati today. They introduced ESPN2HD and placed a lovely asterisk next to it indicating that it was "Not available on one-way cable cards." I'm about to file my FCC comment now.
> 
> Others concerned about this may want to consider contacting their local cable franchise authority.
> 
> Here's the complaint I'm filing


So, are you also going to complain about the sat. co's having a waiver and not opening up their network? Are you going to complain when the cable co says "ok, you can have ESPN2 HD, but you will NEVER get another new HD channel because we are out of bandwidth?'' Quit your crying, SDV is the future, it is the only way cable has to compete with D*. You are part of a very small minority, like .001% of cable co's customer base. The rest of the customers want more HD channels.


----------



## davecramer74

> Quit your crying, SDV is the future, it is the only way cable has to compete with D*.


amen, more channels is all i have to say.


----------



## davecramer74

> I feel like I just lost on a horrible $600 bet


ebay?


----------



## bicker

More channels sounds good to me. 

Let me ask a question: ESPN HD is a linear channel? Only ESPN2HD is SDV? If so, then I'm not disappointed yet. As long as they only put the less important channels on SDV, I'll be content.


----------



## LoREvanescence

Sighs, well. I was just searching the web to see what the status of Comcast and SDV in this are is. Now, I didn't find anything that said if any channels were in SDV yet, but found way to many articles stating 400 hd channels by years end, 800 hd channels by the end of 2008 and hints at massive roll outs of SDV in nearly all comcast markets in the coming months to support this=\

I really hope that this does not happen. I would much prefer to see comcast use another option they will be testing in Chicago this fall. They plan to turn off all analog cable channels except local networks and providing 1 free set top box to every house hold to compensate for the loss of analog channels to the digital teer. That sounds like a much better solution then SDV to me.

Also when searching comcast and sdv I found this article on satelliteguys.us which really ticks me off. They must really not like Tivo. But some of the points they bring up about tivo support would not be good if they hold any truth. Does anyone know if their points could warrent anytruth?



> I have read that article and have also talked with many Comcast people. Both the article and my contacts have said they would offer 800 HD "choices" not channels. The choices will be mixed between 24x7 linear HD channels (ESPN2 HD etc) and HD Video On Demand content. I have been told by a few people that a massive push is underway to upgrade many of the big markets quite fast and come very very close to matching the upcoming DirecTV HD offerings. Now with that said don't expect this to happen as I'm not sure how I feel about what I was told. I'm also not sure if they can upgrade the markets that fast either. I've also been told from a very high and I mean high person within Comcast that they have crossed the "T"s and dotted the "I"s and feel they are fully covered on the legal front for what I'm going to say below. This was left on my answering machine less than 24 hours ago so its very new.
> 
> Comcast will be rolling out switched digital video in nearly all of their markets and sadly they won't bother working with Tivo for support with their Series 3 HD Tivo. Also Comcast can win in court and win any complaints that may reach the FCC as well.
> 
> The way they will win this is because Tivo didn't build their device within the specs for a two-way cable card device. Its not Comcast's fault if the Series 3 HD Tivo cannot receive the new HD channels on SDV when Tivo refused to support hardware wise the two-way cablelabs specs. I'm also told that if Tivo included the hardware for two-way communication all customers would need is an M-Card. I'm also told that if Tivo would have done this Comcast would work with them to make sure everything worked on Comcast's end.
> 
> So I've also talked to many people at one of my local Boston law firms and they all say that Comcast is in the right as they are supporting all of the cable card specs and they cannot help it when other companies don't follow the specs and leave out a crucial feature such as two-way communication.
> 
> So I guess this is a big big blow to Series 3 HD Tivo users but I also say that many of you should have known better than to buy an expensive box knowing full well it wasn't a two-way device. I'm also getting hints that the FCC will soon require that all cable card client devices such as the HD Tivo will need to place a big sticker on each box telling customers what the device doesn't support within the cable card specs. So they would need to say on the box that this device doesn't support two-way communication and this may hamper your ability to receive current and/or future channels on your cable company.
> 
> So in simple terms the law and courts would decide that Comcast followed all the cable card specs and that Tivo on their own accord decided to build a one way device when they could have built a two-way device instead. Comcast cannot be held liable for another company willingly not supporting two-way communication period.


----------



## GoHokies!

There isn't anything technically wrong about the article, it just leaves out the crucial fact that including the 2 way bits would have forced them to be OCAP compliant, which means that the cable company would be able to download their own OS onto the box and overwrite the Tivo OS.

The link that needs to be broken is the 2-way=OCAP bundling crap that exists today.


----------



## LoREvanescence

GoHokies! said:


> There isn't anything technically wrong about the article, it just leaves out the crucial fact that including the 2 way bits would have forced them to be OCAP compliant, which means that the cable company would be able to download their own OS onto the box and overwrite the Tivo OS.
> 
> The link that needs to be broken is the 2-way=OCAP bundling crap that exists today.


I didn't know that issue. And that is a crucial issue. What is a Tivo Box with a cable companies OS? Just another paper weight useless box with a crappy interface, lack of features and add banners.

Why is that OCAP thing a requirement of 2-Way? With that there can be no real third party competition, doesn't that alone warrent a fcc complaint or possible legal action that can stand ground. It's not that Tivo is not in compliance its the fact, they need to be one way to have a box that differs from the cable companies.


----------



## JoeSchueller

txagfan said:


> So, are you also going to complain about the sat. co's having a waiver and not opening up their network? Are you going to complain when the cable co says "ok, you can have ESPN2 HD, but you will NEVER get another new HD channel because we are out of bandwidth?'' Quit your crying, SDV is the future, it is the only way cable has to compete with D*. You are part of a very small minority, like .001% of cable co's customer base. The rest of the customers want more HD channels.


Quit crying? There's a much easier solution to the problem - turn off analog! SDV is not the only way to add HD, it is just the most convenient way to continue to collect STB rental and pimp PPV to me. The sat-co's are subject to competition - thus they have consumer choice. Sat-co's also do not use public right-of-way's and public infrastructure. They are inherently private enterprises. Cable companies are granted monopoly status by gov't franchise authorities, and thus should be held to a higher standard of openness and consumer choice.

I see your point, but I respectfully disagree.


----------



## GoHokies!

LoREvanescence said:


> Why is that OCAP thing a requirement of 2-Way? With that there can be no real third party competition, doesn't that alone warrent a fcc complaint or possible legal action that can stand ground. It's not that Tivo is not in compliance its the fact, they need to be one way to have a box that differs from the cable companies.


Because the cable companies do not want to give over control of the boxes. The CEA is lobbying against it and so far as I know the FCC hasn't gotten involved yet. That's where my heartburn with the FCC's half-implementation of the '96 telecom act that was supposed to fix all this crap.


----------



## wbertram

Re the often made statement "SDV makes more channels available."

I fail to see the logic here. If the cable company says they have, say, 10 HD capable delivery channels, but they offer 30 HD channels available, then they can only deliver 10 HD channels at a time. If the 10 HD capable delivery channels are already in use, and you want to watch one of the 20 HD channels not being transmitted, you are out of luck.

It makes no difference how many HD channels they say are available, 30, 50, 1000. Eventually the 10 HD capable delivery channels will be in use with the 10 most popular HD channels, and the other 20, 40, or 990 HD channels are unavailable to you.

They still can only deliver only 10 HD channels at a time. SDV does not allow them to increase the number of deliverable HD channels.

Now, if you want to watch unpopular channel 29, at, say, 8:00PM Wed evening, you might be able to get up at 4:00AM Wed morning, tune your STB to channel 29, and leave it there until 8:00PM Wed evening, and channel 29 will still be being delivered. But good luck in being able to tune in unpopular channel 29 at 7:55PM Wed evening! Unpopular channel 29 will be essentially unavailable for prime time viewing!


----------



## wbertram

Tip for those in the SDV nightmare.

Get your friends and neighbors to tune their STBs to the most unpopular channels they can imagine. Lock the SDV system into delivering all the unpopular channels. Then let the cable companies start getting the complaints from customers who find that the popular channels are "Not Available".


----------



## ah30k

wbertram said:


> Get your friends and neighbors to tune their STBs to the most unpopular channels they can imagine.


Like I want to set my TV to some unpopular channel? Who in their right mind would agree to this?


----------



## wbertram

Question.

If all the delivery channels are in use, and somebody wants to watch a PPV movie, will the cable company knock off one of the free channels being delivered, and replace that programming with the PPV movie in order to reap the PPV fee?


----------



## ah30k

wbertram said:


> Re the often made statement "SDV makes more channels available."


Yes, you scenario is correct, but if they size the SDV pool of channels properly as well as the node sizes the chance that a user will want a channel and no slots will be available should be a six-sigma event (well maybe not that rare, but rare).

Also, future systems will be able to re-claim bandwidth by increasing the compression on the lesser watched channels to squeeze in the new request.


----------



## ah30k

wbertram said:


> Now, if you want to watch unpopular channel 29, at, say, 8:00PM Wed evening, you might be able to get up at 4:00AM Wed morning, tune your STB to channel 29, and leave it there until 8:00PM Wed evening, and channel 29 will still be being delivered.


Any channel with inactivity for a period of time is able to be polled to see if the watcher is still there. "Please hit the enter button if you still want this channel". If no response is received the channel will be reclaimed and the STB will be sent to a safe channel.

oh, and getting up at 4:00 to set a channels seems like an awful lot of work.


----------



## ah30k

wbertram said:


> Question.
> 
> If all the delivery channels are in use, and somebody wants to watch a PPV movie, will the cable company knock off one of the free channels being delivered, and replace that programming with the PPV movie in order to reap the PPV fee?


Current systems usually have PPV and linear channels separate. Future systems will mix and match for greater efficiency.


----------



## wbertram

ah30k said:


> Yes, you scenario is correct, but if they size the SDV pool of channels properly as well as the node sizes the chance that a user will want a channel and no slots will be available should be a six-sigma event (well maybe not that rare, but rare).
> 
> Also, future systems will be able to re-claim bandwidth by increasing the compression on the lesser watched channels to squeeze in the new request.


If they do as you suggest, then the "SDV pool of channels" would have to be essential the same as the advertised number of available channels. So, what has SDV bought them? Nothing!

With regards to the "compression fix". You would be happy watching highly compressed channels? ala the HD Lite used by the satellite companies?


----------



## vman41

wbertram said:


> I fail to see the logic here. If the cable company says they have, say, 10 HD capable delivery channels, but they offer 30 HD channels available, then they can only deliver 10 HD channels at a time. If the 10 HD capable delivery channels are already in use, and you want to watch one of the 20 HD channels not being transmitted, you are out of luck.
> 
> It makes no difference how many HD channels they say are available, 30, 50, 1000. Eventually the 10 HD capable delivery channels will be in use with the 10 most popular HD channels, and the other 20, 40, or 990 HD channels are unavailable to you.


If the buildout of the fiber is deep enough to have just 10 outlets in a switch group, you'd be the 10th person so could always get what you want.

The number I seem to be seeing is 400-500 subscribers being served by a hub, and I guess 300 or so Mhz of SDV bandwidth (both SD and HD). If all HD, that would be 100-150 channels.


----------



## wbertram

ah30k said:


> Any channel with inactivity for a period of time is able to be polled to see if the watcher is still there. "Please hit the enter button if you still want this channel". If no response is received the channel will be reclaimed and the STB will be sent to a safe channel.
> 
> oh, and getting up at 4:00 to set a channels seems like an awful lot of work.


If I get up to get a beer during a commercial, I might get "polled", and when I come back, I will have lost the channel in the middle of a show? That will make customers very happy!


----------



## ah30k

wbertram said:


> If they do as you suggest, then the "SDV pool of channels" would have to be essential the same as the advertised number of available channels. So, what has SDV bought them? Nothing!


Statistical analysis shows that if you offer an x channel pool for y offerings with a node size of z you will be able to satisfy all of the users 99.9% of the time. The x can be much less than y. You can choose not to believe it if you want.


wbertram said:


> With regards to the "compression fix". You would be happy watching highly compressed channels? ala the HD Lite used by the satellite companies?


Most users would never notice the difference and it would rarely happen anyway. Once again, you can choose to disagree if you want.


----------



## ah30k

wbertram said:


> If I get up to get a beer during a commercial, I might get "polled", and when I come back, I will have lost the channel in the middle of a show? That will make customers very happy!


The timeout for the response is configurable and will surely be tuned to allow people to take a piss. Again, this message will only pop up if you have done nothing with the STB for a long period of time. So if you are in the corner case of someone who has done 'nothing' with your remote for a long time, and you are still watching a show, and you get up for a beer at just the right time and you take a very long time to get back THEN your worry might be valid.


----------



## ah30k

Some people seem to think that those designing these SDV systems are total buffoons.

They are spending a lot of time engineering it.


----------



## CharlesH

wbertram said:


> If I get up to get a beer during a commercial, I might get "polled", and when I come back, I will have lost the channel in the middle of a show? That will make customers very happy!


Kind of like when you are watching something in the middle of the 30-minute "live" buffer, and your TiVo prompts you to change channels to record something, and discards the rest of the buffer if you don't respond in time.


----------



## wbertram

ah30k said:


> Statistical analysis shows that if you offer an x channel pool for y offerings with a node size of z you will be able to satisfy all of the users 99.9% of the time. The x can be much less than y. You can choose not to believe it if you want.
> Most users would never notice the difference and it would rarely happen anyway. Once again, you can choose to disagree if you want.


Put some realistic numbers for x, y, and z in the appropriate formulas, and let us see what the probability is that I will not be able to receive a random channel selection when I want to. Try it with the appropriate numbers for, say, TWC in Austin.

Poll the SDV users in Austin and see how often they are getting the "Channel Not Available" screen.


----------



## txagfan

wbertram said:


> Put some realistic numbers for x, y, and z in the appropriate formulas, and let us see what the probability is that I will not be able to receive a random channel selection when I want to. Try it with the appropriate numbers for, say, TWC in Austin.
> 
> Poll the SDV users in Austin and see how often they are getting the "Channel Not Available" screen.


The only time I have seen that screen is when a channel is down due to a service outage. Otherwise, I have never seen that screen.


----------



## ChrisFix

ah30k said:


> Statistical analysis shows that if you offer an x channel pool for y offerings with a node size of z you will be able to satisfy all of the users 99.9% of the time. The x can be much less than y. You can choose not to believe it if you want.
> Most users would never notice the difference and it would rarely happen anyway. Once again, you can choose to disagree if you want.


This is exactly how the public telephone system works...there are many less channels for completing calls than there are subscribers - depending on telco, and where in the network you are, they concentrate up to 5:1 (one voice channel for 5 subscribers) and it works 99.9% of the time for 100% of subscribers.


----------



## ah30k

wbertram said:


> Put some realistic numbers for x, y, and z in the appropriate formulas, and let us see what the probability is that I will not be able to receive a random channel selection when I want to. Try it with the appropriate numbers for, say, TWC in Austin.


Sorry, no can do. Not public data.



wbertram said:


> Poll the SDV users in Austin and see how often they are getting the "Channel Not Available" screen.


Why are you telling me to go do something. You're welcome to if you wish.


----------



## wbertram

ah30k said:


> The timeout for the response is configurable and will surely be tuned to allow people to take a piss. Again, this message will only pop up if you have done nothing with the STB for a long period of time. So if you are in the corner case of someone who has done 'nothing' with your remote for a long time, and you are still watching a show, and you get up for a beer at just the right time and you take a very long time to get back THEN your worry might be valid.


And what about my kids who are watching a children's show, and don't understand the message on the screen? "Daddy, Daddy, my show went off and won't come back! sob, sob, sob".


----------



## LoREvanescence

ah30k said:


> The timeout for the response is configurable and will surely be tuned to allow people to take a piss. Again, this message will only pop up if you have done nothing with the STB for a long period of time. So if you are in the corner case of someone who has done 'nothing' with your remote for a long time, and you are still watching a show, and you get up for a beer at just the right time and you take a very long time to get back THEN your worry might be valid.


What would happen though, if you have a dvr stb forsay, and are not home while it's recording. If it were to get polled while recording event could the station get pulled? Just a interesting thought.


----------



## ah30k

wbertram said:


> And what about my kids who are watching a children's show, and don't understand the message on the screen? "Daddy, Daddy, my show went off and won't come back! sob, sob, sob".


You are moving into the realm of irrational argumenting now. For those looking to argue against it, nothing will convince you. I already said 1) it should not even be statistically needed 2) it will only go to STBs with long periods of inactivity. If you kids fall into both then tough luck. **** happens.


----------



## ah30k

LoREvanescence said:


> What would happen though, if you have a dvr stb forsay, and are not home while it's recording. If it were to get polled while recording event could the station get pulled? Just a interesting thought.


Once again, the engineers are working many use-cases. STBs with recordings are assumed to be using the channel and will not be polled.


----------



## wbertram

ah30k said:


> Statistical analysis shows that if you offer an x channel pool for y offerings with a node size of z you will be able to satisfy all of the users 99.9% of the time. The x can be much less than y. You can choose not to believe it if you want.
> Most users would never notice the difference and it would rarely happen anyway. Once again, you can choose to disagree if you want.


The only way you can guarantee 99.9% availability is if the channel pool, x, is equal to, or slightly less than, the lesser of the number of offerings, y, or the node size, z. Since y is most likely less than z, this means that x must be equal to, or slightly less than y. In other words, the size of the channel pool must be very close to the number of offerings. So what has the expense of the SDV equipment bought you?


----------



## ah30k

wbertram said:


> The only way you can guarantee 99.9% availability is if the channel pool, x, is equal to, or slightly less than, the lesser of the number of offerings, y, or the node size, z. Since y is most likely less than z, this means that x must be equal to, or slightly less than y. In other words, the size of the channel pool must be very close to the number of offerings. So what has the expense of the SDV equipment bought you?


Sorry, can't argue with you any more on this. You are right. All of the cable operators are stupid and pissing millions away on this with no payback.


----------



## vman41

ah30k said:


> Once again, the engineers are working many use-cases. STBs with recordings are assumed to be using the channel and will not be polled.


The smarter thing to do would make the protocol that requests the channel include the expected time on that channel. Alternatively, an STB making a recording could just renew the channel request every 15 minutes.


----------



## vman41

ah30k said:


> You are right. All of the cable operators are stupid and pissing millions away on this with no payback.


Welcome to America.


----------



## ah30k

vman41 said:


> The smarter thing to do would make the protocol that requests the channel include the expected time on that channel. Alternatively, an STB making a recording could just renew the channel request every 15 minutes.


I should caveat my responses... Although I am generally aware of the SDV design, exact details may be slightly different. The exact implementation of the protocols and sequence diagrams for switching and the DVR recording are a good example of specifics which I may be wrong on.


----------



## LoREvanescence

wbertram said:


> The only way you can guarantee 99.9% availability is if the channel pool, x, is equal to, or slightly less than, the lesser of the number of offerings, y, or the node size, z. Since y is most likely less than z, this means that x must be equal to, or slightly less than y. In other words, the size of the channel pool must be very close to the number of offerings. So what has the expense of the SDV equipment bought you?


Well to me at least. This all makes since when there comes a point where bandwidth could start becoming an issue. Sadly, I wish it wasn't the direction things were going or that tivo supports it now.

What is the latest with turning off analog cable. In systems where they turn it off is this an alternative to sdv or will they still use sdv after turning off analog cable.

From reading through the avsforum today it seams that Comcast have already pulled the plug for analog cable in Chicago leaving only local access channels as analog. They are making this move becuase the majority of homes in the city already have digital cable, for those who don't, comcast is providing a free STB as a solution. It seams that they are now turnign off analog channels in the suburbs over the next few months.

Is this a likely trend that we will see in more cities in the near future to a lot for more space for digital content? What is the latest information as to what the cable industry is doing in terms of analog cable over the next few years.


----------



## ah30k

LoREvanescence said:


> What is the latest with turning off analog cable. In systems where they turn it off is this an alternative to sdv or will they still use sdv after turning off analog cable.
> 
> From reading through the avsforum today it seams that Comcast have already pulled the plug for analog cable in Chicago leaving only local access channels as analog.


And people started screaming that their S2DTs were now rendered merely single-tuners and they needed STBs for every TV. You are always going to piss someone off. It is just a matter of who.


----------



## HiDefGator

Turning off analog just delays when they deploy SDV. Eventually they will do both.


----------



## jordanz

Why don't they go to a packet-switched type of protocol (ala TCP/IP)? This SDV thing seems like a big hack to me.


----------



## ah30k

jordanz said:


> Why don't they go to a packet-switched type of protocol (ala TCP/IP)? This SDV thing seems like a big hack to me.


Incremental changes to the headend and STB base over time as opposed to a massive switch-out of the entire infrastructure. Cable company investors would not tolerate the kind of cost impacts necessary to switch the underlying tech.


----------



## LoREvanescence

ah30k said:


> And people started screaming that their S2DTs were now rendered merely single-tuners and they needed STBs for every TV. You are always going to piss someone off. It is just a matter of who.


Well, it's true, there is always someone thats going to be pissed off. Such is the life of adapting new technology to replace a older one. I just wish this one 1 way 2 way ocap thing could have been settled by now, not changing every couple of months leaving third party devices out of the circle.


----------



## jordanz

ah30k said:


> Incremental changes to the headend and STB base over time as opposed to a massive switch-out of the entire infrastructure. Cable company investors would not tolerate the kind of cost impacts necessary to switch the underlying tech.


I see. This does, however, seem like an interim solution. They're banking on each SDV "node" only needing a subset of the total available channels. At some point in the future they'll need to look at a better technology.


----------



## ah30k

LoREvanescence said:


> ... I just wish this one 1 way 2 way ocap thing could have been settled by now, not changing every couple of months leaving third party devices out of the circle.


You know, that would have been the one solution that would seem to leave virtually no one pissed off except the cable companies.


----------



## MickeS

ah30k said:


> Sorry, can't argue with you any more on this. You are right. All of the cable operators are stupid and pissing millions away on this with no payback.


Are you saying no business every makes costly mistakes?

I guess I just don't see the benefit of this in the long run, vs going all digital and building out capacity. I see the near-term benefits. I guess the costs are small enough that they feel they are OK.


----------



## jrm01

ah30k said:


> Any channel with inactivity for a period of time is able to be polled to see if the watcher is still there. "Please hit the enter button if you still want this channel". If no response is received the channel will be reclaimed and the STB will be sent to a safe channel.


Is my dongle going to send back the proper response if Tivo is recording a SDV channel and I'm not home?


----------



## ah30k

jrm01 said:


> Is my dongle going to send back the proper response if Tivo is recording a SDV channel and I'm not home?


Hence why I am not betting on the magic dongle any time soon.


----------



## DCIFRTHS

jrm01 said:


> Is my dongle going to send back the proper response if Tivo is recording a SDV channel and I'm not home?


Reading your post, it sounds like you have one already, so maybe you should tell us 

If the dongle didn't provide this basic functionality, then it wouldn't be a solution for TiVo. I doubt that TiVo would deploy the dongle if it didn't support TiVo's most basic functions.


----------



## VinceA

The 'dongle' seems to be almost entirely for TiVo (and any future other CableCard DVRs). Are there any CableCard TVs that have the required USB port that the dongle would need?


----------



## BobCamp1

wbertram said:


> Re the often made statement "SDV makes more channels available."
> 
> I fail to see the logic here.


Well, this is how your cell phone service has worked. Voice channels are only dedicated to your phone one a call is established. Once the call is completed, the channel is released back into the pool of available channels. The channels that are used to handshake between your phone and the tower are much smaller in nature, so the system can support many more of those channels than voice channels. The same technology is used for landline phones too.

Yes, if everybody who owned a phone tried to call at the exact same time, the system gets congested. But unless a disaster occurs (9/11, hurricanes, etc.), no more than x% of people are using the service at any one time. In the past two years, the cable company has been busy watching your viewing habits and conducting trials in some markets to determine how many channels they can switch to SDV. If they implement it correctly, you won't notice a thing. Unless you're using an S3.

The benefit is that it is a quick way to boost capacity without rewiring everyone's house to bring fiber directly to the house. They need a solution ASAP. I have FIOS -- my uplink speed is probably faster than your downlink speed. And it's the same price as your service. DirecTV will release a bunch of HD channels any day now. Cable is just trying to keep up.


----------



## wbertram

BobCamp1 said:


> Well, ...SNIP
> 
> Yes, if everybody who owned a phone tried to call at the exact same time, the system gets congested. ...SNIP.


Of course, that is exactly how the SDV system works! Everybody who owns a TV sits down at 8:00PM and tries to tune to their favorite channel. And, the system gets congested, just like the phone system gets congested on Mother's Day, or after a catastrophe like 9/11.

SDV only "increases capacity" when relatively few people are viewing TV.


----------



## ah30k

wbertram said:


> Of course, that is exactly how the SDV system works! Everybody who owns a TV sits down at 8:00PM and tries to tune to their favorite channel. And, the system gets congested, just like the phone system gets congested on Mother's Day, or after a catastrophe like 9/11.
> 
> SDV only "increases capacity" when relatively few people are viewing TV.


In practice, not everyone sits down to watch every channel on the map at 8:00. Most people tune to x channels at any given time where x is much smaller than y offered. SDV will and is working just fine in the areas where it is deployed without running out of slots. I don't know what else to tell you to make you feel any different. SDV actually works better during peak times because there is more concentration on fewer channels.

When was the last time you could not reach you mother on Mothers Day on the first attempt?


----------



## philipl411

bicker said:


> That really points out the no-win situation that a la carte is, especially if it is to be driven by consumers wanting it. They'll go from complaining about "having to pay for channels they don't watch"  to complaining about how all the channels now cost $3-$4 each.


Maybe so, but if your pricing is correct, my bill would go down by 2/3. I don't watch any HBO types, no sports (I am told that ESPN type channels would cost $70+) I long for the "a la carte" system


----------



## HiDefGator

wbertram said:


> Of course, that is exactly how the SDV system works! Everybody who owns a TV sits down at 8:00PM and tries to tune to their favorite channel.


Fortunately a huge majority of people watch the same 6 or 7 channels at 8:00 when they sit down making SDV possible.


----------



## skylab

Early reports indicate that SDV does not save as much bandwidth as hoped. To simplify things a bit, think about the demographics in your area -- there are probably high income neighborhoods and lower income neighborhoods (rich people don't build big houses in trailer parks). Thus, hoseholds with HDTV tend to be grouped togther in the same neighborhoods. Moreover, people with HDTVs tend to watch a heck of a lot more hdtv than sd analog. If only HDTV stations are put on sdv, chances are that the people in these high income neighborhoods are watching a good number of the HD channels at the same time.

To get the bandwidth savings, the entire lineup needs to be placed on sdv. This means an all digital lineup. However, going all digital, in and of itself, makes room for 150-200 or so HD stations without the use of sdv.

So, it really makes little sense to use sdv at this point without going all digital. Nevertheless, one particular company is going full steam ahead, while most others seem to be adopting a wait and see approach.


----------



## cableguy763

skylab said:


> Early reports indicate that SDV does not save as much bandwidth as hoped. To simplify things a bit, think about the demographics in your area -- there are probably high income neighborhoods and lower income neighborhoods (rich people don't build big houses in trailer parks). Thus, hoseholds with HDTV tend to be grouped togther in the same neighborhoods. Moreover, people with HDTVs tend to watch a heck of a lot more hdtv than sd analog. If only HDTV stations are put on sdv, chances are that the people in these high income neighborhoods are watching a good number of the HD channels at the same time.


Having been a service tech for a cable company up until 2 years ago, I actually saw more hdtv's in poor neighborhoods than rich neighborhoods. Some of these people would pay their cable bill before they bought the kiddoes new shoes.  
Also, HD channels are certainly not the only channels going sdv. Check out the Austin lineup on the first post.


----------



## bicker

wbertram said:


> Everybody who owns a TV sits down at 8:00PM and tries to tune to their favorite channel. ... SDV only "increases capacity" when relatively few people are viewing TV.


Or when the vast majority of people watch the same few channels -- which is generally the case at 8:00PM.


----------



## bicker

philipl411 said:


> Maybe so, but if your pricing is correct, my bill would go down by 2/3.


I doubt you're typical. I find that I'm often very typical in the grand scheme of things. We'd purchase TNT, USA, Sci-Fi, F/X, Discovery, AMC, ABC Family, Lifetime, Food Network, CNN Headline News, TWC, MSNBC, Animal Planet, Travel Channel, and BBC America. If my pricing is correct, with a la carte I'd pay $75, instead of the current package price of $59.45 (Basic $9.55, Expanded $41.95, Digital Classic $7.95). And I'd still have to pay $19.59 for equipment and fees (cable box, plus two cable card, plus a remote), plus $4.58 in taxes, regardless of which way I pay for programming.

And without BBC America, the difference is even more pronounced: $71 a la carte; $51.50 as a package.


----------



## bicker

skylab said:


> Early reports indicate that SDV does not save as much bandwidth as hoped.


Citation, please.


----------



## mike_camden

bicker said:


> I doubt you're typical. I find that I'm often very typical in the grand scheme of things. We'd purchase TNT, USA, Sci-Fi, F/X, Discovery, AMC, ABC Family, Lifetime, Food Network, CNN Headline News, TWC, MSNBC, Animal Planet, Travel Channel, and BBC America. If my pricing is correct, with a la carte I'd pay $75, instead of the current package price of $59.45 (Basic $9.55, Expanded $41.95, Digital Classic $7.95). And I'd still have to pay $19.59 for equipment and fees (cable box, plus two cable card, plus a remote), plus $4.58 in taxes, regardless of which way I pay for programming.
> 
> And without BBC America, the difference is even more pronounced: $71 a la carte; $51.50 as a package.


I agree with you here. As much as I would like a workeable ala carte package that actually saved money, I saw numbers a couple of year ago that really surprised me. Based on the 15 or so digital channels that are watched a lot in our house, we would pay more also. Among the channels we would choose would be ESPN 1 and 2, the NFL Network, the Discover channels, National Geographic, MTV, some of the home improvement channels, and some of the children channels.

The numbers I saw convinced me that the current pricing structure based on volume of subscribers saves money while providing more channels (many of which are never tuned in our house).

Sorry no sources or links; like I said it was a couple of years ago.


----------



## jercra

skylab said:


> However, going all digital, in and of itself, makes room for 150-200 or so HD stations without the use of sdv.


There seems to be a lot of talk on here about how going all digital makes SDV unnecessary. This is very shortsighted in my opinion. Cable Companies are not going with SDV to simply provide more channels or compete with D*. There is a bigger picture. The end game with SDV is QAM sharing in which all video, VOD and HSD share the same set of QAMs. This will allows the cable companies to offer what they believe will be an unlimited number of channels and virtually an unlimited number VOD streams (HD and SD) as well as vastly higher HSD rates. In the end the investment in SDV, which is pretty minimal by cable company standards, has great yields for both the cable companies and their customers.


----------



## lrhorer

cableguy763 said:


> Having been a service tech for a cable company up until 2 years ago, I actually saw more hdtv's in poor neighborhoods than rich neighborhoods.


Well, it's a bit of an overstatement, but I agree it happens that some rich people have old, dinky sets and some fairly low income people have very nice TVs, indeed. When I was in the cable business - back when TVs were gas powered - I saw many brand new and moderately full featured TVs in tenements, and lots of ancient TVs in million dollar homes. One in particular was Red McCombs. He is one of the richest men in San Antonio, and when he had a problem, they usually sent me out as a matter of PR. The artwork in his foyer cost nearly as much as my entire home, yet he had a television which was at least 15 years old. About 75% of the time, it was that old TV which was the source of the problem, rather than the CATV plant. Even though he was rich enough to purchase an NBA basketball franchise (the San Antonio Spurs) outright, he would always have the set repaired rather than just buying a new one. Go figure.



cableguy763 said:


> Also, HD channels are certainly not the only channels going sdv. Check out the Austin lineup on the first post.


Generally speaking, right now SD channels benefit more from SDV simply because it is mostly the more popular channels which are offered in HD. SDV has its greatest benefits for channels which are watched by a limited number of people at a given time. It's greatest benefit is for interactive events like On Demand and for low volume offerings. In conventional analog or digital CATV broadcasts it doesn't really pay to nail up the bandwidth for a channel whose viewing share is only .1%, but with SDV, the provider can put perhaps 30 or 40 channels with a .1% viewer share in a single SDV "channel". Any channel with a 1% or greater viewer allocation is probably going to be streaming on most of the nodes anyway, so SDV doesn't give as much benefit for the cost.

Another advantage of SD over HD in SDV is it's allocation profile. I was speaking with an old friend of mine from my CATV days who is now an engineering consultant for the CATV company. This is from memory, so the numbers might be a bit off, but as I recall, he said a single digital stream could handle 6 HD channels or 16 SD channels. If we divide up a stream into 48 allocation units, then an SD channel requires 3 units and an HD channel requires 8. Allocating an HD channel to a stream requires there be 8 available units on the stream. The only mixed allocation which makes full use of the entire stream is 3 HD channels and 8 SD channels. This means the most effective use of the bandwidth is either to allocate certain streams as HD-only or else allocate half of certain streams as HD. Either way, the best use of bandwidth will occur if all of the HD channels are fixed. Pre-allocating less than 100% of the HD channels results in an increasingly significant waste of bandwidth. This of course must be balanced with the waste of bandwidth associated with pre-allocating a channel which few people are watching. Unless the entire lineup is SDV, the best compromise is to limit the number of HD channels allocated to SDV streams and maximize the number of SD offerings on SDV streams, unless the SD channel in question has a very large share of the viewing audience at any given time.


----------



## lrhorer

CharlesH said:


> Since SDV works at a node granularity, I would think that it would be a real winner where there are neighborhoods where most of the residents speak a particular foreign language, and many of them would like to have programming in their language. In other neighborhoods where that language is not spoken, few if any people would want those channels.


Neighborhood centric or not, this is precisely where SDV has its advantage. 'Not necessarily just in linguistic demographics, but every minority demographic. It allows the CATV company to address the desires of niche hobbyists, for example, or medical professionals, or computer geeks. They can offer the Pottery Channel, Surgeon's Weekly, and Computer Geeks Digest - all for additional profit, of course.


----------



## lrhorer

vstone said:


> I vote for a middle ground, where all of the expensive channels (NFL, ESPN, etc. are ala carte. This would still allow them to provide a breadth of programming without killing off minor channels.


The idea is to require the CATV system *offer* a la carte programming, not that all programming must be a la carte. It would be perfectly fine for the CATV company still still offer "bundles". That way, if the consumer only wants what now constitutes basic cable plus Discovery Kid's Channel, they can get DKC without having to pay for the entire enhanced tier.

Again, I don't think most people will come off any cheaper and probably will choose to go with tiered services. Some, however, may fair very well with a la carte.


----------



## lrhorer

pashasurf7873 said:


> 'Phazing out' may have been the wrong term. they told me that they won't be issuing them after the 24th. A fellow hawaii forum member wrote to the local fcc regulator and they responded to contact the local regulatory commission or something because the fcc no longer deals with cable issues.


They just plain lied to you, flat out. By law they are required to provide CableCards, period.

I suggest you write a letter to the General Manager of the CATV system. Be extremely specific about who said what, and if possible give names and dates. Inform him or her you are writing to the FCC. If you have a personal lawyer, speak to him about the matter, and don't have him or her take any action (that will cost you money), but get the details on what it would take to file a class action lawsuit. Again, obtain specifics as to where, when, and how much it costs to file. Then as well as mentioning the FCC in your letter to the GM, also reference your lawyer by name and give details concerning the possibility of a lawsuit. Don't just issue a blank threat, but show there is some real muscle behind the threat.

I think you might be astounded at the results, and I can just about guarantee you will get much faster and more satisfying results than a thousand letters to the FCC. If not, well then go ahead with the letter to the FCC. It can't hurt.


----------



## lrhorer

LoREvanescence said:


> I really hope that this does not happen. I would much prefer to see comcast use another option they will be testing in Chicago this fall. They plan to turn off all analog cable channels except local networks and providing 1 free set top box to every house hold to compensate for the loss of analog channels to the digital teer. That sounds like a much better solution then SDV to me.


You (and lots of others) seem to be missing the main point of SDV. Yes, for the CATV provider it does offer the potential of offering an essentially unlimited number of channels. This is good for the consumer of course because it gives them a vastly greater palette from which to choose. More importantly, however, it offers *INTERACTIVE SERVICES*. The most obvious is Video on Demand. It also allows for things like games, opinion polls, even elections. It allows for special features exactly like those provided on current DVD offerings, including non-theatrical releases, alternate endings, and alternate Points of View. It allows for Web Browsing and online banking. It will allow for video conferencing and v-mail.


----------



## lrhorer

LoREvanescence said:


> Also when searching comcast and sdv I found this article on satelliteguys.us which really ticks me off. They must really not like Tivo. But some of the points they bring up about tivo support would not be good if they hold any truth. Does anyone know if their points could warrent anytruth?


Very little indeed. Whoever this is hasn't a clue. There is a huge difference between M-cards and CC 2.0 specifications. CC 2.0 has not yet been deployed, period, so suggesting TiVo was in some way deficient for not deploying CC 2.0 spec devices is just so much horse$#%&. TiVo would still be waiting to deploy a box if it had waited for CC 2.0. As it was they waited well over a year for CC 2.0 to be resolved. If they had waited for CC 2.0, it might have bankrupted them. Whoever this butt-munch is needs to learn a little bit about what he is speaking before he opens his mouth and spews manure like this all over the place.


----------



## lrhorer

LoREvanescence said:


> I didn't know that issue. And that is a crucial issue. What is a Tivo Box with a cable companies OS? Just another paper weight useless box with a crappy interface, lack of features and add banners.


No, no, *NO!*. OCAP would not allow the CATV company to replace the OS. That would be essentially impossible (for a specific box, it would be physically possible, but the OS which runs on one box will not likely run on any other box). Secondly, it is not the OS which provides the features of which you, I and millions of TiVo users are so fond, it is the TiVo application, which is a very different thing. That said, OCAP won't allow the CATV company to disrupt the UI features of the TiVo, either. OCAP is middleware. It's still a lousy idea, but like any middleware it won't have any affect on the application layer. Well, hypothetically, anyway. Occasionally there can be an unintentional interaction between a piece of middleware and an application (perhaps even one not related to the middleware) which breaks something. It's also always possible that in modifying an application so it can work with a piece of middleware the developer may accidentally break something, but that is also another matter.



LoREvanescence said:



> Why is that OCAP thing a requirement of 2-Way?


It's pork barrel. OCAP has been proposed as part of the CC 2.0 specification. The CC 2.0 specification is what covers 2-Way CableCards. If OCAP is part of the specification, then no device (TiVo or otherwise) will receive Cable Labs CableCard 2.0 certification unless it meets OCAP requirements.

The thing many people in this forum and elsewhere seem to be missing or forgetting is this is not just a TiVo issue.



LoREvanescence said:


> It's not that Tivo is not in compliance its the fact, they need to be one way to have a box that differs from the cable companies.


That's not the issue with OCAP. One of the main problems with OCAP is that the CATV company will be controlling what software the user is using to provide the services and in effect monopolizing the OCAP providers / developers. At it's most sinister it has Big Brother overtones. At it's most likely it has Microsoft overtones. OCAP oponents feel the user should be able to decide which software they want to use, not some corporation. As a somewhat similar example, think of the Network Services on the TiVo. One can implement them using TiVo Desktop, or one may choose Galleon. Some day perhaps there will be a third or fourth choice. Another example is Web Browsers. Some people use Internet Exploder, while other use NetEscape, and others of us use FirelessFox, or some other offering. Any of these can be updated automatically if the user wishes, but with OCrAP, the user would be restricted to using software developed by Joe's Bait Shop and Software Emporium or Identity Theft Specialists and no recourse to preventing a bug or spyware infested copy from being installed, and no way to remove it (without hacking the TiVo).


----------



## lrhorer

ChrisFix said:


> This is exactly how the public telephone system works...there are many less channels for completing calls than there are subscribers - depending on telco, and where in the network you are, they concentrate up to 5:1 (one voice channel for 5 subscribers) and it works 99.9% of the time for 100% of subscribers.


Depending on at what point in the network you are speaking, the concentration may be vastly higher than that. There are some 100 million or more lines here in San Antonio, but the Local Exchange Carrier (AT&T) does not have 20 million lines going from San Antonio to Austin, for example, nor does it have anything nearly like 20 million lines between its LSOs. The 5:1 number is a good rule of thumb for most business PBXs (other than telemarketing firms who try their best to keep every single line in their building active nearly continuously). For non-commercial lines especially, the concentration is much, much higher. Think about it. A 1:5 concentration assumes the peak useage is going to be 1 user in 5 on the phone. To reach this level, the average user must be on the phone 1/5 of the day, or at least 1/5 of peak hours. Even assuming a relatively narrow peak useage window of 5 hours, that still has the average user on the phone at least an hour every evening. Do you spen an hour every evening on the phone? I don't. I maybe spend an hour a week during peak hours on the phone, if that.


----------



## lrhorer

wbertram said:


> And what about my kids who are watching a children's show, and don't understand the message on the screen? "Daddy, Daddy, my show went off and won't come back! sob, sob, sob".


That won't happen. Once the user has initiated a channel download, the system won't release that bandwidth until the user changes channels. If the user does receive the banner, in general he will only need to wait until someone else in the node service area changes channels. With 500 houses on the node and the ability to deliver easily 1500 SD channels or 600 HD channels, it's just not going to happen very often to even one subscriber anywhere in the node, let alone to the same subscriber. You'll suffer network issues at the source far more often, and that affects thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even millions of subscribers at once.

Besides that, *get a life!!* We're only talking about a TV program, here.


----------



## bicker

lrhorer said:


> They just plain lied to you, flat out. By law they are required to provide CableCards, period.


Well wait a minute -- we don't even know what cable company is involved here. Not every cable company is required to provide CableCards.


----------



## lrhorer

wbertram said:


> The only way you can guarantee 99.9% availability is if the channel pool, x, is equal to, or slightly less than, the lesser of the number of offerings, y, or the node size, z. Since y is most likely less than z, this means that x must be equal to, or slightly less than y. In other words, the size of the channel pool must be very close to the number of offerings. So what has the expense of the SDV equipment bought you?


By that logic, every home LAN needs a 100 Mbps feed into the internet, and the ISPs all need 1,000,000 Terrabit/sec feeds into the Internet backbone. The channel pool can literally be in the millions, tens of millions, or even bilions or trillions and it will not matter in the least. The maximum number of channels *DELIVERED* (let alone available and being paid for by subscribers) in the system is equal to the number of nodes times the number of channels per node. In a city the size of San Antonio, for example, that would be 300,000 subscribers divided by 500 subscribers per node multiplied by about 9600 SD channels or 3600 HD channels per node or a total of 57,600,000 SD channels or 2,160,000 HD channels all watched simultaneously across the city. Of course those are both ridiculous numbers, but it is the theoretical limit of SDV. (The CATV company's switches wouldn't even handle a small fraction of that.) The odds of the network seeing that level of utilization across the city is zilch. That completely answers what the "expensive" SDV gear has bought the CATV company. Oh, by the way, the SDV gear is *PRECISELY* the same gear needed to provide digital services. Hmm. 'Sounds like a really good investment to me.

Now back to the individual user. If we assume the node feeding your house is at the limit of 2000 subscribers and every house has 4 Televisions or DVRs and all 4 are on different HD channels in every house (8000 televisions and only 1 watching ABC, 1 watching NBC, 1 watching CBS, 1 watching HBO, 1 watching ESPN, etc???!!!! and every one of them in HD???!!!!) then over half the people in the node are going to be SOL. Do you really think this is going to happen frequently? It will require the watchers in your node to have watching habits which give CBS, ABC, NBC, PBS, HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, The Movie Channel, ESPN, CNN, WTBS, WGN, and Discovery *combined* a Nielsen rating of under 1%. Yeah, that's going to be a really persistent problem...

EDIT: I have been reliably informed that some of the CATV providers, at least, are running compression levels that allow no more than two HD channels per stream along wth one SD channel or 11 SD channels per stream. Even so, the odds any particular user will suffer froma congested network on a regular basis are extremely low.


----------



## lrhorer

jordanz said:


> Why don't they go to a packet-switched type of protocol (ala TCP/IP)? This SDV thing seems like a big hack to me.


It is packet switched. That is why it is called Switched Digital Video. That is also why it has to be 2-Way.


----------



## lrhorer

bicker said:


> Well wait a minute -- we don't even know what cable company is involved here. Not every cable company is required to provide CableCards.


Hmm. You may be right. Reading through the message I got the impression it was TWC in Hawaii, but re-reading, it may not be the case. Nonetheless, I can pretty much assure the OP a letter to the local GM of the CATV company will work wonders, while writing to government agencies - or even the CEO of a national corporation is liable to get nothing whatsoever done.


----------



## lrhorer

wbertram said:


> Of course, that is exactly how the SDV system works! Everybody who owns a TV sits down at 8:00PM and tries to tune to their favorite channel. And, the system gets congested, just like the phone system gets congested on Mother's Day, or after a catastrophe like 9/11.


You need to stop and think for a minute. It doesn't matter how many people are viewing. It's how many people want to view different things at the same time. Using conventional broadcast technology, the limit is hard set by the bandwidth of the CATV plant. For most systems the usable bandwidth is going to be about 600MHz - 850MHz. Assuming all digital, this is going to be on the order of 1100 or so SD channels. With all HD content, that drops to only 300 or so channels. With that limited number, it is simply not practical to allow every subscriber to determine what gets watched or when. Forget about VOD (although TiVo pretty much makes VoD a moot issue).



wbertram said:


> SDV only "increases capacity" when relatively few people are viewing TV.


That's completely backwards, unless you are saying it's more effective outside prime-time. Even then it isn't true if the CATV operator offers Video Re-do. This allows any user to pause or rewind live TV or start watching a "live" broadcast late without having a DVR or needing to have it tuned to the channel. This very popular feature essentially turns every broadcast program into potentially thousands of "channels", since large numbers of viewers may be watching at slightly different times. The bottom line is, SDV increases capacity the moment more video streams are downloading into terminals, CableCard TVs, or DVRs than can be handled on a single drop. That number is something like 500 or so.

Think about it. In a city of a million people or so, how difficult is it - even during prime time - *even during the Superbowl* - for more than 500 viewers to want to watch different channels? With SDV, even if only a single viewer wants to watch a particular program at a particular time, it's not a problem. Even if 20,000 viewers want to watch different things or at slightly different times, it's no problem. (Actually, the CATV company's servers would probably have problems delivering 20,000 simultaneous unique streams, but that's another issue.)


----------



## lrhorer

bicker said:


> I doubt you're typical.


I'd be shocked to find I am typical.



bicker said:


> I find that I'm often very typical in the grand scheme of things. We'd purchase TNT, USA, Sci-Fi, F/X, Discovery, AMC, ABC Family, Lifetime, Food Network, CNN Headline News, TWC, MSNBC, Animal Planet, Travel Channel, and BBC America. If my pricing is correct, with a la carte I'd pay $75, instead of the current package price of $59.45 (Basic $9.55, Expanded $41.95, Digital Classic $7.95). And I'd still have to pay $19.59 for equipment and fees (cable box, plus two cable card, plus a remote), plus $4.58 in taxes, regardless of which way I pay for programming.
> 
> And without BBC America, the difference is even more pronounced: $71 a la carte; $51.50 as a package.


I doubt they will be able to charge $5 each for non-premium channels. After all, they only charge $10 each for movie packages, and they include 5 or 6 commercial-free movie channels. I seriously doubt they would be able to charge more than $3 or so a la carte, if that.

My CATV bill right now is $115, excluding Broadband service. Assuming we continue the $8 a month for the CableCards and $9.95 for the Digital Terminal in the back room, and assuming premium channels are $10 and non-premium are $3, I'd get HBO, Starz, 3 of the four PBS channels, UHD, HDNET, HDMovies, TCM, Animal Planet, USAHD, SCI-FI, Discovery, Discovery Science, and TNTHD. That's a total of $79.95, which leaves $35 for them to charge for basic service and still leave me breaking even. At that I suspect at least four of the channels I listed will be in basic service. They'll have a very hard time justifying $35 for basic service.


----------



## moyekj

Ben and/or GoHokies, here's another list of SDV channels to add to the first few posts in this thread (Cox Fairfax VA):
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=5468367&&#post5468367


----------



## skylab

jercra said:


> There seems to be a lot of talk on here about how going all digital makes SDV unnecessary. This is very shortsighted in my opinion. Cable Companies are not going with SDV to simply provide more channels or compete with D*. There is a bigger picture. The end game with SDV is QAM sharing in which all video, VOD and HSD share the same set of QAMs. This will allows the cable companies to offer what they believe will be an unlimited number of channels and virtually an unlimited number VOD streams (HD and SD) as well as vastly higher HSD rates. In the end the investment in SDV, which is pretty minimal by cable company standards, has great yields for both the cable companies and their customers.


1. No, they are going to sdv to make people pay to lease a cable box (and have the opportunity to peddle VOD and other garbage -- things they can't peddle to cablecard users).

2. I don't care if cable uses sdv for two-way services. Great. Go all digital and do not put one-way programming on sdv.

3. As soon as there are 300 hd channels, use sdv. Until then, all digital will work just fine.


----------



## bicker

lrhorer said:


> I doubt they will be able to charge $5 each for non-premium channels.


I agree. It will probably be $4. That is what my calculations were based on.



lrhorer said:


> After all, they only charge $10 each for movie packages, and they include 5 or 6 commercial-free movie channels. I seriously doubt they would be able to charge more than $3 or so a la carte, if that.


Yeah, I think you're wrong about that.

However, you do make a good point. I think for $4, we should get a number of channels:

$4 - CNN, CNN Headline News, Court TV, TBS, and TNT
$4 - Disney Channel, ABC Family, Toon Disney, and SoapNet
$4 - Discovery Channel, TLC, Animal Planet, Discovery Health and maybe a couple of others
$4 - MSNBC, CNBC, and Shop NBC 
$4 - AMC, USA Network, Sci-Fi, and Bravo 
$4 - A&E, History Channel, Biography Channel, National Geographic

However, is that really still a la carte?


----------



## HiDefGator

skylab said:


> 1. No, they are going to sdv to make people pay to lease a cable box (and have the opportunity to peddle VOD and other garbage -- things they can't peddle to cablecard users).
> 
> 2. I don't care if cable uses sdv for two-way services. Great. Go all digital and do not put one-way programming on sdv.
> 
> 3. As soon as there are 300 hd channels, use sdv. Until then, all digital will work just fine.


And if it were your company you could make these decisions. But it's not.


----------



## vstone

The channel allotment is NOT system wide, each neighborhood has its own little cable system, with the head end telling the neighborhood controller what channels to carry and tellling the STB what freq/subchannel to tune to to get a particular channel.


----------



## bicker

HiDefGator said:


> And if it were your company you could make these decisions. But it's not.


 :up:


----------



## lrhorer

skylab said:


> 1. No, they are going to sdv to make people pay to lease a cable box (and have the opportunity to peddle VOD and other garbage -- things they can't peddle to cablecard users).


That's completely false. It's true they do want to lease you a cable box, but it is completely false they won't be able to peddle the service to CableCard uses. Any device which will be CableCard 2.0 compatible will be able to get every service offered by SDV provided the manufacturer provided the host makes allowance for the service. VOD is right at the top of the list, and I seriously doubt any manufacturer would leave it out of their device's capabilities. One of the advantages of OCAP is it would pretty much guarantee the device would do so, but in my estimation this represents a silver lining to a potentially very large and dark cloud, rather than a sufficient argument to retain OCAP as part of CC 2.0

Note every single company which supplies Digital Terminals to CATV companies is converting their entire product line to CableCard devices. Some still use proprietary 2-Way systems, but they all are going to be CC 1.0 very soon.



skylab said:


> 2. I don't care if cable uses sdv for two-way services. Great. Go all digital and do not put one-way programming on sdv.


The problem is many consumers want the 2-Way services on every channel. If the CATV companies only provide those services on certain channels, it will represent a very real counter-selling point for the satellite providers or competitor CATV companies where they are available.



skylab said:


> 3. As soon as there are 300 hd channels, use sdv. Until then, all digital will work just fine.


No, it won't.


----------



## routerman

JoeSchueller said:


> Quit crying? There's a much easier solution to the problem - turn off analog! SDV is not the only way to add HD, it is just the most convenient way to continue to collect STB rental and pimp PPV to me. The sat-co's are subject to competition - thus they have consumer choice. Sat-co's also do not use public right-of-way's and public infrastructure. They are inherently private enterprises. Cable companies are granted monopoly status by gov't franchise authorities, and thus should be held to a higher standard of openness and consumer choice.
> 
> I see your point, but I respectfully disagree.


I agree that turning off analog would gain some HD channel space. I believe 2 HDs fit in the space of 1 analog. In Austin, TW has removed several analog channels (23 and 51) and put HD channels in their place. My guess is that they have to wait for contracts to expire before they drop and/or move a channel to digital. Maybe SDV is a way to offer lower viewed HD channels and the removal of analog is for the high viewed programming?

I fail to understand how SDV is the most convenient way for cable companies to continue to collect SDB fees? Wouldn't dropping analog channels be easier and also move more subscribers to STB's? The number of analog only customers has got to dwarf the Tivo S3, Tivo HD and cablecard customers. I would think that each analog channel dropped would generate more angry phone calls than all of the cable card customers combined.

It seems to me that putting lots of equipment near the customers home and maintaining this equipment has to be much more expensive than taking an analog signal and moving it to digital. In many cases, I think that many of these channels are already digital so all it might take is a swap out of equipment. My guess is that SDV is one of many ways the cable companies will be competing with satellite to provide more HD channels.


----------



## skylab

lrhorer said:


> That's completely false. It's true they do want to lease you a cable box, but it is completely false they won't be able to peddle the service to CableCard uses. Any device which will be CableCard 2.0 compatible will be able to get every service offered by SDV provided the manufacturer provided the host makes allowance for the service. VOD is right at the top of the list, and I seriously doubt any manufacturer would leave it out of their device's capabilities. One of the advantages of OCAP is it would pretty much guarantee the device would do so, but in my estimation this represents a silver lining to a potentially very large and dark cloud, rather than a sufficient argument to retain OCAP as part of CC 2.0
> 
> Note every single company which supplies Digital Terminals to CATV companies is converting their entire product line to CableCard devices. Some still use proprietary 2-Way systems, but they all are going to be CC 1.0 very soon.
> 
> The problem is many consumers want the 2-Way services on every channel. If the CATV companies only provide those services on certain channels, it will represent a very real counter-selling point for the satellite providers or competitor CATV companies where they are available.
> 
> No, it won't.


I'm sorry, you're wrong. I'm not talking about the future generation of cablecards, I'm talking about what is available now and why cable doesn't want it to work. First, contrary to your post, the current generation fo cablecards can't receive VOD, PPV, etc. Cable despises one-way cablecards because it can't peddle two-way VOD, PPV, etc. services that it has spent boatloads on in the last decade. Cable also despises one-way cablecards because it allows companies like Tivo and TVGuide to develop their own services, and, gasp, even put through ads using the cable system that is beyond the money grubbing hands of the cable companies.

Cablecard 2.0 will not see the light of day if cable can help it -- every reasonable proposal offered by the CEA has been met with resistance. Cable wants to control the interface you use to watch programming and control what you are able to do with the programming (like archive to blu-ray, DVHS, etc.). Of course, Tivo and the CEA will not agree with this. If cable gets its way then there will be no competitive market for navigation devices because these navigation devices will not, and will actually be prevented from, having features superior to a leased box.

Consumers don't want or need two-way services from the cable companies.


----------



## skylab

HiDefGator said:


> And if it were your company you could make these decisions. But it's not.


How original.


----------



## ah30k

skylab said:


> I'm sorry, you're wrong. I'm not talking about the future generation of cablecards, I'm talking about what is available now and why cable doesn't want it to work. First, contrary to your post, the current generation fo cablecards can't receive VOD, PPV, etc. Cable despises one-way cablecards because it can't peddle two-way VOD, PPV, etc. services that it has spent boatloads on in the last decade.


All CableCARDs can receive two-way services so I think it is ironic that you start off a post saying someone is wrong and follow-up with incorrect statements.

You might want to start with this http://www.opencable.com/primer/cablecard_primer.html and in particular the quote...


> The media has frequently reported that first-generation CableCARD 1.0 modules are one-way devices1. This is simply not true. CableLabs had always intended to develop the CableCARD module and host receiver standards with two-way capability. However the manufacturers of digital TVs requested that a host standard be developed that only had one-way capability. This one-way cable-ready receiver was defined by the FCC's Plug & Play order and by the Joint Test Suite (JTS). It is the definition of this one-way receiver that lacks the ability for two-way functionality, not the CableCARD module. While the FCC defined the elements of the one-way cable-ready receiver, CableLabs continued to define specifications for two-way receivers.
> 
> When a CableCARD 1.0 module is used with a two-way receiver (e.g., Samsung HLR5067C) that card supports all the necessary two-way functionality for VOD, SDV, and other interactive services.


----------



## bicker

Is it safe to say that one of the big things cable companies give up by allowing this new dongle is the ability to earn revenue from advertisements placed on the program guide? If true, that clarifies why they would want to charge a significant amount per month for it.


----------



## jfh3

bicker said:


> Is it safe to say that one of the big things cable companies give up by allowing this new dongle is the ability to earn revenue from advertisements placed on the program guide?


Assuming that you actually believe this, and aren't trying to play devil's advocate -- it may be safe to say, but it wouldn't be accurate.

It's in the cable company's best interest to support a method for UDCP devices to operate as a consumer would reasonably expect in an SDV system, since their alternative is that they could lose that customer to the competition (e.g. satellite).

For those customers, they've already lost the eyeballs on the cable guide anyway, so there's nothing left to lose by supporting the dongle.


----------



## bicker

So are you saying that they don't give up revenue from advertisements placed on the program guide if they let TiVo get around OCAP for two-way services? Neat trick. 

Get a grip.


----------



## jfh3

bicker said:


> So are you saying that they don't give up revenue from advertisements placed on the program guide if they let TiVo get around OCAP for two-way services? Neat trick.
> 
> Get a grip.


You really need to go read the latest NTCA FCC filing - you obviously don't understand the either the dongle solution or why the CE industry is so opposed to OCAP.

And yes, they don't give up revenue from the advertisements, because they don't get it in the first place - you can't give up what you don't have.


----------



## skylab

ah30k said:


> All CableCARDs can receive two-way services so I think it is ironic that you start off a post saying someone is wrong and follow-up with incorrect statements.
> 
> You might want to start with this http://www.opencable.com/primer/cablecard_primer.html and in particular the quote...


Show me a cablecard 1.0 device that does two-way services like sdv. For all intents and purposes the navigation devices are one-way.


----------



## ah30k

skylab said:


> Show me a cablecard 1.0 device that does two-way services like sdv. For all intents and purposes the navigation devices are one-way.


Your first comment (which I responded to) was that the CableCARDs are not two-way. Now you are talking about devices/hosts? Which is it? I can't discuss this with you if you keep changing your tune.

With respect to correct and incorrect, I prefer to stay away from intents and purposes and stick to the facts.


----------



## cableguy763

skylab said:


> Show me a cablecard 1.0 device that does two-way services like sdv. For all intents and purposes the navigation devices are one-way.


I could show you about ten thousand SA cable boxes released after 7-1-07 that work two way with cablecard 1.0. They are multistream cards, but still 1.0.


----------



## GoHokies!

moyekj said:


> Ben and/or GoHokies, here's another list of SDV channels to add to the first few posts in this thread (Cox Fairfax VA):
> http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=5468367&&#post5468367


Thanks for the heads up, post updated.

Was out in the woods camping all weekend, so I'm trying to get caught up.


----------



## classicsat

bicker said:


> I agree. It will probably be $4. That is what my calculations were based on.
> 
> Yeah, I think you're wrong about that.
> 
> However, you do make a good point. I think for $4, we should get a number of channels:
> 
> $4 - CNN, CNN Headline News, Court TV, TBS, and TNT
> $4 - Disney Channel, ABC Family, Toon Disney, and SoapNet
> $4 - Discovery Channel, TLC, Animal Planet, Discovery Health and maybe a couple of others
> $4 - MSNBC, CNBC, and Shop NBC
> $4 - AMC, USA Network, Sci-Fi, and Bravo
> $4 - A&E, History Channel, Biography Channel, National Geographic
> 
> However, is that really still a la carte?


No, but it is close. That is in fact the sort of system I have available with my satellite provider (Starchoice), after their Essentials package.

I however chose their "cable classics" package, which is their basic tier and mostly cable channels that were around before the Great Canadian 2001 Channel Expansion. And most of the post 2001 channels can be added individually (after their Essentials package)


----------



## vstone

Cable copnaies actually get paid to carry some shopping networks. That's why they often end up the the basic local channel only tier. I assume that ShopNBC is also in that category.


----------



## FoxFireX

Not to interrupt the ongoing discussion, but just another note from San Antonio. We're getting additional SDV burn that they haven't put on their web site yet. ESPN2 HD (125) was added some months back, but is SDV only, and not marked as such. And just recently, ESPN Classic was moved from the analog tier to digital (channel 256) and guess what? SDV. So I've now lost access to a channel I used to receive. TWC and the FCC have now both received nastygrams.


----------



## lrhorer

bicker said:


> I think for $4, we should get a number of channels:
> 
> $4 - CNN, CNN Headline News, Court TV, TBS, and TNT
> $4 - Disney Channel, ABC Family, Toon Disney, and SoapNet
> $4 - Discovery Channel, TLC, Animal Planet, Discovery Health and maybe a couple of others
> $4 - MSNBC, CNBC, and Shop NBC
> $4 - AMC, USA Network, Sci-Fi, and Bravo
> $4 - A&E, History Channel, Biography Channel, National Geographic
> 
> However, is that really still a la carte?


Well, yeah, sure, as long as they do offer each channel (other than must-carry channels) as a separate billable item, there is nothing wrong with also offering bundles.


----------



## lrhorer

skylab said:


> I'm sorry, you're wrong.


References, please.



skylab said:


> I'm not talking about the future generation of cablecards


Neither am I. All CableCards are 2-way, and always have been. Even Single Stream cards (S-Cards) are 2-Way. I repeat, it is the host which supplies layer 1 and 2 support for interworking. If the host is 2-Way, then 2-Way communications are supported. Note no host is currently officially CC 2.0, but there are plenty of 2-Way proprietary boxes.



skylab said:


> I'm talking about what is available now and why cable doesn't want it to work.


No, you're just talking out of your hat.



skylab said:


> First, contrary to your post, the current generation fo cablecards can't receive VOD, PPV, etc.


Tell that to Time Warner Cable. They've distributed several tens of thousands of Scientific Atlanta and Pace Digital Terminals and DVRs with CableCards in them. Every single last one is 2-Way.



skylab said:


> Cable despises one-way cablecards because it can't peddle two-way VOD, PPV, etc. services that it has spent boatloads on in the last decade.


Since every CableCard ever produced, including the very first one off the production line of any company, can handle 2-Way transactions, this is patently false. The fact they are peddling such services using ordinary CableCards pretty much bows this theory all to pieces.



skylab said:


> Cable also despises one-way cablecards


Since no such animal has ever existed, it would be extremely difficult to despise it and at best foolish to try.



skylab said:


> because it allows companies like Tivo and TVGuide to develop their own services, and, gasp, even put through ads using the cable system that is beyond the money grubbing hands of the cable companies.


Here you've taken a left turn from ignorance into the edges of irrationality. There is no such thing as a 1-Way CableCard, but even if there were, it would not allow TiVo or anyone else to do anything more than a 2-Way card. I think yoiu are getting CableCard specs mixed up with OCAP. OCAP has been proposed (but not approved) as part of the CC 2.0 specification, but OCAP in its essence relates ot the HOST specifications, not the CableCard, and there is absolutely nothing whatsoever about 2-Way communications either in the host or the CableCard which requires OCAP.



skylab said:


> Cablecard 2.0 will not see the light of day if cable can help it


That is a different issue, but it is precisely the opposite of what you said above. According to you, the CATV companies want 2-Way services (which is true, actually), but now you claim they don't. Make up your mind.



skylab said:


> every reasonable proposal offered by the CEA has been met with resistance.


That is yet a third issue, not in itself directly related to the other two.



skylab said:


> Cable wants to control the interface you use to watch programming


I suspect they could not care less, at least in this context, but CC 2.0 and OCAP have absolutely nothing to do with this issue, even if they do. Neither OCAP nor CC 2.0 address the User Interface.



skylab said:


> and control what you are able to do with the programming (like archive to blu-ray, DVHS, etc.).


Of course there are a lot of overlapping interests involved, but separating them out for a moment, the CATV companies per se don't really care if you can copy to an offline device - it's no skin off their nose. It's the motion picture industry who dislikes that aspect and who is pushing so hard for DRM and DHCP. They have a lot of clout with CableLabs, and in fact those strictures are part and parcel of CC 1.0. Again, the fact almost all the non CC certified DVRs supplied by the CATV companies do allow the user to copy the material (usually over firewire) argues definitively against your statement. Even CC 1.0 devices like the Series III and the TiVo HD do not allow digital copies of the content unless its DRM bits are unset. Once again, that pretty much blows your theory all to pieces.



skylab said:


> If cable gets its way then there will be no competitive market for navigation devices because these navigation devices will not, and will actually be prevented from, having features superior to a leased box.


While the CATV companies might like for that to be true, there is nothing in CC 2.0 or even in OCAP which will prevent it. If ratified, their devices will have to pass the same OCAP restrictions and specifications as everyone else's box.



skylab said:


> Consumers don't want or need two-way services from the cable companies.


They don't need one way services from the CATV company or anyone else. There is not a single person on this planet who has an actual need to watch television programs, nor anyone on the planet who could not do very well without a TV. That said, consumers *DO* want them, your protests notwithstanding. I have a close friend who is a video nut and is thrilled with the features of the TiVo. He came over just yesterday and we worked on some issues with Galleon and my Series III TiVos. He was extremely impressed with the capabilities, and was very close to the verge of buying a TiVo, but he isn't, because it does not yet handle VOD, and his wife and daughter would rebel if they could not have VOD. (BTW, many of the VOD chanels here in San Antonio are free.)


----------



## lrhorer

skylab said:


> Show me a cablecard 1.0 device that does two-way services like sdv. For all intents and purposes the navigation devices are one-way.


The Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8300C, 8300HDC, 824C, 8240HDC, 4250C, 4250HDC, 4240C, and 4240HDC, for starters. Then there's also the Motorola DCH-100, DCH-3200, DCH-3416... really, do I need to go on?


----------



## lrhorer

skylab said:


> Consumers don't want or need two-way services from the cable companies.


By the way, exactly what is it about On-Line Banking, Interactive Opinion Polls, Elections, Online Gaming, Web Browsing (including watching missed episodes of their favorite programs a few months later), being able to access broadcasts in three or four dozen different languages from as many different countries, being able to watch home movies from their Aunt's 70th birthday across the country, Video Conferencing, getting one's medical results from the lab, being able to host one's own televison show, watching channels individually dedicated to knitting, pottery, woodworking, gardening, and a hundred other hobbies, watching chanels dedicated to civil engineering, electrical engineering, criminal law, civil law, neurosurgery, internal medicine, and a hundred other professions, and all of a thousand other specialties which could be broadcast with SDV should the consumers not want?

With SDV, the local Radio Control Aircraft club could put up - say - $50 a month to provide the content and then each member of the club could pay $4 a month to have the channel, and then any content put onto the server is automatically available 24 hours a day to the members. 'Same for the Oil painting Club, etc, and for thousands of different clubs or professional organizations. Every modestly sized or larger company in town can have their own channel delivered to their employees. Again, what should they not want?


----------



## lrhorer

ah30k said:


> With respect to correct and incorrect, I prefer to stay away from intents and purposes and stick to the facts.


Yes, but it seems since the facts completely contradict Skylab's opinions, he avoids them as much as possible. Frankly, I'm not quite sure what points he is trying to argue, since as you say he tends to flip back and forth. What he seems to be completely failing to understand is the CableCard is a separable security device which sits between the transceiver and the video output device. The transceiver does all the communications (both ways) at the RF level. The CableCard only handles encription and messaging to the host device. It tells the host device what to do based upon information in the digital stream sent to it by the transceiver. It does not transmit any RF signals itself, but in order for it to function at all, it must be able to take data from the host and send data back to the host. All CableCards are 2-Way.


----------



## vman41

lrhorer said:


> Again, what should they not want?


They don't want the cable company as gatekeeper. Give us a simple fat pipe to the internet and let the cable companies offer those services with no advantage over anyone else.


----------



## bicker

lrhorer said:


> Well, yeah, sure, as long as they do offer each channel (other than must-carry channels) as a separate billable item, there is nothing wrong with also offering bundles.


Though the individual channels and the bundles would be the same price, of course.


----------



## bdraw

lrhorer said:


> The Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8300C, 8300HDC, 824C, 8240HDC, 4250C, 4250HDC, 4240C, and 4240HDC, for starters. Then there's also the Motorola DCH-100, DCH-3200, DCH-3416... really, do I need to go on?


Technically those aren't OpenCable 2.0 devices (formally CableCARD 2.0), since they don't use OCAP user interfaces.

They changed the name for good reason, everyone gets the card and the standard confused. The CableCARD hardware isn't changing, only the spec is.


----------



## ah30k

bdraw said:


> Technically those aren't OpenCable 2.0 devices (formally CableCARD 2.0), since they don't use OCAP user interfaces.


The question was not asking for 2.0 boxes but two-way 1.0 boxes.


----------



## skylab

You have just proven my point. All the devices cited above are only available for lease from a cable company. There are no navigation devices available to purchase in the marketplace that offer "two-way" services like sdv using cablecard 1.0. My point is that cable is trying to force people to lease their boxes rather than purchasing navigation devices on the marketplace by using sdv to deliver what has always been "one-way" programming. Its really not that hard of a concept. If you love cable so much then buy some stock and I've got a bridge to sell you.


----------



## ah30k

skylab said:


> ... My point is that cable is trying to force people to lease their boxes rather than purchasing navigation devices on the marketplace by using sdv to deliver what has always been "one-way" programming.


This is something that can be argued in a civilized manner



skylab said:


> Its really not that hard of a concept.


It is when you muddy the water with incorrect statements such as saying that CableCARDs are one-way and saying other people are wrong when stating they are two-way.



skylab said:


> If you love cable so much then buy some stock and I've got a bridge to sell you.


Could you please refer me to a single post in this thread that says someone (or even hints at it) loves cable? Please?

Why when we point out that you are wrong do you accuse people of being cable-lovers?


----------



## skylab

lrhorer said:


> Of course there are a lot of overlapping interests involved, but separating them out for a moment, the CATV companies per se don't really care if you can copy to an offline device - it's no skin off their nose. It's the motion picture industry who dislikes that aspect and who is pushing so hard for DRM and DHCP. They have a lot of clout with CableLabs, and in fact those strictures are part and parcel of CC 1.0. Again, the fact almost all the non CC certified DVRs supplied by the CATV companies do allow the user to copy the material (usually over firewire) argues definitively against your statement. Even CC 1.0 devices like the Series III and the TiVo HD do not allow digital copies of the content unless its DRM bits are unset. Once again, that pretty much blows your theory all to pieces.


Wow, someone needs to pull their head out of the sand. Cable wants to be the sole provider of how you and I view programming -- everything from where we choose to watch to when.

Go over to the avsforum and read how cable has essentially disabled firewire ports with respect to both copying programming 5c "copy freely" directly to a comptuer and to recording 5c "copy once" programming to DVHS.

Read up a bit at http://www.eff.org/IP/pnp/cablewp.php, "who killed tivo2go," it might answer a few questions for you.


----------



## sfhub

skylab said:


> Go over to the avsforum and read how cable has essentially disabled firewire ports with respect to both copying programming 5c "copy freely" directly to a comptuer and to recording 5c "copy once" programming to DVHS.


DVHS isn't DTCP certified and thus can't copy any 5c encrypted programming. This isn't the fault of the cable company. The content copy protection flags are controlled by the content providers. If the cable company is changing the flags incorrectly, then your beef would be with the cable company, otherwise your beef is with the studios who came up with this scheme.


----------



## skylab

DVHS can record 5c protected content. I have numerous 5c "copy once" recordings on dvhs.

Yes, cable companies have problems with mismatched flags.

Cable also rolled out a passport firmware upgrade back on 06' that disabled firewire output to PCs for recording 5c "copy freely" content. This is well documented in the avsforums.


----------



## lrhorer

vman41 said:


> They don't want the cable company as gatekeeper. Give us a simple fat pipe to the internet and let the cable companies offer those services with no advantage over anyone else.


Now that I come closer to agreeing, but it's a far cry from there to saying, "No 2-Way Services". Actually, IMNSHO, what should be ratified is someting like the following: The Host lists all available middleware available for transaction management, including all available OCAP software approved by the local CATV and available from them. The user then has the choice of which products he wishes to load and which ones he specifically does not want to load or wishes to unload. On the other side of the coin, the CATV provider should not be bound to support any non-OCAP applications. Indeed, I wouldn't even have too much of a fit if it specified they did not have to provide technical support (as opposed to service) for any device bearing non-OCAP products. That way, if the user is having problems and he wants to call the CATV company to help, the CATV company coud require he must first disable all non-OCAP utilities to prove the issue is not caused by faulty non-OCAP software. After all, there is no reason the CATV company should bear any financial responsibility for the user loading software which breaks the system.


----------



## lrhorer

bdraw said:


> Technically those aren't OpenCable 2.0 devices (formally CableCARD 2.0), since they don't use OCAP user interfaces.


I never said they were. Skylab asked someone to list at least one CC 1.0 device which provides 2-Way communication. Oh, BTW, some of the Motorola boxes do support OCAP. NHone of the SA boxes do.


----------



## lrhorer

skylab said:


> Wow, someone needs to pull their head out of the sand. Cable wants to be the sole provider of how you and I view programming -- everything from where we choose to watch to when.


I presume you mean me. My head is not in the sand, but I was formerly n the CATV industry, and I still retain close ties to individuals in the industry, including a number of General Managers and some senior officers of a number of CATV corporations. No one in that industry could possibkly care less what you as a consumer watches or when, as long as you pay for the programming. Now no doubt you are going to scream about the fact they want every user to pay as much as posssible for the services, whether they make use of them or not. To that I can only respond, "Of course they do!!". There isn't a single profit based businesss on earth who does not want to charge the maximum the market will bear for their goods and services while simultaneously reducing the overhead costs of producing those services. It's not a hidden agenda. It's the entire point of all business.



skylab said:


> Go over to the avsforum


'Been there, done that. There is a huge difference between figuring out what was done and being able to correctly ascribe the motivations for doing it, assuming it was motivated in the first place. That said, as I already mentioned, there are a lot of overlapping interests. Time Warner Cable, for example was until recently owned by Time Warner, Inc. Guess what else they own? Warner Brothers.



skylab said:


> Read up a bit at http://www.eff.org/IP/pnp/cablewp.php, "who killed tivo2go


No, thanks. As a fully qualified Telecommunications Engineer with 30 years experience in the industry - 8 years of it in the CATV sector - I really don't need to do any more reading of material from non-authoritative sources. I have plenty of authoritative sources. I might suggest you stop reading such sources, however, because they don't seem to be educating you.


----------



## sfhub

skylab said:


> DVHS can record 5c protected content. I have numerous 5c "copy once" recordings on dvhs.
> 
> Yes, cable companies have problems with mismatched flags.
> 
> Cable also rolled out a passport firmware upgrade back on 06' that disabled firewire output to PCs for recording 5c "copy freely" content. This is well documented in the avsforums.


Sorry I mistook DVHS for CapDVHS on PCs. Nothing you wrote, I just read it wrong.

If you have examples of 5c protected content that won't record on DTCP-certified equipment, then you have cause to complain. Could you provide references?


----------



## lrhorer

skylab said:


> You have just proven my point. All the devices cited above are only available for lease from a cable company.


I really don't want to be offensive, but you just keep piling one completely incorrect statement on top of another. Every one of those devices can be purchased by anyone who wants to purchase one. Scientific Atlanta is not selling them direct to consumers, but it isn't illegal to get one. Motorola is going to be selling the 3416 and I think the 3200. In any case, all you asked was to point to a CC 1.0 device which support SDV. I did.

I'm no fan of the CATV companies, but this actually does bring up something which isn't quite fair for the CATV companies. What happens if a box is lost or stolen? The CATV company has two choices, it can implement a policy of just eating the cost, or it can charge the customer for losing the box. The thing is, if the customer is charged for the box, then by law he owns it. If the box happens to turn up, the customer is by no means required to return it, but if the CATV company finds it, they are required to either return the box or the money to the user. The Police regularly find numbers of stolen boxes and turn them over to the CATV company, and it costs the CATV company a good bit of change to track down the owners.

The other option is to not charge the customer for lost or stolen boxes, but in that case there is nothing to prevent a good number of users from "losing" one cable box after another. It also winds up with large percentages of disconnecting customers not bothering to return the box.



skylab said:


> There are no navigation devices available to purchase in the marketplace that offer "two-way" services like sdv using cablecard 1.0.


Saying soomething over and over does not make it true. I can drive over to my local Electonics store and have them order one of these items if Iso choose.



skylab said:


> My point is that cable is trying to force people to lease their boxes rather than purchasing navigation devices on the marketplace by using sdv to deliver what has always been "one-way" programming.


I know your point. It's wrong.



skylab said:


> Its really not that hard of a concept.


No one said it's difficult, just wrong. Being easy doesn't make it right.



skylab said:


> If you love cable so much then buy some stock and I've got a bridge to sell you.


1. I despise many of the practices of the Cable Companies, including both my local ones. The fact they are guilty of many excesses and failings in no way proves they are guilty of this.

2. Their being guilty of the failing of which you charge them does not mean their stock is going to fail, so your point eludes me. Clearly this is meant to be some sort of slur agianst my mental faculties, but it fails dismally in that respect, as well.

3. The statement does nothing to support your position.


----------



## gschoen

lrhorer said:


> No, thanks. As a fully qualified Telecommunications Engineer with 30 years experience in the industry - 8 years of it in the CATV sector - I really don't need to do any more reading of material from non-authoritative sources. I have plenty of authoritative sources. I might suggest you stop reading such sources, however, because they don't seem to be educating you.


I can't believe any of us non-authoritative, uneducation doofs even post here! Until we have 8 years in the CATV sector, at least.


----------



## classicsat

lrhorer said:


> I really don't want to be offensive, but you just keep piling one completely incorrect statement on top of another. Every one of those devices can be purchased by anyone who wants to purchase one. Scientific Atlanta is not selling them direct to consumers, but it isn't illegal to get one. Motorola is going to be selling the 3416 and I think the 3200.


They can not, or will not be authorised, in most cases though.

While technically not against the law to privately purchase such hardware , it is well within the right of providers to deny authorisation of such 3rd party procured fixed security boxes.

The box providers have generally not sold their non CC boxes on the open market, but just to providers, who may have the option of selling their boxes, but in the USA have chosen not to.


----------



## ah30k

classicsat said:


> They can not, or will not be authorised, in most cases though.


While its true that the old embedded security versions would never get authorized the new the host/CableCARD versions should be able to be authorized.


----------



## MichaelK

ah30k said:


> While its true that the old embedded security versions would never get authorized the new the host/CableCARD versions should be able to be authorized.


actually I could be wrong but I believe the proprietary boxes ARE NOT Cablelabs verified so the cable company can say 'no verification- no connection'- looks like Moto only has something called HDT-300 verified- which appears to be an ATSC/Cablecard HD STB that was to be in retail in 2004 but looks like maybe it was just vaporware? And I see nothing from SA/Cisco on the list.

http://www.cablelabs.com/udcp/downloads/OC_PNP.pdf

Maybe one can get an unverified device hooked up by chance someplaces but I wouldn't assume any particular head end would allow it.


----------



## vstone

MichaelK said:


> actually I could be wrong but I believe the proprietary boxes ARE NOT Cablelabs verified so the cable company can say 'no verification- no connection'- looks like Moto only has something called HDT-300 verified- which appears to be an ATSC/Cablecard HD STB that was to be in retail in 2004 but looks like maybe it was just vaporware? And I see nothing from SA/Cisco on the list.
> 
> http://www.cablelabs.com/udcp/downloads/OC_PNP.pdf
> 
> Maybe one can get an unverified device hooked up by chance someplaces but I wouldn't assume any particular head end would allow it.


I seem to remember reading about an off the shelf cable STB with OTA tuners from SA, but its been awhile. They've probably watched Tivo struggle with the cable companies, or perhaps they just announced it as a bargaining chip.


----------



## NSPhillips

Cox Fairfax added NFL Network HD today. It's showing as "channel not available" on my Series 3. I called tech support (at about 10:30 pm) and played dumb. The guy said the best he could do was schedule a technician to find my missing channel. He had no idea about SDV. He also said they weren't allowed to send reset signals to cable cards because it might "melt your TV."


----------



## DCIFRTHS

NSPhillips said:


> ... He also said they weren't allowed to send reset signals to cable cards because it might "melt your TV."


Was that a joke


----------



## NSPhillips

DCIFRTHS said:


> Was that a joke


He appeared to believe that sending signals to cable cards can cause them to overheat or possible screw up the firmware in your TV. I'm guessing that the guy on duty at 10:30 on a Tuesday is told to not try anything extreme.


----------



## pmiranda

You can add 1653 - TBSHD
I do think it's a bit unfair to say 2 to 78 are SDV without a note that they're the digital simulcast of analog channels that you still receive, you just don't get the digital versions (same resolution, just a little more noise).


----------



## morac

I had a tech out today because the signals on a frequency are low. While he was here I asked about SDV and he said it's coming to South Jersey in 4Q of this year.

I'm guessing the SDV dongle won't be ready by that time. He did say that only low traffic channels will be put on SDV, but he also said existing channels could be moved to SDV.

On the plus side he mentioned a lot more HD channels are coming.


----------



## DCIFRTHS

morac said:


> I had a tech out today because the signals on a frequency are low. While he was here I asked about SDV and he said it's coming to South Jersey in 4Q of this year.
> 
> I'm guessing the SDV dongle won't be ready by that time. He did say that only low traffic channels will be put on SDV, but he also said existing channels could be moved to SDV.
> 
> On the plus side he mentioned a lot more HD channels are coming.


Most, if not all of the foreign language channels are switched on the Westchester Cablevision system. I believe that sports packages are switched too.

As long as the mainstream channels remain non-switched, I will remain a Cablevision customer - even when Verizon is done with the FiOS installation in my building.


----------



## pmiranda

morac said:


> I had a tech out today because the signals on a frequency are low. While he was here I asked about SDV and he said it's coming to South Jersey in 4Q of this year.
> 
> I'm guessing the SDV dongle won't be ready by that time. He did say that only low traffic channels will be put on SDV, but he also said existing channels could be moved to SDV.
> 
> On the plus side he mentioned a lot more HD channels are coming.


Expect those new HD channels to be SDV. Every new HD channel we've gotten in Austin is SDV. I'm guessing it makes sense since there are still not many folks with HDTVs, so it's relatively rare for anyone to be watching those channels.


----------



## bdraw

Ran across this, most interesting to note is the ratio. It says that a 1:1 ratio between customers and channels is optimal for SDV. This would mean they'd need approximately four times as many nodes. I wonder how much that'd cost.

http://connectedhome2go.com/2007/09/25/update-on-switched-digital-video/


----------



## ah30k

bdraw said:


> Ran across this, most interesting to note is the ratio. It says that a 1:1 ratio between customers and channels is optimal for SDV. This would mean they'd need approximately four times as many nodes. I wonder how much that'd cost.
> 
> http://connectedhome2go.com/2007/09/25/update-on-switched-digital-video/


Dude, you missed the point again. The 1:1 ratio is optimal for unicast not SDV.



> By the time SDV starts rolling out in Asia and Europe, we may be into the next phase of the technology. Specifically switched unicast, which is designed to provide personalized video streams (and new revenue opportunities via targeted advertising). Switched unicast becomes feasible when the number of set-tops in a service group approaches a 1:1 ratio with the number of video streams being served.


----------



## bdraw

How is unicast not SDV?

I know in computer networking that broadcast is the opposite of unicast. I see broadcast as the conventional delivery method and unicast as SDV.


----------



## morac

pmiranda said:


> Expect those new HD channels to be SDV. Every new HD channel we've gotten in Austin is SDV. I'm guessing it makes sense since there are still not many folks with HDTVs, so it's relatively rare for anyone to be watching those channels.


He mentions some would be and some wouldn't be. They just added TBS-HD yesterday and it's not SDV. Unfortunately it's not in the guide data yet so while I can tune it I can't schedule recordings on it.


----------



## ah30k

bdraw said:


> How is unicast not SDV?
> 
> I know in computer networking that broadcast is the opposite of unicast. I see broadcast as the conventional delivery method and unicast as SDV.


SDV is community sharing of a subset of a broadcast channels. The 100 channels (example number only) that are currently being broadcast in the SDV system are broadcast to all users in the node. The same commercials on Monday Night Football are shown on all TVs in the node.

Think of SDV as a subset broadcast.

Unicast (which the article refers to as the next generation of technology) is a unique channel distributed just for you (hence the 0.99:1 requirement - slight discount for off televisions). In this case, you can customize commercials for each user in the network.


----------



## Bierboy

Has anyone else mentioned this apparent resolution to the SDV issue? It looks to me like it would resolve all the *****ing from naysayers claiming SDV will "kill" TiVo.


----------



## ah30k

Bierboy, I know you've been around a long while so I'm stumped as to your rookie mistake. This has been all over this forum already.


----------



## PaulS

bdraw said:


> How is unicast not SDV?
> 
> I know in computer networking that broadcast is the opposite of unicast. I see broadcast as the conventional delivery method and unicast as SDV.


SDV is quite analgous to multicast in the data networking world. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me at all to find that the CableLabs folks drafted their SDV requirements from the IGMP RFC's.

Broadcast : all datatreams/channels are sent simultaneously to all receivers

Unicast : a single datastream/channel is sent to a single receiver

Multicast (simplified description) : Imagine a tree, where the source of all data/channels is at the trunk, and all of the receivers are the leaves. In between the trunk and leaves, at branching points, are filtering agents. In the data world, these are multicast (typically IGMP) enabled routers, in the SDV world they are SDV-enabled nodes.

When a client wants to receive data/channels, it sends a message towards the trunk. All of the filtering agents between that particular leaf and the trunk now know that the leaf wants to receive that data/channel, and log that info into a table. Think of it as punching a hole in a firewall, allowing specific data to flow through that firewall.

When data/channels arrive at a filtering agent, the agent consults its table to see who is actively listening for this data/channel. It then selectively sends the data/channels to only those leafs who want to receive that data/channel. Conversely, data is not sent to leaves who did not explicitly tell someone that they wanted that data. This is where the bandwidth savings are.

When a client is done receiving data/channels (changes channels, turns off computer, etc), it sends a message towards the trunk. All of the filtering agents between that particular leaf and the trunk now know that the leaf does not want to receive that data/channel, and removes that info from the table. The hole in the firewall is now plugged.


----------



## jrm01

PaulS said:


> When a client is done receiving data/channels (changes channels, turns off computer, etc), it sends a message towards the trunk. All of the filtering agents between that particular leaf and the trunk now know that the leaf does not want to receive that data/channel, and removes that info from the table. The hole in the firewall is now plugged.


This is the SDV requirement that has always puzzled me as to how TiVo will be able to do this with a dongle. TiVo doesn't know if you are watching a channel. The TV could be turned off and it doesn't know this. If not done properly it would put an added burden on the SDV node.


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## HiDefGator

I don't think the cable box knows if you are actually watching the TV or not either. I think the system assumes that every cable box will be on and tuned to a channel at all times. The hope is that many of them are tuned to the same channels.


----------



## PaulS

jrm01 said:


> This is the SDV requirement that has always puzzled me as to how TiVo will be able to do this with a dongle. TiVo doesn't know if you are watching a channel. The TV could be turned off and it doesn't know this. If not done properly it would put an added burden on the SDV node.


True enough. Not necessarily a TiVo-specific problem, either. It's also a problem for vanilla set top boxes as well. If the box is just sitting there, tuning/recording a channel for hours on end, how do you determine if it's safe to yank the SDV stream away from it ?

The safe answer is to have the STB continuously tell the nodes upstream that it's still actively tuned to that channel, and that they should still allow that stream to flow.

However, knowing how the cableco's work (read : try to scrounge every penny, and actively piss off customers in the process), they'll likely propose a time limit, or have the box try to query the user to see if it's safe to yank the stream.


----------



## cableguy763

It could be that the box is looking for presses from the remote i.e. vol up, down or mute....


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## morac

PaulS said:


> The safe answer is to have the STB continuously tell the nodes upstream that it's still actively tuned to that channel, and that they should still allow that stream to flow.
> 
> However, knowing how the cableco's work (read : try to scrounge every penny, and actively piss off customers in the process), they'll likely propose a time limit, or have the box try to query the user to see if it's safe to yank the stream.


I'm pretty sure they'll use a time limit since many people just leave their boxes on all the time. If someone tuned to a SDV channel and then went away for a weekend it would tie up a SDV stream when no one is using it, which defeats the purpose of SDV.

What will probably happen is that near the end of the time limit there will be a popup asking if you are still watching the channel. If you don't answer, the SDV switches off and is replaced by a popup telling you to push okay or something to retune the channel.

For DVRs, the cablebox/dongle will have to be smart enough to tell the host that it's recording (or keep refreshing the request) so that the SDV stream isn't yanked while the box is recording.


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## snowbunny

Has TiVo explicitly said that they will deliver a fix to the SDV problem? Or are we still hoping to pressure TWC et al to not use SDV?

Can an S2 (which is still connected to the cable company's digital converter box) *record* in HD? If so, and MRV is becomes reality, could that recording then be transferred from the S2 to the S3 (assuming that the recording is not flagged as copyrighted)?

I can see why there'd be no reason to transfer an HD recording from an S3 to an S2 (S2 cannot display HD) but I can see a very good reason for allowing the transfer from an S2 to an S3.


----------



## DCIFRTHS

snowbunny said:


> ... Can an S2 (which is still connected to the cable company's digital converter box) *record* in HD? ...


The S2 boxes can *not* record an HD signal.


----------



## bicker

morac said:


> I'm pretty sure they'll use a time limit since many people just leave their boxes on all the time.


I thought I remember reading (with regard to the dongle) that there was a four hour (or maybe three hour?) reconfirmation component to its design.


----------



## jrm01

snowbunny said:


> Has TiVo explicitly said that they will deliver a fix to the SDV problem? Or are we still hoping to pressure TWC et al to not use SDV?


The have explicitly said they are working with the cabelcos on a solution which will include a dongle.


----------



## Bierboy

ah30k said:


> Bierboy, I know you've been around a long while so I'm stumped as to your rookie mistake. This has been all over this forum already.


Since SDV has no impact on me (and, given our cableco, probably won't for a very long time), I've paid no attention to the threads about it in these fora. I had just stumbled on this, so, of course, ignore my addled ramblings....


----------



## morac

snowbunny said:


> Has TiVo explicitly said that they will deliver a fix to the SDV problem? Or are we still hoping to pressure TWC et al to not use SDV?


This is their official position. A fix is in the making, but is not yet available.



snowbunny said:


> Can an S2 (which is still connected to the cable company's digital converter box) *record* in HD? If so, and MRV is becomes reality, could that recording then be transferred from the S2 to the S3 (assuming that the recording is not flagged as copyrighted)?


The S2 is incapable of recording HD content. If you hook up a S2 to a HD cable box and using s-video or RCA jacks then the S2 will record HD channels, but they will only be in SD since the cable box will down-convert it.



snowbunny said:


> I can see why there'd be no reason to transfer an HD recording from an S3 to an S2 (S2 cannot display HD) but I can see a very good reason for allowing the transfer from an S2 to an S3.


It's been said that SD content will be transferable.


----------



## HiDefGator

jrm01 said:


> The have explicitly said they are working with the cabelcos on a solution which will include a dongle.


I don't thnk the cable companies have agreed to actually make it and distribute it yet. I believe Tivo has said this solution would work for them. I'm not as convinced the cable companies have bought into it yet.


----------



## MichaelK

also- hate to be the wet blanket- but the cable filing specifically says something like FUTURE devices might work with it. And the Tivo statement says nothing specific about CURRENT model tivo's. 

Myself I assume tivo can upgrade the S3's and THD's in use to use the new thingie but i wouldn't bet my house on it. (maybe a paycheck- but not the house or even a car...)

Also, I'd have to agree that I'm not convinced either that cable will universally support it unless the FCC mandates it and they dont show any leanings to do that of late....


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## bicker

Cable will support it to the extent they believe that failing to do so might result in more stringent and less friendly requirements regarding separable authentication. So that means that cable companies for whom those requirements were waived will care very little, and those for who those requirements are enforced will care more.


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## jrm01

HiDefGator said:


> I don't thnk the cable companies have agreed to actually make it and distribute it yet. I believe Tivo has said this solution would work for them. I'm not as convinced the cable companies have bought into it yet.


Maybe the individual cablecos haven't agreed to it, but their organization has agreed to it with the FCC.



> Great progress has been made and the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA) revealed the solution in a filing with the FCC. The agreed-upon solution is a small external adapter, called a tuning resolver, which will attach to the back of the CableCARD device and enable two-way communication with the cable headend so that switched digital channels can be received by TiVo products


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## mikeyts

MichaelK said:


> also- hate to be the wet blanket- but the cable filing specifically says something like FUTURE devices might work with it. And the Tivo statement says nothing specific about CURRENT model tivo's.
> 
> Myself I assume tivo can upgrade the S3's and THD's in use to use the new thingie but i wouldn't bet my house on it. (maybe a paycheck- but not the house or even a car...)
> 
> Also, I'd have to agree that I'm not convinced either that cable will universally support it unless the FCC mandates it and they dont show any leanings to do that of late....


The NCTA filing says:


> With only firmware modifications to new UDCP products, and a USB 2.0
> connection, properly equipped UDCPs could receive programming offered on SDV channels. Many *currently deployed UDCPs, including TiVo DVRs*, have one or more USB 2.0 connectors and *might even be upgradeable with firmware for SDV*.


(Emphasis added). I read this to mean that new UDCP products could be designed to work with these devices from the beginning and that some current device (like the UDCP TiVos) _might_ be capable of using it.

The beginning of the announcement at TiVo's site reads:


> Currently, switched digital channels are unavailable to TiVo DVRs that use CableCARDs. However, the cable industry is working with TiVo and others to develop a technical fix so that TiVo devices will be able to access these switched digital channels.


To me, this is talking about a current problem with current products and a prospective fix for that problem with current products. Not some mythical future TiVo CableCARD models, of which there arguably will be none if they fail to fix this.

As I see it, TiVo doesn't need for cable to manufacture and distribute this thing--they could make and sell it themselves, if they have access to the proprietary protocols being used to deploy SDV.


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## jercra

bicker said:


> I thought I remember reading (with regard to the dongle) that there was a four hour (or maybe three hour?) reconfirmation component to its design.


Comcast SDV spec says that this parameter must configurable though it appears that they have chosen 4 hours to start. This is for all STBs not just the dongle. There is also a sepatate flag to indicate that a show is being recorded on a DVR box so that the bandwidth is not marked as reclaimable while any DVR is recording it.


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## HiDefGator

mikeyts said:


> As I see it, TiVo doesn't need for cable to manufacture and distribute this thing--they could make and sell it themselves, if they have access to the proprietary protocols being used to deploy SDV.


I suspect since each cable company has different hardwrae configured in numerous different ways that the dongle or the firmware for it or the software for it would have to come from each cable company. Ever tried getting a cable company to do something just for a handful of Tivo S3 owners?


----------



## classicsat

With todays "field programmable" devices, I believe that UDCP box manufacturers could make them themselves and program when installed.


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## mikeyts

It could follow the CableCARD model, with a proprietary protocol spoken to the headend and a standardized protocol between the host the "tuning resolver". That would need an amendment to CFR Title 47 Part 76 to require that the cable companies stock the appropriate model "tuning resolver". Alternatively, they could standardize both protocols (host-to-resolver and resolver-to-headend) and anyone could manufacture and distribute (or sell) them. Unlike CableCARD, there is no security concern to push the former model.

No use speculating--we'll see how it comes out. I think that the existence and wording of TiVo's customer notice encouraging (and the fact that it's not accompanied by some BS "these are forward-looking statements which do not commit in any way" disclaimer).


----------



## bicker

mikeyts said:


> No use speculating--we'll see how it comes out.


However, some folks need to make decisions now, and that'll be the case going forward, based on a best guess about how this will all work out.



mikeyts said:


> I think that the existence and wording of TiVo's customer notice encouraging (and the fact that it's not accompanied by some BS "these are forward-looking statements which do not commit in any way" disclaimer).


Well, I wouldn't be so sure.

"... TiVo does not represent or guarantee the truthfulness, accuracy, reliability, completeness or timeliness of contents on the Site. ... TIVO MAKES NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, AS TO ... A USER'S RELIANCE ON OR USE OF ANY INFORMATION .... PROVIDED ON ... THE SITE, OR ANY FAILURE OF PERFORMANCE CAUSED BY OR ARISING OUT OF USE OF OR ACCESS TO ANY ... INFORMATION CONTAINED IN THE SITE."

I'd say that pretty-much covers their tail backwards and forwards.


----------



## DCIFRTHS

mikeyts said:


> ... No use speculating--we'll see how it comes out. I think that the existence and wording of TiVo's customer notice encouraging (and the fact that it's not accompanied by some BS "these are forward-looking statements which do not commit in any way" disclaimer).


I am also going to keep a positive attitude toward this whole situation :up:

I do hope that we see the solution sooner rather than later, as many people need the device now.


----------



## mikeyts

bicker said:


> However, some folks need to make decisions now, and that'll be the case going forward, based on a best guess about how this will all work out.


We haven't been given enough data to make anything like an educated guess. You may as well flip a coin.


----------



## morac

There's also the possibility that the entire industry drags it's collective heals for 10 years like they did with CableCARDS, though I dont' think the FCC will let them get away with that again.


----------



## lrhorer

jrm01 said:


> The have explicitly said they are working with the cabelcos on a solution which will include a dongle.


Actually, that's not quite what the official website says, and in fact I hope it isn't the case, or rather I hope if it is the case it isn't the only case. While workable, a USB based dongle is the least flexible and least desirable solution for many devices, including the Series III / TiVoHD. If somone does develop a USB dongle, fine, but I hope they either make it both USB and Ethernet, or else they develop both a USB and Ethernet version of the dongle. Certainly the code revisions required for the TiVo are much, much simpler for an Ethernet version. It will also result in much simpler administration and far less plumbing, plus an Ethernet version of the dongle would allow the consumer to have one dongle serve every Ethernet based CableCard device in the house. A USB Dongle will require a separate dongle be purchased for every device. An Ethernet based dongle capability would even make it possible to eliminate the dongle altogether as long as the user has Internet service with their CATV provider, if the engineering is done correctly.


----------



## lrhorer

bicker said:


> However, some folks need to make decisions now, and that'll be the case going forward, based on a best guess about how this will all work out.


Yes, and what's worse, the uncertainty is not good for the consumer in general or the prospective TiVo owner in particular. Not only that, but while in some cases an air of uncertainty can readily be exploited, most often by the entrenched interest, in this particular case I don't see that the resulting FUD is really benefitting anyone very much. It may be renting out more CATV leased DVRs, but I'm not sure that isn't offset by those who are using it as a decision point to go with some other provider (AT&T, FIOS, Satellite, alternate CATV provider, etc). This I think especially since some CATV providers have made their DVR leases a near loss-leader to encourage retention and greater market penetration. In short, if the situation is at all deliberate on their part, it may have backfired.

On the other hand, I don't think the situation is as much a result of Machiavellian conspiracies as of downright short-sightedness and pig-headedness. Add a little greed and a healthy dose of parochial attitudes and you get... well... what we've got.


----------



## bicker

mikeyts said:


> We haven't been given enough data to make anything like an educated guess. You may as well flip a coin.


One doesn't necessarily follow from the other. Generally, if you feel you haven't been given enough data to make an informed decision, then the best decision is typically believed to be the least invasive decision, i.e., in the case of TiVo, don't purchase it.


----------



## bicker

morac said:


> I dont' think the FCC will let them get away with that again.


I haven't seen any indication that anything has changed that would lead me to believe that the FCC will act any differently in the future than they have in the past. If anything, the fact that they "let them get away" with things before is foundation for projecting that they will "let them get away" with things again.


----------



## bicker

lrhorer said:


> On the other hand, I don't think the situation is as much a result of Machiavellian conspiracies as of downright short-sightedness and pig-headedness. Add a little greed and a healthy dose of parochial attitudes and you get... well... what we've got.


It may be fun to project such aspersions on the various parties, here, but the reality, I believe, is much less nefarious. Each company is doing what it should: Operating its business in accordance with the laws, in the best interests of its owners, as per their obligations. That normal-and-reasonable manner of conduct need not necessarily result in sweetness-and-light for everyone. Business is a naturally competitive, and often tumultuous environment, and it should be. Just because someone doesn't experience a smooth road doesn't mean that anyone else has wronged them.


----------



## mikeyts

lrhorer said:


> Actually, that's not quite what the official website says, and in fact I hope it isn't the case, or rather I hope if it is the case it isn't the only case. While workable, a USB based dongle is the least flexible and least desirable solution for many devices, including the Series III / TiVoHD. If somone does develop a USB dongle, fine, but I hope they either make it both USB and Ethernet, or else they develop both a USB and Ethernet version of the dongle. Certainly the code revisions required for the TiVo are much, much simpler for an Ethernet version. It will also result in much simpler administration and far less plumbing, plus an Ethernet version of the dongle would allow the consumer to have one dongle serve every Ethernet based CableCard device in the house. A USB Dongle will require a separate dongle be purchased for every device. An Ethernet based dongle capability would even make it possible to eliminate the dongle altogether as long as the user has Internet service with their CATV provider, if the engineering is done correctly.


TiVo's announcement says:


> Great progress has been made and the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA) revealed *the solution* in a filing with the FCC.


"The" (not "one possible") solution revealed on PDF page 36 of the FCC filing is a USB-2 based "tuning resolver":


> In order to address this issue, the cable industry has worked with CE companies such as TiVo to arrive at a solution that can provide two-way SDV channels to one-way digital cable products through an external device attachment to the UDCP.
> 
> Under this approach arrived at through private discussions outside of regulatory compulsion a small Tuning Resolver adapter could be made available to the UDCP consumer. With only firmware modifications to new UDCP products, and a USB 2.0 connection, properly equipped UDCPs could receive programming offered on SDV channels. Many currently deployed UDCPs, including TiVo DVRs, have one or more USB 2.0 connectors and might even be upgradeable with firmware for SDV


I can see ways in which they could use Ethernet to solve this problem--they could run a server in the headend with which a running device could register over the internet for each of the unidirectional CableCARDs it hosted. It could then send messages requesting mappings for services that it wanted to tune and telling it when it was no longer actively using those services. That solution wouldn't require a "dongle" at all, just authorization of your network capable device with the cable headend as a valid user of the server. How do you envision an "Ethernet dongle" working?


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## CharlesH

lrhorer said:


> An Ethernet based dongle capability would even make it possible to eliminate the dongle altogether as long as the user has Internet service with their CATV provider, if the engineering is done correctly.


I was hoping that you weren't suggesting a design that required that one be getting Internet service through the cable company, but...  . For a LOT of us, DSL is a more economical choice (not to mention the usual issue about sharing the bandwidth on your node).


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## jrm01

lrhorer said:


> Actually, that's not quite what the official website says, and in fact I hope it isn't the case, or rather I hope if it is the case it isn't the only case. While workable, a USB based dongle is the least flexible and least desirable solution for many devices, including the Series III / TiVoHD. If somone does develop a USB dongle, fine, but I hope they either make it both USB and Ethernet, or else they develop both a USB and Ethernet version of the dongle. Certainly the code revisions required for the TiVo are much, much simpler for an Ethernet version. It will also result in much simpler administration and far less plumbing, plus an Ethernet version of the dongle would allow the consumer to have one dongle serve every Ethernet based CableCard device in the house. A USB Dongle will require a separate dongle be purchased for every device. An Ethernet based dongle capability would even make it possible to eliminate the dongle altogether as long as the user has Internet service with their CATV provider, if the engineering is done correctly.


I probably read too much into this statement from Tivo:



> The agreed-upon solution is a small external adapter, called a tuning resolver, which will attach to the back of the CableCARD device and enable two-way communication with the cable headend so that switched digital channels can be received by TiVo products.


I assumed that since it was being referred to as a "tuning resolver" that it would be a USB solution and that if it were an Ethernet solution it would be something like a "channel requestor".


----------



## morac

jrm01 said:


> I probably read too much into this statement from Tivo:
> 
> I assumed that since it was being referred to as a "tuning resolver" that it would be a USB solution and that if it were an Ethernet solution it would be something like a "channel requestor".


It can't be an ethernet device because there is only one ethernet port and, at least in my case, it's already being used to connect to my local network. Any "tuning resolver" would have to connect to a QAM or DOCSIS network. There's no way to connect 2 physically different networks to one ethernet port.

Since there are 2 USB ports, another device could be plugged in even if one USB port was in use.


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## pmiranda

jrm01 said:


> I probably read too much into this statement from Tivo:
> 
> I assumed that since it was being referred to as a "tuning resolver" that it would be a USB solution and that if it were an Ethernet solution it would be something like a "channel requestor".


If it were an ethernet solution it'd be something like "software". It's a USB dongle with a QAM transmitter and maybe a receiver as well.


----------



## entropy1980

Anyone know if TWC Canyon Country, CA just went SDV? I Just came home had a TiVo message that a lineup change had occured that TBSHD had been "added" and now a whole block of channels aren't working....


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## lrhorer

morac said:


> It can't be an ethernet device because there is only one ethernet port and, at least in my case, it's already being used to connect to my local network.


I must admit it was really hard for me to resist blasting this response with flames. Please look up the phrase "layered network model", and then the terms "network bridging" and "network routing".



morac said:


> Any "tuning resolver" would have to connect to a QAM or DOCSIS network. There's no way to connect 2 physically different networks to one ethernet port.


You really have a lot to learn about networking, I'm afraid. Not only is it false there is "no way" to connect 2 physically divergent Layer II or Layer III networks to a Layer II or Layer III Ethernet network, there are in fact a very large number of ways, generally called translation bridging (Layer II) and routing (Layer III). Secondly, a single Ethernet interface can very easily host large numbers of networks - dozens or even hundreds in fact. They don't even have to be compatible networks. A single interface can easily handle TCP/IP, NetBEUI, IPX, and OSI networks simultaneously. Thirdly, it is also untrue the resolver must connect to a QAM or DOCSIS network, although if the user has his internet access provided by the CATV company, it's virtually certain it would transverse the DOCSIS network at some point, that point being the most logical place to insert the request packet into the CATV provider's network. All that is required is the request packet reach the video server farm at the CATV headend and that the ARP tables of the switches which serve the path to the user's node be updated with the TiVo's network address and the IP address of the CableCard. Yes, the easiest way to handle this is over the CATV provider's DOCSIS network, but it isn't the only way. What's more, providing a resolver which provides a bridge to the DOCSIS network from the consumer's LAN is not difficult at all. Indeed, it is precisely what the DOCSIS modem sitting in my computer room is doing right now: providing access to the CATV company's DOCSIS network for my broadband Internet connection via Layer III routing. That includes all three of my TiVos. That's exactly what the dongle will do, as well, whether it is a USB or Ethernet device, although it will probably also act as a VPN endpoint.



morac said:


> Since there are 2 USB ports, another device could be plugged in even if one USB port was in use.


What's your point? While you are looking up the other terms, I suggest you also look uo the term "layyer 2 network switch". I have nearly 20 devices - including 2 other TiVos - "plugged in" to each of my TiVo's ethernet ports. Indeed, if I were to shut down the firewall on my cable gateway, there would be essentially hundreds of millions of devices plugged in to the Ethernet ports of my 3 TiVos, including every single router owned by my CATV provider. Whether the dongle is USB based or Ethernet based, it will be providing exactly the same function at the network layer. The difference is an Ethernet based dongle requires far less specialized code in the TiVo, only 1 dongle is required for every device (TiVo or otherwise) in the house, and the function of the dongle could quite readily be taken over by the DOCSIS modem most Series III TiVo owners already have in their house, or possibly even by a DSL modem, for those of us who buy our Internet access from someone other than the Cable company. The latter will require a bit more in the way of indulgence on the part of the CATV company, but what the heck, if DSL subscribers have to have the dongle while CATV broadband customers don't, c'est la vie.

Oh, by the way, the two USB ports on your TiVo are not completely independent. They represent two ports on a USB hub, and the only difference between two USB ports and multiple Ethernet ports is the hub / switch is internal for the USB ports and external for the Ethernet ports. Well, that and the vast advantages offered by switching over hubbing, and the fact the required network protocols for the Ethernet port are already in place in the OS, and very little applications code will need to be written for an Ethernet dongle and ...


----------



## lrhorer

bicker said:


> It may be fun to project such aspersions on the various parties, here, but the reality, I believe, is much less nefarious.


Please re-read my post. I specifically stated I believed the situation is *NOT* a result of coordinated nefarious intents, or in fact of any nefarious intent.



bicker said:


> Each company is doing what it should: Operating its business in accordance with the laws, in the best interests of its owners, as per their obligations.


No, they are operating in accordance with what they *THINK* is in the best interest of the profiting parties, not what *IS* the best interest of the company. Said thinking is often tempered by greed, often to the detriment of the cpmapny (which is more than just the investors). No offense, but you seem to have a hard time distinguishing between intent and the ability to implement that intent. Just because an executive *intends* to save his company millions of dollars by some decision does not mean he *will*, and while greed is not necessarily the difference between the two, it certainly can be and historically has been on many occasions. Not only that, but many businessmen don't care what is in the best interest of the business, only what they can get out of it today. I can give you hundreds of examples, but I'll give four:

1. The motion picture companies virtually had simultaneous coronaries when VCRs became widely available. Many of them refused to release titles at all, or agreed to do so only long, long after the movie was out of the theaters and had been broadcast on TV. Greed suggests preventing the user from renting or purchasing the movie will cause him to spend more money at the theater. The truth is ready access to video rentals and purchases *increase* the number of theater goers, and now many films make far more on rentals and DVD purchases than in theaters, yet theaters are making more money than ever and the movies studios are consequently making more money, as well. How was their obtuse conservativism motivated by greed good for the companies and their investors?

2. Sony believed by refusing to release their Betamax patents for others to manufacture they could keep all the money made in the VCR and tape market to themselves. When was the last time you saw a betamax tape? How was this decision clearly motivated by greed rather than good business sense good for the company and its investors?

3. A few years ago, one of our sales representatives came to me outraged because we did not have any available bandwidth going into one of the major long distance providers. She demanded to know why. The reason was we had filled up the systems going to the carrier. She then demanded we build another system into the carrier. I explained a new system would cost $200,000, and the revenue we had put on the old system took almost 10 years to fill with 1/4 the bandwidth. The circuit she was so incensed she could not sell would garner $75 a month. I told her we could not afford to spend that sort of cash on a system which was unlikely to pay for itself in 10 years, let alone in 3 (which is our standard business model). I asked her if she would agree to cover the difference if the system did not make money inside of 3 years. She went away, but stamped her feet and threw a temper tantrum to our local VP and demanded we build the system. Having placed all sorts of dollar signs in the VP's eyes, she demanded we build the system. Ten years later, the revenue on the system has paid for about $15,000 of the $200,000 build. The sales rep doesn't care, though, because she got her commission and doesn't have to pay for the $185,000 loss. She could not then and does not now care that she cost the company a small fortune. The VP is less sanguine, but what can she do? She was hoist upon her own petard. How was this decision clearly motivated by greed rather than good business sense good for the company?

4. At the onset of the telecom bust, the CEO of our company met with a number of other CEOs and CFOs from our business sector. At the timne, all the companies including ours were beginning to feel the pinch caused by the market overindulgences (more greed, by the way) in the high tech sector in general and the telecom world in particular. She was shocked. Virtually every one of them had business which could be saved by cutting their workforce 15 - 20%, consolidating their debt, and controlling their expenditures over the next 24 - 36 months. The solution favored by every single one of them, however, was to deliberately bankrupt their companies and run with the cash. The end result? Every single one of those companies went bankrupt within the next 3 years, the employees all lost their jobs, and the investors were largely left holding the bag. How was this decision clearly motivated by greed rather than good business sense good for the companies and their investors?



bicker said:


> That normal-and-reasonable manner of conduct need not necessarily result in sweetness-and-light for everyone. Business is a naturally competitive, and often tumultuous environment, and it should be. Just because someone doesn't experience a smooth road doesn't mean that anyone else has wronged them.


Which has nothing to do with my statements. The fact monkeys can be captured by placing food into a small hole where once they have grasped the food they are unable to withdraw their hand in no way comments upon the highly competitive world in which they live. They are an extremely successful genus, but they can be individually undone by their greed. The same is true of corporate executives. Many care virtually nothing for the company for which they work, and in many cases they will deliberately choose a detrimental course for the company if it yields greater short term gains for them personally. In this case, however, I as I already said, I think it is more a matter of being blinded by greed than being directly motivated by it. To put it briefly, many of the execs are simply unable to see the real advantages to be gained by cooperating in this situation.


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## CharlesH

lrhorer said:


> I must admit it was really hard for me to resist blasting this response with flames. Please look up the phrase "layered network model", and then the terms "network bridging" and "network routing".


I got the impression that the proposed USB dongle was also physically connected to the cable, implementing at least the transmitter part of a DOCSIS modem. The data it would be transmitting need not be encapsulated IP or any other routable packets, just some data that the node or head-end recognizes.

I would think that the biggest complication would be that different cable systems use different protocols for SDV, so somewhere this has to be dealt with.


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## lrhorer

bicker said:


> One doesn't necessarily follow from the other. Generally, if you feel you haven't been given enough data to make an informed decision, then the best decision is typically believed to be the least invasive decision, i.e., in the case of TiVo, don't purchase it.


While true in general, there are plenty of spectacular exceptions. In the late 1970s, I had an opportunity to purchase $8000 worth of gold coins at $35 an ounce. My father convinced me not to risk the money. Boy was that a good decision?

That said, I'm generally in full agreement the best action to take is none at all if the decision is not at a critital point. On th eother hand, it gets harder and harder to "just wait and see" as time goes on, and I think many people want to take advantage of the advancing technologies sooner rather than later. This makes holding off all that more difficult. The bottom line is I can readily see how many consumers are very frustrated and thus prone to blame everyone in the universe for the problem. To some extent, it may even be justified. The various parties are most assuredly dithering about.


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## lrhorer

bicker said:


> Cable will support it to the extent they believe that failing to do so might result in more stringent and less friendly requirements regarding separable authentication. So that means that cable companies for whom those requirements were waived will care very little, and those for who those requirements are enforced will care more.


The execs will base their decision upon whatever criteria they choose. Some may just personally like the idea. Others may just personally dislike the idea. Certainly few CATV execs would balk at adopting the technology if they can be convinced it will earn them greater revenues or decrease their expenses significantly over the next 12 - 36 months, but the fact is many will believe whatever they want to believe no matter what arguments are presented them.


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## lrhorer

CharlesH said:


> I got the impression that the proposed USB dongle was also physically connected to the cable, implementing at least the transmitter part of a DOCSIS modem.


'Correct.



CharlesH said:


> The data it would be transmitting need not be encapsulated IP or any other routable packets, just some data that the node or head-end recognizes.


While true in general, it's not true in this case. The CableCard has an IP address which can be assigned. The TiVo doesn't, but I'm pretty sure the in situ 2-way hosts do.



CharlesH said:


> I would think that the biggest complication would be that different cable systems use different protocols for SDV, so somewhere this has to be dealt with.


Yep, although the number of protocols is limited. I know Scientific Atlanta has a proprietary protocol, and others may have other ones. This fact and the fact the FCC may or may not mandate OCAP is also a stumbling point. It's also probably the main reason TiVo is currently between a rock and a hard place and why the S3 was released without 2 way support.


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## lrhorer

HiDefGator said:


> I suspect since each cable company has different hardwrae configured in numerous different ways that the dongle or the firmware for it or the software for it would have to come from each cable company. Ever tried getting a cable company to do something just for a handful of Tivo S3 owners?


Well, first of all, there are only a handful of CATV companies serving over 80% of the connected individuals in the US and Canada. Secondly, there are even fewer manufacturers of CATV equipment, and many of those manufacturers are sharing an even smaller number of protocols for their equipment. The two biggest by far are Scientific Atlanta (Cisco) and a gaggle of companies which are employing OCAP. This represents probably 95% of the CATV market. SA and Cisco, however, are large enough to provide a real impedimant to the process.


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## lrhorer

mikeyts said:


> I can see ways in which they could use Ethernet to solve this problem--they could run a server in the headend with which a running device could register over the internet for each of the unidirectional CableCARDs it hosted. It could then send messages requesting mappings for services that it wanted to tune and telling it when it was no longer actively using those services. That solution wouldn't require a "dongle" at all, just authorization of your network capable device with the cable headend as a valid user of the server. How do you envision an "Ethernet dongle" working?


That is already how SDV works right now, with one exception: The SVV servers are not open to the internet. The packets come in securely over the CATV network using an upstream carrier to handle the data. The Ethernet dongle (and the USB dongle for that matter) will do precisely the same thing. The difference is if the dongle is Ethernet based, the code to handle the routing is already embedded in the Linux OS. It may even already be compiled as a part of their distro (I haven't checked). If the CATV companies can be convinced to open VPN tunnels to their SDV servers and TiVo can be convinced to include VPN end point code into the TiVo, then the TiVo will work without the dongle over any internet connection, and other devices can still use the dongle. If not, then the dongle will still be necessary, but only 1 per household will be necessary, not 1 per device, and it still will be much easier for TiVo to implement. In genral any device with an Ethernet port could also use the dongle at least as easily as the USB port.

While doable, the USB port is not a really good solution for this purpose. It's only advantage is more devices have USB ports than have Ethernet ports at this time, but that's changing fast.

(OH, by the way, there is no such thing as a unidirectional CableCard. It is the host - in this case the TiVo - which is unidirectional or bidirectional.)


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## morac

lrhorer said:


> I must admit it was really hard for me to resist blasting this response with flames. Please look up the phrase "layered network model", and then the terms "network bridging" and "network routing".


First off I know how networking works. I was talking about Layer I since the dongle will not provide access to your LAN. If you can figure out how to plug two ethernet cable into your TiVo's ethernet port, more power to you, but in the real world that's not possible.

Second I think you might have failed economics or business 101 since none of what you posted has anything to do with what the dongle is designed to do. The dongle is designed to mimic the way a cable box communicates with the headend. A cable box communicates via TCP/IP running on top of a QAM based networking layer. The cable box is not designed to allow any other devices access to any layer of the network because it is not required for the cable box to do it's job (and also for security reasons). 
Similarly the dongle's sole purpose is to communicate orders of whatever device it is plugged into, to the headend. It is not designed to interface with your LAN nor is it designed to provide any kind of direct network access to that device and most likely won't. Ie: similarly how you can't surf the Internet through your cable box, the dongle won't do this either. So it makes next to no sense to use the ethernet port for the dongle since doing so would cut the TiVo off from the LAN. It also makes little sense from a design point of view since it forces the dongle to give the TiVo an IP address when one isn't required. In that way it makes as much sense as plugging your flash drive or mouse into your ethernet port on your PC.

Could a dongle be designed that the ability to work as a cable modem? Sure you could build the dongle so that it has a built in router and DOCSIS mode, but it makes no sense to do so since all it does is increase the cost and size and makes it more complicated than it needs to be. That would be like forcing someone to buy an $400 iPhone when a plain $30 cell phone would work just as well.

The main reasons why the dongle will connect to the USB port:
1. Cost - It will make the dongle more expensive similar to how networked printers are more expensive than USB printers.
2. Practicality - The dongle needs to be small and preferably powered by whatever it is plugged into. This makes USB the superior choice.
3. Standards - USB is generally the accepted standard for connecting any kind of device to a computer. It's the same reason why cell phones don't connect to PC's via ethernet.
4. Flexibility - The dongle needs to work on a variety of different devices, many of which probably don't have ethernet ports. CableCARD TV's have USB ports, but not ethernet ports.
5. Functionality - A dongle wouldn't be needed if ethernet was used since the S3 could just send the commands directly out over the existing tcp/ip network.


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## lrhorer

CharlesH said:


> I was hoping that you weren't suggesting a design that required that one be getting Internet service through the cable company, but...  . For a LOT of us, DSL is a more economical choice (not to mention the usual issue about sharing the bandwidth on your node).


Well, first of all the bandwidth requirements for the upstream data are so small as to be totally negligible. Secondly, whether the consumer is allowed to use DSL is entirely up to the CATV company's policies (unless mandated by the FCC, of course). Fundamentally it will require the CATV company to open their SDV servbers to access via the internet (i.e. allowing data to penetrate their firewall). While this is a simple proposition, I'm willing to bet the IT execs at all the CATV companies are going to require the connection be only via secure tunnel ala IPVPN or IPSEC. If so, then the packet can come from anywhere. Otherwise, it would have to come from one of their "own" modems, either DOCSIS or Dongle.


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## mikeyts

Though it's interesting to speculate on, I really don't think that they're thinking about any kind of Internet-oriented scheme. As I pointed out, the NCTA's FCC filing speaks only of a USB-2 based device (and TiVo's notice speaks only of having worked with the NCTA to develop a single solotuion). Who cares whether you need one for every eligible UDCP in your home? It's a relatively straightforward and secure approach and the devices themselves should be fairly inexpensive to manufacture. Remember, the KISS principle: Keep It Simple, Stupid .


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## lrhorer

morac said:


> First off I know how networking works.


Apparently not.



morac said:


> I was talking about Layer I


No you weren't. The USB port is no more capable of being connected directly to the QAM / DOCSIS transmitter than an Ethernet port is. There s also nothing which prevents the user from installing a USB hub just as easily as an Ethernet hub / switch. Doing so will provide the host with more Ethernet ports just as well as USB ports, but it won't enable one to bridge the data onto an RF signal from the Ethenet port any less readily than from the USB port. Any bridging between different physical networks (Ethernet, T-1, USB, RF) must be done at layer II or Layer III, and it's done every day. In fact, it's done by the vast majority of networks out there, including every SDV system.



morac said:


> since the dongle will not provide access to your LAN.


Irrelevant, although technically speaking since it may be possible to bypass the dongle altogether, the same device may indeed be used for both. If not, it doesn't matter.



morac said:


> If you can figure out how to plug two ethernet cable into your TiVo's ethernet port, more power to you, but in the real world that's not possible.


It's called a switch, and it derives from the very same technology which provides two USB ports on the back of your TiVo.



morac said:


> Second I think you might have failed economics or business 101 since none of what you posted has anything to do with what the dongle is designed to do. The dongle is designed to mimic the way a cable box communicates with the headend.


Indeed it is. The cable box employs a router to pick up the layer III (IP) packet from the CableCard, de-encapsulate it from its 802.1 Ethernet packet, re-encapsulate it within a different packet type, modulate it onto an RF carrier, and transmit it out the CATV cable. Neither the CATV cable nor any CATV device further up the line knows or cares what Layer I and Layer II segments are transversed by the packet on the way to or from the RF transceiver.



morac said:


> A cable box communicates via TCP/IP running on top of a QAM based networking layer. The cable box is not designed to allow any other devices access to any layer of the network because it is not required for the cable box to do it's job (and also for security reasons).


First of all, it's untrue. Both Motorola and Scientific Atlanta make CATV boxes which communicate across the LAN with each other to deliver messaging and video between the boxes. It's true the RF WAN network is firewalled off from the Ethernet LAN network, but that is a function of the network (Layer III) routing, not Layer I access.



morac said:


> Similarly the dongle's sole purpose is to communicate orders of whatever device it is plugged into, to the headend.


Irrelevant. The fact thge dongle has a dedicated purpose has nothing to do with the methods used to communicate with it. It also has nothing to do with access to the other devices which may be connected to it.



morac said:


> It is not designed to interface with your LAN nor is it designed to provide any kind of direct network access to that device and most likely won't.


Irrelevant. Plugging a device intol the same LAN segment as other devices does not provide access to or from those devices unless every device in question allows such asccess and participates in the same network session.



morac said:


> Ie: similarly how you can't surf the Internet through your cable box, the dongle won't do this either.


Motorola and Scientific Atlanta make boxes which do this very thing. More importantly, one of the big features touted by SDV is the ability to browse the Internet and employ online banking, stock trading, etc over the CATV system using the cable box and connected TV. More importantly WRT this issue, however, is the fact the connection medium to the Dongle doesn't matter to the network or the dongle.



morac said:


> So it makes next to no sense to use the ethernet port for the dongle since doing so would cut the TiVo off from the LAN.


Again, you need to learn something about networking. It won't cut off anything. Establishing the traffic on the Ethernet port is no different than on the USB port, except that the Layer II and III networking protocols are already in place in the TiVo for the Ethernet port. Establishing a VPN endpoint on one of the IP addresses is simple.



morac said:


> It also makes little sense from a design point of view since it forces the dongle to give the TiVo an IP address when one isn't required.


The TiVo already has two IP addresses (if it is participating in SDV), and giving it a third and fourth is no big deal. Having two of them on the Ethernet port is also no big deal. What's more, depending on how it is engineered, it is not necessarily required that the Ethernet port be given a second IP address, but it is the easiest way if the CATV provider is worried about external security and especially if they allow access through other providers. If not then a dedicated TCP or UDP port on the TiVo's existing IP addresss will work just fine.



morac said:


> In that way it makes as much sense as plugging your flash drive or mouse into your ethernet port on your PC.


While quite possible, and while I do make use of both flash drives and mouse pointers over my Ethernet LAN (and the Bluetooth network, BTW), the mouse and the drive are not absolutely required to participate in network communications. The dongle is.



morac said:


> Could a dongle be designed that the ability to work as a cable modem?


I never suggested it should be.



morac said:


> Sure you could build the dongle so that it has a built in router and DOCSIS mode, but it makes no sense to do so since all it does is increase the cost and size and makes it more complicated than it needs to be. That would be like forcing someone to buy an $400 iPhone when a plain $30 cell phone would work just as well.


I never suggested this. My suggestion is to eliminate the dongle altogether, or at the very least reduce the number of dongles from 2, 3, 5, or perhaps more to just one. How many consumers - even rich ones - would rather pay $20 for one dongle than $100 for 5 of them? In my house it will require at least 4, and I'd rather it be one, or none.

Since you mention it, however, modifying an existing device is also a possibility. It would require firmware modification, not hardware modification, but if the CATV companies want to get snippy about it, they could easily support a firmware change to existing DOCSIS modems which would allow them to do dual duty as dongles. The cost to the consumer should really be zilch, but even supposing the consumer does buy their own modem (like I have), would they be willing to pay $10 more for a dual-purpose modem? I would.



morac said:


> 1. Cost - It will make the dongle more expensive similar to how networked printers are more expensive than USB printers.


False. Network printers are more expensive because they are less in demand, and becasue only consumers who need higher performance from their printers are generally interested in networking them. The OEM prices for Ethernet chipsets are no higher than for USB chipsets.



morac said:


> 2. Practicality - The dongle needs to be small and preferably powered by whatever it is plugged into. This makes USB the superior choice.


Only partly true. While it's possible the dongle might be powered by the USB port, I certainly would prefer it be at least optionally powered by an external source. Since an Ethernet version of the dongle could be and probably would be in a completely different part of the house, the point is moot for it. A more important difference, however, is the user does not generally speaking want the peripheral device to communicate with more than 1 computer, but in the case of the dongle many of us *DO* want it to communicate with more than 1 computer.



morac said:


> 3. Standards - USB is generally the accepted standard for connecting any kind of device to a computer. It's the same reason why cell phones don't connect to PC's via ethernet.


That's total nonsense. The 802.1 Ethernet standard far predates USB 1.0. The reason USB has become so popular for peripheral devices is because those devices don't need to participate in any networking. The dongle does. The second reason is because until recently Ethernet was somewhat more expensive than USB. This is no longer the case. Oh, and my cell phone does not use either to communicate with my computer. It employs Bluetooth peer networking. This is closer to Wireless Ethernet than it is USB.



morac said:


> 4. Flexibility - The dongle needs to work on a variety of different devices, many of which probably don't have ethernet ports. CableCARD TV's have USB ports, but not ethernet ports.


True, but this is very likely going to change. It certainly has for A/V Receivers. Nonetheless, this point is well taken, but then it is also precisely why I said I hoped there would be developed either two different versions or a dual input version.



morac said:


> 5. Functionality - A dongle wouldn't be needed if ethernet was used since the S3 could just send the commands directly out over the existing tcp/ip network.


Which has been my point all along, or at least partly. It might be needed for those who do not have broadband access with their CATV provider, and it might be needed for devices which don't have Ethernet ports, but if designed properly then other devices will make use of the dongle while the TiVo need not.


----------



## lrhorer

mikeyts said:


> Though it's interesting to speculate on, I really don't think that they're thinking about any kind of Internet-oriented scheme. As I pointed out, the NCTA's FCC filing speaks only of a USB-2 based device (and TiVo's notice speaks only of having worked with the NCTA to develop a single solotuion).


Well, the CATV company's reluctance might be obvious - they may well think it is better to sell both Broadband Internet and CATV access to consumers rather than just CATV service alone. As I pointed out in another post, however, this attitude might be self-defeating. Their thinking might be they get a better chance to sell two items rather than one. This might not be the case, however. As I had to put home most forcefully this past week to one of my vendors who for years has been angling to sell more products to me, his choice is not more products or fewer products, but rather fewer products or none at all. I hope I finally got the point across, because they are headed rapidly towards none, and it's a shame because they make a good product.

In any case, the USB route sounds better to some folks on the surface, but it's a dead end. It's a band-aid on a bullet wound. Of course, so might be the Ethernet solution, but at least the wound gets debrided a bit, first. If done right, the Ethernet solution could be more than a band-aid.



mikeyts said:


> Who cares whether you need one for every eligible UDCP in your home?


I do. It's three (or more) additional devices to have to buy. It's adddional points of failure. It's additional cabling. It's much more difficult to troubleshoot. It means the dongle will have to go inline with the UDCP devices rather than the DOCSIS modem, which is somewhat less susceptible to CATV issues, and usually easier to troubleshoot when they do occur.



mikeyts said:


> It's a relatively straightforward and secure approach and the devices themselves should be fairly inexpensive to manufacture.


The same is true of an Ethernet version. The same is most especially true if it isn't required for the TiVo, at all.



mikeyts said:


> Remember, the KISS principle: Keep It Simple, Stupid .


How is one device plugged in to the DOCSIS modem in my computer room more complex than four devices plugged in to four different hosts? How is inserting four different RF devices into four different coax cables simpler than one? If something fails, is it the TiVo or the dongle? If all the TiVos are using one dongle, then if the dongle fails all four will stop receiving SDV. If it's the TiVo, then only one will fail. With individual dongles, there's no way to tell from the failure mode.


----------



## bicker

lrhorer said:


> Please re-read my post. I specifically stated I believed the situation is *NOT* a result of coordinated nefarious intents, or in fact of any nefarious intent.


Yes, I've reread your post and you mentioned "greed", which is indeed a nefarious intent. "Pig-headedness" and "parochial" are also terms used as references to nefarious aspects. Let's not distract attention from the thread with a meta-discussion, and just accept that we disagree about that.

Each company is doing what it should: Operating its business in accordance with the laws, in the best interests of its owners, as per their obligations. That doesn't mean you have to like it, of course.


----------



## mikeyts

lrhorer said:


> Well, the CATV company's reluctance might be obvious - they may well think it is better to sell both Broadband Internet and CATV access to consumers rather than just CATV service alone. As I pointed out in another post, however, this attitude might be self-defeating. Their thinking might be they get a better chance to sell two items rather than one. This might not be the case, however. As I had to put home most forcefully this past week to one of my vendors who for years has been angling to sell more products to me, his choice is not more products or fewer products, but rather fewer products or none at all. I hope I finally got the point across, because they are headed rapidly towards none, and it's a shame because they make a good product.
> 
> In any case, the USB route sounds better to some folks on the surface, but it's a dead end. It's a band-aid on a bullet wound. Of course, so might be the Ethernet solution, but at least the wound gets debrided a bit, first. If done right, the Ethernet solution could be more than a band-aid.
> 
> I do. It's three (or more) additional devices to have to buy. It's adddional points of failure. It's additional cabling. It's much more difficult to troubleshoot. It means the dongle will have to go inline with the UDCP devices rather than the DOCSIS modem, which is somewhat less susceptible to CATV issues, and usually easier to troubleshoot when they do occur.
> 
> The same is true of an Ethernet version. The same is most especially true if it isn't required for the TiVo, at all.
> 
> How is one device plugged in to the DOCSIS modem in my computer room more complex than four devices plugged in to four different hosts? How is inserting four different RF devices into four different coax cables simpler than one? If something fails, is it the TiVo or the dongle? If all the TiVos are using one dongle, then if the dongle fails all four will stop receiving SDV. If it's the TiVo, then only one will fail. With individual dongles, there's no way to tell from the failure mode.


To my mind, you've made several points in favor of individual dongles. For one, individual dongles don't require access to broadband internet service, which some TiVo owners may not have or desire. For another, one dongle for multiple units introduces a single point of failure for all of your TiVos; the dongle fails, they all lose access to SDV services. How is this desireable?

I still can't envision what an internet dongle would do, exactly, and how it would be deployed. If an internet-accessed SDV server were running at the headend, why wouldn't your TiVos be able to access it directly, like accessing your system's SMTP server (assuming that you use cable broadband internet service).

I don't think that need worry about it--there's no indication that they are now or will work on an internet based solution.


----------



## lrhorer

bicker said:


> Yes, I've reread your post and you mentioned "greed", which is indeed a nefarious intent.


No, it isn't. It only becomes nefarious intent if it is translated into action and it forms part and parcel of the motivation for the act. A person may be greedy - and all of us are to some extent, yet if they do not allow that greed to a prime or at least significant motivation for their actions, then they are not guilty of nefarious intent, no matter how greedy they may in fact be. What's more, as in this case, the actions do not seem to be motivated by greed directly. but more by fear. The root of that fear however is seated in the fact their greedy instincts don't allow them to see clearly what they would see if greed were not clouding their vision. This is called being foolish, not nefarious. See my previous comment about the monkeys. Their intent is not in any way nefarious.



bicker said:


> "Pig-headedness" and "parochial" are also terms used as references to nefarious aspects.


'Far from it. While both may be undesirable in certain cirsumstances, neither is nefarious. Indeed, a parochial attitude is usually a very healthy one if not taken to extremes and again if it is not allowed to interfere with one's success. "We're the best!" is a perfectly fine attitude unless it is allowed to blind one to ones flaws, or a result of hidden infereorities. Pig headedness is an absolutely essential element of success, and is an absolutely positive trait unless it is allowed to assume excessive proportions. A little dab will do you.

A nefarious intent is one which seeks to do harm or evil, not one whose motivation has evil elements. Of course evil intent and evil motivation go well in hand, but they are not totally inclusive of each other. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions, not evil ones.



bicker said:


> Each company is doing what it should: Operating its business in accordance with the laws, in the best interests of its owners, as per their obligations.


No, they aren't. They are costing themselves millions, perhaps tens of millions. This is not in their best interest, no matter how one slices it. Operating within the laws is not relevant. The stupidest individual on earth can avoid breaking laws. Only an intelligent and fearless one can maximize effectiveness while maintaining a balance between consumer satisfaction and operating costs. It isn't easy, but it also is not as difficult as the players in this melee have made it on themselves.



bicker said:


> That doesn't mean you have to like it, of course.


My liking it or disliking it won't make them one iota wiser or stupider. Frankly, I couldn't really care too much less if they do bankrupt themselves. I'm glad you are happy attrempting to bankrupt an enterprise throug stupidity is somehow in the best interest of the enterprise, but I'm going to have to start to insist you quit employing hand-waving, straw man arguments, and ad-hominem. Please either address my comments, concede them, or ignore them.


----------



## lrhorer

mikeyts said:


> To my mind, you've made several points in favor of individual dongles.


Of course I have! No honest debater can ever avoid exposing some of the strengths of an adversary opinion...



mikeyts said:


> For one, individual dongles don't require access to broadband internet service, which some TiVo owners may not have or desire.


But this isn't one of them. Ethernet dongles do not require access to broadband service. If properly engineered and with the cooperation of the CATV provider, an Ethernet based dongle system (not just the dongle) could potentially allow the user to select broadband access rather than the dongle. It gives the user a choice, rather than limiting them to one solution.



mikeyts said:


> For another, one dongle for multiple units introduces a single point of failure for all of your TiVos; the dongle fails, they all lose access to SDV services. How is this desireable?


It is desirable because the user knows which device has failed, versus not being sure who to call or how to go about fixing the problem. Dependign on how the device is engineered, it might be fairly easy to employ multiple dongles if the user so desires. 'Worst case, the user could buy two dongles and put one away in case the first one fails. It's still chaper than buying 4 or 5 of them.



mikeyts said:


> I still can't envision what an internet dongle would do, exactly, and how it would be deployed.


That's not the idea. The dongle would not be internet based.



mikeyts said:


> If an internet-accessed SDV server were running at the headend, why wouldn't your TiVos be able to access it directly, like accessing your system's SMTP server (assuming that you use cable broadband internet service).


That's correct. There are three possible ways to design this:

1. The DOCSIS modem has a VPN endpoint built in to it, or at a mimimum a second (nonroutable) network on the LAN interface. This allows the USB dongle to be essentially nothing more than an ordinary USB => Ethernet converter with no RF transmitter required, and the Series III TiVo needs nothing but some extra code. This will only allow the user to access the SDV content via broadband if he has broadband access with the CATV company, but the CATV company may demand this anyway. There would be nothing to prevent the simultaneous development of an RF based dongle which would allow customers with no broadband access at all to still get service via an RF dongle. Indeed, all the parts and pieces of these systems are right off the shelf.

2. Design a VPN endpoint into the dongle. This can be simpler than the industry standard IPVPN and IPSEC protocols, because the packets never have to leave the CATV company's internal LAN to be forwarded out to the internet. Otherwise the situation is much as above. The Series III and other Ethernet enabled devices need nothing but code. USB-only devices get a physical dongle. Users without broadband get the RF dongle.

3. The best of worlds, but the CATV companies may not wish to entertain the system where standard VPN protocols are built in to the dongle to allow access via secure gateway to the CATV server farm via the internet. This works no matter whose internet service the user gets. Again, all three of these scenarious work perfectrly well with an RF dongle for use by those who don't have any broadband access.

Options 2 and 3 do require there be designed two different versions of the dongle, but none of them require any new type of hardware be designed, only repackaging of already existing OEM devices.



mikeyts said:


> I don't think that need worry about it--there's no indication that they are now or will work on an internet based solution.


I'm skeptical of it, as well, at least via option 3. Option 2 is the least trouble for the CATV company, but it is only internet in the sense it uses the existing DOCSIS connection to deliver the nonroutable packet.


----------



## pmiranda

lrhorer said:


> There would be nothing to prevent the simultaneous development of an RF based dongle which would allow customers with no broadband access at all to still get service via an RF dongle.


A USB-powered and connected RF (well, QAM in the RF band) interface is exactly what makes sense to build. Everybody that has cablecards has cable. Not everybody has a cablemodem, DSL, or another kind of internet access. Everything else you two are debating would leave some percentage of users out in the cold, and everything but a software-only solution for broadband-connected TiVos with charitable cablecos will cost more.


----------



## DCIFRTHS

pmiranda said:


> ... everything but a software-only solution for broadband-connected TiVos ...


Now that's what I would call a *solution*


----------



## bicker

lrhorer said:


> No, it isn't.


Sorry, but at this point I realized that we must be speaking different languages. I'll wait for the DVD and check out the English subtitles.


----------



## vstone

pmiranda said:


> A USB-powered and connected RF (well, QAM in the RF band) interface is exactly what makes sense to build. Everybody that has cablecards has cable. Not everybody has a cablemodem, DSL, or another kind of internet access. Everything else you two are debating would leave some percentage of users out in the cold, and everything but a software-only solution for broadband-connected TiVos with charitable cablecos will cost more.


I'm not sure that QAM has anything to do with upcable transmissions; we're not multiplexing video signals, we're only sending a packet requesting a channel, possibly with a return packet telling us how to tune the requested channel. The return packet could be with a QAM data stream (and it would make sense to do so).

Since at least some SDV solutions communicate via IP packets (between head-end and neighborhood controller, I presume) this may be software doable. It seems likely that the cable companies would want a mechanism that mirrors SDV communications with a cable box, presumably some out of band DOCSIS capability.


----------



## jsshattuck

bdraw said:


> *
> 
> Please report any SDV channels in your area and I'll update this post.
> Thanks to GoHokies! for the great SDV background.*


*

Time Warner-Charlotte has begun to deploy SDV, and on prime stations, not just the worthless niche stations.

On October 1 they added 282 TBS HD to make the Baseball playoffs available to customers, and on October 15 will add three more, MTV HD, Versus/Golf HD, and A&E HD, all in SDV.*


----------



## HiDefGator

jsshattuck said:


> Time Warner-Charlotte has begun to deploy SDV, and on prime stations, not just the worthless niche stations.


That just can't be true. What about all those people on this very forum that insisted that SDV would never get any important channels put on it? It was suppose to only be for foreign languages, midget golf, etc.


----------



## mikeyts

HiDefGator said:


> That just can't be true. What about all those people on this very forum that insisted that SDV would never get any important channels put on it? It was suppose to only be for foreign languages, midget golf, etc.


I suspect that you're being facetious, but that assertion was disproved long ago. The heaviest early users of SDV have placed everything except for a few premium subscription tiers in SDV, including stuff like ESPN, HDNet and Discovery.


----------



## bdraw

jsshattuck said:


> On October 1 they added 282 TBS HD to make the Baseball playoffs available to customers, and on October 15 will add three more, MTV HD, Versus/Golf HD, and A&E HD, all in SDV.


I hate to admit it, but HD channels are niche channels, especially the newer ones that have yet to gain viewers.


----------



## bicker

Good point. Really, until their original series come back around next year, networks like USA are even niche channels. Watched their ratings plummet in the last few weeks.


----------



## kramertc

jsshattuck said:


> Time Warner-Charlotte has begun to deploy SDV, and on prime stations, not just the worthless niche stations.
> 
> On October 1 they added 282 TBS HD to make the Baseball playoffs available to customers, and on October 15 will add three more, MTV HD, Versus/Golf HD, and A&E HD, all in SDV.


I'm in Charlotte.
I just got a Tivo HD last week and found this out the hard way. It's too bad as I really like the Tivo in every aspect over the rental boxes from TW. I don't care for TBS but if all new HD channels will be in SDV then I'm returning the Tivo.


----------



## jsshattuck

kramertc said:


> I'm in Charlotte.
> I just got a Tivo HD last week and found this out the hard way. It's too bad as I really like the Tivo in every aspect over the rental boxes from TW. I don't care for TBS but if all new HD channels will be in SDV then I'm returning the Tivo.


The 4 new HD stations being added this month are all SDV. I got no indication that the existing HD channels will be converted ti SDV. I couldn't go back to a SA8300HD.

My hope is that the proposed solution will be implemented soon and it will be a non issue.


----------



## bdraw

I'm thinking of removing the list all together. 

The problem is that there are so many SDV channels and they change almost constantly the list is almost useless. 

It would make more sense if it wasn't so easy for a CableCo' to switch a channel to/from SDV so easily.


----------



## pmiranda

bdraw said:


> I'm thinking of removing the list all together.
> 
> The problem is that there are so many SDV channels and they change almost constantly the list is almost useless.
> 
> It would make more sense if it wasn't so easy for a CableCo' to switch a channel to/from SDV so easily.


It's probably enough to add a note that Cableco's using SDV will likely apply it to any new HD channels. At least that's the case here in Austin, TX.


----------



## bicker

I disagree. As long as different cable systems use SDV differently, a generalized statement would not be appropriate.


----------



## HiDefGator

I think it is fair to say that any new HD channels offered on cable will probably be SDV. But I don't think you can go so far as to say existing HD channels will not be moved to SDV. If cable companies are going to spend the money to deply SDV, the only reason not to move existing HD would be to keep S3 owners happy. That's not much of a reason in their minds.


----------



## mikeyts

That's not entirely true. There are tens of millions of pieces of UDCR equipment out there other than TiVos, and some small percentage of them are being used with CableCARDs. Though you certainly can't count on it, the providers will probably avoid moving cash-cow premiums like the Showtime, HBO, Cinemax and Starz! tiers into SDV because the can't count on any of the CableCARD subs who are paying extra for them now agreeing to take a box in order to get them.


----------



## MichaelK

mikeyts said:


> That's not entirely true. There are tens of millions of pieces of UDCR equipment out there other than TiVos, and some small percentage of them are being used with CableCARDs. Though you certainly can't count on it, the providers will probably avoid moving cash-cow premiums like the Showtime, HBO, Cinemax and Starz! tiers into SDV because the can't count on any of the CableCARD subs who are paying extra for them now agreeing to take a box in order to get them.


unfortunately I think your nunmbers are way high.

there's only tens of millions of HD equipment in the wild. Only a small percentage of them have cablecard slots. And only a small percentage of those have cablecards in them for a variety of reasons.

http://www.ncta.com/IssueBrief.aspx?contentId=2711&view=4



> By June 15 of 2007, the five largest MSOs  which serve nearly 80% of the cable subscribers in the country  have deployed over 241,000 CableCARDs. When the CableCARDs deployed by the next five largest companies are included, there have been over 271,000 CableCARDs deployed by cable operators serving approximately 90% of the cable subscribers in the country.


so maybe there's 300,000 or so at the moment. How many of those are going to have HD preminums like HBO/SHO/Cinemax/Stars? Of those some percentage will just grin and bear it and get a new cable box. So the numbers for any one cable company that might give up premium revenue is probably only in the tens of thousands.


----------



## bicker

The point is that the more popular the channel, the less benefit is derived from putting it on SDV. The optimal assignment to SDV will always be in reverse order of popularity.


----------



## HiDefGator

bicker said:


> The point is that the more popular the channel, the less benefit is derived from putting it on SDV. The optimal assignment to SDV will always be in reverse order of popularity.


Aren't you still making the assumption they will only SDV some stuff? They might as well SDV everything they legally can if they are going to use SDV. Less benefit is not the same thing as no benefit.


----------



## bicker

Absolutely. If they SDV everything, then they're still using the optimal formula I outlined in my message above.


----------



## DCIFRTHS

HiDefGator said:


> I think it is fair to say that any new HD channels offered on cable will probably be SDV. But I don't think you can go so far as to say existing HD channels will not be moved to SDV. If cable companies are going to spend the money to deply SDV, the only reason not to move existing HD would be to keep S3 owners happy. That's not much of a reason in their minds.


Cablevision has added new mainstream HD channels to their line-up using the standard delivery method (no SDV). So far, the only offerings they have put on SDV are the specialty packages.


----------



## bicker

Hopefully THAT will be the most common model applied.


----------



## jsshattuck

HiDefGator said:


> I think it is fair to say that any new HD channels offered on cable will probably be SDV. But I don't think you can go so far as to say existing HD channels will not be moved to SDV. If cable companies are going to spend the money to deply SDV, the only reason not to move existing HD would be to keep S3 owners happy. That's not much of a reason in their minds.


Congress has already had committee meetings to address the fact that SDV and the inability to get CableCard II's working in third-party boxes is in violation of the spirit if not the legal intent of the CableCard regulations. This is in spite of the fact that new generation set-top boxes are supposed to use them as well. Time Warner here in Charlotte indicated to me that their NEW STB's are indeed CableCard II enabled.


----------



## bicker

jsshattuck said:


> Congress has already had committee meetings to address the fact that SDV and the inability to get CableCard II's working in third-party boxes is in violation of the spirit if not the legal intent of the CableCard regulations.


And Congress *took* what *action*?


----------



## lrhorer

pmiranda said:


> A USB-powered and connected RF (well, QAM in the RF band) interface is exactly what makes sense to build. Everybody that has cablecards has cable. Not everybody has a cablemodem, DSL, or another kind of internet access. Everything else you two are debating would leave some percentage of users out in the cold, and everything but a software-only solution for broadband-connected TiVos with charitable cablecos will cost more.


If you will re-read my posts, you will see I am not leaving anyone out. My request is for an overall solution which covers everyone's needs both today and in the future without limiting the technology's growth and future potential. The USB / RF only solution only makes sense if one wants to dig a deeper hole than the one we are already in, and entrenches an inferior, inherently obsolete design which will just be all that much harder to eliminate a few months down the road. To anyone who hasn't thought through the situation in depth it may seem the easiest solution, but as is often the case the easy solution is not the best. It's often not even the easiest. The fact it may cost more in the short term is not in and of itself a good excuse to force a solution which will cost much, much more in the long term.


----------



## lrhorer

By the way, there is another piece of the puzzle many people are missing in this whole dongle debate. The fact a device such as a television has a USB port does not mean it will automatically work with a USB dongle. In fact, it won't, and for most devices there will be no simple way to get it to work with the dongle. While the TVs and other receivers often do have USB ports, very few if any have any UI tied to the USB port, and none have the required networking in place. DVRs like the TiVo are unique in this respect. Depending on the design, it may or may not even be possible to update the firmware in the device without physcially changing out hardware, and even if the device does have EPROM based firmware, it may not be downloadable / programmable by the user. I know my CableCard enabled TV is not, and it's a relatively new one. What this means is at the very least is that unless your device has a download utility available to it (like the TiVo), at a bare minimum it's going to require a trip to the repair shop. In practial terms, if the device is not network enabled, it's not going to be pretty.


----------



## pmiranda

If you care about TV's, it's probably too late. I haven't seen many with a USB connection, much less ethernet and networking support. I suppose a TV with USB for connecting a camera could probably have the software added to use a dongle of some sort, but if it has a USB port meant only for firmware upgrades, chances are it will not be a host port and therefore wouldn't have the hardware capability to use the same dongle that a TiVo would want. I suppose if you were very clever then the dongle could sense (or have a mode switch or two connectors, or just two versions) that would allow it to be the host or an endpoint and then hope that your TV has enough capability to link the USB port to the cablecard, which is not a foregone conclusion.
If I've read your posts accurately, the unique thing you're proposing is to connect a dongle via ethernet, which definitely require more software work than a simple USB device meant to add back the RF transmit capability TiVo left out of their boxes. (Presumably under threat from CableLabs that it wouldn't be certified if it had transmit capability without OCAP?) The cablecards already have all the firmware to generate the packets they need to communicate to the head-end, and they even have their own MAC addresses... all that's missing is the physical layer, so adding in a route up through a different network via TiVo's ethernet port is just slower and more complicated, and I fail to see how it's any improvement beyond reducing the number of loads on the cable line. (No improvement if your ethernet-connected dongle then has an RF transceiver to communicate with the head-end.)
Maybe folks would understand if you restate what it is you're proposing?


----------



## mikeyts

lrhorer said:


> By the way, there is another piece of the puzzle many people are missing in this whole dongle debate. The fact a device such as a television has a USB port does not mean it will automatically work with a USB dongle. In fact, it won't, and for most devices there will be no simple way to get it to work with the dongle. While the TVs and other receivers often do have USB ports, very few if any have any UI tied to the USB port, and none have the required networking in place. DVRs like the TiVo are unique in this respect. Depending on the design, it may or may not even be possible to update the firmware in the device without physcially changing out hardware, and even if the device does have EPROM based firmware, it may not be downloadable / programmable by the user. I know my CableCard enabled TV is not, and it's a relatively new one. What this means is at the very least is that unless your device has a download utility available to it (like the TiVo), at a bare minimum it's going to require a trip to the repair shop. In practial terms, if the device is not network enabled, it's not going to be pretty.


No, the "tuning resolver" is definitely not going to solve the problem for the vast majority of UDCR products. Many don't have USB connections and for some that do have them, it might not be possible for those connections to be manipulated by their firmware in the required ways.

Field upgradable firmware is becoming more and more common; there's a service created by a company called UpdateLogic which broadcasts firmware updates for client devices on a low bandwidth datacasting loop. It's kind of a cool idea--my local PBS affilliate (KPBS) is carrying their datacasts in their broadcast transport stream (TSreader analysis of a recording of KPBS show that they're using an aggregate 30 Kbps on two "programs", about 13 MB worth of stuff per hour, minus whatever overhead their system adds).

My own television has a memory card slot for direct viewing of digital camera pics; you can download firmware updates and load them onto a memory card (or get preloaded cards sent to you by the manufacturer) and effect an update that way. It's straightforward, but not the easiest technology for Joe and Jill Average to deal with. Memory card firmware updates have been a feature of some televisions for quite a few years now.


----------



## vstone

bicker said:


> The point is that the more popular the channel, the less benefit is derived from putting it on SDV. The optimal assignment to SDV will always be in reverse order of popularity.


From a technical standpoint, yes. From a bean counter's spend less and make more standpoint, not necessarily.


----------



## bicker

I'm not sure what arrangement would be better than reverse order of popularity, from a financial standpoint. 

Hmmmm... okay, I think I understand what you're saying, i.e., that some amount of sub-optimization in the technical aspect may be tolerable by the vast majority of the customer-base, and also consequently prompt more rental of cable company equipment, since it would be less of a hassle than dealing with the tuning resolver. Understood.


----------



## wo5m

From what I have read cable cards have the ability to decode SDV channels it just can't communicate upstream, correct?. I have both a HDTivo and digital cable box. If TWC(in Dallas) ever decided to goto SDV couldn't I request the SDV channel on the digital cable box in the other room and then be able to watch the programing on the Tivo?


----------



## pmiranda

wo5m said:


> From what I have read cable cards have the ability to decode SDV channels it just can't communicate upstream, correct?. I have both a HDTivo and digital cable box. If TWC(in Dallas) ever decided to goto SDV couldn't I request the SDV channel on the digital cable box in the other room and then be able to watch the programing on the Tivo?


No good... there's no way to know which of the dozens of possible frequencies the channel will be delivered on, and the cablecard will refuse to map the channel onto SDV frequencies anyway. You can manually change some QAM tuners to grab SDV channels but I don't think TiVo will do it. I know I've tried it here on TW Austin and it didn't work.


----------



## bdraw

I updated the first post because keeping it accurate is like hitting a moving target. Also, I saw an article in the WSJ that listed a few markets that were using SDV. So from now on, I'll just keep a list of markets that we know use SDV.


----------



## SMWinnie

bdraw said:


> I updated the first post because keeping it accurate is like hitting a moving target.


Well, shucks.

I had thought it was an enormously clever meta-joke, where you were illustrating the SDV problem by trying futilely to keep up with the dynamically changing channel map.

Come to think of it, I suppose throwing one's hands in the air could be the punchline.


----------



## lrhorer

vstone said:


> From a technical standpoint, yes. From a bean counter's spend less and make more standpoint, not necessarily.


It also depends on what is meant by "popular" in the context of the CATV company's offerings, particularly VOD, Video RE-Do and Pay Per View. Relatively little benefit is accorded for regular broadcast channels, but significant benefit is gained if that same content is offered as VOD or Video Re-Do. Extremely large benefit is gained from Pay Per View, since it has the simultaneously the highest markup and greatest diversity of programming.


----------



## lrhorer

pmiranda said:


> No good... there's no way to know which of the dozens of possible frequencies the channel will be delivered on, and the cablecard will refuse to map the channel onto SDV frequencies anyway. You can manually change some QAM tuners to grab SDV channels but I don't think TiVo will do it. I know I've tried it here on TW Austin and it didn't work.


Not only that, but the decoder information is specific to a particular CableCard. If the headend hasn't told the card it can decode the signal and how, it won't and couldn't if it tried.


----------



## lrhorer

pmiranda said:


> If you care about TV's, it's probably too late. I haven't seen many with a USB connection, much less ethernet and networking support.


Exactly.



pmiranda said:


> I suppose a TV with USB for connecting a camera could probably have the software added to use a dongle of some sort, but if it has a USB port meant only for firmware upgrades, chances are it will not be a host port and therefore wouldn't have the hardware capability to use the same dongle that a TiVo would want.


Not only that, but there may not be a simple way to carry the output from the CableCard out to the USB port. In the DVR, everything is managed by and communicates with the CPU, but in a TV, the tuning section and the USB port section may be completely independent.



pmiranda said:


> If I've read your posts accurately, the unique thing you're proposing is to connect a dongle via ethernet, which definitely require more software work than a simple USB device meant to add back the RF transmit capability TiVo left out of their boxes.


No, not really. The Linux Kernel already has all the networking support built right in to the Ethernet port and the CableCard interface. It's very simple to bridge them using freely available Linux uitilities, or with some very simple custom utilities. Networking the USB port is not difficult, either, but it then absolutely requires a dongle. If done properly, though, those with broadband access with their CATV company, wouldn't need a dongle at all. Those with broadband access from some other vendor might need a dongle, but it could be either USB or Ethernet. If their CATV company allows VPN access via the Internet, then once again it could be done without a dongle at all. Otherwise, take your pick, Ethernet or USB. Just as companies like Linksys and NetGear offer several different types of broadband router, they could offer 2 or 3 different types of dongle. Right no you can drive down to your local computer store and buy a plain broadband router, a wireless broadband router. A VOIP broadband router. A wireless VOIP broadband router, a combination media gateway and wireless broadband router, or a wireless cable gateway with built in wireless access point and DOCSIS modem. The latter is what I am using.



pmiranda said:


> The cablecards already have all the firmware to generate the packets they need to communicate to the head-end, and they even have their own MAC addresses... all that's missing is the physical layer,


'Correct, but that bridge can just as easily be via the Ethernet port as the USB port.



pmiranda said:


> so adding in a route up through a different network via TiVo's ethernet port is just slower and more complicated


It's not significantly slower, and it isn't any more complex. If the system is designed properly, then all the TiVo will need is a primitive router utility added to forward the packets from the CableCard to the Ethernet port. Depending on the details of the system, it might need to be a VPN endpoint utility, straight NAT, or possibly a spoofed MAC address.



pmiranda said:


> and I fail to see how it's any improvement beyond reducing the number of loads on the cable line. (No improvement if your ethernet-connected dongle then has an RF transceiver to communicate with the head-end.)
> Maybe folks would understand if you restate what it is you're proposing?


The improvement is that for some users, a dongle won't be necessary. For others, it may be necessary, and can be available. An alternate system would require a dongle for all users, but only one per household rather than one per device.


----------



## cryptmagic

So does anyone know if there is going to be a solution for SDV or are tives just going to become useless bricks? I was looking to get two Tivo HD's but am now hesitant.


----------



## bguzik

cryptmagic said:


> So does anyone know if there is going to be a solution for SDV or are tives just going to become useless bricks? I was looking to get two Tivo HD's but am now hesitant.


Apparently TiVo went to the FCC about this, and I have it on good authority that at least one major Operator is now working with them on what is called an "SDV Resolver" for one-way CableCARD CE devices. It is my understanding that it will interface with TiVo S3 and TiVoHD via the USB port...

I suppose it's anybody's guess as to "When" this will be available.

Barry


----------



## bicker

No one can foresee the future, but all indications are that TiVo is working with cable system operators to deploy a solution which they've worked-out in principle. There are no guarantees: (1) No guarantees with regard to whether things will all work out; (2) No guarantees that your specific cable company will be willing to participate; (3) No guarantees with regard to how well the solution will work as compared to non-SDV applications; (4) No guarantees with regard to the time-frame for deployment of a solution; (5) No guarantees that SDV won't arrive at your doorstep before this solution is available to you; and (6) No guarantees with regard to how much extra this solution will cost you.

Personally, knowing all this, *I* still bought a TiVo S3 earlier this year. You have to make *your own* choice in light of this information.


----------



## mikeyts

bguzik said:


> Apparently TiVo went to the FCC about this, and I have it on good authority that at least one major Operator is now working with them on what is called an "SDV Resolver" for one-way CableCARD CE devices. It is my understanding that it will interface with TiVo S3 and TiVoHD via the USB port...
> 
> I suppose it's anybody's guess as to "When" this will be available.
> 
> Barry


Uh, we've been discussing the "tuning resolver" (aka "dongle") for most of the past couple of hundred posts in this thread. Though TiVo was named as a collaborator on it, the use of such a device was proposed to the FCC by the National Cable & Telecommunications Association in a filing made back at the end of August(here, "tuning resolver" on PDF page 36).

bicker, I don't think anybody's going to manufacture or distribute this dongle until the FCC decides what should be done about the SDV-rendering-UDCR-equipment-nearly-useless situation. They'll choose to go with the dongle or with the CEA's proposal for "UDCR+" or some other viable solution someone else proposes. In any case, I forsee them modifying their regs to require that the cable providers under their regulation provide the chosen solution by a specific deadline. It won't be left up to their choice.


----------



## bicker

I don't think we know that Mike. As others have pointed in out in related threads, the folks involved here may perceive a benefit in acting without mandate, for fear of how draconian the mandate would be if they don't choose the action they want to take themselves. 

So, again, no guarantees.


----------



## mikeyts

bicker said:


> I don't think we know that Mike. As others have pointed in out in related threads, the folks involved here may perceive a benefit in acting without mandate, for fear of how draconian the mandate would be if they don't choose the action they want to take themselves.
> 
> So, again, no guarantees.


Whether they initially choose to act without mandate, it is likely that they will get a mandate in one direction or another. The issue of the effect of SDV on deployed UDCR products has been brought to the FCC by the CEA with a proposed solution; the NCTA has responded with heavy criticism of that proposal and proposed another solution. Although I suppose that it's possible that the FCC will respond with, "Okay, UDCR, a system that you created under heavy pressure from the FCC, is being rendered nearly useless; we're okay with that--nothing needs to be done," I strongly doubt that this will be their response. They will select something to try to remedy the situation, probably one of the two proposals, possibly with modifications. If someone goes ahead and tries to implement one of them before the FCC chooses (and, practically speaking, only the cable industry is in position to implement their "tuning resolver" thing without FCC approval) that entity will risk wasting a lot of money. I suppose that it's a gamble that they might take, since they need to move forward with the deployment of SDV (satellite is adding several new HD channels every week now) and implementing the tuning resolver makes it look like they give a damn about the CEA's concerns.


----------



## bicker

mikeyts said:


> Whether they initially choose to act without mandate, it is likely that they will get a mandate in one direction or another.


And perhaps, just as with other things, that mandate will (1) come too late to make any difference; (2) be worded so vaguely so as to allow them to do practically whatever they want anyway; (3) end up prompting them to do things that make our lives, as viewers, worse than if the mandate was never put in place; (4) any or all of the above.



mikeyts said:


> Although I suppose that it's possible that the FCC will respond with, "Okay, UDCR, a system that you created under heavy pressure from the FCC, is being rendered nearly useless; we're okay with that--nothing needs to be done," I strongly doubt that this will be their response.


That totally and completely ignores what we're talking about here: The voluntary actions of the industry to work this issue out themselves. THAT does change the dynamic. Completely.



mikeyts said:


> If someone goes ahead and tries to implement one of them before the FCC chooses (and, practically speaking, only the cable industry is in position to implement their "tuning resolver" thing without FCC approval) that entity will risk wasting a lot of money.


I doubt that. Even in a trigger-happy regulation environment (which is not the case with the current administration), government is reticent to butt its nose in when industry has resolved the problem itself. And let's remember the problem the regulations are intended to address: access -- NOT cost.


----------



## mikeyts

First, we wouldn't be having this discussion if it weren't for the regulatory efforts of the FCC. TiVo S3 and TiVo HD would not exist because CableCARDs would not exist. The cable industry had no intention of attempting to devise a non-proprietary system for conditional access. They did it in response to an FCC mandate.

Your own posts state why we need for the solution (whatever form it takes) to be regulated. You keep saying over and over again "no guarantees", and you're right--without FCC regulation we have no guarantees, and neither does TiVo or any of the OEMs. Without an FCC requirement to provide and support CableCARDs, I'd wager that few or none of the cable providers would provide and support them. Without regulations requiring it, few or none of them will support this tuning resolver solution either.


----------



## bdraw

I agree with Mike on this one. If it wasn't for government regulations on this one there wouldn't be a HD TiVo. The bottom line is that cable co's like STBs and if they had there way they'd control everything in our home.


----------



## tivoknucklehead

Time Warner Hilton Head SC has just gone to SDV and I am seriously considering recommending that my dad switch over to Directv and sell his S3, not just because of that, but because TW is horrible, only offers one broadcast network (CBS) in HD and charges extra for ESPN HD


----------



## vstone

tivoknucklehead said:


> Time Warner Hilton Head SC has just gone to SDV and I am seriously considering recommending that my dad switch over to Directv and sell his S3, not just because of that, but because TW is horrible, only offers one broadcast network (CBS) in HD and charges extra for ESPN HD


That's interesting. The whole TWCSC system is run out of Columbia. In Myrtle Beach we get the Columbia NBC station in HD, although the local NBC station is Wilmington. There's some wording in the CFR about using stations closest to the head end. IF TWCSC's head end is in Columbia, the entire state could end up receiving Columbia channels.


----------



## skaggs

I dug up this letter Albany TWC sent to Cable Card users in August 2006:


> August 21, 2006
> 
> Dear Valued Customer,
> 
> We would like to thank you for choosing Time Warner Cable to provide your cable services as we are proud to bring you cutting edge, state-of-the-art video as well as voice and data products.
> 
> As you are aware, the current CableCARD technology enables access only to our "one-way" programming services. In order to receive "two-way" programming services such as On Demand programming, the Interactive Program Guide, and more, you must have a digital set-top box. For your review, we have enclosed a brochure that describes the differences in the capabilities of CableCARD-enabled devices and digital cable boxes.
> 
> As part of our ongoing upgrade to digital programming, Time Warner Cable will be moving "alternate time zone" channels of our premium feeds to a two-way, switched digital technology. Premium programming services like HBO, Showtime and Starz often offer multiple channels that show the same programming in different time zones. In the future, those alternative time zone channels will be available only to customers with two-way digital boxes.
> 
> Please note that as early as September 15, 2006, the following channels will no longer be available:
> 
> Channel # Channel Name
> 115 Disney West
> 708 HBO West
> 709 HBO Premium West
> 710 HBO Signature West
> 711 HBO Family West
> 712 HBO Comedy West
> 713 HBO Zone West
> 714 HBO Latino West
> 725 Cinemax West
> 726 MoreMax West
> 727 ActionMax West
> 728 ThrillerMax West
> 746 Showtime West
> 747 Showtime 2 West
> 748 Showtime 3 West
> 749 Showtime Extreme West
> 750 Showtime Beyond West
> 754 Showtime Next West
> 755 Showtime Family West
> 756 Showtime Women West
> 763 The Movie Channel West
> 764 The Movie Channel 2 West
> 776 Starz West
> 777 Starz 5 Cinema West
> 788 Encore West
> 
> If you would like to continue to receive alternative time zone or any of the other digital "two-way" channels or services we offer after September 15, 2006, please contact us at 1.866.321.CABLE. We will be able to provide you with a digital cable box that will give you access to all of Time Warner Cable's programming and features.
> 
> We thank you again for choosing Time Warner Cable.


I have verified the following channels are currently SDV on Albany TWC:
001 TWC information
746 Showtime West
747 Showtime 2 West
748 Showtime 3 West
749 Showtime Extreme West
750 Showtime Beyond West
754 Showtime Next West
755 Showtime Family Zone West
756 Showtime Women West
763 The Movie Channel West 
764 The Movie Channel 2 West

I haven't checked the HBO, Cinemax, or Disney channels and I don't have Starz or Encore.


----------



## mikeyts

skaggs said:


> I dug up this letter Albany TWC sent to Cable Card users in August 2006:
> I have verified the following channels are currently SDV on Albany TWC:
> 001 TWC information
> 746 Showtime West
> 747 Showtime 2 West
> 748 Showtime 3 West
> 749 Showtime Extreme West
> 750 Showtime Beyond West
> 754 Showtime Next West
> 755 Showtime Family Zone West
> 756 Showtime Women West
> 763 The Movie Channel West
> 764 The Movie Channel 2 West
> 
> I haven't checked the HBO, Cinemax, or Disney channels and I don't have Starz or Encore.


That's a pretty considerate cable provider. Though they can be occasionally handy, you don't really need the other-time-zone feeds of those channels. Presenting those channels as SDV first is awfully nice of them.


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## morac

Comcast in my area dropped all the West Coast feeds. Their reasoning was that people can either watch the East Coast feeds or use OnDemand.


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## ah30k

morac said:


> Comcast in my area dropped all the West Coast feeds. Their reasoning was that people can either watch the East Coast feeds or use OnDemand.


or TiVo it!


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## bicker

ah30k said:


> or TiVo it!


 What a brilliant idea!


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## skaggs

I went through all the pay channels I receive.

Here's the complete list of SDV channels for Albany TWC (as of 10/19/07):
001 TWC information
708 HBO West
713 HBO Zone West
746 Showtime West
747 Showtime 2 West
748 Showtime 3 West
749 Showtime Extreme West
750 Showtime Beyond West
754 Showtime Next West
755 Showtime Family Zone West
756 Showtime Women West
763 The Movie Channel West 
764 The Movie Channel 2 West


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## MichaelK

assuming the tuning resolver shows up at some point. Would it also likely enable PPV and VOD? Or just SDV?

I guess it's not likely as then cable would somehow need to get guide info to tivo for ppv and vod selections that tribune currently doesn't have? Would that be the only hangup or are their other technical issues?


----------



## cableguy763

MichaelK said:


> assuming the tuning resolver shows up at some point. Would it also likely enable PPV and VOD? Or just SDV?
> 
> I guess it's not likely as then cable would somehow need to get guide info to tivo for ppv and vod selections that tribune currently doesn't have? Would that be the only hangup or are their other technical issues?


For PPV or VOD it would have to interact with the billing system to verify credit/ablity to charge for the service purchased.


----------



## soccercoach61

cableguy763 said:


> For PPV or VOD it would have to interact with the billing system to verify credit/ablity to charge for the service purchased.


The tuning resolver / "dongle" wouldn't have to interact with the billing system; it would only have to be able to allow a request transaction to be sent back to the headend so that the proper decryption keys get sent to your cable cards to allow you to watch the show. If you are in arrears, your request would get denied and you wouldn't get the keys.


----------



## morac

cableguy763 said:


> For PPV or VOD it would have to interact with the billing system to verify credit/ablity to charge for the service purchased.


Technically once you have 2-way communication anything is possible. I don't see why the resolver would have to interact directly with the billing system since the resolver could send info on what device it's plugged into, which presumably the cable provider knows is tied to a specific account (like how it knows your cable box is tied to your account).

I'm assuming that they'd want the resolver to send the cableCARD pairing information since otherwise the user could tune to (though not receive) an unauthorized channel. I suppose the cable industry could just have the resolver send nothing but tuning requests and make it with no smarts at all, but that seems kind of stupid since it would send requests for channels the user isn't allowed to receive, which would be a waste of bandwidth.

At that point all they'd need is some kind of standard PPV/VOD interface protocol that the TiVo could use to talk to the cable companies' servers and TiVo would have to code something up on their end to display to the end user. I highly doubt that will happen (knowing the industry), but there's nothing physically preventing it from working.


----------



## Joybob

morac said:


> Technically once you have 2-way communication anything is possible. I don't see why the resolver would have to interact directly with the billing system since the resolver could send info on what device it's plugged into, which presumably the cable provider knows is tied to a specific account (like how it knows your cable box is tied to your account).
> 
> I'm assuming that they'd want the resolver to send the cableCARD pairing information since otherwise the user could tune to (though not receive) an unauthorized channel. I suppose the cable industry could just have the resolver send nothing but tuning requests and make it with no smarts at all, but that seems kind of stupid since it would send requests for channels the user isn't allowed to receive, which would be a waste of bandwidth.
> 
> At that point all they'd need is some kind of standard PPV/VOD interface protocol that the TiVo could use to talk to the cable companies' servers and TiVo would have to code something up on their end to display to the end user. I highly doubt that will happen (knowing the industry), but there's nothing physically preventing it from working.


The real question is, does anyone even use PPV or VOD???


----------



## soccercoach61

Joybob said:


> The real question is, does anyone even use PPV or VOD???


Not with a Tivo...


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## ah30k

Yes, lets add more complexity to the device so it would take even longer to get to market.


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## morac

ah30k said:


> Yes, lets add more complexity to the device so it would take even longer to get to market.


Technically it could be added after the device is in the marketplace (though it will probably only be available for rent) since all the resolver does is allow upstream communication. It's up to TiVo (and other CE manufacturers) and the cable companies to decide how it is used.

The data that runs over the resolver should be independent of the resolver itself (if it's designed correctly), the same way that you didn't need to buy a new network adapter for the TiVo when HME apps came out.


----------



## mikeyts

MichaelK said:


> assuming the tuning resolver shows up at some point. Would it also likely enable PPV and VOD? Or just SDV?
> 
> I guess it's not likely as then cable would somehow need to get guide info to tivo for ppv and vod selections that tribune currently doesn't have? Would that be the only hangup or are their other technical issues?


I've thought about this and conceptually it wouldn't require much more for basic IPPV and VOD menu support.

The original V1 CableCARD spec contained an API running in the CableCARD for fixed versions of Interactive Program Guide, Video On Demand and Impulse Pay-Per-View applications, based on HTML. The cable providers rejected it on the grounds that it was too inflexible, holding out for development of OCAP, which has taken an additional 5 years to come to fruition (a year or two of which was mostly politicking).


----------



## CharlesH

morac said:


> The data that runs over the resolver should be independent of the resolver itself (if it's designed correctly), the same way that you didn't need to buy a new network adapter for the TiVo when HME apps came out.


Given that the resolver will be provided by the cable company, I am assuming that it will have the system-specific logic on how to talk to the SDV server, so the TiVo can talk to it over USB using a generic protocol. One of the issues with SDV is that there are several SDV protocols out there, and the question was where the system-specific logic would live (in the host device or in the "resolver"). So I suspect that the "resolver" is more than just a stripped-down cable modem.


----------



## vstone

CharlesH said:


> Given that the resolver will be provided by the cable company, I am assuming that it will have the system-specific logic on how to talk to the SDV server, so the TiVo can talk to it over USB using a generic protocol. One of the issues with SDV is that there are several SDV protocols out there, and the question was where the system-specific logic would live (in the host device or in the "resolver"). So I suspect that the "resolver" is more than just a stripped-down cable modem.


The Tivo would probably have an option like the Network Option (phone vs Ethernet) with selectable options concerning cable plant hardware and possibly the cable company itself. From a hardware standpoint I assume a cable box communicates upstream via its DOCSIS cable modem (just an assumption, I really don't know anything about this), so I'm not sure why a "resolver" would need more than that.


----------



## MichaelK

Joybob said:


> The real question is, does anyone even use PPV or VOD???


Personally I think in the past 10 years Ive ordered maybe 20 pay per views (if you include amazon unbox)- Probably half were free from coupons or whatnot Ive had but I guess maybe I purchased 10).

VOD on the other hand I would probably use more often. Honestly Im not all that aware of what my cable company has since I had directv for like 8 years and only went to cable to use the S3s last year, but from what I gather theres tons of free stuff on many providers. I might use that. For example just recently I made one of my amazon unbox purchases to get an episode of My name is earl that both my s3s missed because Thursday nights are busy and the baseball playoffs wound up pushing my tuners over the edge. So I spent 1.99 getting it from unbox. Im not certain as I never really had vod, but I think some providers have some normal tv for free so perhaps I could have just gotten earl later on for free via VOD.

Its no deal breaker for sure but since they are going through the hassle to do SDV it would be nice to get VOD and PPV too and actually have a device that offers all the 2-way programming features that cable offers now without having to ditch tivo.

My opinions aside- a HUGE number of people use PPV. It's insane. I dont have the numbers at my finger tips but I remember once seeing directv's PPV take rate. And it was like so high that it meant many people order SEVERAL PPV's a week to make up for those of us that never use it. So some people do really like PPV. (and since much of VOD is free I assume it gets used piles too by a certain segment of the population)


----------



## jercra

Joybob said:


> The real question is, does anyone even use PPV or VOD???


Are you serious? Places like LA and NYC see over 1 million VOD session setups on any given weekend. VOD is extremely popular and only getting more popular. More and more HD is being delivered via VOD and with new services like TWCs Start Over the seeds of true network PVR are being planted.


----------



## HiDefGator

Joybob said:


> The real question is, does anyone even use PPV or VOD???


I use PPV all the time. With two children it is far cheaper to pay $4 for a movie and watch it in my living room. I can't get VOD with Directv yet, but when I was at my brother's house I thought it was way cool.


----------



## mikeyts

VOD especially can be handy. Most providers have Subscription VOD channels for HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, etc. I've caught the odd episode of a recent series mid-season and used the VOD channel ("Showtime On Demand", etc) to catch up by watching the series from the beginning. To date, the VOD service that I've used has left much to be desired, performance-wise, with very slow response to commands and only one way-too-fast speed of FF and REW, but it's been marginally usable.

I've also used HD PPV and VOD a few times. Generally uninspired quality, though better than the standard definition stuff. The online movies I've been most satisfied with, though not a service of the cable providers, is high-definition downloads from Xbox Live Video Marketplace. If the cable providers could acheive that picture quality with the same level of command response they'd have something.


----------



## BruceShultes

HiDefGator said:


> I use PPV all the time. With two children it is far cheaper to pay $4 for a movie and watch it in my living room. I can't get VOD with Directv yet, but when I was at my brother's house I thought it was way cool.


As long as you have either an HR20 or the new HR20 D* receiver, you will have VOD available in the near future.

It is currently being testing and looks like it getting close to be ready for National Release. At this time the programs available for testing are mostly SD, but there are two HD ones, so HD should also be available before long.

The requested VOD programs are sent to your box over the internet, so you should get your box connected to be ready.

At this time, D* has to make a manual change to your account before you can receive VOD, but I suspect this will change before the NR.

Also at this time the VOD portion of the guide data seems to take up to 24 hours before it shows the available VOD shows after your box is connected and your account has been activated for VOD, but I suspect this may change before national release as well.

Unlike most cable company VOD, you need to wait a few minutes after you request a show before you can start watching it.

Of course this is better than Tivo's first Amazon Unbox implementation, where the show needed to be completely downloaded before you could start to watch it. I don't remember whether this has changed yet in either 9.1 or 9.2.

If you want to check out VOD on D*, look in the Cutting Edge portion of the dbstalk.com forum.


----------



## mikeyts

BruceShultes said:


> Of course this is better than Tivo's first Amazon Unbox implementation, where the show needed to be completely downloaded before you could start to watch it. I don't remember whether this has changed yet in either 9.1 or 9.2.


9.2 supposedly supports playback of a program while it's downloading. I'm sure that it requires some minutes of buffering before you can start playing, but I haven't got 9.2 yet, so I'm unable to test it.


----------



## thedarksavant

Joybob said:


> The real question is, does anyone even use PPV or VOD???


I've watched maybe 5 things in the last 3 years or so on VOD. Since I got my HDTiVo in Sept, I've watched quite a bit from Amazon Unboxed. If I wasn't such a sports nut and needed Espn, I'd drop Comcast like a bad habit, go 100% over the air, and buy from Amazon anything else I couldn't get.


----------



## mikeyts

mikeyts said:


> 9.2 supposedly supports playback of a program while it's downloading. I'm sure that it requires some minutes of buffering before you can start playing, but I haven't got 9.2 yet, so I'm unable to test it.


Just got 9.2--I've tried Unbox and can verify that you can start playback immediately after downloading begins. Also, downloading begins almost immediately after ordering (within a minute of requesting it--the upgrade message says that it's been speeded up). As soon as the blue light came on, I found the listing in Now Playing for the download and pressed PLAY; I was warned that it was in the middle of downloading it and that, depending upon my download speed there might be pauses. There were no pauses and it finished downloading before I'd watched half of it, but I'm using a wired connection to my router and have seen my cable modem link hit 18 Mbps to my PC from some sites.

Progressive download is a pretty big improvement.


----------



## holligl

Is there a posting, by region of the Comcast Stations going to SDV?

We are in the Suburban Chicago area, and I went back through the thread to August and did not find anything about the Chicago area.

Our ESPN2 HD has begun to experience occasional outages, and the Encore channels show a cable card message referencing the fact this is a one way RF device, and to contact the Cable Company. Issue is on both the THD w/MCard and the Cable card TV. Smells like SDV, but we have experienced tons of other issues going to Digital service and HD with Comcast. Most involve sending a tech out when it is a headend problem.


----------



## bicker

holligl said:


> Is there a posting, by region of the Comcast Stations going to SDV?


You mean, in the future? No.


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## holligl

Let me ask the question differently.

If a channel you are supposed to receive does not come in, how can you determine if it may have been switched to SDV?


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## HiDefGator

holligl said:


> Let me ask the question differently.
> 
> If a channel you are supposed to receive does not come in, how can you determine if it may have been switched to SDV?


Other than calling the cable company and asking I don't know of any fool proof method. If it works on the cable box but doesn't work on your Tivo its a sign but not proof. Could still be cable card problems.


----------



## vstone

holligl said:


> Is there a posting, by region of the Comcast Stations going to SDV?
> 
> We are in the Suburban Chicago area, and I went back through the thread to August and did not find anything about the Chicago area.
> 
> Our ESPN2 HD has begun to experience occasional outages, and the Encore channels show a cable card message referencing the fact this is a one way RF device, and to contact the Cable Company. Issue is on both the THD w/MCard and the Cable card TV. Smells like SDV, but we have experienced tons of other issues going to Digital service and HD with Comcast. Most involve sending a tech out when it is a headend problem.


The Chicago cable plant appears to be the flagship Comcast system. Since you lost your analog channels on July 1, I'm pretty sure that you are near the top of the list for SDV.


----------



## holligl

vstone said:


> The Chicago cable plant appears to be the flagship Comcast system. Since you lost your analog channels on July 1, I'm pretty sure that you are near the top of the list for SDV.


In the Chicago area, the suburbs still have the analog service too. The city has gone digital only.


----------



## robojerk

Where are you *Tuning Resolver*????


----------



## mercurial

robojerk said:


> Where are you *Tuning Resolver*????












TUUUNING RESOLVERRRRRRRRRRRR!


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## bicker

Unfortunately, at least in the short-term, this IS a no-win-scenario. I suspect we'll see the tuning resolve eventually, but not soon enough for some folks.


----------



## sidsub

Has anyone heard of an ETA on the tuning resolver? I've seen a lot of talk about it, but no dates. Also, when it does come out, will it be a TiVo product that one has to buy, or will it be a cable company product for them to rent out?

It seems like it would _really_ be in TiVo's interest to get these out there quickly. Not having cablecard functionality fully usable must be a big drag on TiVo HD sales.


----------



## bicker

No, there has been absolutely no official information released about an ETA for the tuning resolver -- not even a commitment by any specific cable company to make it available.


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## jlib

There is no evidence yet that it has even gone past the concept stage. Until there is a working prototype I am an unbeliever.


----------



## jlib

vstone said:


> The Chicago cable plant appears to be the flagship Comcast system. Since you lost your analog channels on July 1, I'm pretty sure that you are near the top of the list for SDV.


If a cable system axes the analog bandwidth won't they then have more than enough freed bandwidth for all the HD channels that are available?


----------



## pmiranda

jlib said:


> If a cable system axes the analog bandwidth won't they then have more than enough freed bandwidth for all the HD channels that are available?


Yes, but they'd rather piss off the few people using cablecards than the large number of people they've sold on cable as a no-box-required solution to getting dozens of channels, compared to satellite/U-verse (always requires a box per TV) or even broadcast (handful of channels now, box required after analog broadcast goes away).


----------



## mikeyts

jlib said:


> If a cable system axes the analog bandwidth won't they then have more than enough freed bandwidth for all the HD channels that are available?


The FCC has passed a measure to disallow cable to "axe the analog bandwidth" (or at least some of it) until 2012, three years after the over-the-air analog shutdown. For at least at least the basic tier, they're being forced to convert the digital transmissions into analog and put that on the wire. This is to allow the 60% or more of television viewers in this country who use cable some time to adjust and continue to use any legacy analog televisions they might have with cable.

Even without the FCC's dictates, cable really can't afford to suddenly stop analog. The fact that some part of their service works by just plugging an old television into a wire is an advantage for them; without it, they'll doubtlessly lose a significant number of subs.

In the meantime, DirecTV is boasting that they've already added 70 new HD channels and will add another 30 by the end of the year. If they don't respond in kind, cable will lose (other) subs. Although I'd love to hate SDV and call it a unnecessary, nefarious plot by cable to screw me and other unidirectional CableCARD equipment users over, there really doesn't seem to be any other way for them to remain competitive.


----------



## dswallow

mikeyts said:


> The FCC has passed a measure to disallow cable to "axe the analog bandwidth" (or at least some of it) until 2012, three years after the over-the-air analog shutdown. For at least at least the basic tier, they're being forced to convert the digital transmissions into analog and put that on the wire. This is to allow the 60% or more of television viewers in this country who use cable some time to adjust and continue to use any legacy analog televisions they might have with cable.


Still, there's almost no reason to have to remove the entire analog selection in order to make enough room for the HD channels. Most cable systems could easily recover as much as 60-70 analog channels and still be leaving 25-35 channels available for analog retransmission. And since there's really on 50 or so HD channels in existence (sorry, just can't count Voom), plus applicable regional broadcast stations and sports networks, there's no need to remove even half that many analog channels at the moment.


----------



## bicker

mikeyts said:


> The FCC has passed a measure to disallow cable to "axe the analog bandwidth" (or at least some of it) until 2012, three years after the over-the-air analog shutdown. For at least at least the basic tier, they're being forced to convert the digital transmissions into analog and put that on the wire.


Note that the measure you refer to explicitly stated that cable could either convert the digital transmissions into analog at the head-end, and pass them along to customers as analog signals in the coax *OR* pass them along to customers as digital signals in the coax, and convert them to analog via a STB. The regulation didn't even explicitly require that the STB be specifically affordable. That FCC decision was generally recognized as a rare win for cable.



mikeyts said:


> Even without the FCC's dictates, cable really can't afford to suddenly stop analog.


Though they've done exactly that, in Chicago.


----------



## morac

bicker said:


> Though they've done exactly that, in Chicago.


That's just one city out of all the places cable serves. It's basically a drop in the hat if you count all the cable subscribers in the U.S. It could be an experiment or maybe Comcast determined that there were a low number of analog cable users there.

I'm assuming in other areas analog cable is more prevalent. The only reason my parent's got a cable box is because their TV broke and they bought an HD TV and got the box so they could get the HD basic channels (they don't subscribe to digital cable). In my area you could still get HBO without a converted box until about a year ago when they moved it to digital only.


----------



## bicker

morac said:


> That's just one city out of all the places cable serves.


One of the largest cities in the country. If they can do it there, they can do it anywhere.

Anywhere.



morac said:


> I'm assuming in other areas analog cable is more prevalent.


Don't assume.


----------



## morac

bicker said:


> One of the largest cities in the country. If they can do it there, they can do it anywhere.


Yes, but they haven't. As of right now, it's just one city. Get back to me when they start switching over more areas.


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## bicker

Get back to me when they stop deploying SDV.


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## lrhorer

bicker said:


> One of the largest cities in the country. If they can do it there, they can do it anywhere.
> 
> Anywhere.


Maybe. Maybe not. First of all, just because it is one of the largest cities in the U.S. does not necessarily mean the penetration in that market is correspondingly good for the CATV provider in question. It doesn't mean it isn't either, of course. I for one just do not know. It could be the provider in question has a comparatively low revenue share in Chicago. I know it's true for our company. We make more money in many other comparatively smaller US cities than we do in Chicago.

Secondly, the fact they have done it in Chicago does not necessarily mean they have been successful doing it in Chicago. Maybe they have, and maybe they haven't. I just don't know, so I won't assume.


----------



## lrhorer

robojerk said:


> Where are you *Tuning Resolver*????


Until the CATV companies all convert to a single SDV standard, I doubt the tuning resolver will get off the ground, and even if it does it's not going to help a large percentage of TiVo users unless they develop more than 1 resolver.


----------



## CharlesH

bicker said:


> Get back to me when they stop deploying SDV.


I think most people wouldn't begrudge the cable companies deploying SDV *IF* they had made a solution like the tuner resolver available concurrently with their SDV deployment.


----------



## CharlesH

lrhorer said:


> Until the CATV companies all convert to a single SDV standard, I doubt the tuning resolver will get off the ground, and even if it does it's not going to help a large percentage of TiVo users unless they develop more than 1 resolver.


That was the reason that I understand why the resolver would be obtained from your cable company. I wouldn't think the hardware would be any different for the various SDV protocols; they would just have to have the appropriate firmware in it to map from a generic protocol over the USB, to the specific SDV protocol over the cable.


----------



## lrhorer

dswallow said:


> Still, there's almost no reason to have to remove the entire analog selection in order to make enough room for the HD channels. Most cable systems could easily recover as much as 60-70 analog channels and still be leaving 25-35 channels available for analog retransmission. And since there's really on 50 or so HD channels in existence (sorry, just can't count Voom), plus applicable regional broadcast stations and sports networks, there's no need to remove even half that many analog channels at the moment.


I don't know about most, but I do know there are many which cannot. San Antonio is one of them. The analog selections in San Antonio only go to channel 72. They could recover perhaps 30 analog selections, allowing about 60HD channels. The thing is, SDV allows thousands of "channels". Every VOD or Video Redo selection is a separate "channel",and deploying VOD and Video Redo on a broad scale requires SDV.


----------



## lrhorer

CharlesH said:


> That was the reason that I understand why the resolver would be obtained from your cable company. I wouldn't think the hardware would be any different for the various SDV protocols; they would just have to have the appropriate firmware in it to map from a generic protocol over the USB, to the specific SDV protocol over the cable.


I'm afraid you think wrong. The hardware for the two main systems, Scientific Atlanta / Cisco and Motorola are incompatible. Although somewhat similar, the two are different at the hardware level, not just the software level. There are no doubt others, although the number is definitely limited.


----------



## lrhorer

CharlesH said:


> I think most people wouldn't begrudge the cable companies deploying SDV *IF* they had made a solution like the tuner resolver available concurrently with their SDV deployment.


Most people don't care one way or the other, since the issue does not impact them. Indeed, most are unaware there is even an issue. It is quite unfortunate for us TiVo owners, but nonetheless true that most CATV subscribers don't care whether TiVo users are left in the cold, or not, and the revenue impact from disgruntled TiVo users is relatively small. Our only silver lining lies in three facts:

1. Although comparatively small, the revenue tied to our activities may not be considered trivial. The CATV companies aren't going to bend over backwards for us, but if meeting our demands doesn't cost them too much time, trouble, and money, they may be willing to acquiesce. The margin may be thinner, but as long as it isn't zero - or worse negative - they may well be willing to consider our requests.

2. Although small in number and in total represented revenue, TiVo users tend to represent the top end of the monetary pyramid, and no company wants to alienate rich clients, no matter how little revenue they may generate. They are, after all, the ones who do the investing, and they control much more capital individually than the less affluent individuals. Everyone knows biting the hand which feeds you is a really bad idea, but biting the hand which houses you is also not a really good one.

3. As a group, I think TiVo users tend to be vocal, and we all know which wheel gets the grease. Although of relatively low impact to the CATV company's revenue stream, from a PR perspective alienating TiVo users may not be considered the smartest move they could make, and keeping us happy and quiet has some very real value in it. We just should not overestimate that value.


----------



## HiDefGator

lrhorer said:



> It is quite unfortunate for us TiVo owners, but nonetheless true that most CATV subscribers don't care whether TiVo users are left in the cold, or not, and the revenue impact from disgruntled TiVo users is relatively small.


You need to be a bit more specific. It is only HD Tivo owners who are being left out in the cold and that is a very small number compared to all Tivo owners.


----------



## pmiranda

lrhorer said:


> I'm afraid you think wrong. The hardware for the two main systems, Scientific Atlanta / Cisco and Motorola are incompatible. Although somewhat similar, the two are different at the hardware level, not just the software level. There are no doubt others, although the number is definitely limited.


That must be why you need to specify which system you have when you buy an S3... oh wait, you don't! Must be those standards they use...All that the SDV needs to do is provide the standard transmit hardware called for in the cablecard spec for a 2-way host, and the differences between systems is either software or completely handled by the cablecard. The hardware is trivial but I'm sure the testing and qualification is not.


----------



## bicker

CharlesH said:


> I think most people wouldn't begrudge the cable companies deploying SDV *IF* they had made a solution like the tuner resolver available concurrently with their SDV deployment.


True, but that won't necessary affect whether or not they actually deploy SDV... they've made no assurances to that effect. Folks should be prepared for SDV to be deployed in their area, without a tuning resolver offering available.


----------



## ntrainer

OK, I understand (basically) what's going on with our TiVo box, given this discussion: we're in Cox's N.Va. (Fairfax) area, and now that they've gone to switched digital signals, we're losing an enormous amount of functionality. BTW, we haven't just lost the signals that another poster mentioned would be SDV; we've lost all of the HD channels, HBO... every single channel over 102 seems to be grey. In addition, for some reason NBC -- not HD, basic NBC, channel 4 -- is also not being processed by our Series 3.

Needless to say, this is frustrating enough that I'm trying to think of SOME temporary fix. I don't see any really suggested in this forum. Should I give up on HD and just go back to having a cable box? Is the cable box even compatible with the Series 3 TiVo? Is my problem related to the fact that I have one of the earlier Series 3 boxes? If so, would it be fixed by getting a box that's fully compatible with the M CableCards?


----------



## sidsub

HiDefGator said:


> You need to be a bit more specific. It is only HD Tivo owners who are being left out in the cold and that is a very small number compared to all Tivo owners.


At this point, it would be most of their new or upgrading customers, right? I mean the only TiVo's that do HD are the TiVo HD and the Series 3, and they only work with either basic cable or digital cable using CableCards, and those CableCards are getting to where they'll miss a lot of HD channels now in an increasing number of markets thanks to SDV. This would seem to be a *big* problem for TiVo.


----------



## HiDefGator

sidsub said:


> At this point, it would be most of their new or upgrading customers, right? I mean the only TiVo's that do HD are the TiVo HD and the Series 3, and they only work with either basic cable or digital cable using CableCards, and those CableCards are getting to where they'll miss a lot of HD channels now in an increasing number of markets thanks to SDV. This would seem to be a *big* problem for TiVo.


I suspect it is getting to be a bigger problem for them by the day. But keep in mind that most people have no idea that the Tivo HD they are buying today will not get any HD once SDV comes to their city. If they don't get a solution for it relatively soon it will start cutting into their sales. How many people will need to return their new Tivo to Best Buy before they decide to stop stocking them?


----------



## mikeyts

ntrainer said:


> OK, I understand (basically) what's going on with our TiVo box, given this discussion: we're in Cox's N.Va. (Fairfax) area, and now that they've gone to switched digital signals, we're losing an enormous amount of functionality. BTW, we haven't just lost the signals that another poster mentioned would be SDV; we've lost all of the HD channels, HBO... every single channel over 102 seems to be grey. In addition, for some reason NBC -- not HD, basic NBC, channel 4 -- is also not being processed by our Series 3.
> 
> Needless to say, this is frustrating enough that I'm trying to think of SOME temporary fix. I don't see any really suggested in this forum. Should I give up on HD and just go back to having a cable box? Is the cable box even compatible with the Series 3 TiVo? Is my problem related to the fact that I have one of the earlier Series 3 boxes? If so, would it be fixed by getting a box that's fully compatible with the M CableCards?


There can be no temporary fix. SDV is an application-level protocol and the reason that TiVo can't directly support it is that it require bidirectional communication with the cable system; it's not something that's built into M-Cards. M-Cards aren't inherently bidirectional and S-Cards aren't inherently unidirectional--it's the interface in the device (television or STB) which supports bidirecitonal or unidirectional communication. The "M" in M-Card stands for Multi-Stream, meaning that they can decrypt multiple service streams simultaneously. Because of this, TiVo HD can use a single M-Card for both tuners. They're working on making that work for TiVo S3, but neither will ever be capable of the bidirectional exchanges necessary for SDV. To gain access to a channel carried as SDV, a device has to be able to ask the cable system for information, and TiVos aren't physically equiped with what they need to do that. What's being discussed is attaching an external "dongle" to them via one of the USB connections which would also be connected to the coax through which they could speak the SDV protocols back to the cable system.

You need to identify your local cable franchising agency and complain formally (and vehemently) to them on paper, with copies sent to the cable company management. I'm fairly certain that it's against FCC regulations for your cable company to present their rebroadcast of the over-the-air DTV channels as SDV, so you should at least get that handful of HD services (ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, the CW, PBS and any local independents). If you're indignant enough, maybe you can get them to shake free a few of the channels outside of the core basic tier. If they add dozens of new HD service in order to compete with what DirecTV is doing, don't expect to be able to get any of them unless and until this "tuning resolver" dongle is available.


----------



## 3morgans

ntrainer said:


> OK, I understand (basically) what's going on with our TiVo box, given this discussion: we're in Cox's N.Va. (Fairfax) area, and now that they've gone to switched digital signals, we're losing an enormous amount of functionality. BTW, we haven't just lost the signals that another poster mentioned would be SDV; we've lost all of the HD channels, HBO... every single channel over 102 seems to be grey. In addition, for some reason NBC -- not HD, basic NBC, channel 4 -- is also not being processed by our Series 3.


I had this problem too. It turns out that everytime Cox makes an SDV programming change, your cable cards loose encryption. I found out that a TiVo reset will resynch the cards and give you back your non-SDV channels.


----------



## pmiranda

3morgans said:


> I had this problem too. It turns out that everytime Cox makes an SDV programming change, your cable cards loose encryption. I found out that a TiVo reset will resynch the cards and give you back your non-SDV channels.


Ah, if that's the problem, they'll also fix themselves eventually if you leave it alone, but it can take almost a day!


----------



## mikeyts

bicker said:


> Note that the measure you refer to explicitly stated that cable could either convert the digital transmissions into analog at the head-end, and pass them along to customers as analog signals in the coax *OR* pass them along to customers as digital signals in the coax, and convert them to analog via a STB. The regulation didn't even explicitly require that the STB be specifically affordable. That FCC decision was generally recognized as a rare win for cable.
> 
> Though they've done exactly that, in Chicago.


I'm sorry--I didn't notice this post earlier, or I'd have argued with it .

I believe that your understanding of this is incorrect. Cable is allowed to carry digital only, but only if all their subscribers have equipment that can handle it (not if they make such equipment available for to lease to their subscribers but if they can prove that all of their subs actually have such equipment), which isn't likely to be true in any market or to become true by 02/09. The way that you interpret this, the ruling has no effect whatsoever, since I believe that all of the cable providers are currently leasing digital boxes capable of outputting downconverted HD digital signals over SD analog outputs; the boxes I was using 3 years ago could do it. Martin's original stated goal for this regulation was that no one be immediately forced to lease a digital box after the analog shutdown, so he considers it a win; cable considers it a win because Martin did not want the regulation to contain a sunset date--he wanted them to continue analog carriage indefinitely and he didn't get that.

I find it very difficult to believe that any system in Chicagoland is small enough to qualify to _request_ an exemption from this ruling (I lived there for a couple of years, working for 3Com). Cable wanted automatic exemptions for systems of 552 MHz capacity or less and the commission refused, though they will review case-by-case exemption requests. Is there some online citation that you can make that some Chicago area system has gone all digital?

I really wish that I could actually quote the text of the order here (FCC 07-170, adopted 9/11/07). For some reason the R&O is not available online yet, though another order that they adopted the same day (to force cable to continue to sell the channels that they own to their satellite and telco competitors for the next 5 years) is available.


----------



## bicker

mikeyts said:


> I believe that your understanding of this is incorrect. Cable is allowed to carry digital only, but only if all their subscribers have equipment that can handle it (not if they make such equipment available for to lease to their subscribers but *if they can prove* that all of their subs actually have such equipment)


There was no indication that the regulation includes any such provision.



mikeyts said:


> The way that you interpret this, the ruling has no effect whatsoever


Which is why industry analysts generally labeled the decision as a rare FCC win for cable companies.

I guess we'll have to wait first for the R&O to be released, and then for its interpretation to make it to the courts, to know for sure.


----------



## MichaelK

morac said:


> That's just one city out of all the places cable serves. It's basically a drop in the hat if you count all the cable subscribers in the U.S. It could be an experiment or maybe Comcast determined that there were a low number of analog cable users there.
> 
> I'm assuming in other areas analog cable is more prevalent. The only reason my parent's got a cable box is because their TV broke and they bought an HD TV and got the box so they could get the HD basic channels (they don't subscribe to digital cable). In my area you could still get HBO without a converted box until about a year ago when they moved it to digital only.


it's more than just one city-

In many BIG cities cable is already all box in some areas so they can encrypt everything to stop pirating. If they are 100percent box anyway then ditching analog is pretty easy.

Time Warner's NYC plant apparently did the same thing some months ago (and I think they own Staten Island so it might not have already been 100% box- I'd assume parts of Brooklyn and the south bronx to be all box though) . And I believe Cablevision is working on it to in their parts of NYC.

I'd assume if NYC and Chicago are doing it than places like philly and boston and LA, etc aren't far behind.

The majority aren't going to go all digital tomorrow or anything but they could quickly get to 10 or 20% of cable households if they flip the big cities.


----------



## MichaelK

lrhorer said:


> I don't know about most, but I do know there are many which cannot. San Antonio is one of them. The analog selections in San Antonio only go to channel 72. They could recover perhaps 30 analog selections, allowing about 60HD channels. The thing is, SDV allows thousands of "channels". Every VOD or Video Redo selection is a separate "channel",and deploying VOD and Video Redo on a broad scale requires SDV.


honestly I'm not sure how things turn out. But recovering 30 channels is more than enough for now. that's what- 90 HD channels- that's still a decent amount more than all the HD ANNOUNCED channels in existance. Even counting VOOM I think that's plenty for the next year or so. Going all digital on a 750mhz system gives what- 200 HD and 300 SD channels? (too lazy to do the math but it's in that range- no?)


----------



## MichaelK

lrhorer said:


> Most people don't care one way or the other, since the issue does not impact them. Indeed, most are unaware there is even an issue. It is quite unfortunate for us TiVo owners, but nonetheless true that most CATV subscribers don't care whether TiVo users are left in the cold, or not, and the revenue impact from disgruntled TiVo users is relatively small. Our only silver lining lies in three facts:
> 
> 1. Although comparatively small, the revenue tied to our activities may not be considered trivial. The CATV companies aren't going to bend over backwards for us, but if meeting our demands doesn't cost them too much time, trouble, and money, they may be willing to acquiesce. The margin may be thinner, but as long as it isn't zero - or worse negative - they may well be willing to consider our requests.
> 
> 2. Although small in number and in total represented revenue, TiVo users tend to represent the top end of the monetary pyramid, and no company wants to alienate rich clients, no matter how little revenue they may generate. They are, after all, the ones who do the investing, and they control much more capital individually than the less affluent individuals. Everyone knows biting the hand which feeds you is a really bad idea, but biting the hand which houses you is also not a really good one.
> 
> 3. As a group, I think TiVo users tend to be vocal, and we all know which wheel gets the grease. Although of relatively low impact to the CATV company's revenue stream, from a PR perspective alienating TiVo users may not be considered the smartest move they could make, and keeping us happy and quiet has some very real value in it. We just should not overestimate that value.


#4 dont want to piss off the FCC

#5 dont want to piss of congress.

I think number 3 with those last 2 are what matters. They dont want to be seen circumventing the intent of the 1996 telecom act to allow 3rd party devices to exist.


----------



## ntrainer

Thanks for the suggestion, 3morgans. Indeed, the reboot has gotten me all my 'regular' channels back -- that is, the ones I watch: HD networks, the regular NBC 4, and HBO. I hope I don't have to reboot constantly to solve this problem as it re-occurs. But I appreciate the pragmatic suggestion!


----------



## MichaelK

found this press release thing about cable needing to support analog tv's:

http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-276576A1.pdf



> The FCCs ruling today allows cable operators to
> comply with the viewability requirement by choosing to either: (1) carry the digital signal in
> analog format, or (2) carry the signal only in digital format, provided that all subscribers have the
> necessary equipment to view the broadcast content.


Sounds like Bicker is correct (there I go again agreeing with him- LOL).

At worst cable will have to 'provide' that equipment to people . So they'll give out free boxes and just jack the rates for basic to include it. At this point many include a "free" box with digital cable. So who's to say they dont just 'include converter boxes for free' in the future?

Maybe I'm missing something - but it sure does sound like a non-story. Is there ANY such consumer device today that doesn't have a set of ananlog rca outputs? Maybe blueray players dont but doesn't pretty much everything else?


----------



## mikeyts

Yeah, I think that both bicker and I read all of the press releases and commissioner comments. The way that I read it is that they're going to have to actually place equipment in all of their subs' homes in order to do digital only broadcasting. If they force their subs to lease equipment they will undoubtably lose subs by the millions. If they provide it for free, they're gonna take a big hit. If they raise the basic rate (which the regulated providers cannot do without FCC buy-in) they will lose subs.

We'll see what the net effect becomes in the end.


----------



## dswallow

mikeyts said:


> If they provide it for free, they're gonna take a big hit. If they raise the basic rate (which the regulated providers cannot do without FCC buy-in) they will lose subs.


I think there's a happy medium in there... one that's probably being tested in the handful of markets where they're doing just that... putting in a free digital receiver even for basic tier subscribers. Equipment costs really aren't high per receiver, and they gain the opportunity to capture more income from interactive services, PPV/OnDemand, and eventually a la carte channel offerings.


----------



## bicker

MichaelK said:


> Sounds like Bicker is correct (there I go again agreeing with him- LOL).


See? That didn't hurt too much? 



MichaelK said:


> At worst cable will have to 'provide' that equipment to people . So they'll give out free boxes and just jack the rates for basic to include it.


Though not that the R&O didn't include the word "free" -- not even the word "affordable".


----------



## bicker

dswallow said:


> Equipment costs really aren't high per receiver, and they gain the opportunity to capture more income from interactive services, PPV/OnDemand, and eventually a la carte channel offerings.


I do think that this is one reason why they're pushing for the low-end cable-box integration band exemption. With CableCard capability, these STBs will be, of course, significantly more expensive.


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## MichaelK

yep-

I noticed the lack of "free" in the press release. That's why I'm saying "worst case" is they are free.


----------



## bicker

And to be fair, they probably WILL be free, for either at least one or perhaps as much three boxes, for the market-share-related reasons mentioned.


----------



## MichaelK

mikeyts said:


> ... If they raise the basic rate (which the regulated providers cannot do without FCC buy-in) they will lose subs.
> 
> We'll see what the net effect becomes in the end.


true they might lose bottom subs but i dont see the regulators stopping anything. They haven't done a thing to cable in years that mattered. More and more plants are declaring competition from DBS all the time. And Verizon is going to let a big chunk of the northeast off the regulatory hook in the next couple years.

As to loosing bottem end subs- I dont think they care. Directv noticed a couple years ago that the bottom of the subs account for little profit (the numbers directv showed were remarkable. It was akin to the top quarter of their subs accounted for the lions share of their profits.

Comcast seems to have noticed that too- their last conference call they had a NET loss of a good pile of basic subs but their high end subs numbers went up with people adding digital cable or interent or voice and so their revenue was up a bunch.

Based on those 2 examples I'm not so sure they wouldn't actually LIKE to jack the rates 10 bucks and give digital boxes for free and then let the 'cheapskates' leave and call DISH (if they even want to be bothered with them anymore). There's parts of the country where digital cable costs almost the same as analog at this point- clearly they want to get people into those upper tier services with a box in the house. As Doug says - you drop the box off and they can order PPV/ VOD, online dating, jobs, cars, hook them into advertising, etc etc.


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## MichaelK

I looked it up in my town just to get a frame of reference.

Analog basic is 56.80. 

Digital basic is just $8.95 more and you get a "free" digital box (which are 4.95 alone) with that. Addtional tv's are 6.95 which includes a "free" box.

end game- analog basic is 56.8. It's 4 dollars to add digital basic. and then 2 bucks more pre tv after the first for digital service (likely the "additonal outlet" fee).

A bunch of numbers in there- but point is they could use the 2008 and 2009 rate increase to raise analog basic at a rate faster than digital basic so in the next couple years they would wind up being basically the same and few would even notice. If someone is willing to walk for 5 dollars a month at that point then probably cable doesn't want them since they wont be ordering PPV or anything else extra.


----------



## mikeyts

MichaelK said:


> I looked it up in my town just to get a frame of reference.
> 
> Analog basic is 56.80.
> 
> Digital basic is just $8.95 more and you get a "free" digital box (which are 4.95 alone) with that. Addtional tv's are 6.95 which includes a "free" box.
> 
> end game- analog basic is 56.8. It's 4 dollars to add digital basic. and then 2 bucks more pre tv after the first for digital service (likely the "additonal outlet" fee).
> 
> A bunch of numbers in there- but point is they could use the 2008 and 2009 rate increase to raise analog basic at a rate faster than digital basic so in the next couple years they would wind up being basically the same and few would even notice. If someone is willing to walk for 5 dollars a month at that point then probably cable doesn't want them since they wont be ordering PPV or anything else extra.


I gotta believe that you're talking about extended basic, typically 70 or so channels including things like Discovery, A&E and SciFi. The basic service tier is the 20 or so channels which must include any over-the-air rebroadcasts and which is typically dominated by things like CNN and the community access channels. That's what we're talking about here--the FCC isn't at all talking about making them continue to carry 50 or 60 extended basic channels in analog, none of which they have any requirement to carry in analog (or any other form) as it is. In my system, "limited basic" is $12.95/month.

We're not talking huge amounts of bandwidth here; this FCC ruling doesn't affect anything except carriage of over-the-air channels, which in most areas is some 5-8 channels.


----------



## MichaelK

sorry- I'm aware there's lifeline analog (basically the regulated channels) which some people call basic and then extended basic cable which is the analog most people have. I wasn't clear.

But once you flip the 50 or so channels that are not regulated into the digital tier there's going to be just a tiny amount of people actually with lifeline service. The only place I've ever seen it in real life was in school like 30 years ago. I understand that some elderly also tend to get it. And also some folks with DBS who cant get locals. But still your talking about a tiny amount and they are people that cable probably HATES. They certainly make zilch on those people. So they'de love to jack that price the 5 bucks and get those people to leave.

Cable doesn't even care if they lose the extended analog people so why would they care about the lifeline people?

(I think my company gives around 14 channels for 14 bucks or something like that to those people.)


----------



## MichaelK

I do agree it's a small slice so they might just keep it for the foreseeable future. But at some point those 5-8 channels do mean something when a typical cable system has only room for 125.


----------



## cableguy763

Most cable co's actually lose money on the basic only subscribers, especially if they even have just one service call a year.


----------



## hddude55

Is there any "official" estimate when the tuning resolver will be available?

P.S. I'd really like to keep up with SDV developments and wish people would take discussion of issues unrelated to SDV to other threads. It's hard enough to wade through a lengthy thread like this one.


----------



## bicker

No, there is no "official" estimate about availability.


----------



## CharlesH

bicker said:


> No, there is no "official" estimate about availability.


Nor any "non-official" ones, AFAIK


----------



## bicker

Well, non-official estimates abound, ranging all the way up to "never".


----------



## vstone

cableguy763 said:


> Most cable co's actually lose money on the basic only subscribers, especially if they even have just one service call a year.


Let's see. A bunch of channels they get for free, some public access channels, and some shopping channels that they actually get paid to show. My local basic just went up to $21 (yes, I know its as low as $12 in other places). That's $252/year for a mostly marginal quality TV picture using two decade old equipment. And they disasembled our local head end so they have plenty of spare equipment. No crocodile tears here.

Now this may change if they end up paying for HD locals in Feb 09 (when must carry rules shift to digital carriage), but even then they'll blame to broadcasters while secretly counting the increased margin they can charge.


----------



## boywaja

ntrainer said:


> we're in Cox's N.Va. (Fairfax) area, and now that they've gone to switched digital signals, we've lost all of the HD channels, HBO... every single channel over 102 seems to be grey. In addition, for some reason NBC -- not HD, basic NBC, channel 4 -- is also not being processed by our Series 3.


I live in fairfax county and am not experiencing that. I can see all the non-sdv HD channels. I dont subscribe to the digiital tiers so I cant comment on them.

As 3morgans mentions, you're cable cards are probably having cable card issues. Although I don't have any issues like what he is reporting either.


----------



## dolfer

hddude55 said:


> P.S. I'd really like to keep up with SDV developments and wish people would take discussion of issues unrelated to SDV to other threads. It's hard enough to wade through a lengthy thread like this one.


Agreed! :up:

I came here to see what's up with the SDV issue and I see a bunch of posts about HD converter boxes, analog cable, digital cable, blah, blah, blah! None of this has anything to do with SDV. Let's stay on point!


----------



## MichaelK

that's kind of the nature of this place- when a thread with an "important topic" comes along- many people are sitting around waiting forinfo that just isn't coming. So the thread wanders off topic while we listen to the silence. If something real happens it will show up and there will be 10 new pages in a day talking about it. Sorry, doesn't make it right, but just sort of the way it is. 

I'll resist my urge to talk about profitablility on basic cable lines now so we can wait around the 3 months till any facts actually exist to post about....


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## mikeyts

Personally, I was just going to ignore the comments from the gallery about staying on point. Those of us who have actively participated in the discussion and who have posted facts and rumor when we find them do not do it as a service to those who sit around and listen. If the thread gets too thick with slightly off-topic stuff to suit them, I don't see how that concerns me. (Note that neither dolfer or hddude55 has posted anything else in this thread--their complaints are their sole "contribution" to the discussion).

Every thread that I participate in I subscribe to and skim every new post as it's made. I use auto-subscribe and occasionally manually subscribe to threads where I have nothing to say and unsubscribe if I lose interest. Closely following threads with little effort is what your User CP is for. If your way of using these forums isn't working for you, maybe you should make a change, but to complain about the course of threads that you didn't start or make any contribution to is just cheeky.


----------



## madneon

Well I just got off the phone with tivo and was told ( by someone who actually had a clue what sdv was) that tivo boxes WILL NOT be able to receive those channels and what ever you read on the tivo website might be incorrect. SO there you have it ( I really hope he is incorrect) but if not I guess I will still have OTA....


----------



## dswallow

madneon said:


> Well I just got off the phone with tivo and was told ( by someone who actually had a clue what sdv was) that tivo boxes WILL NOT be able to receive those channels and what ever you read on the tivo website might be incorrect. SO there you have it ( I really hope he is incorrect) but if not I guess I will still have OTA....


He's correct. Now. And we all know that's the case. But this thread is talking about the solution to that issue which TiVo is working on now with cable companies (the Tuning Resolver), which TiVo states on their web site is being worked on, and which people here were asking about whether or not there's been any more progress/info provided.


----------



## madneon

Man I hope this tuning resolver thingee works and comes out soon


----------



## MichaelK

CURRENTLY you absolutley can not get sdv on ANYTHING but a cable company owned device. 

In the future OCAP devices should work with SDV.

AND the gist of this thread is IF cable and TiVo can work out the dongle thing then at some magic point in the future the tivo's should be able to deal with it to.


----------



## lrhorer

pmiranda said:


> That must be why you need to specify which system you have when you buy an S3... oh wait, you don't! Must be those standards they use...All that the SDV needs to do is provide the standard transmit hardware called for in the cablecard spec for a 2-way host, and the differences between systems is either software or completely handled by the cablecard. The hardware is trivial but I'm sure the testing and qualification is not.


I'm sorry, but you are quite misinformed. Scientific Atlanta's upstream communications do not conform to Cable Card 2.0 specs or to OCAP. They don't have to because CableCard 2.0 and OCAP have not been ratified, and no one is required to meet those standards. In fact, the CableCard 2.0 standard does not in fact really exist, because various aspects of its formulation have been rejected by the participating parties. CableCard 1.0 is in effect, but it does not provide standards for upstream communications by the host. The Series III, a large number of TVs, and all of the newest generation of CATV set top boxes all conform to CC 1.0. That does not get you to SDV, and an upstream dongle whihc works with a Scientific Atlanta CATV system will not work with a Motorola CATV system, period.


----------



## lrhorer

HiDefGator said:


> You need to be a bit more specific. It is only HD Tivo owners who are being left out in the cold and that is a very small number compared to all Tivo owners.


'Absolutely true, which makes CableCard TiVo users an even small percentage of the whole CATV customer base.


----------



## lrhorer

ntrainer said:


> lost all of the HD channels, HBO... every single channel over 102 seems to be grey. In addition, for some reason NBC -- not HD, basic NBC, channel 4 -- is also not being processed by our Series 3.


'No guarantees, but there is little good reason for a CATV company to switch the locals or the highest penetration premium channels to SDV.



ntrainer said:


> Should I give up on HD and just go back to having a cable box?


Not if you ask me.



ntrainer said:


> Is the cable box even compatible with the Series 3 TiVo?


No. The Series III units are designed to work with OTA and CableCard based HD.



ntrainer said:


> Is my problem related to the fact that I have one of the earlier Series 3 boxes?


No.



ntrainer said:


> If so, would it be fixed by getting a box that's fully compatible with the M CableCards?


No. All S-Cards are just as compatible with SDV as any M-Card.


----------



## dswallow

lrhorer said:


> I'm sorry, but you are quite misinformed. Scientific Atlanta's upstream communications do not conform to Cable Card 2.0 specs or to OCAP. They don't have to because CableCard 2.0 and OCAP have not been ratified, and no one is required to meet those standards. In fact, the CableCard 2.0 standard does not in fact really exist, because various aspects of its formulation have been rejected by the participating parties. CableCard 1.0 is in effect, but it does not provide standards for upstream communications by the host. The Series III, a large number of TVs, and all of the newest generation of CATV set top boxes all conform to CC 1.0. That does not get you to SDV, and an upstream dongle whihc works with a Scientific Atlanta CATV system will not work with a Motorola CATV system, period.


A Tuning Resolver dongle could be created that would work with any DOCSIS-compliant cable system, which most all are, and very likely all that would be using SDV would be.

Of course, that's referring to the hardware. What would be necessary is firmware implementing whatever protocol was necessary to support the SDV requests on a specific system.

And the simplest thing to do would be to create this Tuning Resolver USB dongle and establish a standardized way (or ways) it attempts to bootstrap itself via communications over a DOCSIS-compliant cable modem; that bootstrap process would involve loading firmware on the Tuning Resolver that is created specifically for that cable system.

In the end, you have one piece of hardware that can be utilized by all cable systems and only a tiny bit of firmware coding may vary between cable systems, all of which could be delivered to the USB dongle in the field, requiring no preauthorization by anyone.


----------



## moyekj

Well I guess I knew it was going to happen sooner or later - looks like SDV is coming to Cox, Orange County by December 17 when a whole host of new HD channels will be added:
http://cox.com/ocpv/hdtv/new.asp
The clue is the following line:


> Televisions and other consumer owned devices equipped with a CableCARD may require a digital set top receiver in order to receive all programming options offered by Cox Digital Cable.


 Of course no details given on which specific channels will be SDV.

Would be nice to know what Tivo's definition of "widespread SDV deployment" really means and how much time they think that statement can buy them...


----------



## mikeyts

Hmm. My housemate's son-in-law is in technical operations management with Cox San Diego. I was at his home for my housemate's daughter's birthday, and he didn't seem to think that they were going to roll out switched video to the home anytime soon (apparently, they've implemented some form of switching at a national level--I didn't ask). Hopefully he's right.

Of that list, we don't have HGTV, Food, CNN, TLC, NFL, FSN, History, Animal Planet, the HDNets, Cinemax, Starz!, Discovery (the new Discovery HD--we have HD Theater) or TLC. It would be a decent upgrade, but hardly equal to the huge number of new HD channels recently added by D*. What in that list is new for your area?


----------



## moyekj

mikeyts said:


> Hmm. My housemate's son-in-law is in technical operations management with Cox San Diego. I was at his home for my housemate's daughter's birthday, and he didn't seem to think that they were going to roll out switched video to the home anytime soon (apparently, they've implemented some form of switching at a national level--I didn't ask). Hopefully he's right.
> 
> Of that list, we don't have HGTV, Food, CNN, TLC, NFL, FSN, History, Animal Planet, the HDNets, Cinemax, Starz!, Discovery (the new Discovery HD--we have HD Theater) or TLC. It would be a decent upgrade, but hardly equal to the huge number of new HD channels recently added by D*. What in that list is new for your area?


 Selected Orange County areas already had:
MYTV13 HD, National Geographic HD, A&E HD, FSNW HD, Starz HD, Cinemax HD

New to everyone:
NFL HD, History Channel HD, Animal Planet HD, CNN HD, TBS HD, TLC HD, Discovery Channel HD, FOOD HD, HGTV HD, HDNET, HDNET Movies

After this update the only ones missing I would care about: SciFi HD & USA HD


----------



## mikeyts

moyekj said:


> Selected Orange County areas already had:
> MYTV13 HD, National Geographic HD, A&E HD, FSNW HD, Starz HD, Cinemax HD
> 
> New to everyone:
> NFL HD, History Channel HD, Animal Planet HD, CNN HD, TBS HD, TLC HD, Discovery Channel HD, FOOD HD, HGTV HD, HDNET, HDNET Movies
> 
> After this update the only ones missing I would care about: SciFi HD & USA HD


Give me Sci Fi HD and I'd be perfectly happy with what I already have (though I'd watch the HD Nets if they were there--I had them before when I lived in a TWC area). Sci Fi is the only SD network that I watch anymore. I currently record some 22 hours of HDTV from the networks and Showtime; it's difficult keeping up with the television that I already watch.


----------



## jimwnola

Perhaps, this is off point. I don't know.

2 weeks ago I was getting by with a dvd recorder with tv guide plus, and an HD TV with a cable card. Just like that, the digital tuner breaks. Before, I couldn't watch recorded HD, but I could at least watch it live and record other shows with an ir blaster. Now, without the tuner, no more watching and recording. I figured a repair would be hundreds of dollars and still no recorded HD. I began researching all my options, reading everything and was just about to get a tivo. I had never heard of SDV 2 weeks ago, and this issue, alone, has me stopped in my tracks. 

On top of providing better service, one thing that appealed to me about tivo, compared to leasing a dvr from Charter, was paying the lump sum for 3 years, getting it over with, and bringing down monthly costs to $8. I see Charter also plans to use SDV, so it almost seems reckless to pay $600 or more dollars on service that is threatened to be unusable in the near future. Hope that the issue will be resolved isn't much to rely on. I don't think the cable companies have much of an incentive to help tivo get the $15 or more a month they want for themsleves. And as noted by some, the rest of the country doesn't even know what SDV is, and many might even welcome it for the new HD channels.

I have read most of the posts here. I don't really want to rent an overpriced dvr from Charter, spend $600 on a tivo that could be soon obsolete or half functioning, or pay hundreds in repairs just to be where I was. Tell me why it might be smart to get the tivo, even with this SDV issue looming?


----------



## bicker

I'll tell you why I bought a TiVo S3 despite the looming spectre of SDV. Worse comes to worst, I put up an antenna, and just record OTA. It wouldn't be as good as getting all those cable choices, but it would still provide some value, enough that the risk is worth it, given that if the risk never materializes, I get the full value of the DVR. 

That was my rationale. How well it helps you depends on how much you and your situation matches mine.


----------



## mikeyts

I bought my S3, fully aware of the pending SDV problem, because I couldn't deal with the cable company's DVR. I moved from a TWC neighborhood into a Cox one; previously I'd had an SA8300HD running Passport Echo, which I was reasonably satisfied with (there are several features of it that I still miss), and got the same box running SARA from Cox, which has an intolerably poor user-interface. Just unbelievable--it's like it was designed and written by a bunch of not-particularly-talented and under-motivated high-school hackers. It was almost physical painful to use. My choice was to buy a TiVo or stop recording television.

If things remain the same in terms of cable content available to me, I'm fine. My fear is that they'll move some things to SDV, reducing what I can watch. Even then, there are 5 or 6 HD channels that they could take away from me that I'd hardly notice the lack of (TBS HD, Discovery HD Theater, A&E HD, NG HD, MOJO, etc). If they add Sci Fi HD as an SDV service it will break my heart, but I'll live. The more HD the merrier, but I'd hardly watch any of the other things that I don't already have that DirecTV has added so far.


----------



## chashulme

moyekj said:


> Selected Orange County areas already had:
> MYTV13 HD, National Geographic HD, A&E HD, FSNW HD, Starz HD, Cinemax HD
> 
> New to everyone:
> NFL HD, History Channel HD, Animal Planet HD, CNN HD, TBS HD, TLC HD, Discovery Channel HD, FOOD HD, HGTV HD, HDNET, HDNET Movies
> 
> After this update the only ones missing I would care about: SciFi HD & USA HD


Well, I'm in precisely the same boat you are (1x Series 3 unit with CableCards + OTA in Laguna Niguel), and unfortunately I think I have at least a partial answer to your question.

This morning I received the blast email from Cox about adding HDNet and HDNet Movies (new HD Tier) on December 17... I've been running DIRECTV on HR20's, and also a single S3 on Cox to compare the two... With the addition of the HDNet feeds, I thought I might want to dump DIRECTV altogether, as they are in the maw of forcing out the HR20's by year's end. But what I found out when I called Cox made me do an about face.

It turns out that the HD channels Cox S3 customers have now are all they're gonna get. According to Cox tech support, and a supervisor I was transferred to, S3 (cable card) customers will not be receiving any of the new channels to be broadly launched on Dec. 17, nor any added thereafter. The supervisor informed me that SDV support is required to get any additional channels, and that cable card S3's would not be compatible. When I complained about not being notified in any way of these limitations, she tried to float the notion that it's not only the cable card that is incompatible, but also the S3 and my displays -- that's when we parted company (I hung up the phone).

So now, AFAIK it seems to be either I learn to like the HR21 and the dreaded DIRECTV Grid, or I deep-six my S3 and cable cards in favor of Cox hardware? This seems to all have happened overnight...

In any case, the HD channels I cannot get now, even though I live in Laguna Niguel, are CNN HD, Discovery HD, NFL Network HD, TLC HD, History HD and Animal Planet HD. And I assume I won't be watching HDNet or HDNet Movies on Dec. 17...


----------



## moyekj

chashulme said:


> Well, I'm in precisely the same boat you are (1x Series 3 unit with CableCards + OTA in Laguna Niguel), and unfortunately I think I have at least a partial answer to your question.
> 
> This morning I received the blast email from Cox about adding HDNet and HDNet Movies (new HD Tier) on December 17... I've been running DIRECTV on HR20's, and also a single S3 on Cox to compare the two... With the addition of the HDNet feeds, I thought I might want to dump DIRECTV altogether, as they are in the maw of forcing out the HR20's by year's end. But what I found out when I called Cox made me do an about face.
> 
> It turns out that the HD channels Cox S3 customers have now are all they're gonna get. According to Cox tech support, and a supervisor I was transferred to, S3 (cable card) customers will not be receiving any of the new channels to be broadly launched on Dec. 17, nor any added thereafter. The supervisor informed me that SDV support is required to get any additional channels, and that cable card S3's would not be compatible. When I complained about not being notified in any way of these limitations, she tried to float the notion that it's not only the cable card that is incompatible, but also the S3 and my displays -- that's when we parted company (I hung up the phone).
> 
> So now, AFAIK it seems to be either I learn to like the HR21 and the dreaded DIRECTV Grid, or I deep-six my S3 and cable cards in favor of Cox hardware? This seems to all have happened overnight...
> 
> In any case, the HD channels I cannot get now, even though I live in Laguna Niguel, are CNN HD, Discovery HD, NFL Network HD, TLC HD, History HD and Animal Planet HD. And I assume I won't be watching HDNet or HDNet Movies on Dec. 17...


 I guess we'll see. When I asked SDV is not yet deployed in Orange County and it is coming sometime next year. Seeing as some areas already have these they are not under SDV currently, but perhaps Cox is already reserving future HD channels for SDV as you say, and won't enable them for CC customers. Scanning with my QAM tuner there are 7 encrypted QAM channels showing up so I know I'm getting the signals, they just are not in my CC channel map.


----------



## chashulme

I was left with the impression that SDV is not enabled now, but that Cox has decided to drive a stake in the ground (or, 'in the heart' might be more apt...) on CC's. And although I haven't yet gone toe-to-toe with the sales group, I was told that it would make no diff. The conversation was not heated, as I think this just puts up a barrier to any positive outcome. But the sup essentially told me that, although they really didn't want to lose me as a customer, escalating the issue would have no positive effect... The appear to be determined.


----------



## ah30k

chashulme said:


> I was left with the impression that SDV is not enabled now, but that Cox has decided to drive a stake in the ground (or, 'in the heart' might be more apt...) on CC's. And although I haven't yet gone toe-to-toe with the sales group, I was told that it would make no diff. The conversation was not heated, as I think this just puts up a barrier to any positive outcome. But the sup essentially told me that, although they really didn't want to lose me as a customer, escalating the issue would have no positive effect... The appear to be determined.


SDV works fine with CableCARDs as long as the host device supports two-way services. Unfortunately the TiVo does not.


----------



## CrispyCritter

ah30k said:


> SDV works fine with CableCARDs as long as the host device supports two-way services. Unfortunately the TiVo does not.


It's insufficient just to support two way services. The host device also has to be running the cable company's software (there is currently no standard SDV interface, just standards for downloading software). And there is no standard modular interface at the moment, so the complete software system has to be supplied by the cable company. Why have a TiVo then?


----------



## SCSIRAID

CrispyCritter said:


> It's insufficient just to support two way services. The host device also has to be running the cable company's software (there is currently no standard SDV interface, just standards for downloading software). And there is no standard modular interface at the moment, so the complete software system has to be supplied by the cable company. Why have a TiVo then?


Why have a Tivo? To use it for the stuff not on SDV and the stuff available OTA. This minimizes the exposure to the nasty low capacity cable DVR to stuff only on SDV. That is my plan.


----------



## CrispyCritter

SCSIRAID said:


> Why have a Tivo? To use it for the stuff not on SDV and the stuff available OTA. This minimizes the exposure to the nasty low capacity cable DVR to stuff only on SDV. That is my plan.


My point was why have a TiVo if the cable company is supplying the software (and TiVo isn't).

I agree it may be reasonable to run a TiVo and not have access to the SDV channels. But an OCAP compatible TiVo that can get SDV with the cable company supplying the software seems useless. Perhaps someday standards will arise here, but there aren't any useful ones now.


----------



## SCSIRAID

CrispyCritter said:


> My point was why have a TiVo if the cable company is supplying the software (and TiVo isn't).
> 
> I agree it may be reasonable to run a TiVo and not have access to the SDV channels. But an OCAP compatible TiVo that can get SDV with the cable company supplying the software seems useless. Perhaps someday standards will arise here, but there aren't any useful ones now.


But that isnt what OCAP is doing. Cableco is supplying middleware and unique FW for their cable system. Tivo would be supplying the user interface and the guts of the Tivo experience.


----------



## HiDefGator

CrispyCritter said:


> I agree it may be reasonable to run a TiVo and not have access to the SDV channels.


It seems reasonable to you because you are only missing a couple of HD channels today. How reasonable will it seem the middle of next year when you aren't getting say 100+ HD channels?

Once you have mopre than one HD TV in the house is it reasonable to buy a Tivo and lease a cable DVR for each one?


----------



## dswallow

HiDefGator said:


> It seems reasonable to you because you are only missing a couple of HD channels today. How reasonable will it seem the middle of next year when you aren't getting say 100+ HD channels?
> 
> Once you have mopre than one HD TV in the house is it reasonable to buy a Tivo and lease a cable DVR for each one?


I fully expect a Tuning Resolver to become available before any cable system offers 100 or more HD channels using SDV.

In the meantime I have a primary viewing location and already have a cable company DVR for it in addition to two Series 3 TiVo's; and while I almost never use it, it's there for access to OnDemand and PPV programming anyway.

It's not unreasonable for someone with multiple TiVo's and multiple HD displays to at least equip one of them with the cable company DVR to gain access to programming currently unavailable any other way. Doing it for every display location might be excessive, though. 

For me, personally, there's only maybe 5 or 6 channels that I record anything from that aren't already available to me in HD from my cable company. For the most part beyond just channel surfing a few times because I can, I can't see that the other 90+ HD channels would even ever get tuned once in my house to watch something, let alone to record something.


----------



## CrispyCritter

SCSIRAID said:


> But that isnt what OCAP is doing. Cableco is supplying middleware and unique FW for their cable system. Tivo would be supplying the user interface and the guts of the Tivo experience.


But it's impossible for TiVo to do that at the moment. There is no standard for TiVo to communicate with the cable company middleware, as they need to. Once there is a standard, I agree that's the desired division. But I see no indication that the cable companies are moving to make that happen. That's why TiVo has been filing all those briefs with the FCC.


----------



## ah30k

CrispyCritter said:


> Originally Posted by ah30k View Post
> SDV works fine with CableCARDs as long as the host device supports two-way services. Unfortunately the TiVo does not.
> 
> 
> 
> It's insufficient just to support two way services. The host device also has to be running the cable company's software (there is currently no standard SDV interface, just standards for downloading software). And there is no standard modular interface at the moment, so the complete software system has to be supplied by the cable company. Why have a TiVo then?
Click to expand...

Uh, what part of 'support two-way services' are you adding extra conditions to? All of what you are adding is covered in my statement of 'support'. Why do you have a need to add unnecessary info.

The software does not have to be cable company software. Anyone can write to the specs that are provided by the cable operators.


----------



## CrispyCritter

ah30k said:


> Thank you for adding extra information that adds no extra value. And wrong too. If the protocol is published (which it is to those who have a need) than anyone can write the software to interface to the SDV server*.


You're wrong on two accounts. First, your message said that TiVo doesn't support SDV. My message says that TiVo *can't* support SDV. Very different.

Second, "the" protocol is not published in any form that TiVo can make use of. There is no single protocol common among all implementations, and there is no commitment from any one cable company not to change the protocol. There is a reason why standards are needed. Once the cable companies commit to a standard, TiVo can do something. Before then, they can't.


----------



## dswallow

ah30k said:


> Uh, what part of 'support two-way services' are you adding extra conditions to? All of what you are adding is covered in my statement of 'support'. Why do you have a need to add unnecessary info.


It's not unnecessary info at all. Your implication is that a 2-way host device will solve the problem. That's untrue. A 2-way host device, absent any standards to communicate with the cable head-end to request switched digital video channels, is useless. And no such standard exists.


----------



## ah30k

Doug and Crispy,
There is what is commonly referred to as the Time-Warner spec named for the comapny that took the lead in the field. This is available to any legit company that want to interface to a headend using that spec. There is the Comcast NGOD spec which is a slight variation of the TW spec and the favored protocol of Comcast. Mot and BigBand systems follow these specs. I'm sure SA systems have one as well. Just because you can't google a spec doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

lets not get too wrapped up in the difference between an ICD and a standard.


----------



## CrispyCritter

ah30k said:


> Doug and Crispy,
> There is what is commonly referred to as the Time-Warner spec named for the comapny that took the lead in the field. This is available to any legit company that want to interface to a headend using that spec. There is the Comcast NGOD spec which is a slight variation of the TW spec and the favored protocol of Comcast. Mot and BigBand systems follow these specs. I'm sure SA systems have one as well. Just because you can't google a spec doesn't mean it doesn't exist.


Where did I deny internal protocols exist?

Where is the public commitment from any of these companies that they will not change their protocol?


----------



## ah30k

Oh, where to begin. I guess in order


CrispyCritter said:


> Second, "the" protocol is not published in any form that TiVo can make use of.


yes it is, jsut because you dont have it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.


> There is no single protocol common among all implementations, and there is no commitment from any one cable company not to change the protocol.


Right there are about three. Life sucks get over it. Code to all three.[/QUOTE]


> There is a reason why standards are needed. Once the cable companies commit to a standard, TiVo can do something. Before then, they can't.


Again, life sucks. code to it or sit on the sideline.


----------



## morac

ah30k said:


> Again, life sucks. code to it or sit on the sideline.


And this attitude was why the FCC had to intervene to get the cable companies to commit to a standard (what is currently cableCARD) in the first place.


----------



## lrhorer

dswallow said:


> A Tuning Resolver dongle could be created that would work with any DOCSIS-compliant cable system, which most all are, and very likely all that would be using SDV would be.


I do not have the technical details of the Scientific Atlanta system, but I do not believe it is. I could be mistaken.

If both it and Motorola (and whatever other system is out there) is DOCSIS compliant, then a dongle is unnecessary for most subscribers with TiVos, which is what I have been saying all along in any case. Since the TiVo is probably just about the only device which can even make use of a USB dongle in the first place, there just is no terribly good reason to develop one. An Ethernet solution will be far simpler and cheaper.


----------



## lrhorer

chashulme said:


> The supervisor informed me that SDV support is required to get any additional channels, and that cable card S3's would not be compatible.


That's total crap. They either lied to you, you misunderstood, or they haven't a clue. All CableCards meets the same specs, and the FCC has mandated that all CATV providers support CableCards. Indeed, all the new series of CATV STBs are CableCard based, and every CableCard works with every version of SDV. It's true the S3 does not yet support M-cards, but S-Cards work fine with SDV - you just have to have two of them rather than one. The inability of the TiVo (and every other generally available consumer device at this point) to receive SDV has nothing to do with the CableCards and everything to do with the fact the devices are one way. 'Modify the TiVo (with an external device or whatever) to handle two way communictaions with the CATV system and it will work just fine with SDV.


----------



## lrhorer

CrispyCritter said:


> My point was why have a TiVo if the cable company is supplying the software (and TiVo isn't).


I don't know what you mean. TiVo most likely wouldn't in any case.



CrispyCritter said:


> But an OCAP compatible TiVo that can get SDV with the cable company supplying the software seems useless.


How so? Orwellian, yes. Useless, no.



CrispyCritter said:


> Perhaps someday standards will arise here, but there aren't any useful ones now.


That's true, but what has that to do with your previous statements? Just becasue the proposed standard would allow the CATV company to install utilities on your TiVo whether you want them or noty and just because the user does not have the option to use a third party vendor for the software rather than the CATV company's software has nothing to do with the TiVo being useless or not.


----------



## lrhorer

CrispyCritter said:


> It's insufficient just to support two way services. The host device also has to be running the cable company's software (there is currently no standard SDV interface, just standards for downloading software). And there is no standard modular interface at the moment, so the complete software system has to be supplied by the cable company. Why have a TiVo then?


That's nonsense. Who told you this? All that is required for basic SDV compatibility at the software level is the ability to request a particular digital stream from the SDV host. It doesn't care in the least what software generates the packet. Even interactive services only require hooks similar to TiVo's HME protocol to work. For that matter, implementing OCAP on the TiVo would not be difficult. It's just that a lot of people object to OCAP and it's Big Brother implications.


----------



## lrhorer

CrispyCritter said:


> But it's impossible for TiVo to do that at the moment. There is no standard for TiVo to communicate with the cable company middleware, as they need to.


Middleware is not essential to the picture, at all, unless of course it is mandated by the FCC through OCAP or other auspice. That said, I would definitely say a middleware soulution is the way to go. I just don't want the CATV company to have control over what middleware goes into my TiVo. If I don't want a particular feature, I should be able to refuse to allow the software providing the feature to be loaded. That, or if I want to purchase / procure my middleware from someone else other than the CATV company, then that should be my right.



CrispyCritter said:


> Once there is a standard, I agree that's the desired division. But I see no indication that the cable companies are moving to make that happen. That's why TiVo has been filing all those briefs with the FCC.


That's true.


----------



## ah30k

morac said:


> And this attitude was why the FCC had to intervene to get the cable companies to commit to a standard (what is currently cableCARD) in the first place.


I'm just tired of people claiming there is no standard and TiVo can't do anything until the standard exists and TiVo is being totally kept out of the secret world of SDV. There are specs that define what might be three possible protocols based on three implementations of SDV. Who is going to decide which one of those three should be a standard? You? Congress? Who? Tell me who? Please? The others will then go away quietly?

And, byt the way, the CableCARD is an abstraction layer that allows different standards on the back end and a common interface on the STB side. This came what, 10 years after the start of digital cable encryption hit the market.


----------



## HiDefGator

lrhorer said:


> That's nonsense. Who told you this? All that is required for basic SDV compatibility at the software level is the ability to request a particular digital stream from the SDV host. It doesn't care in the least what software generates the packet. Even interactive services only require hooks similar to TiVo's HME protocol to work. For that matter, implementing OCAP on the TiVo would not be difficult. It's just that a lot of people object to OCAP and it's Big Brother implications.


Even if Tivo decided to somehow detect and code to multiple different specs wouldn't there still be a problem with knowing how each system was configured? It just sounds like an impossible task for Tivo to me. Certainly one that would have to be tweaked constantly every time the cable company decided to upgrade firmware, etc.

My money is on the dongle never seeing the light of day. Tivo's future is as a download to boxes that someone else installed and built. The Comcast model.


----------



## lrhorer

morac said:


> And this attitude was why the FCC had to intervene to get the cable companies to commit to a standard (what is currently cableCARD) in the first place.


Well, yeah, to some extent. The situations as a whole was much more complex, however. First of all, there were a lot more than a handful of different proposals with every company holding on dearly to their favorite brand. Secondy, not only was there a tug - of - war between TV manufacturers and between CATV companies, but the two groups as a whole fought against each other. Here we're talking about a much smaller number of combatants.


----------



## mrmike

ah30k said:


> I'm just tired of people claiming there is no standard and TiVo can't do anything until the standard exists and TiVo is being totally kept out of the secret world of SDV. There are specs that define what might be three possible protocols based on three implementations of SDV.


Really? Care to share linkages to them? The only one I'm aware of is a proprietary spec with a $100K licensing fee on it.


----------



## lrhorer

ah30k said:


> I'm just tired of people claiming there is no standard and TiVo can't do anything until the standard exists


Well, can't and unwilling are two different things. I do understand their caution. I think it may not be as safe a position as they think, but I do understand.



ah30k said:


> Who is going to decide which one of those three should be a standard?


That's the $64 question, isn't it?



ah30k said:


> This came what, 10 years after the start of digital cable encryption hit the market.


'Closer to 20, at least in some markets.


----------



## lrhorer

HiDefGator said:


> Even if Tivo decided to somehow detect and code to multiple different specs wouldn't there still be a problem with knowing how each system was configured?


Not at the basic level, no. More sophisticated functions like VOD, Internet browsing, etc are more complex, but at the level of watching "standard" channels it's rather simple.



HiDefGator said:


> It just sounds like an impossible task for Tivo to me. Certainly one that would have to be tweaked constantly every time the cable company decided to upgrade firmware, etc.


No, because remember the CATV company is in somewhat the same boat as TiVo. If they make any fundamental change to their SDV hosts, then they also have to make that change to all their STBs and DVRs. They're not going to want to break anything, so the protocols will be highly backwards compatible.


----------



## lrhorer

mrmike said:


> Really? Care to share linkages to them? The only one I'm aware of is a proprietary spec with a $100K licensing fee on it.


While daunting to you or I, that's nothing to a company the size of TiVo.


----------



## ah30k

mrmike said:


> Really? Care to share linkages to them? The only one I'm aware of is a proprietary spec with a $100K licensing fee on it.


I mentioned two (TW-Spec and the Comcast NGOD spec). You'll need to contact their respective owners for copies. Existence is not governed by the lack or presence of a hyperlink. If you are serious about delivering a product to market, you can get the spec.


----------



## CrispyCritter

lrhorer said:


> No, because remember the CATV company is in somewhat the same boat as TiVo. If they make any fundamental change to their SDV hosts, then they also have to make that change to all their STBs and DVRs. They're not going to want to break anything, so the protocols will be highly backwards compatible.


I thought the entire point of OCAP is to allow the cable companies to change their protocols at will. They theoretically will be able to change head end-end STB software at the same time, thus not breaking anything (except, of course, all the third-party non-OCAP devices).

If the cable companies publicly commit to not changing their basic SDV protocols, then I agree TiVo should go right ahead and implement them. But the cable companies have had every opportunity to do so, and have not; instead they are proposing dongles, which is going to cost them a lot more expense than a simple public commitment. To me, that means they expect the protocols to change.


----------



## mrmike

ah30k said:


> I mentioned two (TW-Spec and the Comcast NGOD spec). You'll need to contact their respective owners for copies. Existence is not governed by the lack or presence of a hyperlink. If you are serious about delivering a product to market, you can get the spec.


Yeah, that's where the $100K came in. And with the spec being under private control by an entity with no interest in making things easier for me, what guarantee do I have that the spec won't change every 6 months? Or that "misbehaviours" would be well explained and investigated. Open specs run the world for very good reasons.


----------



## ah30k

mrmike said:


> Yeah, that's where the $100K came in. And with the spec being under private control by an entity with no interest in making things easier for me, what guarantee do I have that the spec won't change every 6 months? Or that "misbehaviours" would be well explained and investigated. Open specs run the world for very good reasons.


There are no guarantees the spec won't change but if it does change then Motorola, BigBand, Arris, SA and every other SDV vendor will be impacted as well causing expensive updates to fielded headends. All of these impacted vendors will put pressure on the spec owners to settle them. Open specs don't come out of the heavens on beams of sunlight. There are very heated battles over whose preferences are chosen. Eventually SDV might get there.

By the way, you mention "me" and "I" in your responses. Are you developing to this spec or just an observer with a interest in them.


----------



## lrhorer

CrispyCritter said:


> I thought the entire point of OCAP is to allow the cable companies to change their protocols at will.


Well, it's far from the whole point, but that is one benefit of OCAP, yes. By employing middleware, the basic sockets on the end terminal remain unchanged while new featuires are added to the system as a whole. In this scenario, TiVo can make just as much use of the stability of the OCAP interface on the receiver side as the CATV company's STBs. Barring a middleware solution like OCAP, however, the answer to the dilemma for the CATV company is backwards compatibility. Either way, the TiVo is very likely to be shielded by the same armor which covers the CATV company's assets.



CrispyCritter said:


> They theoretically will be able to change head end-end STB software at the same time, thus not breaking anything (except, of course, all the third-party non-OCAP devices).


If any CATV provider is using OCAP, then there is nothing preventing Tivo from supporting OCAP. It's proprietary protocols which throw a monkey wrench into the machinery, but a proprietary protocol is as I said going to tend to be loaded with backwards compatibility.



CrispyCritter said:


> If the cable companies publicly commit to not changing their basic SDV protocols, then I agree TiVo should go right ahead and implement them. But the cable companies have had every opportunity to do so, and have not;


Up to here your point is well taken.



CrispyCritter said:


> instead they are proposing dongles, which is going to cost them a lot more expense than a simple public commitment. To me, that means they expect the protocols to change.


I would say this doesn't follow. A dongle is no less prone to obsolescence than the TiVo iteslf, and if the dongle is provided by the CATV company, then the CATV company is going to be responsible for keeping the dongle up to date. This means they a re either going to have to freeze their protocols (at least those availble to the dongle) or change out thousands of them nationwiode every time they change their protocols.


----------



## jercra

ah30k said:


> There are no guarantees the spec won't change but if it does change then Motorola, BigBand, Arris, SA and every other SDV vendor will be impacted as well causing expensive updates to fielded headends. All of these impacted vendors will put pressure on the spec owners to settle them. Open specs don't come out of the heavens on beams of sunlight. There are very heated battles over whose preferences are chosen. Eventually SDV might get there.


This is right on. There are lots of vendors involved in the many aspects of SDV (SM, ERM, Client, etc) and all of them must conform to the specs currently implemented. Add in that HE techs, support orgs and engineering orgs need a consistent set of behaviors and error codes and you can pretty quickly see that there will be no rapid spec changes. It aslo bears noting that companies like Comcast and TWC do not go blindly into the future. The roadmap for SDV functionality is pretty much laid out for the next couple of years. There won't be many surprises for any SDV vendor and that would include TiVo.

Beyond any of this is the fact that Comcast and TWC are actually actively working towards a common spec, not just for SDV but for all interactive services. Once this is accomplished (and yes it will happen at the speed of cable companies) every other cable company will fall in line behind them as every single vendor will cater to those two companies. They are not doing this because the FCC mandated it. They are doing it because it is the best thing for them as it allows all vendors to develop more rapidly and more economically.

In the mean time, it's not out of the realm of possibility for TiVo to partner with another company that is very familiar with all of the various SDV specs to build a TiVo server that resides in the HE and does all of the required protocol translations for each SDV spec. This would allow TiVo to develop a single client without worrying very much about adapting every TiVo whenever a spec did actually change. This is exactly the approach that Digeo took with their Moxi STB to enable VOD.


----------



## morac

Comcast picked Motorola to supply the hardware for SDV and BigBand to supply the software to handle communication between the headend and the set-top box at the end of last month. BigBand also supplies the software for Cablevision, Time Warner Cable and Cox Communications.

Since they were running trials in Denver, CO and Cherry Hill, NJ, and the Cherry Hill, NJ system uses Scientific Atlanta hardware, it looks like they liked the Motorola ones better (I'm guessing Denver uses Moto).

Since SA and Moto systems are not compatible (which is why you can't use a Moto cableCARD is a SA cable system and vice-versa) I'm not sure what this means for SDV in SA areas.


----------



## moyekj

SDV is coming to Cox, Orange County, which means:
* 6 HD channels I already can't get (CNN HD, Discovery HD, NFL Network HD, TLC HD, History HD, Animal Planet HD)
* 4 HD channels to be launched county wide on Dec 17 I won't get (Food HD, HGTV HD, HDNet, HDNet Movies)
* Any SD and HD channels added from here on out I won't get
* Digital simulcast channels (for channels below 100) will be going away: CableCard customers will revert back to analog channels in channel map
NOTE: SDV hasn't even been deployed yet, but this is all in preparation for SDV deployment.

This also brings up an interesting point: Let's assume for a moment the tuning resolver was already available. Being a CableCard customer my lineup would still be compromised based on anticipation of SDV rollout. Those CableCard customers with tuning resolver would need special treatment for their account to make sure the channel map of regular digital cable box customers would be used instead of the normal CableCard channel map since obviously they can be (and in my case are) different.


----------



## AZrob

moyekj said:


> SDV is coming to Cox, Orange County, which means:
> * 6 HD channels I already can't get
> * 5 HD channels to be launched county wide on Dec 17 I won't get
> * Any SD and HD channels added from here on out I won't get
> * Digital simulcast channels (for channels below 100) will be going away: CableCard customers will revert back to analog channels in channel map
> NOTE: SDV hasn't even been deployed yet, but this is all in preparation for SDV deployment.
> 
> This also brings up an interesting point: Let's assume for a moment the tuning resolver was already available. Being a CableCard customer my lineup would still be compromised based on anticipation of SDV rollout. Those CableCard customers with tuning resolver would need special treatment for their account to make sure the channel map of regular digital cable box customers would be used instead of the normal CableCard channel map since obviously they can be (and in my case are) different.


This is the first I have heard that implementation of SDV may result in below-100 channels going back to analog. Is this an expected consequence of SDV's implementation or is this just a choice local to Cox Orange County?

Rob from AZ


----------



## moyekj

AZrob said:


> This is the first I have heard that implementation of SDV may result in below-100 channels going back to analog. Is this an expected consequence of SDV's implementation or is this just a choice local to Cox Orange County?
> 
> Rob from AZ


 It's an Orange County choice. Though of course I don't like the consequences, it kind of makes sense seeing as something like 50% of Cox customers are analog only and there are also digital subscribers tuning to analog channels without a digital set top box. Still I think Cox OC is being overly aggressive seeing as they just upgraded to 860MHz locally which would have been enough bandwidth to accommodate these recent additions without SDV - but I suppose they are making room for future growth...


----------



## AZrob

moyekj said:


> It's an Orange County choice. Though of course I don't like the consequences, it kind of makes sense seeing as something like 50% of Cox customers are analog only and there are also digital subscribers tuning to analog channels without a digital set top box. Still I think Cox OC is being overly aggressive seeing as they just upgraded to 860MHz locally which would have been enough bandwidth to accommodate these recent additions without SDV - but I suppose they are making room for future growth...


Actually, I kind of like this approach, as long as it's temporary. My wife was very disappointed to hear that moving to CC's from a STB ended up reducing the number of hours available on my Tivo HD + Expander disk from 800 to 400. She was unmoved by the fact that digitally simulcast channels have much better PQ. She wanted to able to record whatever she wanted whenever she wanted. So, if we could access the analog channels again (in analog) that would be a good thing...for her. I see it as a way to get along until the 2 or 3 TB Expander disk is available.

Someone could write a book on "diskspace wars" between spouses....

Rob


----------



## mrmike

ah30k said:


> By the way, you mention "me" and "I" in your responses. Are you developing to this spec or just an observer with a interest in them.


I was. Licensing and development costs killed the project I was working on. Hence my slight bitterness about the subject.


----------



## morac

AZrob said:


> Actually, I kind of like this approach, as long as it's temporary. My wife was very disappointed to hear that moving to CC's from a STB ended up reducing the number of hours available on my Tivo HD + Expander disk from 800 to 400.


Actually, unless you record everything at basic or medium quality, recording digital channels should save you disk space. In my system digital channels recordings are definitely smaller than "best" analog, usually smaller than "high", sometimes smaller than "medium" and never smaller than "low". Your cable company may not compress the signal as well though.


----------



## AZrob

morac said:


> Actually, unless you record everything at basic or medium quality, recording digital channels should save you disk space. In my system digital channels recordings are definitely smaller than "best" analog, usually smaller than "high", sometimes smaller than "medium" and never smaller than "low". Your cable company may not compress the signal as well though.


See, but that's the problem...normally we did record everything at Basic when we had analog, because then we could get 300 hours from my Humax S2. Adding the DVR Expander to my new Tivo HD, I calculated I would get the equivalent of 800 hours. But actually, it's more like 400. Digital channels take up twice as much as Basic.

Rob


----------



## sfhub

morac said:


> Since SA and Moto systems are not compatible (which is why you can't use a Moto cableCARD is a SA cable system and vice-versa) I'm not sure what this means for SDV in SA areas.


They aren't compatible from an encryption standpoint but does that mean they are completely incompatible in all aspects or could some conversion layer handle mapping SDV high-level functionality to hardware specific function?


----------



## mel.simmons

I'd like to understand a bit more about the technical challenge of the "tuning resolver". The first message in this thread gives a nice high-level overview. But how much is known about the details of the protocol? Has anyone with SDV on their cable service tried to "snoop" the communications going back and forth from their set-top box? Would this protocol be largely the same on all of the cable systems adopting SDV, or are there major incompatibilities between cable systems? Should we be expecting one, universal device coming from TiVo? Or might we see some cable companies offering solutions while other companies do not?


----------



## classicsat

The technical challenge is mostly matching the low level protocols and formats the headend expects, and to a certain degree security.


----------



## jercra

mel.simmons said:


> I'd like to understand a bit more about the technical challenge of the "tuning resolver". The first message in this thread gives a nice high-level overview. But how much is known about the details of the protocol? Has anyone with SDV on their cable service tried to "snoop" the communications going back and forth from their set-top box? Would this protocol be largely the same on all of the cable systems adopting SDV, or are there major incompatibilities between cable systems? Should we be expecting one, universal device coming from TiVo? Or might we see some cable companies offering solutions while other companies do not?


AS has been stated, there are basically 2 different protocols to which TiVo would need to adapt. The TWC Protocol (SA) and the Comcast NGOD (Moto) protocol. There are basically three points of integration to get SDV working on any CE device, not just TiVo. 
The first is the ability to read a dynamic channel map off of the cable plant. The plans for SDV include the ability to rapidly and frequently change which channels are broadcast and which are switched. This is typiclly done by reading either an IB or OOB carousel. This is very different between an SA and a Moto plant.
The second is generating a client that can speak "SDV", so to speak. It will need to be able to self-discover a service group, set up a session and tune to the returned freq+program number. Self-Discovery is typically done by reading TSIDs off of the IB. The session setup protocol is very different between the TWC solution and the Comcast solution.
The third is the actual ability for 2 way communication. This is the problem that the dongle is proposed to solve.

So, even if they do get the tuning resolver done there will still be a software development effort and then an even more complicated deployment strategy as each TiVo will need to know what type of SDV protocol to implement and be able to implement them all.


----------



## mikeyts

I'd imagined that the dongle would be like CableCARDs, an adapter to the proprietary protocols on the wire for the TiVo. Any proprietary protocols would be encapsulated in the dongle (which is why'd they'd have to come from the cable providers) and the TiVo would speak a new "dongle protocol" to it to request channel mappings and to receive SDV-related requests from the system. I considered the possibility of the dongle being a primitive tranceiver to implement the physical layer on whatever OOB frequencies are being used for SDV, with TiVo implementing everything else internally, but that'd require that every proprietary SDV protocol be licensed to TiVo. Messy.


----------



## classicsat

Being the resolver will likely be used on boxes other than TiVos, it behooves the cable provider to make the Dongle as smart as possible.


----------



## XBR

Sounds like the Carterphone Decision all over again...sigh.


----------



## pmiranda

mikeyts said:


> I considered the possibility of the dongle being a primitive tranceiver to implement the physical layer on whatever OOB frequencies are being used for SDV, with TiVo implementing everything else internally, but that'd require that every proprietary SDV protocol be licensed to TiVo. Messy.


On the contrary, that seems to be the most elegant, compact, and extensible solution to me. All the protocol is handled in software that TiVo can integrate into existing code and it can be upgraded through existing infrastructure. The dongle is just a dumb piece of cheap hardware that could be (but probably won't be) given away because it has practically no inherent value. This would allow the most flexible path for future upgrades beyond just SDV to allowing other two-way applications, even an OCAP capability if necessary.


----------



## Dmon4u

http://www.twice.com/article/CA6504997.html

"Digital Video Recorder supplier TiVo said it will introduce next year an external adapter that will enable TiVo digital video recorders that use CableCARDs to access switched digital cable channels without a set top box."

--

"Cable operators will make the new adapters available for TiVo customers in the second quarter of 2008, TiVo said. "

More info through link, above.


----------



## bicker

Here's the official press release:

http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/s...11-26-2007/0004711019&EDATE=#linktopagebottom

This is big news. It is both an official acknowledgment by the NCTA that its member will support this solution, and provides a time-frame for it.

The value of TiVo S3 and HD has effectively shot up today.


----------



## ah30k

Still no talk of pricing.


----------



## HiDefGator

bicker said:


> This is big news. It is both an official acknowledgment by the NCTA that its member will support this solution, and provides a time-frame for it.


No doubt it is big news. I'm not holding my breath yet though. When was the last time one of its members actually met a scheduled time frame without asking for an extension? I'll look for it to actually be available very late 2008 for an additional monthly fee.


----------



## moyekj

Great news indeed!
I foresee many calls to my local cable company and clueless CSRs asking about availability.
The other problem I foresee is that currently my cable company already intentionally leaves channels slated for SDV deployment out of the channel map for cablecard customers, so they will have to come up with an alternate channel map for cablecard customers with the tuning resolver, or make it the same map as the digital set top boxes if possible.

However, these issues probably can be overcome and I'm really pleased to see Tivo & NCTA being so pro-active on this issue.


----------



## mikeyts

pmiranda said:


> On the contrary, that seems to be the most elegant, compact, and extensible solution to me. All the protocol is handled in software that TiVo can integrate into existing code and it can be upgraded through existing infrastructure. The dongle is just a dumb piece of cheap hardware that could be (but probably won't be) given away because it has practically no inherent value. This would allow the most flexible path for future upgrades beyond just SDV to allowing other two-way applications, even an OCAP capability if necessary.


There is elegance to such a design on the engineering side but business-wise it sucks. Any proprietary protocols should be encapsulated in the dongle--just as they are in the CableCARDs--allowing TiVo and any other interested OEMs with unidirectional CableCARD devices with USB connections and field-upgradeable firmware to implement their part of this without obtaining and maintaining licensing from Motorola, S-A and/or BigBand Networks and C-COR, which the cable providers already have to do for SDV as implemented in their headends and leased STBs. Placing the protocols in the dongles also minimizes the impact on memory in the UDCP devices which would use them, making more of them eligible.

There are pluses and minuses on both sides but to my mind it comes down heavily in favor of the encapsulate-the-protocols-in-cable-provider-distributed-device solution, which is where they appear to be going. Even the opportunity to charge additional monthly fees for the lease of these things provides incentive to the cable industry to comply; they have the least to gain, since they only stand to lose some fraction of a very small TiVo-owner market, which won't get any bigger without some solution to this SDV thing.


----------



## dolfer

ah30k said:


> Still no talk of pricing.


Hopefully that's because they won't (nor SHOULDN'T) charge any extra for this!


----------



## kjmcdonald

I don't know if this has been posted but I got this in my email this morning:

http://www.broadcastnewsroom.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=240599

A solution??

-Kyle


----------



## dswallow

kjmcdonald said:


> I don't know if this has been posted but I got this in my email this morning:
> 
> http://www.broadcastnewsroom.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=240599
> 
> A solution??
> 
> -Kyle


Is it really that hard to read the last 4 or 5 posts of the big SDV thread?


----------



## mikeyts

dswallow said:


> Is it really that hard to read the last 4 or 5 posts of the big SDV thread?


He did add a little to the discussion for me, since the previous PRs that I read were from TiVo and the NCTA, who'd already announced that they were working on this and that we should expect a solution from them. This CableLabs announcement makes it seem like they're going to be issuing the spec, which is interesting in and of itself.


----------



## bicker

ah30k said:


> Still no talk of pricing.


Expect pricing to be local.


----------



## moyekj

Hopefully there won't need to be 1 dongle per CableCard??


----------



## jpdst22

So I'm guessing this dongle is going to just be for SDV? Is there any reason this couldn't also be built to use it for pay per view or OnDemand type of channels?


----------



## dswallow

moyekj said:


> Hopefully there won't need to be 1 dongle per CableCard??


Sometimes I wonder just how ludicrous ideas like this ever even get started.


----------



## Monty2_2001

Fantastic, wonderful news. Now if we can just get Time Warner in Dallas to get more HD channels!!


----------



## moyekj

dswallow said:


> Sometimes I wonder just how ludicrous ideas like this ever even get started.


 Why is it so ludicrous? The functionality is very closely tied to the cablecards for authentication purposes and right now S3s require a separate card for each tuner for authentication reasons (whether they are M-cards or S-cards). Without knowing the details of the "tuning resolver" I don't see how you can rule out the possibility of needing 1 per card.


----------



## HiDefGator

part of me thinks the dongle only needs to tell upstream what channel is needed and get back a channel to tune to for it and they could certainly do that for both tuners with a single dongle. but then doesn't the dongle also need to keep the channel open so it appears in use and that might require more work to do both in the same dongle. if i'm the cable company having to design and build these things to keep a hand full of people happy and they want it quick then why bother building support for more than a single tuner in it? the more of them I lease the more monthly cash I take in.


----------



## mikeyts

Obviously not many engineering minds involved here.


----------



## Marc

HiDefGator said:


> but then doesn't the dongle also need to keep the channel open so it appears in use and that might require more work to do both in the same dongle.


Not necessarily... they could design it like DHCP leases. The dongle transmits that it wants a certain channel for a certain period of time. The magic server then approves the request and returns the assigned frequency and tells the dongle how long the frequency would be valid for. At some point during this lease, the dongle could send another request to continue accessing that channel on that frequency to maintain access to a switched channel.


----------



## DCIFRTHS

Marc said:


> Not necessarily... they could design it like DHCP leases. The dongle transmits that it wants a certain channel for a certain period of time. The magic server then approves the request and returns the assigned frequency and tells the dongle how long the frequency would be valid for. At some point during this lease, the dongle could send another request to continue accessing that channel on that frequency to maintain access to a switched channel.


Nice idea :up:


----------



## DCIFRTHS

This announcement is great news, and if it works properly, I will have no hesitation in recommending TiVo to everyone with cable.

I have a question, and I really hope that no one responds with snide/sarcastic/insulting comments. I read the release, but I don''t see where it states that the cable companies will be providing the adapter. Can someone point me to where it says this?

Thanks!

EDIT: If you look at all the players involved in the process, it includes SA and Motorola, the two largest manufacturers, of consumer and head end equipment, BigBand Networks, and C-COR, who do SDV technology. It sounds like this adapter has the chance of working like cable modems do. Once the devices are certified, by Cablelabs, you can probably pick one up at you local Best Buy. I also think that the adapters will be product specific. For example, TiVo's dongle won't work on my Sony TV.



> LOUISVILLE, Colo., BUSINESS WIRE -- CableLabs(R) today announced that, along with TiVo, Motorola, Scientific-Atlanta, BigBand Networks and C-COR, it has developed a new solution that extends the functionality of certain Unidirectional Digital Cable Ready Products (UDCPs) that use CableCARDs(TM) to access switched digital services previously unavailable to such devices.
> 
> CableLabs recently developed specifications for a new external interface that enables UDCPs equipped with a USB connector and necessary firmware to access switched digital cable channels, benefiting both cable operators and consumers. A new adapter using this interface will attach to the UDCP device so the device can access switched digital cable channels.
> 
> According to CableLabs President & CEO Dr. Richard Green, development of the new adapter is a result of cable's efforts to explore innovative technology solutions that can manage bandwidth to allow for more efficient deployment of cable's advanced services. The introduction in recent years of cable's interactive digital services, high-definition channels, broadband Internet and digital phone service has resulted in significant consumer demand, which also requires more bandwidth to deliver, he said.


Link to announcement: http://www.broadcastnewsroom.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=240599


----------



## dswallow

DCIFRTHS said:


> I read the release, but I don''t see where it states that the cable companies will be providing the adapter. Can someone point me to where it says this?


You're just reading the wrong release.

http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/s...11-26-2007/0004711019&EDATE=#linktopagebottom



> 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.


----------



## DCIFRTHS

The only downside I see to this solution is that I'm guessing that you will need to have two feeds for the TiVo: One for the tuners, and one for the upstream communications from the dongle. This means that customers with marginal cable signals might drop to levels below the threshold of maintaining a reliable signal to the tuners. Or am I totally off base, and is there another way to communicate without having to split the cable feed?


----------



## dswallow

DCIFRTHS said:


> The only downside I see to this solution is that I'm guessing that you will need to have two feeds for the TiVo: One for the tuners, and one for the upstream communications from the dongle. This means that customers with marginal cable signals might drop to levels below the threshold of maintaining a reliable signal to the tuners. Or am I totally off base, and is there another way to communicate without having to split the cable feed?


The cable will connect through the USB dongle; they'd likely use a tap in the dongle for the DOCSIS-compliant communications with the headend. And if there were any concerns about signal level they could be addressed in the dongle.


----------



## DCIFRTHS

dswallow said:


> You're just reading the wrong release.
> 
> http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/s...11-26-2007/0004711019&EDATE=#linktopagebottom


Wow. The articles certainly read differently. I would prefer a solution that I could purchase from TiVo, but if it works, then I'll be happy. Thanks for the info.

Hopefully, the dongle will be able to get enough juice from the USB connectors so that an external power supply won't be necessary.


----------



## mikeyts

This is the way that I picture it:


Code:


                      Coax In
                    (from wall)
                         |
                   +-----+-----+
                   |           |
                   |  Tuning   |
         +---USB---+ Resolver  |
         |         |           |
         |         +-----+-----+
         |               |
         |            Coax Out
         |               |
         |               |
     +---+---------------+-------------------+
     |                                       |
     |         UDCR Host (like TiVo)         |
     |                                       |
     +---------------------------------------+

The dongle itself would be a small device with a coax connector on one end, and short coax and USB cables coming out of it. Of course, it could have coax connectors on two sides (in and out) and a female USB jack, allowing cables of arbitrary length to be used, but building in cables would discourage attempt to place it far away.



Marc said:


> Not necessarily... they could design it like DHCP leases. The dongle transmits that it wants a certain channel for a certain period of time. The magic server then approves the request and returns the assigned frequency and tells the dongle how long the frequency would be valid for. At some point during this lease, the dongle could send another request to continue accessing that channel on that frequency to maintain access to a switched channel.


Good. I'd been thinking something along those lines only more complex. But...KISS. The exchange could be as simple as:*Dongle-To-Network*: I'd like to tune channel XXX using CableCARD nnnnnnnn.

*Network-To-Dongle: Channel XXX is on QAM 256 frequency fff as program ppp, guaranteed for 10,800 seconds.*​At the end of the lease, the dongle could ask the UDCR Host (i.e., TiVo) whether to renew, and if it said "yes", the original request could be repeated to obtain a new "lease". At any time during the lease, TiVo could send a message to explicitly relinquish its hold on the channel (if say, it completed a recording of an SDV channel on the "unviewed" tuner).


----------



## DCIFRTHS

mikeyts said:


> This is the way that I picture it:
> 
> 
> Code:
> 
> 
> Coax In
> (from wall)
> |
> +-----+-----+
> |           |
> |  Tuning   |
> +---USB---+ Resolver  |
> |         |           |
> |         +-----+-----+
> |               |
> |            Coax Out
> |               |
> |               |
> +---+---------------+-------------------+
> |                                       |
> |        UDCP Device (like TiVo)        |
> |                                       |
> +---------------------------------------+


Yes, based on what Doug described, that's what my diagram was attempting to illustrate. I deleted it to avoid (more) embarrassment...


----------



## pmiranda

mikeyts said:


> There is elegance to such a design on the engineering side but business-wise it sucks. Any proprietary protocols should be encapsulated in the dongle--just as they are in the CableCARDs--allowing TiVo and any other interested OEMs with unidirectional CableCARD devices with USB connections and field-upgradeable firmware to implement their part of this without obtaining and maintaining licensing from Motorola, S-A and/or BigBand Networks and C-COR, which the cable providers already have to do for SDV as implemented in their headends and leased STBs. Placing the protocols in the dongles also minimizes the impact on memory in the UDCP devices which would use them, making more of them eligible.


Business-wise, I'd think the cablecos would want to enable VOD and IPPV with it, which would require software in the TiVo to enable it, unless the dongle gets very expensive. I'd be very surprised if we get anything more than basic SDV support at launch in any case.


----------



## vstone

DCIFRTHS said:


> The only downside I see to this solution is that I'm guessing that you will need to have two feeds for the TiVo: One for the tuners, and one for the upstream communications from the dongle. This means that customers with marginal cable signals might drop to levels below the threshold of maintaining a reliable signal to the tuners. Or am I totally off base, and is there another way to communicate without having to split the cable feed?


They'll just have to turn up the signal level out at the pole and replace any marginal signal splitters in the house with professional ones.


----------



## mikeyts

pmiranda said:


> Business-wise, I'd think the cablecos would want to enable VOD and IPPV with it, which would require software in the TiVo to enable it, unless the dongle gets very expensive. I'd be very surprised if we get anything more than basic SDV support at launch in any case.


Yeah, I'm not counting on that VOD and IPPV support either, though it'd be cool.

CableLabs already developed a scheme for generalized interactive services that was included in the original POD and POD Host specs (ere the CEA came up with the "CableCARD" label). They included predefined service APIs to support the "Holy Trinity" of interactive services IPG, IPPV and VOD, with the ability to support other services through downloaded HTML forms. It wasn't open ended enough to please the cable providers, who opted to pass on using it in favor of finishing the development of OCAP, which decommitted support for OOB backchannel communication. They hadn't defined multi-stream support, so it's just as well, though it would have been nice if they'd required implementation of the backchannel, even though nobody was going to make any major use of it. Having it to support automated installation of CableCARDs would have been enough reason, to my mind. How much could it have added to the cost of DCR products even at the time?

EDIT: Ha! I thought that they'd long eradicated all online hints of the API for generic IPPV, VOD and HTML-based interactive service support that was in the original CableLabs POD specs, but the 2004 version of ANSI/SCTE 28 features them. Of particular interest is the Application Interface, documented beginning at PDF page 61.


----------



## morac

mikeyts said:


> *CableLabs* already developed a scheme for generalized interactive services that was included in the original POD and POD Host specs (ere the CEA came up with the "CableCARD" label).... It wasn't open ended enough to please the *cable providers*, who opted to pass on using it in favor of finishing the development of OCAP....


CableLabs is the research group founded by the cable providers. So what you're saying is that the cable companies own research group came up with a simple method for 2-way communications as part of the cableCARD standard, but it was shot down in favor of OCAP?

That's frustrating on so many levels, especially considering very few CEA want to support OCAP.


----------



## mikeyts

morac said:


> CableLabs is the research group founded by the cable providers So what you're saying is that the cable companies own research group came up with a simple method for 2-way communications as part of the cableCARD standard, but it was shot down in favor of OCAP?
> 
> That's frustrating on so many levels, especially considering very few CEA want to support OCAP.


Mmmmmm, "simple" is a relative word. It _was_ a hell of a lot simpler than frickin' OCAP and could have been supported on a far cheaper hardware platform. (OCAP requires a platform capable of running a virtual machine for a profile of Java ).

10+ years ago, I saw a demonstration to the networking hardware development group that I was working in of a "web server on a chip". It was couple of ICs, a hand full of resistors, an LED, a toggle switch and an RJ45 header mounted on a 2" square breadboard, powered by a AA battery. We connected it to a computer in the conference room and viewed and navigated a set of web pages served by code running on this tiny board. It was designed to add remote cofiguration capabilities to a product (in addition to the SNMP stuff we were working on) with about a $12 addition to the BOM. Remember--that was 10 or 12 years back. Little more than this would be required in a host to support what they were talking about and it'd be somewhat less expensive now .


----------



## Surrealone

Ok I live in Orange County Ca and sent a letter to COX cable and this is the reply..


Hello

Thank you for your reply.

Currently most devices with CableCARD's are not two way capable. This 
means that they will not be able to get the new channels that will be 
deployed with the Switched Digital Video. This change will occur next 
year, but already there are channels in the upgrade areas that 
CableCARD's will not be able to receive. It looks like you are in one of
the areas that have been upgraded.

The are the channels that a CableCARD can get:

A&E HD
KCAL HD
MOJO

Cinemax HD
KCBS HD
Nat Geo HD

ESPN 2 HD
KCOP HD
NBC Universal HD

ESPN HD
KNBC HD
Showtime HD

FSN HD
KOCE HD
Starz HD

HBO HD
KTLA HD
TBS HD

HD Theater
KTTV HD
TNT HD

KABC HD
MHD

In 2008 there will be a new series of CableCARD devices available for 
purchase that will be know as iDCR (interactive Digital Cable Ready). 
These devices will be two-way and will be able to tune channels that are
switched. 

We hope that we have been able to provide you with the information you 
requested. If we have not, or if we can be of any additional service to 
you, please do not hesitate to contact us again.

Sincerely,
Brad
SDCCC


----------



## vstone

iDCR AKA International Drift Championship Racing or Infectious Diseases in Corrections Report

Actually, for more info go to: http://forums.sage.tv/forums/showthread.php?t=23972 (circa 2004)

I have seen references to the Samsung TV mentioned in the article, but had never heard of iDCR.

edit: a search for iDCR can find a reference to a 2007 CEA announcement from Panasonic and Comcast about iDCR plasmas to become available in 2008.


----------



## SCSIRAID

Looks like TiVo sold their soul to OCAP for the tuning resolver.....

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


----------



## mikeyts

SCSIRAID said:


> Looks like TiVo sold their soul to OCAP for the tuning resolver.....
> 
> http://fjallfoss.fcc.gov/prod/ecfs/retrieve.cgi?native_or_pdf=pdf&id_document=6519815501


Actually I think that it's cool. I only wonder how dynamic the switch between "TiVo Mode" and "Cable Mode" will be, but I'd love to have a TiVo that I could switch temporarily to "Cable Mode" to use the subscription VOD channels, particularly now that some HD ones are starting to appear (my Cox system just added Starz On Demand HD). Access to IPPV and Pay VOD wouldn't hurt either.


----------



## SCSIRAID

mikeyts said:


> Actually I think that it's cool. I only wonder how dynamic the switch between "TiVo Mode" and "Cable Mode" will be, but I'd love to have a TiVo that I could switch temporarily to "Cable Mode" to use the subscription VOD channels, particularly now that some HD ones are starting to appear (my Cox system just added Starz On Demand HD). Access to IPPV and Pay VOD wouldn't hurt either.


Agree. I think they did the right thing. The dual mode keeps everyone happy. Continuing to argue about DCR+ would have not likely gotten them anywhere and delayed the inevitable.


----------



## morac

SCSIRAID said:


> Looks like TiVo sold their soul to OCAP for the tuning resolver.....
> 
> http://fjallfoss.fcc.gov/prod/ecfs/retrieve.cgi?native_or_pdf=pdf&id_document=6519815501


The way I read that it sounds like current TiVo's wont support OCAP, but a new "TiVo DVR with OCAP would. I'm hoping I read that wrong.


----------



## dswallow

morac said:


> The way I read that it sounds like current TiVo's wont support OCAP, but a new "TiVo DVR with OCAP would.


That's correct.


----------



## davidtieman

I wish they could get these out sooner than 6 months from now. Cox here in Gainesville, Florida have added 5-6 new HD channels and are planning on a few more before the year end. I can't pick these up on my Tivo and really hate to go back to the cable company DVR. But i guess i can cancel my tivo service until then and live with the cable dvr if i have to. It realy would not bother me as much but one of the channels they messed with was HD Discovery Theater, one of my favorite HD channels.


----------



## yunlin12

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


----------



## morac

yunlin12 said:


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


Man that thing is bigger than I expected. It looks to be about the size of a cable mode. It also looks like it's going to need to be plugged into the wall.

Also it says that the dongles will need to be configured specifically for each cable plant. How smoothly do you think that will go? My guess, not very smooth.


----------



## PaulS

morac said:


> Man that thing is bigger than I expected. It looks to be about the size of a cable mode. It also looks like it's going to need to be plugged into the wall.


I'd bet dollars to donuts that the dongle design is a direct descendant of an existing cable modem design. Pop the ethernet section off the board, and you've already got all the rest of the ingredients on hand ready to go. This is further supported by the ridiculously short time it took them to get it into the labs for integration testing. Think about it, this is the cable industry, *NOTHING* happens this quickly.



morac said:


> Also it says that the dongles will need to be configured specifically for each cable plant. How smoothly do you think that will go? My guess, not very smooth.


Agreed. Look at the nightmare quite a few CableCARD installs go. I'd expect similar results with this device.


----------



## cr33p

Not sure if you guys saw this one yet
More details on the new Dongle "what a gay name anyways"

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


----------



## PaulS

One thing I'd hate to see is that this dongle be manufacturer specific. We know that Motorola is testing theirs out now. For all we know, that unit's only gonna work with Motorola head-ends. As a resident of a town that's supported by an SA head-end, I can only shudder at the prospect of having to wait for, and then attempt to successfully use, one of their boxes.

[butthead] "Cool! He said dongle!" [/butthead]


----------



## classicsat

They are, at minimum, using the tooling they had made for the DCT700.


----------



## lrhorer

vstone said:


> They'll just have to turn up the signal level out at the pole and replace any marginal signal splitters in the house with professional ones.


The CATV plant is engineered and all taps have fixed vaues. The signal cannot simply be "turned up" at the pole. Simply decreasing the size of a tap is not an answer, either. Doing so increases the through loss so that every customer further down the line will suffer lowered levels. How much lower depends on the old and new tap values. Dropping from a 32dB 4-way tap to a 29dB 4-way tap reduces the throughput by less than .03 dB, but dropping from a 14 dB 4-way to an 11 dB 4-way will drop the downstream signal by almost 3.5 dB. Going from an 11 dB 4-way to an 8 dB 4-way will kill the downstream signal completely.

Engineering and retrofitting a single transmission line can costs tens of thousands of dollars. Believe me, I've done it on several occasions, and I had to provide a great deal of justification to get it approved. Unless some new houses were built after the original feeder was built or the original engineer made a mistake - which is highly unlikely - it just won't happen.

All that said, depending on its design, the dongle would not produce any unliveable changes to the signal levels. If the dongle is an RF transmitter only, then a frequency duplexer can be used internally which would have almost no through loss. If it's a transciever, then it's not difficult to bluiid lt with no smaller than a 9dB directional coupler, which only drops the signal 1 dB. In the vast majority of installations, a 1 dB drop in signal level will not be problematical.


----------



## lrhorer

PaulS said:


> One thing I'd hate to see is that this dongle be manufacturer specific.


It has to be. Different manufacturer's systems are not compatible.



PaulS said:


> We know that Motorola is testing theirs out now. For all we know, that unit's only gonna work with Motorola head-ends.


With Motorola spec headends, yes.



PaulS said:


> As a resident of a town that's supported by an SA head-end, I can only shudder at the prospect of having to wait for, and then attempt to successfully use, one of their boxes.


Shudder or not, that's the situation.


----------



## lrhorer

PaulS said:


> I'd bet dollars to donuts that the dongle design is a direct descendant of an existing cable modem design.


Yep. RF-wise, it has to be.



PaulS said:


> Pop the ethernet section off the board, and you've already got all the rest of the ingredients on hand ready to go.


That's just another thing that gets me about this whole mess. A USB dongle is the least attractive means to handle this issue. Had they attacked it properly, no new device at all would have been required. A regular DOCSIS modem would do the trick. Indeed, for most Series II subscribers, their existing DOCSIS modem would work fine to carry both internet bound and SDV traffic with some firmware changes. Those subscribers without high speed internet would require a modem, but no hardware development at all would be required, and one device could serve multiple TiVos.


----------



## lrhorer

morac said:


> CableLabs is the research group founded by the cable providers.


CableLabs was not founded by the CATV companies. It was jointly founded by CATV manufacturers, television manufacturers, Hollywood, and the CATV companies.



morac said:


> So what you're saying is that the cable companies own research group came up with a simple method for 2-way communications as part of the cableCARD standard, but it was shot down in favor of OCAP?


No. OCAP has been proposed as part of OpenCable 2.0. Neither have been offocially implemented. OpenCable 1.0 specified two-way CableCards (and all CableCards are 2-way), but only contained specifications for unidirectional hosts.


----------



## lrhorer

mikeyts said:


> Actually I think that it's cool. I only wonder how dynamic the switch between "TiVo Mode" and "Cable Mode" will be, but I'd love to have a TiVo that I could switch temporarily to "Cable Mode" to use the subscription VOD channels, particularly now that some HD ones are starting to appear (my Cox system just added Starz On Demand HD). Access to IPPV and Pay VOD wouldn't hurt either.


Personally, I couldn't care less about VOD or iPPV. I have both available here on a STB and I had them available on the SA 8300HD. I never use them, and I wouldn't on a TiVo which had them, especially since the content could not be recorded. If it costs nothing and doesn't interfere with ordinary TiVo operations, then fine, but if it adds costs or interferes in any way with ordinary TiVo operations, then I don't want it.


----------



## vstone

lrhorer said:


> The CATV plant is engineered and all taps have fixed vaues. The signal cannot simply be "turned up" at the pole. Simply decreasing the size of a tap is not an answer, either. Doing so increases the through loss so that every customer further down the line will suffer lowered levels. How much lower depends on the old and new tap values. Dropping from a 32dB 4-way tap to a 29dB 4-way tap reduces the throughput by less than .03 dB, but dropping from a 14 dB 4-way to an 11 dB 4-way will drop the downstream signal by almost 3.5 dB. Going from an 11 dB 4-way to an 8 dB 4-way will kill the downstream signal completely.
> 
> Engineering and retrofitting a single transmission line can costs tens of thousands of dollars. Believe me, I've done it on several occasions, and I had to provide a great deal of justification to get it approved. Unless some new houses were built after the original feeder was built or the original engineer made a mistake - which is highly unlikely - it just won't happen.
> 
> All that said, depending on its design, the dongle would not produce any unliveable changes to the signal levels. If the dongle is an RF transmitter only, then a frequency duplexer can be used internally which would have almost no through loss. If it's a transciever, then it's not difficult to bluiid lt with no smaller than a 9dB directional coupler, which only drops the signal 1 dB. In the vast majority of installations, a 1 dB drop in signal level will not be problematical.


I guess I'll just have to take your word on this. All I know is that I had a signal level problem. The cable tech replaced all the splitters, even the cable comp. owned one where cable comes into the house. He wasn't satisfied and went out to the pole to adjust something. Our Internet connection at church was problematic and at the end of about 150 ft of coax. Another tech checked something on the pole, then said the system techs had to replace some pole equipment and it did affect other customers downstream. Apparently the cable comp. doesn't monitor for problems except as reported by the customers. That said, the increase in deployment of digital boxes is probably identifying problems in signal levels and the use of a dongle may identify more, requiring action.


----------



## vstone

It seems to me that cable modems are generally NOT sytem specific. They meet the DOCSIS spec and you can buy them (or at least could) at Best Buy and Circuit City). I've have three different cable modems and one of them was RCA. One was Motorola on our SA system. I presume SA makes cable modems, but I've never seen one. A little programmable, but lockable, firmware would make it relative easy to mass produce these things for multiple cable systems. Using the the ethernet port instead of the USB port would allow it to serve multiple Tivos (and presumably other devices). Somehow replacing our regular cable modem with a souped up one, as referenced above, would be a great idea, assuming its rreasonably hack proof.


----------



## DCIFRTHS

PaulS said:


> ... As a resident of a town that's supported by an SA head-end, I can only shudder at the prospect of having to wait for, and then attempt to successfully use, one of their boxes.





lrhorer said:


> Shudder or not, that's the situation.


I am also in a SA area... Why do you think that SA will take longer to engineer a solution? Is SA known for not "playing nice"?


----------



## Luke M

lrhorer said:


> It has to be. Different manufacturer's systems are not compatible.


It's a choice. The dongle could be as simple as a standard cable modem. But that would be a more complex development effort. The quick-and-dirty approach is to simply mimic a set top box.

So I would expect the dongles to be based on a set top box, not a cable modem.


----------



## PaulS

vstone said:


> It seems to me that cable modems are generally NOT sytem specific. They meet the DOCSIS spec and you can buy them (or at least could) at Best Buy and Circuit City). I've have three different cable modems and one of them was RCA. One was Motorola on our SA system. I presume SA makes cable modems, but I've never seen one. A little programmable, but lockable, firmware would make it relative easy to mass produce these things for multiple cable systems. Using the the ethernet port instead of the USB port would allow it to serve multiple Tivos (and presumably other devices). Somehow replacing our regular cable modem with a souped up one, as referenced above, would be a great idea, assuming its rreasonably hack proof.


I was going to post the same thing, but then thought about it for a minute. The interaction between a cable modem and a head-end are likely to be VASTLY different than the interaction between a host and a channel-switching fabric.

I wasn't aware that Motorola had such small, or cost reduced, STB designs already in the field. Now that I've seen the DCT-700, or whatever it's called, it's clear that this is probably the box the design of the "dongle" is based upon. Add a USB port, some USB control logic, and you're all set.

At least for one tuner. How they'd handle TWO different tuners with one piece of hardware remains to be seen.


----------



## PaulS

DCIFRTHS said:


> I am also in a SA area... Why do you think that SA will take longer to engineer a solution? Is SA known for not "playing nice"?


SA is known (at least to me, and watching various threads here and at AVS) to produce inferior gear, from both a hardware and software perspective. Motorola always seems to be more active and reactive to problems and solutions that need to be delivered.

Compare the DVRs that the two companies field. The Motorola, despite the remote control latency issue, appears to be generally well-liked. The SA, on the other hand, is nearly universally reviled and considered to be a steaming pile.

Compare the CableCARDs that each company fields. At the initial S3 and TiVoHD roll-outs, there were far fewer problems with Motorola cards than the comparable SA ones.

Things may change, now that SA is owned by Cisco, but I'd tend to doubt that.


----------



## terrible_towel

Hi there.. I didn't see it mentioned in this thread, but COX in Hampton Roads, VA (at least in Newport News) has started SDV with the 4 new HD channels from a few weeks ago.

I just wanted to add us to the list...

With FIOS on my street, I guess its good bye COX ...


----------



## morac

PaulS said:


> At least for one tuner. How they'd handle TWO different tuners with one piece of hardware remains to be seen.


It should be a non-issue since the tuners are actually in the TiVo, not the dongle. I would think that one transceiver should be all that's required to make multiple requests (one for each tuner).

Now the cable system has to be smart enough to know that the second request isn't replacing the first one, but is in addition to it, but since the cable provider's DVRs also contain 2 tuners this should not be an issue either.

The only potential hiccup I could see is where both tuners need to change at exactly the same time, but if implemented correctly this should also be a non-issue.


----------



## mikeyts

lrhorer said:


> Personally, I couldn't care less about VOD or iPPV. I have both available here on a STB and I had them available on the SA 8300HD. I never use them, and I wouldn't on a TiVo which had them, especially since the content could not be recorded. If it costs nothing and doesn't interfere with ordinary TiVo operations, then fine, but if it adds costs or interferes in any way with ordinary TiVo operations, then I don't want it.


Don't worry--they're not going to be implementing this on current model TiVos which physically lack the necessary transceiver for the OOB back-channel necessary to support OCAP. Conceivably it could be done with some version of "the dongle" but it seems highly unlikely.

Obviously, they're not gonna be doing this for you . I myself very rarely use VOD or IPPV; in the past couple of years I've only ever rented movies to try HD VOD and didn't find it a very satisfying experience. Every now and then I'll watch and like a recently launched premium cable series and use Subscription VOD to go back and watch all of the earlier episodes in order to catch up with the story. If VOD is ever improved to offer a more responsive interface (and better HD PQ--lots of "macroblocking" defects in fast action scenes in the couple of movies that I tried, _Shrek 2_ and _The Island_), it might be more appealing for me.

However, I've heard several TiVo users in this forum bemoan the lack of VOD and IPPV, and few who say that they lease a cable STB in addition to their TiVo so that they can use it, so there's definitely a market for it. Cable is dreaming up further OCAP-enabled interactive offerings so there's no telling whether they'll come up with some "must have" service at some point. For the moment, if they get this SDV tuning resolver out, I'll be satisfied with my Series 3.


----------



## mikeyts

morac said:


> It should be a non-issue since the tuners are actually in the TiVo, not the dongle. I would think that one transceiver should be all that's required to make multiple requests (one for each tuner).


Sheesh, people, could you give this a rest? They do not need a transceiver for each tuner any more than you need one cable modem for every web page that you're browsing simultaneously. They didn't need one freakin' CableCARD for every tuner and there are now single M-Cards operating in TiVo HDs doing decryption for both tuners simultaneously; that's an order-of-magnitude more difficult thing to do than handle the occasional change of channel, which almost never will be done simultaneously.


----------



## lrhorer

vstone said:


> It seems to me that cable modems are generally NOT sytem specific. They meet the DOCSIS spec and you can buy them (or at least could) at Best Buy and Circuit City).


That's true, but SDV is not DOCSIS, at least not with Scientific Atlanta's implementation. Under OpenCable 2.0, DOCSIS and separable security are convergent technologies, but OpenCable 2.0 has not been ratified.



vstone said:


> I presume SA makes cable modems, but I've never seen one.


'Not as far as I know.



vstone said:


> A little programmable, but lockable, firmware would make it relative easy to mass produce these things for multiple cable systems.


Nope. Unfortunately, not. I believe (but am not certain) the Motorola system is fully compatible with DOCSIS. Scientific Atlanta is not. I suspect C-Cor isn't, either. That said, they couldbe made to work with a DOCSIS modem, even though the systems are incompatible. It would require putting what is essentially a VPN endpoint on the DOCSIS modem and tying the VPN stream into the CATV servers.



vstone said:


> Using the the ethernet port instead of the USB port would allow it to serve multiple Tivos (and presumably other devices). Somehow replacing our regular cable modem with a souped up one, as referenced above, would be a great idea, assuming its rreasonably hack proof.


Amen.


----------



## lrhorer

mikeyts said:


> Sheesh, people, could you give this a rest? They do not need a transceiver for each tuner any more than you need one cable modem for every web page that you're browsing simultaneously. They didn't need one freakin' CableCARD for every tuner and there are now single M-Cards operating in TiVo HDs doing decryption for both tuners simultaneously; that's an order-of-magnitude more difficult thing to do than handle the occasional change of channel, which almost never will be done simultaneously.


It won't require one dongle per tuner. It will most certainly require one dongle per TiVo or any other receiver. I'm looking at a minimum of three.


----------



## lrhorer

mikeyts said:


> Don't worry--they're not going to be implementing this on current model TiVos which physically lack the necessary transceiver for the OOB back-channel necessary to support OCAP. Conceivably it could be done with some version of "the dongle" but it seems highly unlikely.


I'm aware of that, and I'm not worried about the the current versions of TiVo in this respect. I'm concerned about future versions of the TiVo.



mikeyts said:


> I myself very rarely use VOD or IPPV; in the past couple of years I've only ever rented movies to try HD VOD and didn't find it a very satisfying experience.


I had to support it when I worked for the CATV company, so I worked with both iPPV and VOD when I was with them, but VOD was far too much a PITA and the TiVo made searching the VOD streams a futile exercise. I've never seen anything on iPPV I wanted to purchase, even when I as an employee got a large discount on iPPV events.


----------



## lrhorer

PaulS said:


> Things may change, now that SA is owned by Cisco, but I'd tend to doubt that.


I don't know why you would doubt it. I think it is extremely likely it will get much worse.


----------



## lrhorer

Luke M said:


> It's a choice. The dongle could be as simple as a standard cable modem. But that would be a more complex development effort. The quick-and-dirty approach is to simply mimic a set top box.
> 
> So I would expect the dongles to be based on a set top box, not a cable modem.


No. The TiVo (or other receiver) has all the widgets which mimic the STB, except the transmitter and the resolver. The transmitter is a simple RF modulator essentially identical to that found in a cable modem (for Motorola, and similar for Scientific Atlanta). The resolver is just a small CPU similar to that found in both STBs and Modems. The dongle as a whole is much more nearly a modem than an STB.


----------



## PaulS

lrhorer said:


> I don't know why you would doubt it. I think it is extremely likely it will get much worse.


I was being generous.


----------



## PaulS

mikeyts said:


> Sheesh, people, could you give this a rest? They do not need a transceiver for each tuner any more than you need one cable modem for every web page that you're browsing simultaneously. They didn't need one freakin' CableCARD for every tuner and there are now single M-Cards operating in TiVo HDs doing decryption for both tuners simultaneously; that's an order-of-magnitude more difficult thing to do than handle the occasional change of channel, which almost never will be done simultaneously.


Oh, so you mean I can return one of the S-Cards that's in my S3 right now ? Didn't think so...

I'm not familiar with the exact details of the SDV implementations, but I am very familiar with the IP multicast semantics that CableLabs borrowed heavily from to draft the functionality. The dongle is going to have to represent multiple (probably two) logical entities in it's communcations upstream. Essentially, it's gonna have to behave like two separate boxes (or computers, in the IP multicast model) in one physical device. Were the SDV functions to be keyed to a physical ID (MAC address, or what have you), then they'd be up the creek from the get go...

Until we see what they have in store for the dongle, this is all speculation. To argue over unknown details is pointless.


----------



## lrhorer

PaulS said:


> I was going to post the same thing, but then thought about it for a minute. The interaction between a cable modem and a head-end are likely to be VASTLY different than the interaction between a host and a channel-switching fabric.


Well, yes, but the difference is a software protocol issue, not a hardware one. Motorola's SDV platform is compatible with DOCSIS and to many intents and purposes the DCT-700 is a specialized DOCSIS modem with a video section added. The dongle doesn't need a video section, though.



PaulS said:


> At least for one tuner. How they'd handle TWO different tuners with one piece of hardware remains to be seen.


That's trivial. The tuning resolver is a fairly dumb bit of hardware. All it does is provide layer I networking to the CATV headend. The host (or the host section of the DCT-700) handles the communications, and all it needs to be able to do is present two MAC addresses to the headend and speak independantly on both of them. This can be trivially handled in software.


----------



## lrhorer

PaulS said:


> The dongle is going to have to represent multiple (probably two) logical entities in it's communcations upstream.


True.



PaulS said:


> Essentially, it's gonna have to behave like two separate boxes (or computers, in the IP multicast model) in one physical device.


Well, no. It's just going to have to handle (not manage, the TiVo can do that) two independant data streams, but that's been SOP for years. Routers do it all the time.



PaulS said:


> Were the SDV functions to be keyed to a physical ID (MAC address, or what have you), then they'd be up the creek from the get go...


Not at all. First of all, spoofing two MAC addresses on a single interface is not difficult. Secondly, if the Dongle acts like a layer 2 switch, then it will simply pass on the MAC addresses of the CableCards in every packet. The network doesn't care whether the MAC addreses come from two different boxes, or one, as long as they are unique.



PaulS said:


> Until we see what they have in store for the dongle, this is all speculation. To argue over unknown details is pointless.


Well, we have enough details to make some predictions. OTOH, this whole engineering effort has been boneheaded and obtuse from the get-go, so who knows what kludge someone might stick into the mess. Making it work isn't difficult, however.


----------



## lrhorer

PaulS said:


> I was being generous.


Very, if you ask me.


----------



## lrhorer

DCIFRTHS said:


> I am also in a SA area... Why do you think that SA will take longer to engineer a solution? Is SA known for not "playing nice"?


In this respect (and since Cisco has taken them over), I don't know. In the past they haven't had problems working with other vendors - specifically Zenith and Pace, to my knowledge - to get third party hardware working with their platform. I do believe the SA standard is available for purchase, and they would be downright stupid to sell an implementation standard and not support it.


----------



## morac

mikeyts said:


> Sheesh, people, could you give this a rest? They do not need a transceiver for each tuner any more than you need one cable modem for every web page that you're browsing simultaneously.


Since you replied to my post I think you misunderstood my post. I was agreeing with you. The "one per tuner" was referring to the multiple requests (one request per tuner), not the number of transceivers (one).


----------



## mikeyts

PaulS said:


> Oh, so you mean I can return one of the S-Cards that's in my S3 right now ? Didn't think so...
> 
> I'm not familiar with the exact details of the SDV implementations, but I am very familiar with the IP multicast semantics that CableLabs borrowed heavily from to draft the functionality. The dongle is going to have to represent multiple (probably two) logical entities in it's communcations upstream. Essentially, it's gonna have to behave like two separate boxes (or computers, in the IP multicast model) in one physical device. Were the SDV functions to be keyed to a physical ID (MAC address, or what have you), then they'd be up the creek from the get go...
> 
> Until we see what they have in store for the dongle, this is all speculation. To argue over unknown details is pointless.


No you can't return one of the cards in your S3 right now, but TiVo has stated that they're working on making a single M-Card work in multi-stream mode on the S3. It was designed to support a single M-Card and they advertised that a single M-Card would work in it at every product show that they brought the thing to. Unfortunately, the M-Card spec wasn't finalized until after they shipped S3, so there was no way that they could make whatever final tweaks they needed to their implementation and get it certified in time, but they're trying to do it after the fact now. TiVo HD, on the other hand, launched already certified for M-Card and can use either a single M-Card for both tuners or two S-Cards, as TiVo S3 was supposed to, and people are using single M-Cards to serve both tuners now. Both SA and Motorola have introduced cable STBs which use single M-Cards for two-tuner DVR operation which are in use in the field now (the FCC forbids cable providers to buy any more leased STBs which work without CableCARD since July this year).

The other issue with replacing your two S-Cards with a single M-Card is that nothing compells your cable operator to do that. Nothing compells them to stock M-Cards at all except for their own needs for provisioning them in their mandatory CableCARD-enabled leased STBs. Even if they have one, they don't have to give you one, so once TiVo makes it work in S3, you're not guaranteed of being able to switch.

It _is_ useless to speculate as to exactly how the tuning resolver is going to work until it ships, but useless speculation as to how new features will work and what they'll cost is half of what we do here in these forums. It's my opinion (as someone who worked on firmware in networking devices for 15 years) that your speculation that it'd require two tranceivers to support SDV for two tuners is specious. For one thing, SDV is a technology that was intended to be (and is currently) supported by a downloadable app running in an OCAP platform and OCAP doesn't specify or permit multiple backward comm paths to the network.


----------



## PaulS

mikeyts said:


> No you can't return one of the cards in your S3 right now, but TiVo has stated that they're working on making a single M-Card work in multi-stream mode on the S3.


That's all fine and dandy, but from comments made by TiVo reps on this very forum, it's not looking very good for multi-stream support on M-Cards on the S3. Not sure if it's a hardware or driver issue, or TiVo having problems with the card component supplier, but TiVoStephen didn't seem too optomistic about the chances of getting it supported.



mikeyts said:


> It _is_ useless to speculate as to exactly how the tuning resolver is going to work until it ships, but useless speculation as to how new features will work and what they'll cost is half of what we do here in these forums. It's my opinion (as someone who worked on firmware in networking devices for 15 years) that your speculation that it'd require two tranceivers to support SDV for two tuners is specious. For one thing, SDV is a technology that was intended to be (and is currently) supported by a downloadable app running in an OCAP platform and OCAP doesn't specify or permit multiple backward comm paths to the network.


I also have exactly 15 years worth of development firmware for both routers and switches, so I feel I have a DAMN good idea of exactly what goes on under the covers. So, you can lose the uppity condescending tone, for starters...

I never said that they'd need two separate transceivers in the dongle. I said they'd need to behave like there were two logical entities in the box. Not the same. MAC spoofing is certainly a simple thing to accomplish, but the question is whether of not the head-end and switching fabric can deal with it.


----------



## PaulS

lrhorer said:


> Well, yes, but the difference is a software protocol issue, not a hardware one. Motorola's SDV platform is compatible with DOCSIS and to many intents and purposes the DCT-700 is a specialized DOCSIS modem with a video section added. The dongle doesn't need a video section, though.
> 
> That's trivial. The tuning resolver is a fairly dumb bit of hardware. All it does is provide layer I networking to the CATV headend. The host (or the host section of the DCT-700) handles the communications, and all it needs to be able to do is present two MAC addresses to the headend and speak independantly on both of them. This can be trivially handled in software.


Then it definitely sounds like a firmware upgrade gets the job done. I wonder why it even took them this long to get the solution finalized... Then again, it doesn't surprise me, this is CableLabs afterall.

As a funny aside, with all the Cisco talk lately, it gets me to remembering way back when, when I was a little co-op student working for Cabletron back in the day, before the router market had really matured. The rumor mill was abuzz that we were gonna buy this small outfit from California called Cisco. It obviously never happened, Cisco went on to rule the rule, Cabletron went down in flames with all sorts of financial irregularities and cooking of books, and the rest is history...


----------



## mikeyts

PaulS said:


> That's all fine and dandy, but from comments made by TiVo reps on this very forum, it's not looking very good for multi-stream support on M-Cards on the S3. Not sure if it's a hardware or driver issue, but TiVoStephen didn't seem too optomistic about the chances of getting it supported.


I don't know what the issues are, but I know that they intended for it to support M-Cards in multi-stream mode from day one and it was a bullet-point in all of their old presentations for the product. Maybe there was some subtle change in hardware requirements made to the M-Card spec after they shipped S3. My point is that the M-Card spec is there and supports decryption and re-encryption of six simultaneous service streams for a single device that it's installed in. One M-Card is currently supporting two tuners on a number of products, including TiVo HD, and could be used to support even more tuners in future products. To my mind, there's little reason the tuning resolver could not support multiple tuners with a single physical path of communication to the network.

(EDIT: The way that one M-Card supports multiple streams is detailed in Multi-Stream CableCARD Interface specification. CableLabs made changes to their site last week making the path to this document a lot harder to find now).


> I also have exactly 15 years worth of development firmware for both routers and switches, so I feel I have a DAMN good idea of exactly what goes on under the covers. So, you can lose the uppity condescending tone, for starters...
> 
> I never said that they'd need two separate transceivers in the dongle. I said they'd need to behave like there were two logical entities in the box. Not the same. MAC spoofing is certainly a simple thing to accomplish, but the question is whether of not the head-end and switching fabric can deal with it.


Glad to know that you know where you're coming from too. I was not trying to be snooty, just letting you know from whence my opinion comes. Given that you have some similar experience, I'm a little surprised that you'd think that there'd be any difficulty supporting this application for two tuners using a single communications path back to the network. Given my experience with networking design the idea that a single device would need more than one physical path back to the network to make requests for tuning information for multiple tuners seems ludicrous. We obviously have very different conceptions of the situation. To my mind, tuning resolution is an application level service offered to a host device, not to one or more physical tuners.


----------



## PaulS

mikeyts said:


> Glad to know that you know where you're coming from too. I was not trying to be snooty, just letting you know from whence my opinion comes.


No sweat.



mikeyts said:


> Given that you have some similar experience, I'm a little surprised that you'd think that there'd be any difficulty supporting this application for two tuners using a single communications path back to the network. Given my experience with networking design the idea that a single device would need more than one physical path back to the network to make requests for tuning information for multiple tuners seems ludicrous. We obviously have very different conceptions of the situation. To my mind, tuning resolution is an application level service offered to a host device, not to one or more physical tuners.


The concept and application is simple, and has been accomplished every day without even thinking about it for years and years. In the data world.

However, this is the video world, ruled by the NCTA, CableLabs, and whatever media lobbyists are cutting the checks this week. These guys could screw up a free lunch. It wouldn't surprise me at all if the cable guys tried to cook up their own flavor of multicast video service and couldn't get it to fly, so they went back to the IGMP RFCs with their crayons and substituted "video" for "data" and called it a day. These guys are NOT rocket scientists.


----------



## lrhorer

vstone said:


> I guess I'll just have to take your word on this. All I know is that I had a signal level problem. The cable tech replaced all the splitters, even the cable comp. owned one where cable comes into the house. He wasn't satisfied and went out to the pole to adjust something.


Unless he replaced a tap, directional coupler, a trap, or some other passive device one for one, then (unless he was committing a serious breech of engineering rules), what he did was balance the amplifier which feeds your neighborhood (or one of the amps which feeds it). If the tilt or gain of an amp is out of kilter, then there are gain and tilt controls to bring the amp back into spec. The point is the output levels do have a particular specification, and it is improper to ignore that specification in order to get the consumer "a little better signal". Soing so only makes things worse.



vstone said:


> Our Internet connection at church was problematic and at the end of about 150 ft of coax. Another tech checked something on the pole, then said the system techs had to replace some pole equipment and it did affect other customers downstream. Apparently the cable comp. doesn't monitor for problems except as reported by the customers.


There are addressible devices, but they cost well over $500 each, and putting addressible devices at each tap location can also triple the number of power supplies at over $4000 each. A typical CATV plant may have 50,000 or more subsrcriber taps and up tp 100 power supplies, and is generally speaking pretty stable. Do the math.[/QUOTE]



vstone said:


> That said, the increase in deployment of digital boxes is probably identifying problems in signal levels.


It is. The STBs and DVRs themselves are addressible and most can report something about their input levels. There is most certainly a report if one stops talking.


----------



## mel.simmons

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


----------



## bicker

I truly do NOT want them introducing the dongle until it works and works reliably.


----------



## mikeyts

Wow. The BigBandNetworks SDV system on SA networks is a wildly popular combo. Of course, TWC has the largest SDV deployment by far and they're primarily SA-based. In that chart, 15 TWC systems, 3 Cox, 2 Comcast, 1 Charter, 1 Cablevision and 1 Videotron.

So far, we've heard about development of the Motorola dongle though there are only 2 Moto networks out there using SDV.

It also says that TWC San Diego is using SDV (SA Network, SA SDV system--I, luckily so far, am on Cox). There've been some complaints about a few channels not being tunable via CableCARD lately, but people thought that they were actually there on the wire, just not included in the CC map. People have been told that there would be no new HD channels for CableCARD users by CSRs.


bicker said:


> I truly do NOT want them introducing the dongle until it works and works reliably.


When has cable ever waited until a piece of equipment worked reliably before rolling it out?  (at cable, not you, bicker)


----------



## mikeyts

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.


I don't think that the deployment of SDV has been very rapid at all. Comcast, the largest MSO in the nation by nearly a factor of two, has only two systems using SDV, both labelled "Technology Trial". TWC (the second largest) is being pretty aggressive, but at this rate it'll take them more than a year to cover their entire system. In the two months since the last snapshot taken by that site only 3 systems were added. Looking at that list, it could take a couple of years before we see ubiquitous use of SDV. Of course, if D*'s copious addition of HD channels is effective, the pace could quicken.

Of course, none of this is any consolation to people in the TWC Austin and TWC Oceanic systems, where massive numbers of channels are being presented in SDV, including many that they had access to via CableCARD previously. Tuning Resolver development and deployment should proceed with all deliberate speed (before Cox San Diego can add the Sci Fi channel as SDV, which will cheese me off massively ).


----------



## moyekj

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


 Looks to be a fairly complete list which jives with the informal list being kept here. One clarification is even though some markets are not yet deploying SDV, they are already denying channels to CableCard users in anticipation of SDV deployment (the premise being don't give the customer some newer HD channels and then yank them away in a few months). That is the case for Cox Orange County and I believe a few other Cox markets not already on the list.


----------



## bicker

mikeyts said:


> When has cable ever waited until a piece of equipment worked reliably before rolling it out?  (at cable, not you, bicker)


Well, let's put it this way.... surely they should wait AT LEAST until it is reliable to *their *standards, if not *ours*. Surely, they shouldn't release it *earlier* than *their *standards would dictate! 

Eh?


----------



## JoeSchueller

mikeyts said:


> I don't think that the deployment of SDV has been very rapid at all...
> 
> ...Tuning Resolver development and deployment should proceed with all deliberate speed (before Cox San Diego can add the Sci Fi channel as SDV, which will cheese me off massively ).


That's the thing Mike, when it happens to you, suddenly it feels a LOT more urgent.


----------



## mikeyts

moyekj said:


> Looks to be a fairly complete list which jives with the informal list being kept here. One clarification is even though some markets are not yet deploying SDV, they are already denying channels to CableCard users in anticipation of SDV deployment (the premise being don't give the customer some newer HD channels and then yank them away in a few months). That is the case for Cox Orange County and I believe a few other Cox markets not already on the list.


Cox San Diego County has announced a roll-out of 13 new HD channels to a couple of southern areas in mid-December and to most of the rest of the county in mid-January; we'll see whether they fail to add them to the CableCARD mapping. What's keeping them most busy right now is an upgrade from 750MHz to 1GHz bandwidth, so they don't really need to add those channels as SDV, since they only eat up a minor fraction of their added capacity.

At the bottom of that announcement that say:


> Listed HD networks will soon be available to customers...with minimum of Cox Standard Cable and HD service...Cox High Definition (HD) service requires a 1080p, 1080i or 720p-capable, HD-ready TV, a separate subscription to Cox Cable TV (starting at $12.95/mo.) and rental of an HD digital receiver ($5.25/mo.) *or CableCard*.


It doesn't matter much to me either way. I could give a lesser damn about any of those 13 channels. There are a good five or six HD channels that I already have that I rarely watch: A&E HD, National Geophraphic HD, TBS HD, MOJO, HD Theater, etc, etc--they could take any of them away and I wouldn't notice. Bring on Sci Fi HD!


----------



## moyekj

mikeyts said:


> Cox San Diego County has announced a roll-out of 13 new HD channels to a couple of southern areas in mid-December and to most of the rest of the county in mid-January; we'll see whether they fail to add them to the CableCARD mapping. What's keeping them most busy right now is an upgrade from 750MHz to 1GHz bandwidth, so they don't really need to add those channels as SDV, since they only eat up a minor fraction of their added capacity.


 The 750MHz->1GHz upgrades here are about half way complete in Orange County and there are already new HD channels broadcasting on RF channels > 750MHz that are only available to cities where the upgrades have been completed - they actually have a web page detailing which cities are expected to be completed when. So even though theoretically with the bandwidth upgrades SDV is not necessary to accommodate these new HD channels, looks like they have aggressive plans for SDV anyway. As I mentioned before, the entire digital simulcast channels are slated for SDV and CableCard customers will thus revert back to analog versions once deployment begins. That plus any digital channel additions from here on out will be under SDV umbrella supposedly. Perhaps they are saving the bandwidth for many more future HD channels (to keep pace with D*) as well as for much higher broadband speeds.


----------



## Luke M

moyekj said:


> The 750MHz->1GHz upgrades here are about half way complete in Orange County and there are already new HD channels broadcasting on RF channels > 750MHz that are only available to cities where the upgrades have been completed - they actually have a web page detailing which cities are expected to be completed when. So even though theoretically with the bandwidth upgrades SDV is not necessary to accommodate these new HD channels, looks like they have aggressive plans for SDV anyway. As I mentioned before, the entire digital simulcast channels are slated for SDV and CableCard customers will thus revert back to analog versions once deployment begins. That plus any digital channel additions from here on out will be under SDV umbrella supposedly. Perhaps they are saving the bandwidth for many more future HD channels (to keep pace with D*) as well as for much higher broadband speeds.


Sound like even without switched video, CableCard users on Cox will be screwed because any new stuff above 870Mhz will be inaccessible.


----------



## morac

mikeyts said:


> Bring on Sci Fi HD!


:up:

That and Discovery HD and I'd be happy. It's kind of sad when I go to find HD stuff to watch and there's nothing good on so I end up watching SD.


----------



## XBR

moyekj said:


> Looks to be a fairly complete list which jives with the informal list being kept here. One clarification is even though some markets are not yet deploying SDV, they are already denying channels to CableCard users in anticipation of SDV deployment (the premise being don't give the customer some newer HD channels and then yank them away in a few months). That is the case for Cox Orange County and I believe a few other Cox markets not already on the list.


Has Cox publicly defined what channels have been placed into the switched tier in Northern Virginia and are any of them HD? I've read they were going to use SDV to "free up space for more high-definition content," so of course it would suck if said HD content were itself switched--at least until we get the dongle.

I'm in the same market as you and there was a lag between the first expansion in the HD channel lineup several months ago between where I'm at in Coto de Caza and some friends in Ladera Ranch. Ladera had the channels at first release, so I chalked it up to them being a new(er) community. I ended up getting those channels right about the time they expanded the HD lineup again; when I called both Cox sales and tech support about this, they couldn't even spell SDV, but they assured me that it was due to a "re-provisioning" effort going on and that I would ultimately receive those HD channels. We'll see.


----------



## moyekj

XBR said:


> Has Cox publicly defined what channels have been placed into the switched tier in Northern Virginia and are any of them HD? I've read they were going to use SDV to "free up space for more high-definition content," so of course it would suck if said HD content were itself switched--at least until we get the dongle.


 No nothing official AFAIK. 2nd tier CSRs seem to know about it - the one I talked to even knew about SDV and claimed to have an internal email about it. From what I hear in local forums CableCard customers are supposed to be getting an email sometime soon about it but I haven't got anything. Note that with my PC QAM tuner I can see which frequencies the newer channels are on but they are not mapped in my Tivo channel map so I can't tune them - I think this is intentional by Cox. No channels that I care about yet fortunately... However channels < 100 switching back to analog will be a bummer: even for those only USA & SciFi are the ones I watch.


----------



## mikeyts

Luke M said:


> Sound like even without switched video, CableCard users on Cox will be screwed because any new stuff above 870Mhz will be inaccessible.


I don't think that they need to put television programming above 870MHz; they need quite a bit of bandwidth for telephone and telecomm.


----------



## moyekj

mikeyts said:


> I don't think that they need to put television programming above 870MHz; they need quite a bit of bandwidth for telephone and telecomm.


 This article mentions some possible future plans of dedicating 870MHz-1GHz to mpeg4:
http://www.onetrak.com/ShowArticle.aspx?ID=2870


Chris Bowick said:


> Elsewhere, Cox also is eying the video bandwidth savings using MPEG-4. While the compression codec won't be accessible to homes with older digital set-top boxes, MPEG-4 "plays beautifully in the 850 to 1 Gigahertz realm," he noted.


Article also sums up future long term plans (from now to 2010):
# scale back the analog channel count from 74 to 68
# increase standard definition channels from 110 to 200-plus
# raise HD channels from just 8 in 2006 to 100-plus
# boost data bandwidth to 25 Megabits per second downstream, 4 Mbps upstream.

4 Mbps upstream would be nice for my Slingbox...


----------



## snowbunny

I was somewhat heartened by the fact that AT&T used its uverse service to show the Dallas - Green Bay NFL network game on television. They showed it to state legislature members. However, it's still not available in my area, nor is Verizon or any other cable company.

The S2 is still going (barely) and it's a huge relief to have MRV back, but if I need to replace the S2, I have no idea what I'd do. I honestly can't see buying a TiVo HD given the massive use of SDV in TW's Austin market. I think I'd just get the TW DVR and live with it until the SDV issue is sorted -- if ever.


----------



## Luke M

mikeyts said:


> I don't think that they need to put television programming above 870MHz; they need quite a bit of bandwidth for telephone and telecomm.


Not really, IMHO. The upstream would become the limiting factor before you came close to using that much downstream bandwidth for data.


----------



## mikeyts

Luke M said:


> Not really, IMHO. The upstream would become the limiting factor before you came close to using that much downstream bandwidth for data.


There are other uses that they can make of it if CableCARD devices aren't required to tune that high.

On a related note, according to this Engadget blurb, they're also increasing standard data bandwidth up and down, continuing to trim the analog channel allocation and adding equipment to reduce the local node size from 650 to 250 customers average (apparently 250 is some kind of magic number for SDV).


----------



## CharlesH

mikeyts said:


> I don't think that they need to put television programming above 870MHz; they need quite a bit of bandwidth for telephone and telecomm.


With the tuner resolver apparently dealing with the SDV issue, do you think they will pass up another opportunity to mess up cable card users? I realize that that there are legitimate reasons for SDV and putting new content on MP4 in the above-870MHz range, but the side-benefit of pushing people to their proprietary set-top boxes must be irresistible.


----------



## Luke M

mikeyts said:


> There are other uses that they can make of it if CableCARD devices aren't required to tune that high.


Sure, they can deploy set top boxes with 1Ghz tuners. And the CableCard spec can be revised, but that won't help existing devices.

It gives them room to add another tier of HD channels, when and if they need to, without having to dump analog.


----------



## dr.greghouse

mikeyts said:


> There are other uses that they can make of it if CableCARD devices aren't required to tune that high.
> 
> Why can't CableCards decrypt the upper frequencies? I thought the CableCard only decrypts a digital stream after it has been digitized by the tuner A/D. As long as the tuner can operate at the high frequency, isn't a decryptor a decryptor? Hope this hasn't already been asked...


----------



## mikeyts

dr.greghouse said:


> mikeyts said:
> 
> 
> 
> There are other uses that they can make of it if CableCARD devices aren't required to tune that high.
> 
> Why can't CableCards decrypt the upper frequencies? I thought the CableCard only decrypts a digital stream after it has been digitized by the tuner A/D. As long as the tuner can operate at the high frequency, isn't a decryptor a decryptor? Hope this hasn't already been asked...
Click to expand...

You're right--CableCARDs are not tuners and could be used to decrypt streams carried on higher frequencies. However, the OpenCable Host Device 2.0 Core Functional Requirements only require the host to be able to tune inband frequencies between 54 and 864 MHz. The range can be greater, but it's optional. It seems improbable that any UDCR equipment on the market is capable of tuning up to 994MHz., but it's possible.


----------



## dswallow

dr.greghouse said:


> Why can't CableCards decrypt the upper frequencies? I thought the CableCard only decrypts a digital stream after it has been digitized by the tuner A/D. As long as the tuner can operate at the high frequency, isn't a decryptor a decryptor? Hope this hasn't already been asked...


CableCARDS can decrypt any tuned demodulated signal; the problem is the standard for the host device doesn't require the host device to be able to tune to those higher frequencies.


----------



## dr.greghouse

Ahh. Thank you for the info and link. 864 MHz looks like the cutoff.


----------



## mikeyts

dr.greghouse said:


> Ahh. Thank you for the info and link. 864 MHz looks like the cutoff.


864 MHz is the offset of the last block of 6 MHz in 870. From 54 MHz through 864 MHz is still 136 6 MHz slots, enough for 272 HD channels at 19 Mbps each, packed two to a stream (of course they won't use it that way, but we can dream ). Downstream DOCSIS channels can inhabit the low GHz range with standard cable modems, so they can utilize that upper 130 MHz of capacity for data and telephony, moving some or all of that out of the 54 MHz-864 MHz range, making space for more "plug-and-play" video channels.

Bring on 25/4 Mbps as a standard for cable data service and bring on fat, luscious high def downloads from Amazon Unbox and elsewhere!


----------



## djones18

Cox yesterday, activated 11 new HD channels in Fairfax County, VA. Here is their headline:
----------------------------------------------
Effective immediately, Cox now offers the following new high-definition channels:

- CNN HD (708)
- Versus/Golf HD (711)
- TBS HD (722)
- Food Network HD (723)
- HGTV HD (724)
- TLC HD (725)
- Discovery HD (727)
- History Channel HD (728)
- The Science Channel HD (729)
- Animal Planet HD (730)
- NHL Network HD (731) 

Televisions and other consumer owned devices equipped with a CableCARD may require a digital set top receiver in order to receive all programming options offered by Cox Digital Cable.

---------------------------------------------
Inference is these are all SDV. Can any of you TIVO HD/Series 3 owners in Fairfax County, Virginia confirm you are not receiving these channels?


----------



## mikeyts

I like the way that they say "may require a digital set top receiver", as though there was some chance that a CableCARD device might currently tune SDV channels without one .


----------



## MichaelK

In response to someone's comment that cablelabs if funded by the cable company's ...



lrhorer said:


> CableLabs was not founded by the CATV companies. It was jointly founded by CATV manufacturers, television manufacturers, Hollywood, and the CATV companies.
> 
> ....


sorry to drift off topic but I cant seem to let this go for some reason (I know I know I have issues-LOL)

Maybe it WAS open to all at one point but that no longer seems to be the case-

from cablelabs own website:



> CableLabs Membership
> To be a member of CableLabs, a company must be a cable television system operator (as defined by the 1984 Cable Act). A cable operator, as defined by the '84 Cable Act, is a person or persons who provide(s) video programming using closed transmission paths and uses public rights-of-way. This definition does not include open video systems, MMDS (multi-channel multipoint distribution systems), or DBS (direct broadcast satellite).


the list of member company's is found here:

http://www.cablelabs.com/about/companies/

I am NOT very knowledgable about the subject but I dont see any hollywood players, cable manufactureres (surely moto and SA would be on the list if allowed) and no phone company's (i'd think verizon would surely wont to join so they could have some say in the standards go- no?)

So how is cablelabs not funded by the cable company's exactly?

I guess beyond dues from the above players (which I think are assessed as a percent of revenue or perhaps as a surcharge per customer)- there are some testing or licensing fees paid by manufactures to get stuff certified- but seems to me the people making the decisions are clearly only cable company's.

Or am I missing something?

Now that I think about it - I think you are confusing cablelabs with the NCTA. The NCTA I believe DOES have hollywood and equipment makers in the mix. And if I recall even a phone compnay or 2 that were allowed in before the NCTA decided to ban telco's.

I seem to recall that cablelab's (I think it had a differnt name back then?) was initially a part of NCTA but at some point it got spun off and became the monopolistic entity that it is today.


----------



## hokiethang

djones18 said:


> Cox yesterday, activated 11 new HD channels in Fairfax County, VA. Here is their headline:
> ----------------------------------------------
> Effective immediately, Cox now offers the following new high-definition channels:
> 
> - CNN HD (708)
> - Versus/Golf HD (711)
> - TBS HD (722)
> - Food Network HD (723)
> - HGTV HD (724)
> - TLC HD (725)
> - Discovery HD (727)
> - History Channel HD (728)
> - The Science Channel HD (729)
> - Animal Planet HD (730)
> - NHL Network HD (731)
> 
> Televisions and other consumer owned devices equipped with a CableCARD may require a digital set top receiver in order to receive all programming options offered by Cox Digital Cable.
> 
> ---------------------------------------------
> Inference is these are all SDV. Can any of you TIVO HD/Series 3 owners in Fairfax County, Virginia confirm you are not receiving these channels?


Just checked, in Herndon, and my TivoHD doesn't even know the channels exist. My guess is they haven't updated the CC Map for them :-(


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## mikeyts

hokiethang said:


> Just checked, in Herndon, and my TivoHD doesn't even know the channels exist. My guess is they haven't updated the CC Map for them :-(


If they're being presented as SDV services, as that notice from Cox strongly suggests, they're not gonna update the CableCARD maps for them. Good luck. At least they don't include Sci Fi HD, which is about the only new HD channel I've heard of that being deprived of through the use of SDV will truly piss me off.


----------



## mel.simmons

SDV has become a problem for TiVo owners. However TiVo could become a big problem for SDV.

SDV is a business strategy of over-selling product, in expectation that not every customer will show up to buy. It's a lot like the airlines overbooking a flight, assuming that many of those with reservations will not actually show up for the flight. The cable company is offering more channels than they can deliver simultaneously, assuming that not all channels will be requested at the same moment. And that will usually, but not always, be true.

The only statistical study of SDV that I have found on-line (http://www.bigbandnet.com/index.php/tech_whitepaper_statswb.html) claims a large "efficiency" advantage of SDV, that is, the average number of QAM streams used by SDV is significantly less than the number of channels offered on SDV. The author's explanation is that there are a few channels that many people watch, and many channels that are very seldom watched (a Zipf distribution, or a "long tail" effect). However in their plots of the data collected in two experiments, the more important effect is that many set-top boxes were off a lot of the time. Thus, the most frequently watched channel was "off".

However TiVo does not have an off button. It's always watching a channel, and always filling its 30 minute buffer for our instant gratification when we want to skip back and re-run something from live TV. Actually most TiVo's are now watching two different channels, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. TiVo does not know if the TV monitor is on or not, or if anyone is in the room or not. Thus a TiVo will create a much higher average demand on an SDV service than an average human viewer. If a large portion of the households on an SDV node have TiVo (or a similar technology), the statistical model of SDV will fail.

What happens when the statistical gamble of SDV goes bad? Instead of getting the channel they are requesting, viewers get blocked. Sort of like being bumped from an over-sold airline flight. So TiVo might be trying to record some show from an alternative HBO feed, but it won't be able to get the channel when it needs to, and unless some new protocol gives TiVo appropriate feedback, it won't even know that it can't record your show.


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## classicsat

I'd suspect, TiVo will have a mode that will, when done with a recording, tell the headend to release the channel, if needed.


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## dswallow

classicsat said:


> I'd suspect, TiVo will have a mode that will, when done with a recording, tell the headend to release the channel, if needed.


Suggestions don't usually record continuously, though certainly there are such times that does happen. But the 30-minute buffer recording will affect how channel demand from SDV occurs since there's really no current "stop recording anything including the buffers" state for TiVo receivers. Standby mode could be used as one way of doing this, but of all the people I know using TiVo, I know no one who goes to the trouble of using standby mode, so statistically I'm not sure that'll help much.

The receiver does keep track of the last user interaction that occurred, so they may implement some sort of longer term stop-recording-any-buffers mode after sufficient time passes without user input... 6 or 12 hours, for instance. Much like happens now with cable's set-top boxes and how they spin down the hard drive after some extended inactivity.


----------



## bicker

Perhaps one of the conditions associated with the agreement that resulted in the tuning resolver was that TiVo suggestions would be limited to non-SDV sources.


----------



## ah30k

mel.simmons said:


> What happens when the statistical gamble of SDV goes bad? Instead of getting the channel they are requesting, viewers get blocked. Sort of like being bumped from an over-sold airline flight.


People get bumped all of the time. It is a relatively high probability. It should be more analogous to not getting a land-line telephone call through which is very unlikely. Also, if I define a node to be 300 tuners and have 300 channels available, I can use SDV to offer an unlimited number of SDV video streams with 100% probability of success.


----------



## mel.simmons

ah30k said:


> People get bumped all of the time. It is a relatively high probability. It should be more analogous to not getting a land-line telephone call through which is very unlikely. Also, if I define a node to be 300 tuners and have 300 channels available, I can use SDV to offer an unlimited number of SDV video streams with 100% probability of success.


Yes, your suggestion is one way that SDV technology could be used. However that is not the economic model that motivates the cable companies. The values used in one of the experiments I cited included
334 set-top boxes in a node,
100 QAM streams, and
169 programs
so the potential for blocking was very real. If the cable companies had to reduce the number of set-top boxes per node to about 100, their costs would go up significantly. They don't like that.


----------



## ah30k

mel.simmons said:


> so the potential for blocking was very real.


On what do you base your suggestion that the potential is very real. Do you have any usage statistics or just a gut feel. I have seen real data suggesting that the tail of watched channels drops very quickly.

The http://www.motorola.com/mot/doc/6/6578_MotDoc.pdf white paper shows a generic version of the statistics graph. I don't have a more detailed version handy that is able to be posted on the internet.


----------



## rdowty

Does anybody know if Tulsa, OK has or is planning on rolling out SDV anytime soon? I'm just about to jump back onto a TiVo for the first time in about four years now the the HD is around $250.


----------



## mikeyts

I suspect that SDV schemes use a channel "lease" model, where the terminal asks for information for tuning a channel and the system returns something like "Requested channel XXX is in a transport stream on a QAM 256 carrier at frequency YYY as program PPP, guaranteed for for 10,800 seconds". So the terminal starts a timer and 3 hours later, if the tuner hasn't been tuned to something else, stops buffering the channel if it's a non-viewed tuner or if it is viewed, puts up a pop-up asking the user whether he wishes to continue watching, and if he responds, sends a request to renew. If the tuner is still in use recording, it automatically renews. If it doesn't renew, the network automatically rescinds the lease and decrements the channel's use-count, relinquishing the bandwidth for re-use when the count falls to zero.

Since the "are you still watching?" prompt is a bit awkward, the network should probably always make a lease granted that ends in the middle of primetime extended through the end of primetime.


----------



## bicker

The details of the leasing scheme is explained either earlier in the thread or in linked references earlier in the thread.


----------



## mikeyts

bicker said:


> The details of the leasing scheme is explained either earlier in the thread or in linked references earlier in the thread.


We have discussed the concept of leasing channels somewhere in these forums, though I'm not sure that it was in this thread. Of course, it's all still speculation, since we don't have specifications of any of the SDV systems in use.


----------



## Luke M

mel.simmons said:


> Thus a TiVo will create a much higher average demand on an SDV service than an average human viewer.


Note that it isn't average demand that matters, but peak demand. A box which is tuned to a switched channel at 3AM isn't a problem, since the bandwidth would otherwise be wasted.


----------



## morac

ah30k said:


> People get bumped all of the time. It is a relatively high probability. It should be more analogous to not getting a land-line telephone call through which is very unlikely.


Actually back in the day when most people used dial up modems, this started to become a problem because people would tie up the phones lines for hours or even days at a time.

That's the problem when a system isn't used the way it was designed to be used. SDV was designed to be used by humans who don't watch TV 24 hours a day. A TiVo basically does this and watches 2 channels at once to boot.


----------



## morac

Luke M said:


> Note that it isn't average demand that matters, but peak demand. A box which is tuned to a switched channel at 3AM isn't a problem, since the bandwidth would otherwise be wasted.


There's nothing stopping the box from sitting on a switched channel during a high peak demand time. If there are a bunch of TiVo's on a node and they are all tuned to a different SDV channel sometime during the day, the SDV channel pool could run out come prime-time even though no one is watching.

I would like to think that the tunable SDV frequencies could be adjusted to take into account high demand. For example borrowing an extra "channel" normally used for VOD and temporarily reassigning it for SDV. I'm not sure if that's possible with the current implementation though.


----------



## mikeyts

morac said:


> SDV was designed to be used by humans who don't watch TV 24 hours a day. A TiVo basically does this and watches 2 channels at once to boot.


_Humans_ don't watch television 24 hours a day, so if you take steps that prevent TiVo from doing it it won't affect humans.

Note that leased Cable DVRs are nearly as bad as TiVo; you can place them in a standby state that TiVo no longer seems to support, and some firmware will automatically stop buffering the non-viewed tuner if it's not used for a recording for a few hours to save wear and tear on the HDAs, but many people aren't going to bother to turn on standby mode.

Not to worry--use of bandwidth for channels tuned only by unviewed tuners can and will be remedied by schemes like channel leasing as I described a couple of posts back. SDV will work.


----------



## morac

mikeyts said:


> Not to worry--use of bandwidth for channels tuned only by unviewed tuners can and will be remedied by schemes like channel leasing as I described a couple of posts back. SDV will work.


The thing about leasing schemes for always connected/on devices is that there is normally one lease per device. For example, I'm not using my cable modem 24 hours a day, but when I go to use it I'm guaranteed to get an ip address from the DHCP server because there is enough ip addresses for all the modems in my area to be connected at the same time.

What you are talking about is a scheme where if a device is determined to not be in use, it's lease is revoked. This works fine until someone tunes a SDV channel and someone else who may be watching a channel but hasn't interacted with his TiVo for a while finds his lease revoked and he's staring at a black screen.

What it really comes down to, how much legroom the cable companies are willing to give when it comes to the amount of bandwidth they assign to SDV.

I'll give a good example. I used to work at a company where we all used Rational products on a server. The company paid for 30 licenses, figuring that there wouldn't be more than 30 people working with Rational at one time. There were more than 30 people at the company. Well it wasn't long before we started getting "out of license" errors when trying to use the software, even with a 60 minute lease timeout. It was obvious to everyone that more licenses were needed. Everyone except management who suggested that if we ran into this issue to go find someone with a lease who wasn't using the software and ask them to release their license. Needless to say productivity wasn't especially high as a result of this.


----------



## dswallow

The odds may still work out OK as suggestions are generally recorded based on viewing habits and there's still a reasonable chance someone else needs the same station... might even be several other TiVo users on the node needing it for a suggestion.


----------



## morac

dswallow said:


> The odds may still work out OK as suggestions are generally recorded based on viewing habits and there's still a reasonable chance someone else needs the same station... might even be several other TiVo users on the node needing it for a suggestion.


Unless someone has some really weird viewing habits or his TiVo thinks he does.


----------



## dswallow

morac said:


> Unless someone has some really weird viewing habits or his TiVo thinks he does.


Wow... I can't believe that article is over 5 years old.


----------



## mel.simmons

ah30k said:


> On what do you base your suggestion that the potential is very real. Do you have any usage statistics or just a gut feel. I have seen real data suggesting that the tail of watched channels drops very quickly.
> 
> The http://www.motorola.com/mot/doc/6/6578_MotDoc.pdf white paper shows a generic version of the statistics graph. I don't have a more detailed version handy that is able to be posted on the internet.


You are correct that the shape of tail is very important in how many channel requests are blocked. I used the values in my post above (169 channels, 334 tuners, 100 QAM streams) in a Monte Carlo simulation (with 1,000 trials). I used a Zipf law distribution for channel popularity with a power law slope of -1. The BigBand study (http://www.bigbandnet.com/index.php/tech_whitepaper_statswb.html) actually finds slopes of -0.64 to -0.74, which would make the tail longer, and make blockages more frequent. However I am not convinced by their fitting to the data, and I'm willing to assume a slope of -1 until better data shows up. The Motorola white paper you cited did not have any numbers on their graph of channel popularity, but it looked similar to a Zipf distribution.

With these values, my simulation predicts that 22% of channel requests will be blocked. For the frequency of blocks to be less than 1%, 145 QAM streams would be required to deliver the 169 channels. Or, as noted above, if most of the tuners are off most of time, the situation is greatly improved.

In this analysis, it is very important to know the shape the curve of channel popularity. It's tempting to guess that it follows a Zipf law, because so many phenomena seem to look that way (http://www.nslij-genetics.org/wli/zipf/). But I have not seen published data adequate to support that. Perhaps the cable companies have good data? Or perhaps TiVo has good data on their user's viewing habits?

I would be very interested in knowing whether TiVo usage is like human usage. Or does the search capability of TiVo lead to more frequent recordings from "unusual" channels in the long tail?


----------



## mikeyts

morac said:


> This works fine until someone tunes a SDV channel and someone else who may be watching a channel but hasn't interacted with his TiVo for a while finds his lease revoked and he's staring at a black screen.


And this is a problem...how??? TiVo can either be programmed to automatically revert to some known non-SDV channel or to display a "Please select a channel to watch" message. In the scheme that I described, this is only gonna happen for unused, unrecorded background tuners and for displayed foreground tuners where (1) an SDV channels was tuned, (2) the channel hasn't changed in a very long time and (3) there was a failure to respond to a pop-up "are you still watching this" query. In other words the lease was dropped because no one was watching or recording a tuned SDV service, which is a perfectly reasonable thing to happen. Hell, if someone touches the remote, it can automatically re-request the last channel tuned; the message can read "Standing by, please press INFO to view the last channel." When the user returns, it's quite possible that the lease count never reached zero and there are still others using it so it's still present in the same transport stream as the same program and can be brought back up instantly; if not and there's a couple of seconds wait then BFD.

No one requires that SDV be completely transparent. Access to another 100 HD channels should be worth a slight delay here and there.


----------



## ah30k

mel.simmons said:


> I used the values in my post above (169 channels, 334 tuners, 100 QAM streams) in a Monte Carlo simulation (with 1,000 trials). ....
> 
> With these values, my simulation predicts that 22% of channel requests will be blocked.


You tossed out a lot of numbers and theorems but something must be wrong in your simulation because 22% blockage seems WAY off base. I'd have to study your model a bit to determine whether or not I put any faith into it.


----------



## ah30k

Mel,
The BigBand simulation you hyperlinked found that


> We used the Zipf distribution to estimate the number of channels, K, required to accommodate at least 99.5% of total channel use. (Approx 140 STBs)
> A 500-channel system is calculated to require 187 active streams
> A 1000-channel system is calculated to require 276 active streams


----------



## MichaelK

ah30k said:


> On what do you base your suggestion that the potential is very real. Do you have any usage statistics or just a gut feel. I have seen real data suggesting that the tail of watched channels drops very quickly.
> 
> The http://www.motorola.com/mot/doc/6/6578_MotDoc.pdf white paper shows a generic version of the statistics graph. I don't have a more detailed version handy that is able to be posted on the internet.


the neilson ratings make it pretty clear too for anyone looking for specifics- people can just look up the primetime ratings and it quickly becomes clear that beyond the top 20-30 channels the odds of anyone in a 500 home node wanting them drops off dramatically.

Granted that's national but I'd suspect that in any one neighborhood of 500 homes it would be similar- people tend to leave in clusters of similar cultures, socioeconomonics, lanuage, sports markets, etc ,etc

also once you go all digital or OCAP and allow SDV for tivo's and other DVR's (media center pc's). The only people left out would be early cablecard TV buyers and those numbers are tiny and the fraction of them that use cards is even tinier. You could in theory get to that point of 300 tuners per node and then go all SDV and allow unlimited. (statistically I'm sure you can be somehwat bigger then 300 homes)


----------



## MichaelK

mikeyts said:


> We have discussed the concept of leasing channels somewhere in these forums, though I'm not sure that it was in this thread. Of course, it's all still speculation, since we don't have specifications of any of the SDV systems in use.


I could be mistaken but I beleive on of the officail documents- either an FCC filing, or something like it specifically talkes about the leasing thing- or at least the fact that the dongle would need to 'give back' a channel after a certain period of time. I think it said tivo was to notify when 'done' or something and there was a discussion of if tivo would count suggestions as being done or not.


----------



## MichaelK

Luke M said:


> Note that it isn't average demand that matters, but peak demand. A box which is tuned to a switched channel at 3AM isn't a problem, since the bandwidth would otherwise be wasted.


and that peak time is called primetime and that's why the neilsen primetime ratings are a good place to look for the usage patterns that exist.


----------



## MichaelK

morac said:


> Actually back in the day when most people used dial up modems, this started to become a problem because people would tie up the phones lines for hours or even days at a time.
> 
> That's the problem when a system isn't used the way it was designed to be used. SDV was designed to be used by humans who don't watch TV 24 hours a day. A TiVo basically does this and watches 2 channels at once to boot.


SDV isn't really about the fact that everyone isn't watching all the time- it's that even during peak demand the majority of channels are hardly being watched- so you can leverage that.

Even if Tivo's run suggestionms 24/7 on 2 tuners the fact that suggestions record some statiistic version of what people most like to watch means the tivo tuners as a whole will still likely be tuned to the same 30-50 channels that get the majority of viewing.


----------



## ah30k

MichaelK said:


> and that peak time is called primetime and that's why the neilsen primetime ratings are a good place to look for the usage patterns that exist.


Depends on how you define peak. Primetime would likely have the most common viewing pattern and thus the fewest number of unique channels. Alternatively, off hours would likely have the most likelyhood of having strange (?) channels being watched.

I'd love to get the raw data and plot the usage curves dynamically over time (like a moving weather radar map).


----------



## MichaelK

mel.simmons said:


> You are correct that the shape of tail is very important in how many channel requests are blocked. I used the values in my post above (169 channels, 334 tuners, 100 QAM streams) in a Monte Carlo simulation (with 1,000 trials). I used a Zipf law distribution for channel popularity with a power law slope of -1. The BigBand study (http://www.bigbandnet.com/index.php/tech_whitepaper_statswb.html) actually finds slopes of -0.64 to -0.74, which would make the tail longer, and make blockages more frequent. However I am not convinced by their fitting to the data, and I'm willing to assume a slope of -1 until better data shows up. The Motorola white paper you cited did not have any numbers on their graph of channel popularity, but it looked similar to a Zipf distribution.
> 
> With these values, my simulation predicts that 22% of channel requests will be blocked. For the frequency of blocks to be less than 1%, 145 QAM streams would be required to deliver the 169 channels. Or, as noted above, if most of the tuners are off most of time, the situation is greatly improved.
> 
> In this analysis, it is very important to know the shape the curve of channel popularity. It's tempting to guess that it follows a Zipf law, because so many phenomena seem to look that way (http://www.nslij-genetics.org/wli/zipf/). But I have not seen published data adequate to support that. Perhaps the cable companies have good data? Or perhaps TiVo has good data on their user's viewing habits?
> 
> I would be very interested in knowing whether TiVo usage is like human usage. Or does the search capability of TiVo lead to more frequent recordings from "unusual" channels in the long tail?


wow you seem to be really well versed in the math- can you try to find some ratings data and plug that in to your model- I'd love to see real world data plugged it.


----------



## MichaelK

obviously i think the statistics work for the vast majority of cases.

BUT- someone pointed something out in another thread- a close to real world situation that could completely upend the apple cart.

what happens when windows media center pc's get upgraded with the patch for the dongle? And 2 guys on the block decide to have a testosterone battle over who has the best windows DVR- one makes an 6 tuner dvr and the other makes an 8. Now what if those 2 guys are oddballs and watch lots of stuff out in the tail? They rob 14 slots from everyone else or like 10&#37; of the needed slots. THat can get ugly.

if the tivo nero pc software thing turns out to be cool- I just might be one of the oddballs on the block building the silly sized pc dvr...


----------



## mel.simmons

ah30k said:


> You tossed out a lot of numbers and theorems but something must be wrong in your simulation because 22% blockage seems WAY off base. I'd have to study your model a bit to determine whether or not I put any faith into it.


Yes, I would agree the 22% blockage seems very high. This blockage results from the assumption that all 334 set-top boxes are turned on at the same time. The BigBand study found that only about 1/4 of the set-top boxes on a node were on at any moment (in trial A, this is 150 boxes out of 603 installed). If I rerun my simulation with only 150 tuners turned on, the blockage drops to less than 1%. This takes us back to the point in my previous posting: if TiVo never turns off (or releases its channels), it could have a severe impact on SDV performance.

I apologize to other readers for all the mathematics in these postings. Perhaps I can summarize my key points:

- SDV is a complicated statistical game that trades off cost (to the cable company) and quality of service (to the consumer).

- Designing and managing SDV systems will be complex.

- If they are not careful, cable companies could get this very wrong.

- SDV depends upon patterns of consumer behavior that are uncertain and subject to change.

- The performance of SDV will be altered by new consumer-side technologies, including the TiVo dongle.


----------



## bicker

The exact same thing applies to any type of yield management scheme. Yield management is used by many consumer-facing service industries. The most well-known is the practice of over-booking on airlines. So there you are on vacation with little Jenny and little Bobby and you get to the airport a good hour before the flight, but alas, since you got these incredibly low fares you weren't able to reserve seats and there aren't enough seats left for all of you because more folks checked in for the flight than forecast. So you sit it out, perhaps until the next day, even though Jenny might miss her first day back to school after vacation. That's life.


----------



## pmiranda

bicker said:


> The exact same thing applies to any type of yield management scheme. Yield management is used by many consumer-facing service industries. The most well-known is the practice of over-booking on airlines. So there you are on vacation with little Jenny and little Bobby and you get to the airport a good hour before the flight, but alas, since you got these incredibly low fares you weren't able to reserve seats and there aren't enough seats left for all of you because more folks checked in for the flight than forecast. So you sit it out, perhaps until the next day, even though Jenny might miss her first day back to school after vacation. That's life.


If you plan a family vacation and don't get reserved seats, I think you deserve to listen to a screaming 2 year old for a day.

As for SDV, I think TiVo could actually behave better than the cableco boxes. As I'm sure somebody already pointed out months ago here, TiVo already has the "I want to record something on another channel, can I change it?" popup, so it could just as easily add a "This channel is going to be dropped in 5 minutes due to inactivity" popup.
I agree with the poster that said TiVo suggestions shouldn't greatly change "viewing" patterns for SDV. I find it's pretty rare that TiVo suggests channels that I haven't already been watching.
TiVo suggestions could even help the SDV problem... If you've got a cableco settop or DVR, it's going to stay on the last active channel until the SDV lease expires. TiVo is likely to find something you'd actually want to watch on other channels pretty often during prime viewing hours, so it will probably burn out a whole SDV channel leave way less often than the cableco boxes.


----------



## bicker

That's why I think TiVo's got to agree to either limit or bias suggestions towards non-SDV channels as much as possible.


----------



## jcaudle

vstone said:


> It seems to me that cable modems are generally NOT sytem specific. They meet the DOCSIS spec and you can buy them (or at least could) at Best Buy and Circuit City). I've have three different cable modems and one of them was RCA. One was Motorola on our SA system. I presume SA makes cable modems, but I've never seen one. A little programmable, but lockable, firmware would make it relative easy to mass produce these things for multiple cable systems. Using the the ethernet port instead of the USB port would allow it to serve multiple Tivos (and presumably other devices). Somehow replacing our regular cable modem with a souped up one, as referenced above, would be a great idea, assuming its rreasonably hack proof.


Scientific Atlanta does make cable modems. They are availible from Cox here in Fairfax, Va.


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## jimhutchins

Bright House Indiana launched five new HD Channels on November 26, 2007 (http://indiana.mybrighthouse.com/products_and_pricing/digital_cable/programming/default.aspx). Unfortunately, according to Pam in customer service, all of the new channels require a two-way cable card so that the receiver can tell Bright House to switch to them. Though she didn't mention SDV, it seems that they've headed down that path.


CNN-HD (738) - Simulcast of CNN analog
History Channel-HD (755) - Simulcast of History Channel analog
National Geographic-HD (767) - Simulcast of National Geographic analog
HGTV-HD (770) - Simulcast of HGTV analog
MHD-HD (738) - Music:High Definition with a mix music programming from MTV, VH1 and CMT


----------



## mikeyts

Huh. I thought that MHD was an MTV product. Looking at MHD's page it's true. Apparently CMT and VH1 are members of the "MTV Music Group". Though I occasionally flip through MHD, I hadn't paid much attention to what airs on it.

Again, there's no such thing as a "two way CableCARD"--CableCARDs do not contain RF transmitters and receivers and use functions in the host device to actually receive communications from the network and to optionally talk back to it. Until we get the tuning resolver, SDV requires a host device with bidirectional communications and OCAP.

Overall, not a very interesting set of additions from Brighthouse.


----------



## XBR

mikeyts said:


> ...Again, there's no such thing as a "two way CableCARD"--CableCARDs do not contain RF transmitters...


Actually, the CableCARD module itself has been capable of two-way communications since first release. It's the host implementation (hardware and/or software) that kneecaps two-way.


----------



## mikeyts

XBR said:


> Actually, the CableCARD module itself has been capable of two-way communications since first release. It's the host implementation (hardware and/or software) that kneecaps two-way.


Huh? That's what I was trying to say--was I somehow unclear? There are no bidirectional CableCARDs, even for use in devices which are capable of bidirectional communication, just bidirectional communications implemented (or not) in the host device. I'd guess that it's pretty much always been the hardware that's prevented bidirectional communications--I doubt that anyone has put an OOB transmitter in a CableCARD device while omitting firmware to use it.


----------



## XBR

Yes, you were unclear--to me at least, which is the reason for my post. All conforming CableCARDs are inherently capable of supporting two-way communications--it's the host implementation that determines whether it will happen or not--for example: http://www.cablelabs.com/news/pr/2005/05_pr_samsung_082405.html.

If this is what you're trying to say, then I agree.


----------



## mikeyts

XBR said:


> Yes, you were unclear--to me at least, which is the reason for my post. All conforming CableCARDs are inherently capable of supporting two-way communications--it's the host implementation that determines whether it will happen or not--for example: http://www.cablelabs.com/news/pr/2005/05_pr_samsung_082405.html.
> 
> If this is what you're trying to say, then I agree.


I think that it's actually what I _did_ say; I'm sorry that you didn't understand me. Hopefully the message wasn't as unclear to anyone else. Note that I said that CableCARDs "use functions in the host device to actually receive communications from the network *and to optionally talk back to it*". (Though it's more that software running in the host device might talk back to the network using the CableCARD as an intermediary; in their primary decryption/encryption function, CableCARDs have no need to speak back to the network).

Let's drop it. If anyone else failed to get my original point (that bidirectionality is an attribute of the host device and not of the CableCARD) they've gotten it now.


----------



## ah30k

MIke, people get hung up on your very first statement of "there are no such things as two-way CableCARDs." It sounds like you are saying that none will support two-way comm.


----------



## Luke M

ah30k said:


> MIke, people get hung up on your very first statement of "there are no such things as two-way CableCARDs." It sounds like you are saying that none will support two-way comm.


Are CableCards involved at all in upstream communications?


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## SCSIRAID

Luke M said:


> Are CableCards involved at all in upstream communications?


Not with TiVo. TiVo has no upstream communications capability. The Tuning Resolver will provide this capability.


----------



## Luke M

SCSIRAID said:


> Not with TiVo. TiVo has no upstream communications capability. The Tuning Resolver will provide this capability.


I know, but what about two-way CableCard devices?


----------



## SCSIRAID

Luke M said:


> I know, but what about two-way CableCard devices?


So for a two way host like perhaps the upcoming Samsung TV with OCAP, upstream communications will be enabled. I personally dont know if the cablecard will originate any communications independently or instead provide a 'standard' hardware interface for allowing the OCAP code stack to originate the communications. Perhaps Mike will have more info as I believe he as read a good bit of the specs.


----------



## mikeyts

Luke M said:


> Are CableCards involved at all in upstream communications?


Yes, they are, but only in that the proprietary on-the-wire protocols are encapsulated in the CableCARD. When the host needs to send a message back to the network, it gives it to the CableCARD, which dresses it up appropriately and then passes it back to the host to actually be transmitted.

CableCARDs offer a set of services to the to the host device, and the host device offers a set of services to them.

EDIT: I've been trying to find a discussion of the CableCARD Host/Card relationship that's less technical than ANSI/SCTE-28, which is pretty damned technical; I haven't found anything so far. On PDF page 25 of ANSI/SCTE-28 there's a diagram of one scenario for two-way communications (the other involves a built-in mini-DOCSIS modem and something called the DOCSIS Set-top Gateway, or DSG, which is diagrams and "explained" on the pages following. It's a little hairy and built on references to other standards docs.


----------



## morac

I think I can come up with a bad analogy. 

Say you're you want to have a conversation with someone who only speaks Spanish, but you don't speak Spanish. So you go out and buy a Spanish to English, English to Spanish dictionary. It comes with instructions on how to use it to translate conversations when talking on a phone.

You then call the person on the phone and converse with that person using the dictionary to translate what you want to say into Spanish and the response back into English. 

One day you call the person, but find your mouth piece on the phone is broken so all you can do is listen, but you can't talk.


In my bad example, the dictionary is the cableCARD device, the instructions are the cableCARD spec, the working phone is a 2-way compatible host device and the broken phone is a 1-way compatible device. 

This is an overly simplistic example, but the point I hope I'm getting across is that a dictionary (cableCARD) is neither a one way nor a two way device. It's just a tool used in communicating, but the phone (host) is the actual device that is one or two way. The instructions (cableCARD spec) can either be version 1.0 which states you can use broken phones while talking, but doesn't give you instructions on how to use working phones or 2.0 which states only working phones can be used with the dictionary (cableCARD).

Oh and the dongle, would be a fix for the broken phone mouthpiece.


----------



## lrhorer

bicker said:


> That's why I think TiVo's got to agree to either limit or bias suggestions towards non-SDV channels as much as possible.


What? Nonsense! If the TiVo thinks you might enjoy something, it should record it. That's the whole point of having suggestions. The medium over which it is delivered is irrelevant.


----------



## lrhorer

mel.simmons said:


> You are correct that the shape of tail is very important in how many channel requests are blocked. I used the values in my post above (169 channels, 334 tuners, 100 QAM streams) in a Monte Carlo simulation (with 1,000 trials).


Your numbers are off a bit. 100 QAM streams will deliver a lot more than 169 channels. They could deliver about 200 HD channels and 100 SD channels, or more likley at this point something like 100 HD channels and 350 SD channels per node. Most CATV providers havea target of 500 lit homes per fiber node, which would be about 1200 or so tuners (total, not active). Try re-running your analysis with those numbers.



mel.simmons said:


> With these values, my simulation predicts that 22% of channel requests will be blocked. For the frequency of blocks to be less than 1%, 145 QAM streams would be required to deliver the 169 channels. Or, as noted above, if most of the tuners are off most of time, the situation is greatly improved.


What? A channel request does not block a QAM stream. It blocks a channel.



mel.simmons said:


> Perhaps the cable companies have good data?


They have data. How good it is, I can't testify personally, but I suspect it's good.



mel.simmons said:


> Or perhaps TiVo has good data on their user's viewing habits?


They do. It's one of the pieces of data the TiVo unit sends back to TiVo, Inc.

While TiVos produce more effective viewing time, I doubt they affect the prime-time viewing patterns much, at all. Blocking during off-prime time is much less likely.



mel.simmons said:


> I would be very interested in knowing whether TiVo usage is like human usage. Or does the search capability of TiVo lead to more frequent recordings from "unusual" channels in the long tail?


During prime time, I expect it is very much like human useage; just an increased number of apparent humans. Outside prime time I suspect it might have a very significant impact on the mix of channels broadcast in an SDV system.


----------



## bicker

lrhorer said:


> Why?


Because that's what fits within the SDV model. Service providers should be allowed to block any device that is designed in such a way as it contributes to undercutting the SDV model itself. If the service providers see unrestricted Suggestions as a feature that undercuts the SDV model itself, a minor change to how Suggestions work is appropriate to secure good-faith cooperation between service providers and TiVo. TiVo isn't the center of the world. None of TiVo's subscribers are the center of the world. Mass-market service providers provide service to a customer *base*, not to just one customer, and it is perfectly normal to impose service delivery constraints that contribute to an efficient mass-market service delivery model.


----------



## vstone

What's needed, and may or not be available or even doable with the SDV designs out there, is for suggestions to have a second class status: i.e., they can be overidden by a request by an active viewer or by specifically requested programming. However, a similar situation exists with cable boxes (DVR or otherwise) and presumably those tens of Vista PC's out there with cablecards. Are digital cable boxes usually turned off, or are just the TV sets turned off? With an HDMI or DVI connection thay might be able to tell, assuming they're programmed to note this. The Vista PCs are left running.

What can really skew SDV are these folks who have 5 or 6 Tivos (or 5 or 6 cable DVRS, for that matter), most of which are left on all of the time. These installations could wreck havoc in a few specific SDV neighborhoods. Does cable company planning data account for a few of these? Will the cable company have to say you can have only 2 recordable channels? Will they say that each additional recordable channel will cost an extra $50/month? Before you that is outlandish, consider what it will cost them to add an SDV neighborhood to their system just to make one or two Tivo folks happy.


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## MichaelK

bicker said:


> Because that's what fits within the SDV model. Service providers should be allowed to block any device that is designed in such a way as it contributes to undercutting the SDV model itself. If the service providers see unrestricted Suggestions as a feature that undercuts the SDV model itself, a minor change to how Suggestions work is appropriate to secure good-faith cooperation between service providers and TiVo. TiVo isn't the center of the world. None of TiVo's subscribers are the center of the world. Mass-market service providers provide service to a customer *base*, not to just one customer, and it is perfectly normal to impose service delivery constraints that contribute to an efficient mass-market service delivery model.


In a free market sure.

But Im not sure the current laws and fcc regulations regulating cables 3rd party access would allow such a thing if a fight were to ensue. (but seems tivo would rather make nicey nice so who knows if it would ever matter).


----------



## MichaelK

vstone said:


> What's needed, and may or not be available or even doable with the SDV designs out there, is for suggestions to have a second class status: i.e., they can be overidden by a request by an active viewer or by specifically requested programming. However, a similar situation exists with cable boxes (DVR or otherwise) and presumably those tens of Vista PC's out there with cablecards. Are digital cable boxes usually turned off, or are just the TV sets turned off? With an HDMI or DVI connection thay might be able to tell, assuming they're programmed to note this. The Vista PCs are left running.
> 
> What can really skew SDV are these folks who have 5 or 6 Tivos (or 5 or 6 cable DVRS, for that matter), most of which are left on all of the time. These installations could wreck havoc in a few specific SDV neighborhoods. Does cable company planning data account for a few of these? Will the cable company have to say you can have only 2 recordable channels? Will they say that each additional recordable channel will cost an extra $50/month? Before you that is outlandish, consider what it will cost them to add an SDV neighborhood to their system just to make one or two Tivo folks happy.


Im not sure people with 5-6 tivos are a major problem. I think a tivo (or media center pc or anything like it) with 5-6 tuners WOULD be.

5-6 tivos likely are recording many duplicates. So when one box requests the sdv channel be turned on for the node the other 5 can follow along and it means nothing. The problem is if you had 5-6 tuners on my device then all the tuners are looking at something else, and if the drive is empty a tivo might try to get 6 suggestions at once. If the boxes owner has tastes that dont match the average home then that could be a mjor problem if the box goes to pick up 6 different SDV streams.


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## ajwees41

vstone said:


> What's needed, and may or not be available or even doable with the SDV designs out there, is for suggestions to have a second class status: i.e., they can be overidden by a request by an active viewer or by specifically requested programming. However, a similar situation exists with cable boxes (DVR or otherwise) and presumably those tens of Vista PC's out there with cablecards. Are digital cable boxes usually turned off, or are just the TV sets turned off? With an HDMI or DVI connection thay might be able to tell, assuming they're programmed to note this. The Vista PCs are left running.
> 
> .


vstone can you explain what you men by the above please? Most digital boxes are never turned off there is no need to.What kind of similar situation are you talking about with the cable boxes? You do know that the current and newer cable boxes have 2 way communications don't you?

ajwees41


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## vstone

Also keep in mind that new Tivos, or even ones that have been cleared, don't know much about what you want so suggestions are going wander all over the place, especially if your 15 year old son plays with it a lot over Christmas vacation while you're at work.


----------



## vstone

ajwees41 said:


> vstone can you explain what you men by the above please? Most digital boxes are never turned off there is no need to.What kind of similar situation are you talking about with the cable boxes? You do know that the current and ned cable boxes have 2 way communications aren't you?
> 
> ajwees41


Yes, I'm aware that most digital boxes are never turned off or put into standby. Tivos and STBs can be put into standby and save a little power, but I don't know who bothers.

Yes, I know that most or all digital cable boxes have 2 way comms. The point is, do they tell the headend when the TV sets is turned off or can they even detect that no one is watching and tell the head end. This is relatively easy to do with HDMI or DVI connections assuming the circuitry was designe dto do that, but probably requires additional sensitive circuitry to determine if there is a load on the component, S-video, composite, or even RF outputs. And somebody might tune to amusic channel and then list to it thru an audio receiver and turn off the TV set.


----------



## ajwees41

vstone said:


> Yes, I'm aware that most digital boxes are never turned off or put into standby. Tivos and STBs can be put into standby and save a little power, but I don't know who bothers.
> 
> Yes, I know that most or all digital cable boxes have 2 way comms. The point is, do they tell the headend when the TV sets is turned off or can they even detect that no one is watching and tell the head end. This is relatively easy to do with HDMI or DVI connections assuming the circuitry was designe dto do that, but probably requires additional sensitive circuitry to determine if there is a load on the component, S-video, composite, or even RF outputs. And somebody might tune to amusic channel and then list to it thru an audio receiver and turn off the TV set.


I don't think so. I don't think they have the circuitry to do it.


----------



## mikeyts

MichaelK said:


> In a free market sure.
> 
> But I'm not sure the current laws and fcc regulations regulating cables 3rd party access would allow such a thing if a fight were to ensue. (but seems tivo would rather make nicey nice so who knows if it would ever matter).


Yeah, I don't think that TiVo's going to object to an ask that suggestions not be recorded on SDV channels. Without the SDV tuning resolver, they will have sold a ton of equipment that a lot of people will be pissed off that they bought. Very few--if any--of their customers will realize that suggestions aren't being recorded from SDV channels.

vstone, ajwees41--

I feel fairly certain that the SDV systems use a lease mechanism in which the network will automatically decrement the use count for a channel at the end of a period if the lessee doesn't renew. I can't see how SDV would work if the network had to wait for terminals to explicitly release channels. Approved devices would be required to either know that they still need the channel (because they're in the middle of recording it) or to prompt the viewer for permission to renew. Under these circumstances idle turned-on boxes won't break anything (though it'd be nice if people would turn them off when they stop watching).


----------



## vstone

The addition of more cable HD channels, many as a replacement for existing SD channels (think 11 HBO channels, if you include both coasts), will likely push more and more channels into SDV status. As more people watch more HD programming, the programs that they watch in common may diverge significantly and may not necessarily be on a small group of channels. We HD folk will not be watching the same 10 HD channels, we'll be watching (fill in the blank) and those people who watch the shopping channels 24/7 will watch the HD shopping channels. And since cable actually gets paid to carry these, who knows if they'll end up as SDV? Wouldn't want to have to explain to the shopping channel folk that customers were locked out of channel during the big cubic zirconium sale!

A "no suggestions from SDV channels" rule could end up meaning only suggestions from whatever ends up in the new (digital) basic tier.


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## mikeyts

vstone said:


> A "no suggestions from SDV channels" rule could end up meaning only suggestions from whatever ends up in the new (digital) basic tier.


It might (I doubt it, but it might). And this would be tragic in what way?

I wonder what percentage of recorded suggestions is ever watched? How much time is spent by TiVos fecklessly recording stuff for people that they have absolutely no interest in?


----------



## ADent

What's up with 47CFR76.640? It seems to require CableCards (ie PODs) to work. Is this not sufficient or are there other rules?

http://a257.g.akamaitech.net/7/257/...s.gpo.gov/cfr_2007/octqtr/pdf/47cfr76.640.pdf


----------



## mikeyts

ADent said:


> What's up with 47CFR76.640? It seems to require CableCards (ie PODs) to work. Is this not sufficient or are there other rules?
> 
> http://a257.g.akamaitech.net/7/257/...s.gpo.gov/cfr_2007/octqtr/pdf/47cfr76.640.pdf


Yeah, but it doesn't require that any particular set of services be available using them. For instance, they know that you can't access VOD services with unidirectional CableCARD hosts and now you won't be able to access services presented as SDV with them either. They're linear channels, but initial access to them is becoming by interactive request only.

By the way, you can find the CFRs in HTML on a .gov site, here.


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## lrhorer

bicker said:


> Because that's what fits within the SDV model.


Nonsense. The TiVo handling suggestiohns is no different than adding a few extra people ot the house, each with their own TV. The extra amount of recording done by the average TiVo user's box is not going to be significant. SDV is capable of handling tens of thousands, and eventually millions of channels. TiVo useage is a drop in the bucket, even when there wind up being multiple Sereis 3+ TiVos per node. As it is now, I doubt if 1 in 10 nodes has a Series 3 box hanging on it.



bicker said:


> Service providers should be allowed to block any device that is designed in such a way as it contributes to undercutting the SDV model itself.


The TiVo doesn't do that, suggestions or not.



bicker said:


> TiVo. TiVo isn't the center of the world. None of TiVo's subscribers are the center of the world.


Until they are, they are going to have zero impact on SDV implementations. Should they ever become so, then the CATV provider is going to have to cater to their needs in exclusion of all else, or risk losing the bulk of their customers.



bicker said:


> Mass-market service providers provide service to a customer *base*, not to just one customer, and it is perfectly normal to impose service delivery constraints that contribute to an efficient mass-market service delivery model.


Oh, of course, but that has no relevance to this situation. Enacting the guidelines you suggest is much like FedEx charging people who live in the very middle of the block more because it costs more to drive to the middle of the block than near a corner. Sure, it impacts only 1 person in 10, but it's a ridiculous notion which fails to assess the amount of money actually saved by not driving the extra 1000 feet. Putting silly restrictions on the TiVo's capabilities won't reduce the load on the SDV system by any significant amount, even if every house had TiVo.


----------



## lrhorer

vstone said:


> What's needed, and may or not be available or even doable with the SDV designs out there, is for suggestions to have a second class status


It's neither needed nor desirable.



vstone said:


> What can really skew SDV are these folks who have 5 or 6 Tivos (or 5 or 6 cable DVRS, for that matter), most of which are left on all of the time.


The number of these users is statistically completely insignificant. Not only that, but unless the user has a large family with very diverse tastes and each one programs their own TiVo, or unless the user goes to ridiculous lengths to make sure the suggestion profile is different on every Tivo, all six TiVos are going to wind up recording pretty much the same things in suggestions.



vstone said:


> These installations could wreck havoc in a few specific SDV neighborhoods. Does cable company planning data account for a few of these?


No, because it's a ridiculously far-fetched scenario, which will have a negligible impact on the system even if it were to come about.



vstone said:


> Before you that is outlandish, consider what it will cost them to add an SDV neighborhood to their system just to make one or two Tivo folks happy.


Oh, good heavens!! A single node can handle well over 400 simultaneous videos. One or two, or ten, or fifty cantankerous TiVo users on a node won't overload the system, and it's going to be a very, very long time before one person in ten owns a Series 3 TiVo. As to the cost, it was about $5000 per node, last I heard. It may be much cheaper now.

Folks, you're stirring up a tempest in a teacup! Once everyone in the U.S. has enough cash laying around to purchase a shuttle ride at a cost of over $1 million, NASA is going to have trouble filling all the requests for shuttle rides, too. I'm sure they are quaking in their boots.


----------



## bicker

lrhorer said:


> Nonsense.


Your saying so doesn't make it so, and your assertions don't make sense:


lrhorer said:


> The TiVo handling suggestiohns is no different than adding a few extra people ot the house, each with their own TV.


SDV is based on reasonable projections of usage. It is unreasonable to expect thousands of homes to have a few extra people in the house twenty four hours a day, seven days a week continually watching two television programs at the same time.


lrhorer said:


> SDV is capable of handling tens of thousands, and eventually millions of channels.


But only a limited number at a time, within a head-end.


lrhorer said:


> The TiVo doesn't do that, suggestions or not.


I explained how TiVo without the suggestions limitation I outlined, does.


lrhorer said:


> Enacting the guidelines you suggest is much like FedEx charging people who live in the very middle of the block more because it costs more to drive to the middle of the block than near a corner.


Not it isn't. There is* no* analog to SDV in FedEx's world. FedEx is analogous to Pay Per View: They charge for every single box individually. In order for there to be an analogy, FedEx would have to have a service by which you pay a monthly fee for whatever you want to ship, (or perhaps in an a la carte world pay a monthly fee for unlimited shipping to a specific state). Then, the analogy to the SDV limitation I mentioned would be FedEx not allowing an AUTOMATED process, that has nothing to do with the shipments you actually INTENDED to ship, creating packages to be sent in addition to places you've sent things before. Ludicrous.



lrhorer said:


> Folks, you're stirring up a tempest in a teacup!


I disagree. We've learned the hard way in our high-tech world that if you leave a door open, you'll come to regret it in short order. Technology is moving forward way too quickly to not take prudent measures. For all we know, MCE will catch on in 2011, and everyone will have four tuner units sitting in their living rooms. We simply cannot know what will happen next year, much less five or six years down the line. And once you open a door, it is very expensive to close it, from a PR standpoint. Over and over again we see this company or that being bashed here in the forums for taking prudent measures to react to changes in consumer behavior. "But we've always been able to do it in the past..." Blech.


----------



## Luke M

A Tivo isn't capable of flooding a switched video system because it can only record two programs at a time. No more than the cableco's own DVRs. Now if you had a DVR that could record 100 channels at a time, then there might be a problem.


----------



## vstone

I delete most, but occasionally find something I really enjoy, usually on a channel not requented.

I take that you advocate just turning off suggestions permanently?


----------



## MichaelK

vstone said:


> The addition of more cable HD channels, many as a replacement for existing SD channels (think 11 HBO channels, if you include both coasts), will likely push more and more channels into SDV status. As more people watch more HD programming, the programs that they watch in common may diverge significantly and may not necessarily be on a small group of channels. We HD folk will not be watching the same 10 HD channels, we'll be watching (fill in the blank) and those people who watch the shopping channels 24/7 will watch the HD shopping channels. And since cable actually gets paid to carry these, who knows if they'll end up as SDV? Wouldn't want to have to explain to the shopping channel folk that customers were locked out of channel during the big cubic zirconium sale!
> 
> A "no suggestions from SDV channels" rule could end up meaning only suggestions from whatever ends up in the new (digital) basic tier.


in the end most people HD or SD are watching a small portion of the availible channels. It's just a fact. Even with HD- the majority of HD watched probably comes from the big 4 networks. Then the top tier cable nets like HBO and ESPN. THen after that it's all split up. The big 4 are not going to be SDV anytime soon- its debatable if ever it would be legal. Once HD reaches critical mass then EPSN and HBO HD are not going to be SDV either. Someone would always be on one of those so there would be no point to move them from linear. After that wealth HD, bug watching HD, weather HD, shoppin HD, are all likely going to be watched by a tiny percentage of people at any one time and so SDV would work for them.

At some point HD becomes "normal" tv and sd is the oddball and more HD channels would go linear while SD could get pushed to SDV.


----------



## bicker

I don't think so. The "oddball" will always be the niche interests, whether it be SD or HD.


----------



## MichaelK

bicker said:


> .... We've learned the hard way in our high-tech world that if you leave a door open, you'll come to regret it in short order. Technology is moving forward way too quickly to not take prudent measures. For all we know, MCE will catch on in 2011, and everyone will have four tuner units sitting in their living rooms. We simply cannot know what will happen next year, much less five or six years down the line. And once you open a door, it is very expensive to close it, from a PR standpoint. Over and over again we see this company or that being bashed here in the forums for taking prudent measures to react to changes in consumer behavior. "But we've always been able to do it in the past..." Blech.


I think lrhorer's points were that as long as tivo's or MCE devices are a tiny percentage then it's like buying rides on the shuttle.

If we get to the point that everyone needs a ride on the shuttle then it's a different situation.

If as you hypothesize everyone has a 4 tuner SDV ready DVR in their house than the answers get pretty easy- move everything to SDV except the handful of legally mandated channels that have to be in the clear, split the nodes to make them 250 houses and force everyone to use SDV ready equipment. If everyone has a 4 tuner SDV dvr in their house then most tv's likely will already be hooked to SDV ready stuff.

the problem comes in when you are trying to build a system that works for SDV AND keeps the legacy people happy by keeping many of the channel in linear form. Once you get to a point where the legacy people are not a priority it's no problem to get SDV to work with a lot of nine's in it's uptime.

with the digital transition, the lack of cable card acceptance, the looming move to OCAP, the number of people with legacy non SDV ready tuners is going to just keep droping all the time. It's sort of like Directv's move to MPEG4 from MPEG2 for HD- it's really not that big a deal, new services only availible with the newer technology just natural move people to the new platforms.


----------



## bicker

MichaelK said:


> I think lrhorer's points were that as long as tivo's or MCE devices are a tiny percentage then it's like buying rides on the shuttle.


See my comments about "opening doors".



MichaelK said:


> If we get to the point that everyone needs a ride on the shuttle then it's a different situation.


At which time lrhorer will change his argument to, "It's always been this way..." 



MichaelK said:


> If as you hypothesize everyone has a 4 tuner ... DVR in their house than the answers get pretty easy-


You must be using the word "easy" in a manner I'm not familiar with.

You're also inserting words where they don't belong. I didn't say ANYTHING about a "4 tuner SDV ready DVR". There is no such thing available for sale to the market today, and there is no reason to believe that Microsoft and its partners, for example, are even working on a version of MCE and accompanying hardware that would qualify. So for the rest of this message, I'll be editing out the term SDV ready where you've added it erroneously.


MichaelK said:


> move everything to SDV except the handful of legally mandated channels that have to be in the clear,


Resulting in a massive PR hit, as tens of thousands of customers start complaining that they suddenly lost a significant amount of their service.

They're already going to be losing some service as things are, without what you're suggesting, but at least it won't be as draconian as the wholesale move necessary to accomplish what you're advocating, plus cable will be able to roll it in more slowly, spreading the much smaller hit over a much longer period of time.


MichaelK said:


> split the nodes to make them 250 houses and force everyone to use SDV ready equipment.


Resulting on both a lot of extra cost (which I'm sure YOU don't want to pay for), and a significant PR hit.



MichaelK said:


> If everyone has a 4 tuner ... dvr in their house then most tv's likely will already be hooked to SDV ready stuff.


As edited, that is patently untrue, given that there is nothing ensuring that anything will be SDV ready other than equipment provided by cable companies and the TiVo S4.


----------



## vstone

Well, as much as I like the Tivo, I think the analog expanded basic tier's days are numbered. I do not expect it to last until FEB 2012 like basic broadcast.

i expect the appearance of HD version of (name a channel) will be used as an excuse to jettison the SD version. Duplicate carriage of a given channel is just not worth it. About a third of my expanded basic tier already has HD versions (although we don't yet have them). As more people get HDTV sets, they will want USAHD or whatever in place of SD, folks will get cable boxes, the number of folks wanting USASD on their primary TV will decrease dramtically, etc. The end result will be more folks using SDV in the form of cable boxes. Secondary household TV sets that do not use cable boxes are the wild card in this scenario. If cable companies mandate cable boxes for analog receipt of locals (and they can) they can dump a bunch of sd channels and dump the SD versions and move the HD versions to SDV is they aren't already there.

As regarding a 4 tuner SDV DVR. The specs for DVR hard drives say they support 10 simultaneous HD streams (don't say 720P or 1080i) and i have seen reference to a 10 tuner DVR. This would have sense for a home video server for high end clients.

To assume MS isn't working on a solution for MCE is very strange. MCE 2005 has some features that Tivo doesn't support. Locking down the options and equipment can make for a more stable PC. 

Having started selling the Home Windows server (which already has a Tivo addon available), they could easily start building a home video server with MS STB's and run SA and MOTO out of business (since neither of these seems very interested in providing a decent UI).


----------



## Luke M

vstone said:


> Well, as much as I like the Tivo, I think the analog expanded basic tier's days are numbered. I do not expect it to last until FEB 2012 like basic broadcast.
> 
> i expect the appearance of HD version of (name a channel) will be used as an excuse to jettison the SD version. Duplicate carriage of a given channel is just not worth it. About a third of my expanded basic tier already has HD versions (although we don't yet have them). As more people get HDTV sets, they will want USAHD or whatever in place of SD, folks will get cable boxes, the number of folks wanting USASD on their primary TV will decrease dramtically, etc. The end result will be more folks using SDV in the form of cable boxes.


You seem to be saying that switched video will be used more if analog is dumped, but at least in the short run, it's just the opposite. Switched video and dumping analog are alternative ways of expanding usable bandwidth. Most cablecos seem to believe that switched video is the less expensive option.


----------



## morac

Luke M said:


> You seem to be saying that switched video will be used more if analog is dumped, but at least in the short run, it's just the opposite. Switched video and dumping analog are alternative ways of expanding usable bandwidth. Most cablecos seem to believe that switched video is the less expensive option.


Actually switched video is the more expensive option. Dumping analog is actually very cheap to do, but it is highly likely to piss off analog cable customers. As the number of analog only cable customers goes down, you'll most likely see more cable companies dumping analog completely, but in the meantime, SDV is the lesser of 2 evils for them since the only ones it currently hurts are cableCARD users.


----------



## Luke M

morac said:


> Actually switched video is the more expensive option. Dumping analog is actually very cheap to do, but it is highly likely to piss off analog cable customers.


It's not cheap. The cheapest set top box is something like $80, and most TVs will need one, not just the "primary" TV. It doesn't only affect analog-only customers (and those are still 50%). Plus installation costs.

If the channels are sent unencrypted, then most recently made TVs could receive them. That would reduce the costs some.


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## bicker

True, but there is no requirement that STBs be provided for free. 

If you totally discount the costs associated with losing customers because you take away unencrypted analog channels, then doing so is indeed the lowest cost option. However, you cannot legitimately ignore those costs, and they are substantial. That's why more and more you'll see MSOs making the decision that SDV is the lowest cost approach.


----------



## vstone

Luke M said:


> You seem to be saying that switched video will be used more if analog is dumped, but at least in the short run, it's just the opposite. Switched video and dumping analog are alternative ways of expanding usable bandwidth. Most cablecos seem to believe that switched video is the less expensive option.


I agree about the short run, since it will take a while to manufacture and install the new equipment, especially the neighborhood headends.


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## vstone

Luke M said:


> It's not cheap. The cheapest set top box is something like $80, and most TVs will need one, not just the "primary" TV. It doesn't only affect analog-only customers (and those are still 50%). Plus installation costs.
> 
> If the channels are sent unencrypted, then most recently made TVs could receive them. That would reduce the costs some.


People moving to HD are at least somewhat liklely to be using a digital cable box now. Giving them a new HD cable box may free up a lot of non-HD cable boxes, many of these are SDV capable (I wouldn't hazard a guess about how many). these already paid for cable boxes could be used to support the analog SD TV sets that will remain sprinkled around in many houses and offices.


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## Luke M

bicker said:


> True, but there is no requirement that STBs be provided for free.


A cableco can (and probably should) charge for STBs, but then it would have to lower the base price to compensate. So the cost is still there.


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## bicker

True, and while it isn't required for them to provide any STBs for free, if they go all-digital, a lot of us believe many of them will provide at least the first STB for free ("included").


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## brettatk

This may have been posted, but I did not read the entire thread. So forgive me if it has.

Good News if it's true. Just read Charter may employ SDV early as next year. I hope this thing is available if they do.

http://www.eetimes.com/rss/showArtic...etimes_newsRSS

*Edit: Although this post is obviously not worthy to some people, I felt this article gave some updated information on the topic that I did not get from reading previous posts. I never said or made it seem like I was introducing a new topic.*


----------



## mikeyts

brettatk said:


> This may have been posted, but I did not read the entire thread. So forgive me if it has.
> 
> Good News if it's true. Just read Charter may employ SDV early as next year. I hope this thing is available if they do.
> 
> http://www.eetimes.com/rss/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=204203340&cid=RSSfeed_eetimes_newsRSS


Apparently the correct response to this type of post-old-news-without-looking _at all_ in this forum is "you smeeked" . We've been discussing this upcoming "tuning resolver" device in this and other threads for months.


----------



## OrangeKid

Does anyone know if Cox Las Vegas has started using SDV? A number of new HD channels have been introduced over the last few weeks and I cannot receive them on my Tivo S3. Before having a tech come over I would like to be sure that it is not an SDV issue.


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## jercra

Luke M said:


> It's not cheap. The cheapest set top box is something like $80, and most TVs will need one, not just the "primary" TV. It doesn't only affect analog-only customers (and those are still 50%). Plus installation costs.
> 
> If the channels are sent unencrypted, then most recently made TVs could receive them. That would reduce the costs some.


Keep in mind that this is one of the reasons that companies like Comcast choose companies like Motorola as their sole SDV vendor. They are also their primary STB vendor. Motorola is able to offer bundled pricing to help absorb some of the cost of all the new STBs required so long as Comcast chooses only them as the SDV vendor.


----------



## lrhorer

bicker said:


> Your saying so doesn't make it so, and your assertions don't make sense: SDV is based on reasonable projections of usage.


Not fundamentally it isn't no. It's true there is an expectation of a certain penetration in a neighborhood, and it's true deviations from that expectation by something like an order of magnitude would produce significant network congestion. In fact, this would be a problem for the CATV users more than the CATV company, but we'll let that pass for the moment, and assume the CATV company would have a heart attack if even one customer complained of blockages. The projections of which you speak are completely instantaneous and time-independent ones. The model takes no note of what time of day or for what period of time the system is in use. It is entirely based upon the metric of how many simultaneous streams there are at peak useage.



bicker said:


> It is unreasonable to expect thousands of homes to have a few extra people in the house twenty four hours a day, seven days a week continually watching two television programs at the same time.


It is even more unreasonable to assert there are going to be hundreds of TiVos on each node all recording different things on that node 24 hours a day. It just won't happen. What happens across town and how many TiVos are distributed throughout the city is irrelevant. It is unique recordings from a particular node which impact the SDV model, and only at that node. The odds of having hundreds of Series III TiVos on a single node are vanishingly small until TiVo has sold on the order of 100 millions units. Don't hold your breath. The impact of Series II TiVos is vanishingly small.

Not only that, but your assertion that all the TiVos will be recording completely independent content on both tuners 24 hours a day is nonsense. First of all, one would have to really, really work to get the TiVo to record anything 24 hours a day, unless one simply set up a 24 hour recording schedule on both tuners. No one in their right mind would do such a thing. I have three TiVos wth fairly extensive recording bases, and the three put together don't record more than twelve hours a day, and a significant amount of that is duplication.



bicker said:


> But only a limited number at a time, within a head-end.


There's no theoretical limit. There are practical ones, but they are huge. More importantly, the point you are missing is it is not any more of a load on the SDV system at the headend to have a million receivers watching a channel than to have 1. It is only *unique* content which adds extra load to the system, and that load metric is entirely instantaneous. Watching 24 hours a day is no more of a load on the system than watching for 1 microsecond and then shutting down. If anyone on any receiver anywhere in the server realm is watching a program, then adding 100,000 additional receivers to the realm watching the same program doesn't add a single, solitary, even remotely miniscule bit of load to the headend system. Quite to the contrary, the big load on the SDV system will not be TiVos and the like, which will all be recording at regularly scheduled times, no matter how many millions there might be. The big load on the system will be human watchers who employ things like VOD and Video Rewind. These users cause the system to have to produce a totally unique program stream used by no one else anywhere in the city.

Let's put it this way. Suppose the CATV system in question provides a schedule of 2000 channels in a city the size of San Antonio, with roughly 250,000 subscribers, or about 600,000 viewers. At peak viewing times, how likely do you think it is there is not at least one person out of 600,000 watching every one of those channels live? If the headend can handle all 2000 channels at peak viewing time, then it can handle it continuously, 24 hours a day.

The simple fact is, with or without suggestions, the TiVo and similar devices reduce the load on the SDV system by eliminating significant use of VOD and 
Video Rewind, streaming the content from the servers when lots of other people are obtaining the very same content and saving it on the local hard drive rather than calling it up uniquely at some later time from the server. Perhaps it would be better to say they tend as much to level out the load, as reducing it. Either way of looking at it, it's good for the CATV server farm because their peak loads are diminished.



bicker said:


> I explained how TiVo without the suggestions limitation I outlined, does.


Your explanation is nonsense. It either stems from a very significant lack of understanding of how a switched broadcast network works, or else you are just blowing smoke. Here are the simple facts:

1. The number of TiVos in the network is far too small to have a statistically significant impact on the network utilization and will remain so for quite some years. I wish everyone had a Series III TiVo, but the fact is not one in 500 people does.

2. The actions of any DVR system tend to *REDUCE* the load on the CATV system because it is based upon scheduled events. During peak loads, the odds of there being a single scheduled channel not being watched al least one place in the city is vanishingly small, and adding the TiVo to the list of "watchers" doesn't impact the headend servers in the least.

Will the TiVo increase the server load at 04:00 in the morning? Surely, but who cares? The load at that time is very small anyway, and if the servers can handle the load at 19:00, then they can handle the extra load at 04:00. The fact the user will be somewhat likely to watch the 04:00 recording off the local hard drive at 19:00 rather than select a VOD offering or use Video Rewind when he gets up to go to the bathroom only makes things better.

I'm sorry, but the next portions of your post are just poorly conceived and badly thought-out nonsense. If you can't see the analog between singling out people in the middle of the block by a delivery service on whose operation the customers in question have negligible additional impact and singling out CATV subscribers who have at worst a negligible negative impact on CATV service delivery, then I truly don't know how to debate you on it. I'll try to make it simple for you. Even if every house on the system had ten multi-stream TiVos all recording suggestions 24 hours a day, the additional load on the headend servers would be manageable with only a modest increase in the number of servers. The impact to the individual nodes would be somewhat greater, but by cutting the number of subscribers per node, this also could be handled. Unless everyone in the United States goes out and buys a TiVo in the next six months, they'll be able to handle the increasing load.



bicker said:


> I disagree. We've learned the hard way in our high-tech world that if you leave a door open, you'll come to regret it in short order.


'Not if it's a closet door, and this is one awfully friggin' small closet.



bicker said:


> Technology is moving forward way too quickly to not take prudent measures.


I think you need to look up the word "prudent". If your notion is prudent, then spending a few billion dollars to prevent an aerial invasion of Flagstaff, Arizona by the Haitian Air Force is downright essential.



bicker said:


> For all we know, MCE will catch on in 2011, and everyone will have four tuner units sitting in their living rooms. We simply cannot know what will happen next year, much less five or six years down the line.


Did you bother to read what you just wrote before posting it? In order to prevent possible unpredictable problems with a system in the unforeseeable future we need to apply a patch which has no positive impact to the system either now or then, but does negatively impact a related system which has no negative impact now or any foreseeable one in the future?

Dude. Get a grip.



bicker said:


> "But we've always been able to do it in the past..." Blech.


You seem to have a truly tangled understanding of business. A business - any business - has only one purpose. It must provide its customers with valued goods and services for which the customers are willing to provide renumeration. That's it. If any aspect of that purpose becomes "inconvenient" for the business, then they can and should shut their doors, or have them shut for them. The customer is the sole reason the business exists. If the consumer base wants chocolate cake then the baker darned well better make chocolate cake, no matter how allergic to chocolate the baker might be or how much more difficult it might be than yellow cake.

Right now TiVo users are a small fraction of the subscriber base. If they remain so then their impact on the CATV system will remain negligible. If they become a large fraction of the subscriber base, then the CATV providers will have to allow for whatever impact those user's equipment may have. If not, they will find themselves losing customers in droves. In this case, however, even in large numbers the use of TiVo suggestions will not ever have a devastating impact on the CATV system.


----------



## lrhorer

MichaelK said:


> I think lrhorer's points were that as long as tivo's or MCE devices are a tiny percentage then it's like buying rides on the shuttle.
> 
> If we get to the point that everyone needs a ride on the shuttle then it's a different situation.


Well, yes, but the point is it's a silly thing over which to be concerned.



MichaelK said:


> If as you hypothesize everyone has a 4 tuner SDV ready DVR in their house than the answers get pretty easy- move everything to SDV except the handful of legally mandated channels that have to be in the clear, split the nodes to make them 250 houses and force everyone to use SDV ready equipment. If everyone has a 4 tuner SDV dvr in their house then most tv's likely will already be hooked to SDV ready stuff.


No, no, no. You guys are making this way too complicated. The SDV metric is a simple one. The number of channels a CATV system can deliver is logarithmically inversely related to the number of receivers on a node. 'Double the number of channels, and the number of receivers per node must be reduced slightly. This is done by lighting up an additional pair of fibers, planting a new node somewhere in the neighborhood, and moving houses from several nodes onto it. It's a significant investment, but not vast. Conversely, increasing the number of receivers per node (by having multiple receivers in a DVR) will prevent the CATV company form delivering quite as many channels, but only a very small amount, and that number is still considerably greater than the number of channels there are.


----------



## lrhorer

vstone said:


> Well, as much as I like the Tivo, I think the analog expanded basic tier's days are numbered. I do not expect it to last until FEB 2012 like basic broadcast.
> 
> i expect the appearance of HD version of (name a channel) will be used as an excuse to jettison the SD version. Duplicate carriage of a given channel is just not worth it.


Hang on a minute. First of all, SD != analog. An analog channel uses up 6MHz of bandwidth. The same 6MHz slot used for a digital stream can easily carry 6 - 8 SD streams or 2 HD streams and an SD stream, depending on the encoding and how much the CATV provider rate shapes the streams. The point, however, is even if every carrier were used for HD to its maximum extent, there still is room for half as many SD channels as HD channels, and not to deliver at least 1 SD channels for every 2 HD channels is a complete waste of bandwidth. SD feeds won't be going away any time in the near future.



MichaelK said:


> About a third of my expanded basic tier already has HD versions (although we don't yet have them). As more people get HDTV sets, they will want USAHD or whatever in place of SD,


Yes, but encoding HD content is not trivial or cheap, adn neither is recording it. It's going to be a while before every source will be capable of delivering HD content.


----------



## Luke M

jercra said:


> Keep in mind that this is one of the reasons that companies like Comcast choose companies like Motorola as their sole SDV vendor. They are also their primary STB vendor. Motorola is able to offer bundled pricing to help absorb some of the cost of all the new STBs required so long as Comcast chooses only them as the SDV vendor.


Switched video doesn't require new set top boxes (maybe new firmware), so I'm not sure what you mean.

Cable companies take care not to obsolete their enormous investment in STBs. Video on demand, for example, was implemented in a way compatible with legacy set top boxes.


----------



## Luke M

lrhorer said:


> No, no, no. You guys are making this way too complicated. The SDV metric is a simple one. The number of channels a CATV system can deliver is logarithmically inversely related to the number of receivers on a node. 'Double the number of channels, and the number of receivers per node must be reduced slightly. This is done by lighting up an additional pair of fibers, planting a new node somewhere in the neighborhood, and moving houses from several nodes onto it. It's a significant investment, but not vast. Conversely, increasing the number of receivers per node (by having multiple receivers in a DVR) will prevent the CATV company form delivering quite as many channels, but only a very small amount, and that number is still considerably greater than the number of channels there are.


Theoretically, a rich guy could set up a monster DVR (or multiple DVRs) to record every single channel. In that case, switched video doesn't save any bandwidth regardless of service area size.

In general, if one atypical user can consume as much resources as a large number of typical users, then it creates some tension for a flat rate pricing system.


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## mikeyts

Luke M said:


> Theoretically, a rich guy could set up a monster DVR (or multiple DVRs) to record every single channel.


Recording every single one of hundreds of channels, all the time; nooooo, nothing suspicious about that . I think that the cable system and their content providers would discretely have that guy whacked and his "giant DVR" would burn down in a fire of mysterious origins .


----------



## bicker

lrhorer said:


> SDV is based on reasonable projections of usage.
> 
> 
> 
> Not fundamentally it isn't no.
Click to expand...

Of course it is. Look: You and I disagree. You can type in your drivel all day long and it isn't going to get any more convincing. I think you're wrong. Get over it. You've had your say; I've had mine. Time to move on.


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## mikeyts

bicker said:


> Of course it is. Look: You and I disagree. You can type in your drivel all day long and it isn't going to get any more convincing. I think you're wrong. Get over it. You've had your say; I've had mine. Time to move on.


What either of you thinks is irrelevant. The cable providers and the companies developing SDV system have done research and they're convinced. Real, hard data acquisition and analysis--no armchair BS. They pumping many tens of millions of dollars into this and imposing it on us all. It's a gamble, but their only alternative is pumping many billions of dollars into running FTTH to a hundred million households.


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## bicker

mikeyts said:


> What either of you thinks is irrelevant. The cable providers and the companies developing SDV system have done research and they're convinced. Real, hard data acquisition and analysis--no armchair BS. They pumping many tens of millions of dollars into this and imposing it on us all;


Abso-friggen-lutely.


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## dswallow

Luke M said:


> Theoretically, a rich guy could set up a monster DVR (or multiple DVRs) to record every single channel. In that case, switched video doesn't save any bandwidth regardless of service area size.
> 
> In general, if one atypical user can consume as much resources as a large number of typical users, then it creates some tension for a flat rate pricing system.


Except that there'd be sufficient additional outlet charges involved that the cable company would certainly be getting compensated for it. And considering just how many it'd require there may be an upper limit on the number of additional outlets they even allow for one account.


----------



## morac

lrhorer said:


> Yes, but encoding HD content is not trivial or cheap, adn neither is recording it. It's going to be a while before every source will be capable of delivering HD content.


It can't be all that expensive if Joe Consumer can get a HD camcorder for less than $1000. Yes I know the industry uses more expensive cameras, but even if you're talking a $30,000 camera that should still be affordable to most content providers. As for encoding HD, my desktop PC can do that (albeit slowly) so I don't think that's an issue either.

By the way the current list of HD channels is impressive and it's only going to get bigger. How cable companies will be able to provide all these channels is the big question. I personally think that SDV is not the ultimate solution and that the only way this can be done is by switching to MPEG-4 encoding.


----------



## lrhorer

mikeyts said:


> What either of you thinks is irrelevant. The cable providers and the companies developing SDV system have done research and they're convinced. Real, hard data acquisition and analysis--no armchair BS. They pumping many tens of millions of dollars into this and imposing it on us all. It's a gamble, but their only alternative is pumping many billions of dollars into running FTTH to a hundred million households.


That's correct, and I was a fairly significant contributor to that effort until a while back. As a CATV engineer helping to implement the Pegasus system and SDV I had to understand how SDV works and what the implications were for useage, and I still have some inside views on what's going on with the CATV company. The point is, however, they aren't spending a dime worrying about TiVo Suggestions because there isn't anything to worry about. The simple fact - not an opinion but a cold, hard fact - is TiVo suggestions do not add any significant load to the SDV system as a whole. They add nothing at all to the server farm's peak load, and additions to off-peak loads are not relevant in any case. They do potentially add network congestion issues to the local node, but once again this is hardest felt during peak load hours and the additional load is as well represented by any DVR, including the ones provided by the CATV system, not just a TiVo with suggestions.


----------



## lrhorer

morac said:


> It can't be all that expensive if Joe Consumer can get a HD camcorder for less than $1000. Yes I know the industry uses more expensive cameras, but even if you're talking a $30,000 camera that should still be affordable to most content providers.


I have news for you. $30,000 is cheap for an SD commercial camera, let alone an HD. The big networks don't blink an eye at six figures for a camera. The thing is, there aren't hundreds of national networks out there. Most of the content comes from small concerns, down to and including public access where Joe Bob and Cindy create a Merry Christmas video for distribution on the Public Access channel. The cameras the CATV company loans out to those folks cost less than $5000, and that's not liable to change.



morac said:


> As for encoding HD, my desktop PC can do that (albeit slowly) so I don't think that's an issue either.


That's the point, and it is an issue. Anything close to "slowly" is not acceptable for a live broadcast. Of course movie channels and the like have the luxury of taking all the time they want, and they don't use a camera, at all.

The computing horsepower to encode compressed HD video from a live uncompressed stream is phenomenal. Your computer just re-encodes already compressed video, which is much different. The last time I saw a benchmark (although this was several years ago), it took the fastest supercomputer in the world an hour to compress a 60 second commercial into a 1.544Mbps stream without visible artifacts. Of course now chipsets have been developed to handle the compression natively, and computing horsepower is growing at an exponential rate, but it still isn't quite dirt cheap.



morac said:


> By the way the current list of HD channels is impressive and it's only going to get bigger. How cable companies will be able to provide all these channels is the big question. I personally think that SDV is not the ultimate solution and that the only way this can be done is by switching to MPEG-4 encoding.


Well, yes, and no. The number of channels deliverable via SDV is virtualy without bound. In order to increase the number of channels, the CATV company merely needs to decrease the number of houses served by a node. The end limit for node expansion is reached when the number of receivers in every node is less than the number of channel slots on the node, at which point the number of deliverable channels is infinite as far as the distribution system is concerned. Therefore SDV alone is quite sufficient to deliver any number of channels one might wish. The wrinkle is MPEG-4 allows more channels in the same bandwidth, which means the node size doesn't have to be as small. This translates into more channels for less money for the CATV provider, so I have no doubt whatsoever they will be moving to MPEG-4 or some similar protocol in the not too distant future. It won't eliminate SDV, though. What's more, SDV allows for much more than just ungodly numbers of channels. It allows for essentially unlimited venues of interactive services from banking online to interactive classrooms with a live lecturer (rather than what passes for "interactive tutoring" today) to videoconferencing to voting online.


----------



## cableguy763

If a cable co goes to mpeg 4, they would have to have all new boxes. Pretty expensive option.


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## lrhorer

bicker said:


> Of course it is. Look: You and I disagree. You can type in your drivel all day long and it isn't going to get any more convincing. I think you're wrong. Get over it. You've had your say; I've had mine. Time to move on.


Yes, but I am a qualified expert in the field and you are not. Yet once again you resort to ad-hominem retorts rather than real, physical data.

Let me set up a typical scenario:

Moderately large city
100,000 subscribers
2.5 live viewers per household
2 channel DVR per 10 households ignoring any TiVos whatsoever
= 270,000 receivers
500 scheduled channels (no CATV company yet comes close to this, even in the largest cities)

Answer me this: How many of the 500 channels do you estimate are not being viewed by a single receiver peak viewing times? (I'll give you a hint: the answer is less than 1.)

Changing out every single one of the 235,000 receivers to a 5000 channel super-DVR recording every available channel 24 hours a day on 10 times over won't increase the load on the server farm by any amount whatsoever, except to increease the number of broadcast addresses in the headers.


----------



## lrhorer

cableguy763 said:


> If a cable co goes to mpeg 4, they would have to have all new boxes. Pretty expensive option.


'Not if they are already MPEG-4 capable. I don't know the innards of the new boxes all that well, but even if they don't, a staged retrofit coupled with a staged rollout of MPEG-4 would be about the same as the current SDV rollout. At what point it becomes worth it is the question.


----------



## dswallow

lrhorer said:


> 'Not if they are already MPEG-4 capable. I don't know the innards of the new boxes all that well, but even if they don't, a staged retrofit coupled with a staged rollout of MPEG-4 would be about the same as the current SDV rollout. At what point it becomes worth it is the question.


Not really. The SDV rollout doesn't involve replacing the cable boxes at every household. If those boxes can't handle MPEG-4, an MPEG-4 rollout would only become advantageous when all subscribers to any given channel had MPEG-4 capable receivers.


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## mikeyts

lrhorer said:


> Yes, but I am a qualified expert in the field and you are not. Yet once again you resort to ad-hominem retorts rather than real, physical data.
> 
> Let me set up a typical scenario:
> 
> Moderately large city
> 100,000 subscribers
> 2.5 live viewers per household
> 2 channel DVR per 10 households ignoring any TiVos whatsoever
> = 270,000 receivers
> 500 scheduled channels (no CATV company yet comes close to this, even in the largest cities)
> 
> Answer me this: How many of the 500 channels do you estimate are not being viewed by a single receiver peak viewing times? (I'll give you a hint: the answer is less than 1.)


Interesting. BigBandNetworks have some papers online describing field trials of the technology which would seem to uphold their premise that it does work. There are papers here and here about trials run in 2002 and 2003. In their studies the numbers strongly support the premise that great efficiencies can be fairly easily acheived with SDV in the real world, which seems intuitively reasonable. Indications are that number of channels in demand does not grow very much after a certain point as you add subscribers. Given a fixed population of subscribers, growth of demand as you add channels is also flat after a certain point. I'm not sure against what population of subscribers, but they think that you can support a 500 channel system with 276 active streams (which they calculate to require 28 QAMs, but they're obviously talking about SD channels packed 10 or so to the QAM). With "maximum broadcast bit rate" HD programs, you'd need 138 QAMs for 500 HD channels. Of course, a 500 channel system put together today would probably have no more than about 100 HD channels with the rest being SD.

BigBand did do these studies, but they're trying to sell the technology which no doubt colors their conclusions. What evidence do you cite to back your assertions?


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## mikeyts

TWC Austin rolled out SDV over a year ago. I wondered if they'd published anything about their experiences. There are a few tidbits in the following Multichannel News articles:The Switch Is On To Boost Channels
How Time Warner Austin Did Switched Digital​Apparently, at the time of the second article, they were switching 175 SD channels and 8 HD ones on 8 QAMs (normally about enough bandwidth for 80 SD channels or 16 HD ones). Impressive.

EDIT: I just noticed that the entired second article (which was published first) is included as a sidebar in the first piece.


----------



## ah30k

lrhorer said:


> Yes, but I am a qualified expert in the field and you are not. Yet once again you resort to ad-hominem retorts rather than real, physical data.
> 
> Let me set up a typical scenario:
> 
> Moderately large city
> 100,000 subscribers
> 2.5 live viewers per household
> 2 channel DVR per 10 households ignoring any TiVos whatsoever
> = 270,000 receivers
> 500 scheduled channels (no CATV company yet comes close to this, even in the largest cities)
> 
> Answer me this: How many of the 500 channels do you estimate are not being viewed by a single receiver peak viewing times? (I'll give you a hint: the answer is less than 1.)
> 
> Changing out every single one of the 235,000 receivers to a 5000 channel super-DVR recording every available channel 24 hours a day on 10 times over won't increase the load on the server farm by any amount whatsoever, except to increease the number of broadcast addresses in the headers.


The fact that you don't understand the 'node' concept with SDV shows you are not much of a qualified expert.


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## mikeyts

I also noticed the following at Multichannel News:SCTE Okays MPEG-4 Video Standard For Cable​Pointed out there as here is the fact that use of it would require distribution of boxes capable of MPEG-4 decoding.


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## lrhorer

ah30k said:


> The fact that you don't understand the 'node' concept with SDV shows you are not much of a qualified expert.


I understand it perfectly well, and if you will re-read my posts, that should be evident. There are two different primary network bottlenecks in SDV. One is the node. The other is the headend. The claim was made the most significant impact by TiVo's running suggestions would be at the headend, and that thousands of TiVos all recording channels 24 hours a day would swamp the headend server farm.

To simplify things, we'll ignore services such as VOD and Video Rewind for the moment, and assume all the channels bear nothing but scheduled content. If the number of receivers on the node is less than or equal to the number of channels on the node, then channel blocking is impossible. Reducing the number of houses to that point is excessive, however, since utilization of channels on the node won't ordinarily reach 100%. First of all, as we all know, every program has a certain popularity, and a single channel may at times garner more than 50% of the viewing public. All those subscribers (or DVRs) viewing the same program receive the very same stream on a single carrier. This cuts down the number of unique receivers drastically and increases the numbe of homes which can be served by a single node. Most MSOs are targeting their network builds to wind up with between 500 and 1000 homes passed per node, which equates to something like 300 - 600 active subscribers and probably 750 - 1500 receivers. The number of active channels will tend to increase fairly rapidly at first with increasing numbers of receivers on the node, but soon the channel utilization begins to flatten out and only increases very slightly as more receivers are added.

Here the number of multi-stream receivers such as DVRs does impact the number of active channels on the node, especially if things like suggestions are turned on, but the impact is only minimal. Again, it's not zero, but it's not huge, either, especailly once the number of available channels exceeds a moderate fraction of the total number of receivers. In this part of the network, biker is correct in saying the projections are usage based, but first of all, he was talking about congestion at the headend, not at the node, and secondly, the actual impact on traffic of Suggestions at the node is quite small. How small depends on how many channels are supported by the system, how many receivers are online, and of course the time of day. The thing is, at this point in the network, the Suggestions are going to have their biggest impact during the periods of lowest utilization, when blocking is least likely. That's not to say it can never happen. Since the node is considerably oversubscribed, blocking is indeed possible and in fact does happen from time to time. The odds of it hitting the same customer on a regular basis are exceptionally low, however. Unless the node is far too oversubscribed, no user should see a block network error on his receiver even once a month, and then not on any of the more popular channels. Indeed, the presence of Suggestions on TiVo's would tend to help prevent blocking on the scheduled channels while making it somewhat more common on VOD channels or during Video Rewind attempts.

The headend is the second place where blocking can occur, but here the metric is different. At any node the network only has to be able to provide a sufficient number of streams to deliver all the channels being watched on that node, which could easily be fewer than 100. What happens across town is irrelevant. At the headend, however, there is no useage basis for delivery of service. It doesn't matter if one stream is being watched by 90% of the receivers in town. The load in the servers is dependent upon how many total streams are in service. If only a single viewer anywhere in the city is watching a particular program, it has the same impact on the headend as the one holding 90% of the subscribers. At the node the fact a single program is being viewed by a large fraction of the people on the node means the load on the node is potentially much lower. The impact of TiVos running suggestions at the headend is tiny compared with normal scheduled viewing and in fact is minuscule compared to the traffic generated by impulse traffic such as Video Rewind and VOD. Indeed, the traffic generated by all forms of scheduled viewing (including scheduled pay-per-view) is extremely small compared to the traffic generated by interactive video such as VOD and Video Rewind. The scheduled programs might represent 200 or 300 ir even eventually 500 or more unique data streams at the headend, but interactive services could easily eventually outstrip that by a factor of 100. There are a number of very clever schemes to allow the headends to handle such a vast volume, but the point is, if they can handle that volume, they can easily handle one or two or even ten additional streams required by having suggestions turned on.


----------



## lrhorer

mikeyts said:


> BigBand did do these studies, but they're trying to sell the technology which no doubt colors their conclusions. What evidence do you cite to back your assertions?


Well, first of all the fact the channels here in San Antonio now exceed 1000 in numbering. Of course there are some significant gaps and 150 of those channels are audio stations with minimal picture content (more like screen savers), but still the actual number of channels is well over 500, most being pay-per-view and VOD. 72 are still analog. They have a 750MHz system here (they talked about increasing to 850MHz, but ultimately decided against it a couple of years ago). That leaves them about 230 MHz or 38 streams to deliver more than 400 channels, 20 or so of which are HD. I'm told all of their regularly scheduled digital channels offer Video Rewind, but I can't testify to that personally, because I have TiVos, and I left the company long before Video Rewind came out.

I'm not allowed to give too many details, but we happen to share a number of facilities with them, and you wouldn't believe how much power they're using, or how much bandwidth for data. There's a reason for that.


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## lrhorer

dswallow said:


> Not really. The SDV rollout doesn't involve replacing the cable boxes at every household. If those boxes can't handle MPEG-4, an MPEG-4 rollout would only become advantageous when all subscribers to any given channel had MPEG-4 capable receivers.


Um, isn't that kind of what I said? A staged rollout would prevent their having to replace every cable box which didn't support MPEG-4 or to supply one to every customer without a CableCard device of some sort.


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## mikeyts

lrhorer said:


> I'm not allowed to give too many details, but we happen to share a number of facilities with them, and you wouldn't believe how much power they're using, or how much bandwidth for data. There's a reason for that.


I'm sorry, but I seem to have missed something. Who is "we" and who are "them"?

I wasn't aware that people are including the music services in the "500 channels" number. The bandwidth required for streaming music must be miniscule (and for feeding those screen savers, which I doubt are actual video streams). There are 64 of these channels on my system and I'd be surprised if they consumed more than half a QAM.


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## ah30k

lrhorer said:


> I understand it perfectly well, and if you will re-read my posts, that should be evident. There are two different primary network bottlenecks in SDV. One is the node. The other is the headend. The claim was made the most significant impact by TiVo's running suggestions would be at the headend, and that thousands of TiVos all recording channels 24 hours a day would swamp the headend server farm...................


My oh my, you do like to type a lot. I recall no claim that the bottleneck was in the headend. It may be here somewhere but I don't recall it. You laid out a scenario with 100,000 subscribers, tuners and 500 channels and claimed that SDV won't work because of the probability of more streams being needed was greater than 99%. That is where nodes fix the problem.

I don't know why you are off on the headend bottleneck and 1000 interactive streams killing the system. That is a totally different topic. Perhaps you headend is just poorly designed.


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## lew

I understand how SDV would allow a cable system to add more PPV channels and even VOD. I'm not sure how it lets them add more regular channels. The way I understand it if no customer on the node requests the channel then the channel won't be sent. What is the purpose of offering a channel that literally no one in a given area wants to watch? I guess it might make sense for a very niche channel, perhaps international.


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## dswallow

lew said:


> I understand how SDV would allow a cable system to add more PPV channels and even VOD. I'm not sure how it lets them add more regular channels. The way I understand it if no customer on the node requests the channel then the channel won't be sent. What is the purpose of offering a channel that literally no one in a given area wants to watch? I guess it might make sense for a very niche channel, perhaps international.


Statistically there's always channels people aren't watching. By only actually sending video for channels that someone is watching, you can offer more channels than you actually have space to carry simultaneously. That's what Switched Digital Video (SDV) is all about. The efficiency exists because of the way subscribers are grouped and serviced in nodes. Every node has a maximum number of subscribers and receivers within it, and it's within each node that what channels are being watched that matters. The smaller the node, the more unwatched channels exist within the node.

You can even think of the system much like a cell phone tower. When all available channels are being used simultaneously on a given cell tower, they break the cell up into smaller nodes, each serviced by their own tower.


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## ah30k

lew said:


> What is the purpose of offering a channel that literally no one in a given area wants to watch?


The key thing in how you phrase the question. It is NOT "Does anyone ever want to watch this channel?". The question is "Given the number of homes in this node, is someone watching this channel at this given instant?".

Very different questions.

I watch all kinds of channels, but only maybe two at any one time.


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## HiDefGator

lrhorer said:


> Um, isn't that kind of what I said? A staged rollout would prevent their having to replace every cable box which didn't support MPEG-4 or to supply one to every customer without a CableCard device of some sort.


couldn't cable take the same route directv did and only do HD in mpeg4 first? then they wouldn't have to replace every cable box right away.


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## morac

HiDefGator said:


> couldn't cable take the same route directv did and only do HD in mpeg4 first? then they wouldn't have to replace every cable box right away.


They'd still have to replace all the HD boxes out there. There's also the issue that there are no cable MPEG-4 boxes available currently. They won't be available till early 2008.

I think eventually (years out) all new provided HD channels will be MPEG-4, but the cable companies can only use what's available now which is why HD is MPEG-2.


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## lrhorer

mikeyts said:


> I'm sorry, but I seem to have missed something. Who is "we" and who are "them"?


"We" is the company for which I work. "Them" is Time Warner Cable.



mikeyts said:


> I wasn't aware that people are including the music services in the "500 channels" number.


If you mean in terms of quantifying the performance of SDV, I would think "people" are excluding music channels, or at least they should be - which is why I specifically excluded them from my post. On the other hand, by either excluding the local FM stations in favor of the music stations or else putting the local FM stations on a QAM stream, they could gain back 20MHz or 3 QAM streams. That's a fair bit of content, and I suspect they may do just that as one of the first steps to going all digital.



mikeyts said:


> The bandwidth required for streaming music must be miniscule (and for feeding those screen savers, which I doubt are actual video streams).


Compared to HD video, yeah. Compared to the $250 300 BAUD modem I bought back in 1983, it's downright screaming. 



mikeyts said:


> There are 64 of these channels on my system and I'd be surprised if they consumed more than half a QAM.


They're probably 200Kbps or so, so a QAM stream probably handles about 150 of them, so yeah, that's about right.


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## lrhorer

ah30k said:


> My oh my, you do like to type a lot.


'Not particularly, but I'm quite used to it. Writing technical documents including engineering briefs and detailed step-by-step instructions is a significant part of my job.



ah30k said:


> I recall no claim that the bottleneck was in the headend.


See here:
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=5787201#post5787201



ah30k said:


> It may be here somewhere but I don't recall it. You laid out a scenario with 100,000 subscribers, tuners and 500 channels and claimed that SDV won't work because of the probability of more streams being needed was greater than 99%. That is where nodes fix the problem.


I never claimed any such thing. Quite to the contrary, my entire point during this discussion is SDV will work just fine, even with the tiny impact added by having large numbers of TiVos in the field with Suggestions turned on. The probability of more streams being needed is almost 0. The secenario I laid out is quite reasonable and only demonstrates that TiVo Suggestions won't cause issues at the CATV headend.



ah30k said:


> I don't know why you are off on the headend bottleneck and 1000 interactive streams killing the system. That is a totally different topic. Perhaps you headend is just poorly designed.


I wasn't, and I never said it would, and it's not my headend in any case.


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## lrhorer

dswallow said:


> Statistically there's always channels people aren't watching. By only actually sending video for channels that someone is watching, you can offer more channels than you actually have space to carry simultaneously. That's what Switched Digital Video (SDV) is all about.


Well, it's a big part of it, anyway. Another big part is the ability to deliver a myriad of interactive services.



dswallow said:


> The efficiency exists because of the way subscribers are grouped and serviced in nodes. Every node has a maximum number of subscribers and receivers within it, and it's within each node that what channels are being watched that matters.


Your statement is correct, but I think it could be misconstrued. It's not quite what channels are being watched, per se, but rather that every node can have a potentially different set of channels being watched.



dswallow said:


> The smaller the node, the more unwatched channels exist within the node.


Well, yes, but once again it doesn't matter how many channels are unwatched at the node, as long as the total number of channels requested doesn't exceed the total number available. The CATV provider's greatest dream is that every single channel on every single node would be active 24 hours a day. Anything less than that means some amount of theri investment is laying idle. Unfortunately for them, in order to maintain customer satisfaction, they are going to have to make certain the node utilization does not a number slightly lower than 100% for any significant amount of time during peak watching hours.


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## dswallow

lrhorer, I think you're maybe just trying too hard in some of these replies. 

The cable company isn't looking to have 100&#37; utilization at all. All they want is to never have demand for 100.1% utilization or more. On a system-wide basis, they want to offer the greatest selection (i.e., be competitive to alternative services that may be available to customers). On a node level, they never want to have to tell a customer something isn't available. Every node doesn't have to ever see every available channel watched; certainly the cable company doesn't want to see weeks or months go by with not a single customer viewing any particular channel (as that would mean they could just drop the channel and save the money and nobody would even notice or care)... and with SDV they'll actually know if that ever happens, whereas with analog they'd never know.

That balance is of course always subject to review, but it can be monitored very easily with the tools provided by SDV vendors they're using now. And as needed, they can split off nodes well before utilization reaches dangerous levels where they may face having to deny a customer access to a service they're trying to tune.

As far as interactive services, they're not called Switched Digital services; they're called Interactive services. All that SDV has to do with them is simply efficiently using bandwidth for regular channels so that Interactive services have bandwidth for their own needs. The same goes for PPV or VOD services... no relation to SDV except that SDV enables them to have more bandwidth on the node available for such services. 

From many of the papers on SDV statistics it seems somewhere around 70% bandwidth utilization at peak times on a node is the "red flag" to initiate adjusting the node or splitting it completely.


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## ah30k

lrhorer said:


> I never claimed any such thing. Quite to the contrary, my entire point during this discussion is SDV will work just fine, even with the tiny impact added by having large numbers of TiVos in the field with Suggestions turned on.


Doesn't the following quote mean you think that SDV won't work since only 1 of 500 channels isn't being watched?



> Let me set up a typical scenario:
> 
> Moderately large city
> 100,000 subscribers
> 2.5 live viewers per household
> 2 channel DVR per 10 households ignoring any TiVos whatsoever
> = 270,000 receivers
> 500 scheduled channels (no CATV company yet comes close to this, even in the largest cities)
> 
> Answer me this: How many of the 500 channels do you estimate are not being viewed by a single receiver peak viewing times? (I'll give you a hint: the answer is less than 1.)


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## mikeyts

lrhorer, I have to say that I too was getting the impression that you were starting to argue that SDV won't work, when it's been deployed in large systems for over a year and it _is_ working (TWC Oceanic and TWC Austin alone are the 17th and 22nd largest cable systems in the country with 500K subs between them; your own system, TWC San Antonio is the 9th largest, with over 300K subs of its own). Are you using TiVo or a leased box? If you're using a leased box with access to the SDV groups, have you ever experience a denial when requesting an SDV channel?

Also, you claimed that your system has over 1000 channels. I took a look at the TWC San Antonio channel line-up (can you tell that I'm bored ) and found:
265 apparent linear SD channels, though there's some channels duplicated, assigned multiple numbers to put them in multiple ranges (i.e., the "Family Tier")
77 "On Demand" channels (why is there a set of 9 channels--100, 192-199--marked "HD Movies On Demand"?)
36 distinct linear HD channels (44, but 8 have two assigned channel numbers); 4 of these channels are the "other-coast" version of 4 premiums (HBO, Cinemax, Showtime and Starz)
48 "Music Choice" channels
63 total channels in PPV Events, PPV Movies, Movies On Demand (movies as pay-per-viewing-period VOD) and subscription sports-league tiers (i.e., "NBA League Pass", "NHL Center Ice", "ESPN Game Plan", etc).
Altogether there seem to be 490 tunable channel numbers (on leased cable boxes subscribed to everything), with at least 20 channels with multiple assigned numbers because they appear in multiple tiers, so it's around 470 distinct channels. (That's the San Antonio line-up--I'm imagining that the Bandera, Blanco, Lake Hills and Stockdale line-ups are all smaller subsets).

So, your system's channel line-up, while impressive (particularly in the number of VOD channels and especially the number of _HD_ VOD channels), only approaches that 500 channel model, with plenty of PPV, subscription sports and VOD stuff in there and a ton of "other-coast" premiums (all innately switched VOD or highly switchable linears).

EDIT: Sorry--you did not say that you system had more than a 1000 channels; in the post that I was thinking of (this, you said:


> Well, first of all the fact the channels here in San Antonio now exceed 1000 in numbering. Of course there are some significant gaps and 150 of those channels are audio stations with minimal picture content (more like screen savers), but still the actual number of channels is well over 500, most being pay-per-view and VOD.


Upon examination, that was bit off, but not nearly as wrong as what I thought you said .


----------



## rictus

It seems like people are having difficulty understanding the state of the present argument, so here's what I understand so far.

Someone (not lrhorer) was arguing that the existence of TiVos would cause SDV to fail because (1) the headend would get swamped with requests from TiVos tuned to random channels to record suggestions and (2) local nodes might also be getting lots of suggestions requests from TiVos.

lrhorer is arguing that TiVos will *not* cause SDV to fail, because:

(1) the impact of TiVos on the headend is small: pretty much every channel is being requested from the headend at any given time anyway (that was the point he was trying to make with his "500 channels" argument--he wasn't arguing that it would fail, he was arguing that this is true regardless of TiVos or SDV), and the number of HD TiVos being served by a single headend is likely to remain an insignificant proportion for some time to come in any case.

(2) it's conceivable that there will be some issues at individual nodes, but they are likely to be infrequent, since again the proportion of TiVos among households served by a node is relatively small, and the times when TiVos are "wasting extra bandwidth" due to requesting suggestions are mostly at off-peak hours anyway (during on-peak hours, presumably a given household is likely to be watching/recording at least one show "for real", so would be considered in the calculations when deploying SDV).

I don't know who's right--it seems to me to depend on how widespread TiVos are in a given area, although lrhorer is arguing that for any plausible scenario the numbers work out--but it seems reasonably clear to me what the argument is.


----------



## SCSIRAID

rictus said:


> It seems like people are having difficulty understanding the state of the present argument, so here's what I understand so far.
> 
> Someone (not lrhorer) was arguing that the existence of TiVos would cause SDV to fail because (1) the headend would get swamped with requests from TiVos tuned to random channels to record suggestions and (2) local nodes might also be getting lots of suggestions requests from TiVos.
> 
> lrhorer is arguing that TiVos will *not* cause SDV to fail, because:


Your interpretation agrees with mine. lhorer has been arguing (successfully from my view) that SDV will not be negatively effected at the headend due to TiVo suggestions.


----------



## Luke M

rictus said:


> I don't know who's right--it seems to me to depend on how widespread TiVos are in a given area, although lrhorer is arguing that for any plausible scenario the numbers work out--but it seems reasonably clear to me what the argument is.


One thing that's perfectly clear is that the worst case load of a Tivo - recording two switched channels in prime time - is exactly the same as for a cableco DVR. One Tivo user can't bring a switched video system to its knees. It's impossible.


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## mikeyts

Having looked over lrhorer's posts, I can see what he's been arguing, though I'm not sure what the assertion that a system with 100K subs, 270K receivers and 500 linear channels would get 100&#37; of the channels requested during peak hours has to do with SDV, or the post by bicker he quoted in that response. It only takes one "5000 channel super-DVR recording every available channel 24 hours a day" to break SDV, since the premise is that the channels in SDV groups are assigned to over-provisioned pools of bandwidth (typically less than 50% as much as necessary to transmit all of them concurrently). A "super-DVR" sitting on one segment will break the system if it attempts to simultaneously request more of the channels in an SDV group than will fit in the bandwidth assigned to that group; any attempt to simultaneously tune all of them will definitely break it.

Whether any bunch of TiVos on a given network segment recording suggestions would, by themselves, simultaneously request too many SDV channels is another topic. It seems highly unlikely, but creating recordings of suggestions, all of which have a very low probability of actually being viewed, is just not an important enough activity to allocate any portion of a precious shared network resource to. No properly planned SDV group should contain any really popular services, so any 500 channel system should contain a couple of hundred non-SDV services to record suggestions from, if you simply must .


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## lrhorer

mikeyts said:


> lrhorer, I have to say that I too was getting the impression that you were starting to argue that SDV won't work


'Not even. I'm flabbergasted anyone would get that impression. I was rebutting the notion that TiVo Suggestions breaks the SDV model and would cause a severe problem for CATV providers and so TiVo should limit the scope of its Suggestions feature. The notion is nonsense. Ignoring the legal and logistical mess we're in with a lack of unified standards and the inability of any TV / DVR manufacturer to hedge their bets against losing money by picking one of the flavors of SDV, SDV already provides a vastly expanded set of features with far, far more to come. Exactly what statement in any of my posts would have led you to believe I was arguing SDV would not work? It works very well , indeed. It works substantially just as well with myriads of TiVos with Suggestions turned on as without.



mikeyts said:


> Are you using TiVo or a leased box? If you're using a leased box with access to the SDV groups, have you ever experience a denial when requesting an SDV channel?


TiVos, but that's beside the point. I worked on early trials of SDV and other technologies when I was an Engineer for the company which was bought by TWC, and I still have several friends in the Engineering department there. Denial requests are uncommon, and TiVos won't change that appreciably, suggestions or not. Denials are far more likely to be produced by and experienced by non-scheduled event requests which leaves the TiVo mostly out of the equation.



mikeyts said:


> Also, you claimed that your system has over 1000 channels.


No, I said the channel numbers exceed 1000. In fact, the highest channel number is 1310. I also pointed out there were substantial gaps.



mikeyts said:


> (can you tell that I'm bored )


Uh, yeah. No way was I going to do a count of the channels.



mikeyts said:


> (why is there a set of 9 channels--100, 192-199--marked "HD Movies On Demand"?)


Each channel has a different set of movies available. The VOD interface is clumsy, so to help they divide it up into different channel numbers. The VOD interface needs lots of work, if you ask me.



mikeyts said:


> So, your system's channel line-up, while impressive (particularly in the number of VOD channels and especially the number of _HD_ VOD channels), only approaches that 500 channel model, with plenty of PPV, subscription sports and VOD stuff in there and a ton of "other-coast" premiums (all innately switched VOD or highly switchable linears).


The point being? Note classical Pay-Per-View venues are still scheduled. They require authorization, but they starta sn stop at a specific time. IF one person in the city requests the PPV event, then every node in the city can request it without additional impact at the headend, and if one subscriber on the node has requested it then every subscriber on the node can request it without additional impact at the node level.

In any case, the fact is any VOD "channel" is not a single channel, but rather an interactive stream, and two different individuals requesting the same program 5 minutes apart are *NOT* using the same data stream, but an entirely different one - effectively a separate channel. Thus, as I already pointed out, the load on the CATV headend from those two lone subscribers is as high as that of several thousand TiVos with suggestions turned on. Out of 300,000 subscribers, the number of data streams from people ordering VOD offerings and / or requesting Video Rewind will far exceed the number of scheduled programs being requested, which includes all TiVos running Suggestions. At the node, it's unlikely the two subscribers in question will both be on the same node, so the impact from VOD and Video Rewind on an individual node is much less than at the headend. Conversely, the impact from a TiVo running suggestions is much higher at the node level than at the headend (where it is virtually zero), but still quite manageable and quite small. Even if every single household had Series III TiVos with suggestions turned on, the CATV provider would not have to increase the number of nodes by even 5% or 6% - if that - and it's going to be a very long time indeed before TiVo penetration in the CATV subscriber population even reaches 10%, let alone 100%.



mikeyts said:


> EDIT: Sorry--you did not say that you system had more than a 1000 channels;


That's right, I didn't. I also didn't say SDV would not work.

To sum up what I *DID* say, the maximum possible load both at the headend and at any node produced by TiVos running suggestions is equal to the total number of scheduled channels. which in my local system is less than 200, and in my hypothetical system is 500. The number of "channels" the headend must produce for VOD, Video Rewind, and other interactive services is in the 10s of thousands. If the headend can handle that, handing all the TiVo suggestions on Earth is trivial. At the node, Suggestions do increase the load very slightly, but only to speak of amnd mostly in off-peak hours when increasing the load is not a problem. Is it possible one or two of the 300,000 subscribers a day might experience a denial they otherwise would not have experienced if there weren't a bunch of TiVos on his node? Yeah, maybe, but that averages out to maybe once a year per subscriber, and that only once the number of TiVos running Suggestions exceeds 20% - 50% of the customer base. At the rate Series III TiVos are selling, that's going to be a couple of decades, at least.


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## lrhorer

mikeyts said:


> I'm not sure what the assertion that a system with 100K subs, 270K receivers and 500 linear channels would get 100% of the channels requested during peak hours has to do with SDV, or the post by bicker he quoted in that response. It only takes one "5000 channel super-DVR recording every available channel 24 hours a day" to break SDV,


No, it doesn't (at least at the headend) and that's the point I'm trying to make. It doesn't matter if there are millions of 2 channel DVRs or thousands of 5000 channel DVRs, All put togethr they can only request 500 channels, because that's all there are. Now yes, that single 5000 channel DVR could swamp the node its on, if it actually tried to request all 500 channels, because the node can't handle the entire linear bandwidth, let alone adding in the interactive requests on the node.



mikeyts said:


> Whether any bunch of TiVos on a given network segment recording suggestions would, by themselves, simultaneously request too many SDV channels is another topic. It seems highly unlikely, but creating recordings of suggestions, all of which have a very low probability of actually being viewed


How low is "low"? Again, when we are talking about DVRs in general and TiVo Suggestions specifically, we are talking about a scheduled event. It could be PPV, but it isn't VOD and it isn't Video Rewind or any other interactive service. A total of 500 scheduled channels is very large, indeed, but lets say they wind up with 1000 scheduled channels and 5000 interactive events. In order not to be wiewed by at least 1 subscriber, the event is going to have to have a less than 1 in 300 share. Given 1000 channels broadcasting during primetime, every idle stream must have a less that 1 in 300 market share during primetime. Does anyone really believe any significant number of broadcasters are going to schedule a show during primetime which has a less than .34% rating? The notion is just silly, but even if a bunch of broadcasters did schedule a bunch of lost causes during primetime, it still would not even come within several orders of magnitude of the number of streams whihc could be requested by interactive services like VOD and ezpecially Video Rewind.



mikeyts said:


> No properly planned SDV group should contain any really popular services


Well, eventually it will be essentially 100% SDV, except for basic service. After all, it doesn't cost the CATV provider anything more to deliver a channel as SDV than not. It's the same equipment producing the same streams. The differentiation is not between SDV and linear, but between scheduled and interactive. The DVR - Suggestions or not - has a limited impact on the number of scheduled programs being viewed at the node level and zero at the headend. It has zero impact period on interactive services.


----------



## lrhorer

ah30k said:


> The key thing in how you phrase the question. It is NOT "Does anyone ever want to watch this channel?". The question is "Given the number of homes in this node, is someone watching this channel at this given instant?".


Right. The other piece of the puzzle is that the number of subscribers on the node is quite small, comparatively speaking. A program only watched by 1 person in 1000 is still going to be watched by 300 households in a 300,000 subscriber system, but those 300 households are only going to impact roughly 300 nodes, and the other 300 nodes in the system can use that same bandwidth to transmit something else - or a bunch of something elses.


----------



## Luke M

lrhorer said:


> Well, eventually it will be essentially 100% SDV, except for basic service. After all, it doesn't cost the CATV provider anything more to deliver a channel as SDV than not. It's the same equipment producing the same streams.


It certainly does cost more. The switching function isn't free, nor are QAM modulators free.


----------



## dswallow

Luke M said:


> It certainly does cost more. The switching function isn't free, nor are QAM modulators free.


The signal has to be encoded and modulated no matter what. So while there might be a slightly higher cost for a frequency agile configuration or to be able to divert the signal to any of many different encoder/modulators, the cost is still there.

Once you've invested in the technology, there's little reason not to fully utilize it. Nodes will be small enough that even popular channels won't be viewed by anyone at some time. And the bandwidth that would otherwise be wasted to carry a channel 100% of the time when it is needed perhaps only 90% of the time does have value.

Though it's still the use of any channels to carry analog signals that's starving cable systems of bandwidth needed to handle more SD and HD channels. SDV wouldn't be necessary anywhere yet if analog could go away completely... or even be reduced to just 15 or so channels.


----------



## Luke M

dswallow said:


> The signal has to be encoded and modulated no matter what. So while there might be a slightly higher cost for a frequency agile configuration or to be able to divert the signal to any of many different encoder/modulators, the cost is still there.


But for broadcast, this cost can be shared across many nodes.


----------



## dswallow

Luke M said:


> But for broadcast, this cost can be shared across many nodes.


I don't necessarily know how SDV systems in use today are implemented, but if I were creating one, I'd be encoding the signal once and distributing it to all my nodes; each node would then only need to combine that digital signal with whatever other digital signals are going out in a single QAM channel. The node always has to have the ability to modulate every QAM channel it can use for outgoing channels. This cost is per QAM channel, not per broadcast channel. One of the test systems that put most everything on SDV only needed 8 QAM channels for each node, for instance.


----------



## Luke M

dswallow said:


> I don't necessarily know how SDV systems in use today are implemented, but if I were creating one, I'd be encoding the signal once and distributing it to all my nodes; each node would then only need to combine that digital signal with whatever other digital signals are going out in a single QAM channel. The node always has to have the ability to modulate every QAM channel it can use for outgoing channels.


The node itself does not have any modulators. It just converts from optical to electrical.


----------



## mikeyts

lrhorer, let's try to get down to the salient points, so that we can tell whether we're actually arguing. The original assertion was:


Luke M said:


> Theoretically, a rich guy could set up a monster DVR (or multiple DVRs) to record every single channel. In that case, switched video doesn't save any bandwidth regardless of service area size.


As I read this, he's stating that one subscriber running a sufficient number of simultaneous tuners to request all offered channels will break SDV, no matter how small the total number of subscribers on his local node. This is intuitively true: in a system using SDV, if all of the channels offered are requested by one or any combination of tuners in a single node then many requests will have to be denied. If they only request services offered as SDV, the total number of tuners necessary to break SDV should be only a fraction of the total number of channels offered. I pointed out a article in a post above (this) wherein TWC Austin was claiming to offer 175 SD channels and 8 HD ones by dynamically switching them onto a total of 8 shared QAMs. On that system, concurrently requesting any combination of 81 or fewer of those 183 channels (presumably a subset of the system total) from any one optical node will "break" SDV.

You eventually state in apparent response to the posing of this scenario (though not in direct response to Luke M's post):


lrhorer said:


> Changing out every single one of the 235,000 receivers to a 5000 channel super-DVR recording every available channel 24 hours a day on 10 times over won't increase the load on the server farm by any amount whatsoever, except to increease the number of broadcast addresses in the headers.


This may also be true, but I'm having a hard time understanding why it's relevant. At a glance, it sounds as though you're disputing that placing such a "super-DVR" on the system will break SDV, but on closer reading you're sayng that it doesn't matter, because all offered channels will be concurrently requested from the headend across the entire system during peak periods. What does the number of channels concurrently requested by all of the subs on the system have to do with the price of peas? SDV uses the fact that no single optical node will face a demand for anything approaching that number. The main bottleneck in these systems is the coax running from those optical nodes into people's homes. No matter how much capacity of that medium might be expanded in the future (and apparently at least one source is offering tech to get 3GHz capacity out of coax), technology currently deployed in the home can only utilitize about 800 MHz of its downstream capacity; I assume that the fiber backbone of the network can carry much more. It's like a bunch of people sipping from a large stream through soda straws.


----------



## bicker

mikeyts said:


> lrhorer, let's try to get down to the salient points, so that we can tell whether we're actually arguing.


I have to acknowledge and praise the patience you've shown with the guy (i.e., not plonking him a long time ago . . . ) You are a far better man than I.


----------



## mikeyts

Luke M said:


> The node itself does not have any modulators. It just converts from optical to electrical.


Even if that conversion from optical to electrical is a straightforward one (i.e., the individual signals can be captured in one form and re-expressed as the other without demodulating and remodulating), an optical node capable of carrying SDV not only has to be able to demodulate and modulate a signal, it has to be able to compose MPEG Transport Streams. A channel in an SDV group might be present on the fiber in a transport stream in a QAM carrier at 525 MHz (or whatever); the optical node has to strip the packets for the particular requested program from that transport stream, find space in the SDV bandwidth pool for it (which might be in a stream in another carrier at say, 615 MHz), reencode those packets to appear in that stream as a program with a different number and add stuff to tables in the security and information loops on that new stream. (It might not have to re-encode the packets in the stream to have a different program number; it seems to be becoming popular to use very sparse program numbering in transport streams, with direct correspondence ot the tuned channel number). The node further has to be able to modulate all the streams in the SDV bandwidth pool, since its creating those streams dynamically according to demand for channels in the SDV group.

I don't know how these things work precisely, but intuitively it's gotta be something like that. I'm sure that anyone who does know will feel free to correct me .


----------



## Luke M

mikeyts said:


> Even if that conversion from optical to electrical is a straightforward one (i.e., the individual signals can be captured in one form and re-expressed as the other without demodulating and remodulating), an optical node capable of carrying SDV not only has to be able to demodulate and modulate a signal, it has to be able to compose MPEG Transport Streams.


The node itself, like I said, just converts optical to electrical. It's a dumb device. It doesn't care whether it receives analog, QAM, or whatever.

The point is, there does not necessarily need to be a bank of QAM modulators for each node. They can very easily be combined at the location where the nodes are fed. Since broadcast channels are the same for every node, there's no reason why each node would need a private QAM modulator for broadcast. Hence, switched video does mean more QAM modulators are needed.


----------



## ah30k

Lets put to rest this rich guy with 1000 tuner system that breaks SDV by tuning every channel. First off, they would all need to be digital tuners that utilize the Tuning Resolver. I would think that the cable companies would recognize this quite quickly.

Lets try to stay in the real world.


----------



## ah30k

Luke M said:


> The node itself does not have any modulators. It just converts from optical to electrical.


and what form of electrical does it get converted to?

A: It gets modulated onto QAM channels therefore there must be modulators at the node.


----------



## Luke M

ah30k said:


> and what form of electrical does it get converted to?
> 
> A: It gets modulated onto QAM channels therefore there must be modulators at the node.


As I explained, this is not the case. Some people just can't understand that optical is not always baseband digital, I guess.


----------



## ah30k

Luke M said:


> As I explained, this is not the case. Some people just can't understand that optical is not always baseband digital, I guess.


Very simple question for you... How does the optical get to electrical that STBs and TiVos can decode? I say the MPEG streams embedded in multicast streams get modulated onto RF QAM channels but you may have another answer.


----------



## Luke M

ah30k said:


> Very simple question for you... How does the optical get to electrical that STBs and TiVos can decode? I say the MPEG streams embedded in multicast streams get modulated onto RF QAM channels but you may have another answer.


The conversion from optical to electrical is signal format independent. If you send QAM channels into a node, you get QAM channels out. If you send analog in, you get analog out.

The Hybrid Fiber-Coax architecture was conceived and implemented before digital cable even existed. It was all analog originally. So naturally, the optical input needed to be an analog (broadband) signal. This is in contrast to the "normal" use of optical signals in telecommunications, which is baseband digital.

Does that clear it up?


----------



## SCSIRAID

Luke M said:


> The conversion from optical to electrical is signal format independent. If you send QAM channels into a node, you get QAM channels out. If you send analog in, you get analog out.
> 
> The Hybrid Fiber-Coax architecture was conceived and implemented before digital cable even existed. It was all analog originally. So naturally, the optical input needed to be an analog (broadband) signal. This is in contrast to the "normal" use of optical signals in telecommunications, which is baseband digital.
> 
> Does that clear it up?


So I believe you are saying that the dark fiber is basically carrying multiple frequency shifted chunks of spectra which are already modulated QAM channels. The node 'hetrodynes/frequency translates' them to the appropriate RF frequencies. Right?

If so... this would suggest that the 'node' in SDV terms isnt all in one place... the frequency translation points would be distributed wherever they need to be to serve their assigned 'neighborhood' while the heavy lifting of building the transport streams and QAM modulation is somewhere else (like the headend?).


----------



## Luke M

SCSIRAID said:


> So I believe you are saying that the dark fiber is basically carrying multiple frequency shifted chunks of spectra which are already modulated QAM channels. The node 'hetrodynes/frequency translates' them to the appropriate RF frequencies. Right?


No, I'm saying that the node is passing the signal unmodified. All the intelligence is upstream of the node.


----------



## mikeyts

Luke M said:


> The node itself, like I said, just converts optical to electrical. It's a dumb device. It doesn't care whether it receives analog, QAM, or whatever.
> 
> The point is, there does not necessarily need to be a bank of QAM modulators for each node. They can very easily be combined at the location where the nodes are fed. Since broadcast channels are the same for every node, there's no reason why each node would need a private QAM modulator for broadcast. Hence, switched video does mean more QAM modulators are needed.


Hmmm. I'd thought that switching was being done on the level of the optical node _at_ the optical node, but examination of the literature online about specific switched digital video technologies (in particular, BigBand Network's stuff, apparently the most widely deployed at the moment, the switching equipment lives at the distribution hub level (see this popular Wikipedia diagram); each distribution hub sits on an optical transport ring with the headend and has continuous access to all of the offered content, fanning that out over private sets of fibers to each of the optical nodes. Those customized sets of SDV streams (possibly mixed with VOD traffic) are composed in that equipment. Makes sense, and simplifies network maintenance greatly.

From what I just read, every channel starts out in the headend as an RF signal, converted to optical and then converted back by the optical nodes for transmission over "last mile" coax. Some of them are 6 MHz NTSC analog signals, some of them broadband digital streams.


----------



## ah30k

Luke M said:


> The conversion from optical to electrical is signal format independent. If you send QAM channels into a node, you get QAM channels out. If you send analog in, you get analog out.
> 
> The Hybrid Fiber-Coax architecture was conceived and implemented before digital cable even existed. It was all analog originally. So naturally, the optical input needed to be an analog (broadband) signal. This is in contrast to the "normal" use of optical signals in telecommunications, which is baseband digital.
> 
> Does that clear it up?


The frequency range and capacity of the fiber is much higher than the freq range of the coax so there must be some conversion going on. The channels need to get mapped into the RF frequencies that the cable STB can understand. Once again, I say that the edge QAMs in the node select the proper multicast stream based on current usage patterns and modulate the selected MPEG stream onto the RF QAM channel. You and I may never see eye to eye on this. Simply saying that fiber is the same as electrical does not make sense to me.


----------



## Luke M

ah30k said:


> Simply saying that fiber is the same as electrical does not make sense to me.


Please don't invent nonsense and attribute it to me. Thanks.


----------



## Luke M

mikeyts said:


> From what I just read, every channel starts out in the headend as an RF signal, converted to optical and then converted back by the optical nodes for transmission over "last mile" coax. Some of them are 6 MHz NTSC analog signals, some of them broadband digital streams.


Correct.


----------



## ah30k

Luke M said:


> Please don't invent nonsense and attribute it to me. Thanks.


This is what you said...


> The conversion from optical to electrical is signal format independent. If you send QAM channels into a node, you get QAM channels out. If you send analog in, you get analog out.


which implies you can take RF QAM at a central location and jam it into a fiber then suck it back out on the other end and push it back into a coax with no additional modulation at the node.

Anyway, if you have any hope of convincing people that there are no modulators at the node you should be able to answer my question about how you map the fiber optic signals/frequencies to the 800mhz RF spectrum. You keep skirting this issue because you can't answer it and know that you are about as wrong as can be.


----------



## Luke M

ah30k said:


> This is what you said...
> which implies you can take RF QAM at a central location and jam it into a fiber then suck it back out on the other end and push it back into a coax with no additional modulation at the node.


Yes, that's how HFC works.

Instead of tossing around insults, why don't you spend a couple minutes reading up on HFC?


----------



## ah30k

Luke M said:


> Yes, that's how HFC works.
> 
> Instead of tossing around insults, why don't you spend a couple minutes reading up on HFC?


OK, I think I understand the problem. Luke, you are thinking HFC tech that was originally introduced in the 90s. I am thinking of the systems which connect nodes to the master headend using IP over fiber. This system I am referring to allows many MPEG streams to be simultaneously sent out over the IP mulicasts around the fiber ring. At each node, IP multicasts are joined into and then the IP MPEG streams are modulated onto the local plant. This is how SDV will work well. All of the MPEG streams are available on the fiber ring but only those that have current requests from the node will actually be modulated onto the plant.


----------



## ah30k

Luke M said:


> Yes, that's how HFC works.
> 
> Instead of tossing around insults, why don't you spend a couple minutes reading up on HFC?


By the way, when did I insult you?


----------



## SCSIRAID

Luke M said:


> No, I'm saying that the node is passing the signal unmodified. All the intelligence is upstream of the node.


I believe that is pretty close to what I said..... Frequency translation may or may not be considered modification.... probably not. 500Mhz isnt an 'optical' frequency and has to be modulated or frequency shifted to be sent over optical. From what I have read, the node demods downstream data from the fiber and ships it downstream on the coax. It also gathers the upstream data from the coax and modulates and ships that upstream on the fiber. This says that all the transport stream formation and QAM moduluation is done upstream from the node.

I dont know 'How' the node demods downstream data but it would seem that frequency translation would be a likely choice. Attempting to encode it further would seem to be more difficult.


----------



## lrhorer

Luke M said:


> It certainly does cost more. The switching function isn't free,


It's trivial on a per-channel basis, and the differential cost for each additional channel is nothing at all until they fill up a 10G fabric and have to light up another switching module in their switch. The switch itself costs less than $250,000. Each 10G card costs less than $85,000, and can hypothetically carry 640 1080i HD channels. In practice, they can probably only manage about 500 HD channels, but I've never actually seen one fully loaded, myself. If it were all SD, that would equate to over 3000 channels. The local CATV system hauls in over $1 million dollars a day just for San Antonio. A loaded switch costing $500,000 represents less than a half a day's revenue, and the expenditure is capitalized, so it doesn't hit the expense budget.

Even my company, which is much, much smaller than Time Warner Cable, doesn't have a heart attack at spending $500K on a key infrastructure component like that. Just recently the folks upstairs approved capital projects I submitted totalling $1.2 million dollars for expanding our local operation. Companies are required to publish their capital expenditures, and if you look at TWCs' or Comcast's financial statements, I'll bet they both laid out more than $1 billion each in capital expenditures the past year, or at least close to it, if not more.



Luke M said:


> nor are QAM modulators free.


The same QAM modulator is used whether the channel is SDV or linear digital. There is no additional cost for SDV modulation, because it's the same.


----------



## lrhorer

dswallow said:


> I'd be encoding the signal once and distributing it to all my nodes; each node would then only need to combine that digital signal with whatever other digital signals are going out in a single QAM channel.


No, it's a switched protocol, essentially identical to Ethernet switching on your home LAN if you have one. The main switch at the headend sends each packet to whatever nodes require the packet in question. Large systems like those here in San Antonio use smaller intermediate headends, but the paradigm is the same. If a particular data stream is not in use by a particular intermediate headend, it doesn't get sent to the intermediate site. Only the digital streams needed by the node are sent to the node.


----------



## Luke M

lrhorer said:


> The same QAM modulator is used whether the channel is SDV or linear digital. There is no additional cost for SDV modulation, because it's the same.


But there's no reason to have a 1:1 relationship between broadcast channel modulators and nodes. That would be redundant, since you can modulate once and split the signal.


----------



## dswallow

Luke M said:


> But there's no reason to have a 1:1 relationship between broadcast channel modulators and nodes. That would be redundant, since you can modulate once and split the signal.


But the problem is one QAM channel contains multiple subchannels of programming, the specific combination of which may and will change depending on what the subscribers on the node are tuned to. The actual combining of multiple channel datastreams and modulation on a specific QAM channel has to be performed at the node level.

The MPEG encoding of each channel can be performed once for the entire system.


----------



## Luke M

dswallow said:


> But the problem is one QAM channel contains multiple subchannels of programming, the specific combination of which may and will change depending on what the subscribers on the node are tuned to. The actual combining of multiple channel datastreams and modulation on a specific QAM channel has to be performed at the node level.


That is only for switched channels. The question is why such a capability would be needed for broadcast (not switched) channels, which are the same for every node.


----------



## dswallow

Luke M said:


> That is only for switched channels. The question is why such a capability would be needed for broadcast (not switched) channels, which are the same for every node.


That was what we were discussing in terms of all channels should be switched... it's quite likely in a node of only 150 to 500 homes that at any given time even some otherwise popular channels won't be tuned. Bandwidth is bandwidth and anything less than 100% 24-hour-a-day, 52-weeks-a-year demand for a channel represents utilization savings available to the cable operator.


----------



## mikeyts

Let's remember that not everything is switched. In Austin, they supposedly switch 175 (of 265 listed) linear SD digital channels and 8 linear HD channels (out of 28 listed) onto 8 QAMs, about 14 fewer QAMs than it would take to send all those channels everywhere all the time. This still leaves 90 SD digital channels and 20 HD ones that aren't switched (and which are all probably too popular--requested by someone at every node all the time--to be useful to switch).

EDIT: I started composing this before the previous two were posted.


----------



## mikeyts

dswallow said:


> That was what we were discussing in terms of all channels should be switched... it's quite likely in a node of only 150 to 500 homes that at any given time even some otherwise popular channels won't be tuned. Bandwidth is bandwidth and anything less than 100% 24-hour-a-day, 52-weeks-a-year demand for a channel represents utilization savings available to the cable operator.


From that Multichannel News article about the use of SDV in Austin:


> Todd Bowen, director of digital systems for Time Warner Cables Austin, Texas, division, delivered a key piece of wisdom for those deploying switched digital video: Be sure to get the right channels in the mix.
> 
> The most important decision youre going to make is which channels to switch, Bowen said. If you dont pick the right channels, its going to bite you.
> 
> Thats because if those channels are too popular -- that is, if theyre being watched by someone virtually all of the time -- those will potentially eat up all of the space set aside for the SDV pool, defeating the whole purpose of the technology.
> ...​At the operational level, the key question for Bowen was: Which to switch? He offered a few insights from Austin's experience. First, he said, anything in a tier -- like a sports tier or a non-English-language tier -- is a good candidate, because obviously, not everyone takes that tier of service. Alternate-time-zone feeds and pay-per-view channels are also likely to be among the least-viewed channels.
> 
> Event pay-per-view, sports pay-per-view, thats low-hanging fruit, he added. Those are 8-10 channels that are wasted when there are no events.
> 
> But there are exceptions to the rules. For example, in Austin, the West Coast feed of a certain kids channel (the channels company has a large theme park up the road, Bowen noted) happens to be extremely popular. Its the babysitting channel, he said. Its always on.
> 
> Then there are blockbuster PPV events, like high-profile boxing matches. For one such bout recently, Bowen said, customers who subscribed to the event hadnt followed Time Warners instructions to boot up their SA set-tops to download the SDV client from the BigBand servers, so they couldnt tune to the PPV channel. The call center was swamped with irate subscribers. It was a classic example of, Whoops, Bowen said.
> 
> Time Warner Austin has since moved its main PPV-events channel back into regular digital broadcast, although Bowen added that other PPV channels work very well in a switched environment.
> 
> In the final analysis, in selecting the channels to be switched, Theres no magic chart that goes, yes-no-yes-no, he said. Its a case-by-case basis.


It really isn't worth going after every little scrap of bandwidth for channels that are unused by anyone for 5 minutes here or there throughout the day. Being greedy about it doesn't buy you much but, as we're all well aware, will antoganize people trying to use your system via unidirectional DCR devices.


----------



## ah30k

lrhorer said:


> Luke M said:
> 
> 
> 
> nor are QAM modulators free.
> 
> 
> 
> The same QAM modulator is used whether the channel is SDV or linear digital. There is no additional cost for SDV modulation, because it's the same.
Click to expand...

The smaller you made your node sizes the more edge QAMs you will need. There is no free lunch when it comes to bandwidth savings. Edge QAM vendors are salivating at the thought of widely deployed SDV.

You will also need more return path demodulators as the message traffic increases significantly over just VOD.


----------



## dswallow

mikeyts said:


> From that Multichannel News article about the use of SDV in Austin:
> It really isn't worth going after every little scrap of bandwidth for channels that are unused by anyone for 5 minutes here or there throughout the day. Being greedy about it doesn't buy you much but, as we're all well aware, will antoganize people trying to use your system via unidirectional DCR devices.


"640K ought to be enough for anybody." -- Bill Gates, 1981 

It is always a matter of conflicting requirements... it's not unreasonable to expect cable companies will want to provide at least the first few tiers of basic channels in full to all subscribers just to avoid the inevitable complaints from unidirectional device owners who want to have access to channels. Inevitably, though, those same device owners will also want some SDV-based channels, so they'll be upset with you anyway.

It's much like the "need" to keep any analog channels around today. Look what we can do with the bandwidth taken up by one analog channel now and justifying using them for analog channels becomes more and more difficult.


----------



## mikeyts

SDV just does not buy you enough on channels that are popular. Any SDV channel runs the risk of being requested when there is no bandwidth for it and the more popular the channel, the less acceptable that risk becomes.

I can't find it now, but I read one study online in which it was found that no more than 34 of the least popular 200 channels of a set of 300 was ever tuned concurrently on any last-mile segment of the cable system under study. Those are the kind of efficiencies that make SDV worthwhile.


dswallow said:


> "It's much like the "need" to keep any analog channels around today. Look what we can do with the bandwidth taken up by one analog channel now and justifying using them for analog channels becomes more and more difficult.


Those are fairly easily justified--there are hundreds of millions of analog-only tuning televisions in use in the US today (my housemate uses one and until a year ago, I owned a 13-y/o 36" tube which is still in heavy use by the person that I gave it to). The cost of reclaiming that bandwidth now is the cost of distributing digital tuning devices to be attached to those televisions, and many of the owners of those televisions aren't interested in having a separate tuning box, because space is at a premium in the situation where the television is used (little sets on cramped bookshelves and hung under kitchen cabinets and sitting on workbenches in garages). Some people just don't want to have to deal with a separate device at all. (Someone needs to come up with a box that can simultaneously "tune" 75 digital basic/extended basic channels and blend them together as NTSC channels on coax--we about at the point where it can be done, but whether cheaply enough for this app is another matter).

Every year, more and more of those televisions are replaced with digital tuning ones, so the problem gradually diminishes and eventually it will make sense to dump analog cable. It's likely to happen before it's convenient for everyone. The FCC has recently mandated that local television will have to continue to be rebroadcast by cable in analog until 2012 (even though the broadcasters themselves will be prohibited from putting it on the air in analog form ). That decision doesn't affect even all of the 20 channels that you get in basic cable though, much less extended basic.


----------



## dswallow

MicroTune has a chip (the MT2131) that, in volume, is under $3 that can tune analog, digital and QAM. It wouldn't be all the hard to imagine creating a device with a bunch of those coupled with NTSC modulators (or, I suppose, ways to recombine multiple streams into a QAM modulated channel). The main stumbling block would be dealing with encryption on all those channels simultaneously.


----------



## bicker

dswallow said:


> It wouldn't be all the hard ....


Famous last words in this industry, I suspect.


----------



## mikeyts

dswallow said:


> MicroTune has a chip (the MT2131) that, in volume, is under $3 that can tune analog, digital and QAM. It wouldn't be all the hard to imagine creating a device with a bunch of those coupled with NTSC modulators (or, I suppose, ways to recombine multiple streams into a QAM modulated channel). The main stumbling block would be dealing with encryption on all those channels simultaneously.


A couple of years back, Toshiba demonstrated simultaneous decoding of 48 SDTV streams (read from an HDD--see this) on the Cell processor, developed jointly by them, IBM and Sony and used most famously in the Playstation 3. Toshiba's interest in the processor was for general purpose multimedia content crunching in A/V devices; at this point, they're manufacturing the lion's share of them, having bought Sony's factory and picked up their PS3 demand as a supplier. I don't know what additional load decrypting the streams adds.


----------



## Luke M

mikeyts said:


> (Someone needs to come up with a box that can simultaneously "tune" 75 digital basic/extended basic channels and blend them together as NTSC channels on coax--we about at the point where it can be done, but whether cheaply enough for this app is another matter).


http://www.broadlogic.com/tpix.htm


----------



## dswallow

Luke M said:


> http://www.broadlogic.com/tpix.htm


Nice chip, also $300 each in quantity... just the chip. At least a year ago. 

http://www.engadget.com/2006/11/06/broadlogic-unveils-terapix-cables-secret-weapon/


----------



## mikeyts

Very cool. Apparently BroadLogic demonstrated a "residential gateway" based on the chip at a CableLabs conference back in August (see this). A nice thing about this is that you'd only need one of them in a house--just put it in the attic (or wherever your cable comes in) and connect it between the incoming cable and the outlets in the rooms where you were using analog tuners. Any outlets to which you'd attached digital tuners and/or cable modems would need to stay on a clean line, but that should be easy enough.

I wonder if these gateways could be made addressable, allowing the addition of subscription SD digital content tiers like the "Digital Sports Tier", and "Digital Lifestyles Tier", as well as the premium channel tiers (HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, Starz), most elements of which are still SD? That could actually enhance service sales to analog-only or analog-mostly households.

In that article I linked, it gives a CEA estimate that there are an average of 3 analog televisions still in use per household. They are being replaced by digital televisions at a decent pace (estimated 16 million shipped this year), but it's gonna a while yet.


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## Luke M

The problem with the BroadLogic idea is that it's as expensive as providing every TV with a set top box. So the only advantage is whatever customer satisfaction is obtained from allowing people to continue with their old habits.

An alternative gateway approach would be to provide a limited number of simultaneous analog channels, like 4. For each analog TV you would have an RF remote control to select the channel. This might be a little cheaper than a set top box for each TV.


----------



## lrhorer

Luke M said:


> But there's no reason to have a 1:1 relationship between broadcast channel modulators and nodes. That would be redundant, since you can modulate once and split the signal.


Hypothetically this would be possible if the entire QAM is devoted to non-switched channels, but in practice it's not practical. It costs as much to segregate the topology of the headend or hubsite into two sections with different topologies than to simply deploy a single topology for the entire site, and the maintenance and management costs are much lower, not to mention the engineering headaches are greatly reduced. Believe me, designing a headend is difficult enough when all the sources are symmetrical. Adding assymmetrical sources makes things really difficult.

What's worse, adding a new channel or moving a channel from one tier to another suddenly becomes very difficult and time consuming, requiring potentially many hours of truck rolls and channel down-time. If the same system is used for all digital programming, then adding, deleting, or moving a channel or changing from linear to SDV or vice-versa becomes a matter of a few mouse clicks.

Not only that, but one of the features which has CATV providers salivating is the prospect of automated channel upgrades. The user tunes to a channel he does not receive, presses a button and viola! he receives and is billed for a month of HBO or Showtime.


----------



## mikeyts

Luke M said:


> The problem with the BroadLogic idea is that it's as expensive as providing every TV with a set top box. So the only advantage is whatever customer satisfaction is obtained from allowing people to continue with their old habits.


Again, you only need one of these boxes for all of the analog tuners in use in your household. In fact, you could package these things up with amplifiers and put them in the neighborhood distribution boxes, sharing one between several households, selling connections to them as "analog service options" (if you do that, you lose the possibility of selling pay SD digital channel tiers). I don't know about older installations, but the newer homes that I've lived in (built in the past twenty years) have 2-3 lines running in from the those boxes--it'd be simple to connect one or more of them to one of these "gateways" and distribute it to the appropriate outlets.

I'm also sure that pricing of these chips is falling as fast as BroadLogic can make it happen, isasmuch as they haven't sold any of them yet at that year-ago price.

Don't belittle the goal of "allowing people to continue with their old habits". It's called not messing with a satisfied customer. Try to force them to use boxes that they don't want to deal with and they'll take a long hard look at whether they need your service at all and what they might do as an alternative.


----------



## dswallow

lrhorer said:


> Hypothetically this would be possible if the entire QAM is devoted to non-switched channels, but in practice it's not practical. It costs as much to segregate the topology of the headend or hubsite into two sections with different topologies than to simply deploy a single topology for the entire site, and the maintenance and management costs are much lower, not to mention the engineering headaches are greatly reduced. Believe me, designing a headend is difficult enough when all the sources are symmetrical. Adding assymmetrical sources makes things really difficult.
> 
> What's worse, adding a new channel or moving a channel from one tier to another suddenly becomes very difficult and time consuming, requiring potentially many hours of truck rolls and channel down-time. If the same system is used for all digital programming, then adding, deleting, or moving a channel or changing from linear to SDV or vice-versa becomes a matter of a few mouse clicks.
> 
> Not only that, but one of the features which has CATV providers salivating is the prospect of automated channel upgrades. The user tunes to a channel he does not receive, presses a button and viola! he receives and is billed for a month of HBO or Showtime.


I believe the concept is that by eliminating use of bandwidth in the cable plant for any analog signals one no longer needs SDV at all... at least such that the digital channels that would be placed on an analog cable in the home wouldn't be SDV.

I wonder if that chipset has the power to take HD digital signals and downconvert them to SD, thus further eliminating the need to carry SD channels if they have HD counterparts.


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## Luke M

mikeyts said:


> Don't belittle the goal of "allowing people to continue with their old habits". It's called not messing with a satisfied customer. Try to force them to use boxes that they don't want to deal with and they'll take a long hard look at whether they need your service at all and what they might do as an alternative.


That's true, but at the same time, some customers would be happier with the set top box solution and the features it enables (like VOD available on every TV).

Several factors are gradually decreasing the cost of going "all digital":
1) Customers voluntarily subscribing to services requiring a STB
2) FCC tuner mandate having the side effect that almost all new TVs can receive unencrypted QAM
3) STBs getting cheaper


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## mikeyts

Luke M said:


> That's true, but at the same time, some customers would be happier with the set top box solution and the features it enables (like VOD available on every TV).


Every last one of those customers is pounded with ads from the cable company telling them about the wonderful world awaiting them with a box. I gotta think that most people who haven't chosen to add boxes to their televisions have good and sufficient reasons. My housemate is perfectly satisfied with the 75-80 channels that she can tune from her little 20" television in the LR (expanded basic is included in the HOA fees here) and has no desire for VOD. Many people using analog cable now have televisions placed in locations so that they can watch a sitcom or the news while they prepare a meal or in the rooms of small children where they don't need anything more than PBS and Disney. Some of those have boxes in their family rooms and don't want or need them anywhere else. Some don't have any boxes and the major advantage of cable television for them is the fact that they don't have to buy or lease an STB or learn to use a remote control more complicated than a number keypad with CHAN UP/DOWN, VOL UP/DOWN, ON/OFF. Force them to use an STB and they're not going to be happy with you and they might as well take a look at the pricing of what the satellite and telco folks are offering.


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## Luke M

mikeyts said:


> Every last one of those customers is pounded with ads from the cable company telling them about the wonderful world awaiting them with a box. I gotta think that most people who haven't chosen to add boxes to their televisions have good and sufficient reasons.


Yes, but the reason is not necessarily that they place a negative value on digital. For some, the only problem is that the value is less than the cost.


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## bdraw

lrhorer said:


> No, it's a switched protocol, essentially identical to Ethernet switching on your home LAN if you have one. The main switch at the headend sends each packet to whatever nodes require the packet in question. Large systems like those here in San Antonio use smaller intermediate headends, but the paradigm is the same. If a particular data stream is not in use by a particular intermediate headend, it doesn't get sent to the intermediate site. Only the digital streams needed by the node are sent to the node.


You're confusing packet switched with circuit switched. It's more like a telephone line (circuit switched) than Ethernet (packet switched). Packet switched would be IPTV, not SDV.


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## morac

dswallow said:


> I believe the concept is that by eliminating use of bandwidth in the cable plant for any analog signals one no longer needs SDV at all... at least such that the digital channels that would be placed on an analog cable in the home wouldn't be SDV.


The bandwidth that would be freed up by dropping Analog is most likely being earmarked for things like faster broadband connections (ie: DOCSIS 3.0). By using SDV and dropping analog and switching to MPEG-4, the cable companies can free up a lot of bandwidth for use for other things. See this article.

Speaking of MPEG-4, I found this article which describes how using SDV can ease the transition to MPEG-4 (and save bandwidth) by providing MPEG-4 streams to those boxes that support it, but MPEG-2 streams to those that don't. All while keeping the same channel number for both streams. T


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## jsshattuck

GREAT news!!! In October TWC added several new HD channels using SDV (Switched Digital Video--see thread on SDV if you are not familiar with it). Since the TiVo 3 cannot handle SDV, we were either force to do without the new channels or pay $10/month for an STB. Today I visited the TWC website and discovered that one of the channels (Golf/Versus) had been moved to the basic tier. A light went off in my brain that said if that was true, pehaps it was no longer using SDV and could be viewed and recorded by my TiVo. In fact that is true for that channel as well as all the other new HD channels. 

Looks like TWC has seen the light about selecting SDV channels, and at least for now, new HD channels will have dedicated frequencies and will work with CableCARDs.


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## lrhorer

ah30k said:


> I am thinking of the systems which connect nodes to the master headend using IP over fiber. This system I am referring to allows many MPEG streams to be simultaneously sent out over the IP mulicasts around the fiber ring. At each node, IP multicasts are joined into and then the IP MPEG streams are modulated onto the local plant. This is how SDV will work well. All of the MPEG streams are available on the fiber ring but only those that have current requests from the node will actually be modulated onto the plant.


There are several different possible SDV implementations. What works best depends upon a number of factors, including the physical size of the geographical area being served, the average number of subscribers per mile of fiber, the bandwidth of the CATV plant, the number of QAM streams, the number of nodes served from the hubsite, and the ratio of SDV bandwidth to linear digital bandwidth. Here in San Antonio they simply use AM fiber, where the entire RF spectrum is just directly AM modulated as a 750 MHz baseband signal onto the LASER. The nodes themselves are not digital. It's by far the least expensive method of getting the signal out to the node, but it also imposes very strict limitations on the maximum distance from the hubsite to the node. I could be mis-remembering, but if I recall the maximum distance to the node for the gear they use here is less than 14 route miles of fiber. Given that 14 route miles may be as little as 7 or 8 line of sight miles, that's not much for a city the size of San Antonio. Still, it works and it's economical.

Delivery of the digital stream to the hubsite is via pt-pt 10G Ethernet, not an Ethernet ring, although an Ethernet ring would certainly be a possible implementation. The 10G wavelength is carried over a DWDM ring for redundancy, but it is not a ring at the Ethernet layer. Once again, the decision to deliver over pt-pt links rather than a ring is one which is determined by the geographical node density, the number of hubsites, the number of SDV streams, etc.


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## mikeyts

jsshattuck said:


> GREAT news!!! In October TWC added several new HD channels using SDV (Switched Digital Video--see thread on SDV if you are not familiar with it). Since the TiVo 3 cannot handle SDV, we were either force to do without the new channels or pay $10/month for an STB. Today I visited the TWC website and discovered that one of the channels (Golf/Versus) had been moved to the basic tier. A light went off in my brain that said if that was true, pehaps it was no longer using SDV and could be viewed and recorded by my TiVo. In fact that is true for that channel as well as all the other new HD channels.
> 
> Looks like TWC has seen the light about selecting SDV channels, and at least for now, new HD channels will have dedicated frequencies and will work with CableCARDs.


In some areas, TWC's plan to use SDV has been combined with their roll-out of their new Digital Navigator IPG, created and maintained in-house. They have both a hard-coded versions called "Mystro Digital Navigator" (MDN--the original codename of the product was "Mystro") which will run on the memory-limited legacy SA boxes and an OCAP version (ODN) which will run on their new CableCARD-using "C" series leased boxes (i.e., SA Explorer 4250C, 4250HDC, 8300C and 8300HDC), all of which have twice the applications RAM of the old ones. The OCAP version can also run on new "CableCARD V2" equipment with OCAP--they and Samsung have been demonstrating it at product shows running on prototype Sammy televisions for the past year or two.

Digital Navigator has been a bit less than ready-for-primetime; when they rolled it out in trialed in Lincoln, NE last year, it upset so many subs that they held city council hearings to decide whether they had cause to break their contract with TWC and choose a new cable service provider. So, in most places they seem to be taking a slow and cautious approach, distributing ODN on new SA Explorer "C" series boxes but holding off on pushing MDN to everyone with legacy boxes. Even if all the bugs have been worked out, it's gonna be a mess when they push this, with tons of calls from confused subs whose STBs sudden present a different looking GUI with a different set of menus which doesn't respond to quite the same set of commands. Since the "legacy" IPG that they using (Aptiv Digital's Passport and Passport Echo) hasn't been updated to work with the SDV system that they're using, they have to wait until they're ready for widespread deployment of Digital Navigator before they can start using SDV. I think that they'd thought to withhold stuff that they planned to place in an SDV group from their CableCARD customers so they wouldn't have to take them away from them later, but too many people complained.


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## XBR

bdraw said:


> You're confusing packet switched with circuit switched. It's more like a telephone line (circuit switched) than Ethernet (packet switched). Packet switched would be IPTV, not SDV.


According to this article: http://www.cable360.net/ct/strategy/emergingtech/26402.html, the core transport in SDV is packet-switched IP; IP over 10 GbE, SONET, DWDM, etc. It goes on to mention how packet loss, queuing delays and jitter can impact QoE (Quality of Experience), as with VoIP.

I believe the term IPTV more generally refers to television-type services delivered over "traditional" data networks...


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## lrhorer

bdraw said:


> You're confusing packet switched with circuit switched. It's more like a telephone line (circuit switched) than Ethernet (packet switched). Packet switched would be IPTV, not SDV.


No, I'm not confusing them, although I did over-simplify the situation. Actually, SDV is close to being a hybrid of the two types of network. The salient point here, however, is that what happens at layer 2 switching is irrelevant to what happens at layer 3 and above. At layer 2 on an Ethernet network, switching occurs at the packet level whether layer 3 is routed or switched or what the layer 3 service might be. The 802.1 protocols are always circuit-less, whether the layer 3 protocols are circuit-less or not. Since the links being used *ARE* ethernet, they are not "more like a telephone line (circuit switched) than Ethernet (packet switched)". The San Antonio system uses 10G Ethernet to transport their streams (analog, linear digital and SDV) out to their hubsites.

The important point in my original post was traffic not needed by the intermediate hubsite is not sent to the hubsite, and traffic not needded by the node is not sent to the node. The traffic links (whatever they might be for the system in question) only carry data that actually gets used by the endpoint.


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## lrhorer

mikeyts said:


> In some areas, TWC's plan to use SDV has been combined with their roll-out of their new Digital Navigator IPG, created and maintained in-house.


I've heard a whisper or two about this from some of my colleagues who still work at TWC, but I really don't know any details. Of course, they would never divulge any confidential information, and I would never pass on any sensitive information to which I had any access, but from what I've heard, the "not ready for prime time" label is pretty accurate. Of course, IMO, the Scientific Atlanta 8300HD deserves the same label, in spades, and it's been out for a couple of years. For that matter, the entire SDV platform could qualify for the label in my opinion, the fact individual and specific deployments of SDV are working extremely well in many respects notwithstanding.


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## mikeyts

lrhorer said:


> Of course, IMO, the Scientific Atlanta 8300HD deserves the same label, in spades, and it's been out for a couple of years.


Before buying a TiVo S3, I used an Explorer 8000HD running Passport Echo for about 2.5 years and it was nearly as nice overall as the TiVo and I had no larger number of problem with it than I experience with the S3. There are several features of it that I miss dearly, though on the whole their absence is balanced by things that TiVo does better. I moved from a TWC neighborhood into a Cox one where they used the SA8300 running SARA, which is so wretched that I'm certain it would have actually caused me to suffer a fatal heart attack had I used it much longer. I was in a constant state of apoplectic rage while dealing with it. Had I stayed in the old place with Passport Echo, I'd have never been tempted to buy a TiVo.


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## pmiranda

mikeyts said:


> Before buying a TiVo S3, I used an Explorer 8000HD running Passport Echo for about 2.5 years and it was nearly as nice overall as the TiVo...


If TW-Austin had ponied up the bucks for Passport software on their 8000HD, I might never have bought my S3. As it is, they're still SARA-only and I'd rather live without several SDV channels on my TiVo than live with their evil POS box.
Hopefully the reports of the tuning resolver arriving late Q108 are real!


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## lrhorer

mikeyts said:


> Before buying a TiVo S3, I used an Explorer 8000HD running Passport Echo for about 2.5 years and it was nearly as nice overall as the TiVo and I had no larger number of problem with it than I experience with the S3.


I don't have any personal experience with the Passport software, but I have heard it is much better than the SARA software. It would be difficult for it to be worse. Nonetheless, I did enter into a feature comparison with a Passport user some months ago, and the 8300HD lacks a number of critical features:

1. It can't be hacked, because the user doesn't own it.

2. No TTB / TTCB.

3. No TiVoWeb Plus or equivalent.

4. No Galleon or equivalent.

5. No Suggestions.

6. The searches are not as flexible.



mikeyts said:


> I moved from a TWC neighborhood into a Cox one where they used the SA8300 running SARA, which is so wretched that I'm certain it would have actually caused me to suffer a fatal heart attack had I used it much longer.


I used it only as long as I had to, which was until the S3 was released. It was a constant and never-ending ordeal. Generally I was cursing fluently any time I used it - the term "used" being very loosely applied, indeed.


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## lrhorer

pmiranda said:


> If TW-Austin had ponied up the bucks for Passport software on their 8000HD, I might never have bought my S3. As it is, they're still SARA-only and I'd rather live without several SDV channels on my TiVo than live with their evil POS box.


You: :up:+2
SARA: :down:+100,000


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## lrhorer

jsshattuck said:


> Looks like TWC has seen the light about selecting SDV channels, and at least for now, new HD channels will have dedicated frequencies and will work with CableCARDs.


'Not here in San Antonio. All the new HD chanels are SDV. They add one every few days. Oh, and SDV works just fine with CableCards. It just doesn't work with unidirectional hosts like the TiVo.


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## mikeyts

lrhorer said:


> Nonetheless, I did enter into a feature comparison with a Passport user some months ago, and the 8300HD lacks a number of critical features:
> 
> 1. It can't be hacked, because the user doesn't own it.
> 
> 2. No TTB / TTCB.
> 
> 3. No TiVoWeb Plus or equivalent.
> 
> 4. No Galleon or equivalent.
> 
> 5. No Suggestions.
> 
> 6. The searches are not as flexible.


Hmmm. "Critical" is a very relative term, as you apply it. I wonder just what percentage of TiVo users would find your first 4 missing "critical" features to be of any use or concern to them ? TTG/TTCB would be nice, if I could get it to work. I've stored this season of _Friday Night Lights_ on an HDD on my PC using freeware TiVo Desktop; recently I went back to watch those 9 episodes and each and every one of them is nigh unwatchable, riddled with macroblocking and audio and video skips that were not present in the original recording. I know that TiVo has to strip out encryption that it added while recording, but apparently it introduces intra-frame sequencing problems while doing it (or while transferring it back--playing them back on the PC is much better, so perhaps there's hope). People must have found ways to deal with this, but what good is a feature if you have to find this forum and dig through discussions to successfully use it?

As for "suggestions", in my mind, it's probably the worst conceive feature of TiVo. Utterly, profoundly _useless_. In any case, I already watch way too much television to need some lame excuse for AI trying to help me find more (I know, I know--lots of people like it. I wouldn't object to it if it were a Wishlist criteria that I could use to see a list of scheduled stuff that the AI thinks that I might like without requiring that I automatically record all of them).

More flexible searches is something that I appreciate. However, Passport Echo has much more flexible "Season Pass" scheduling--you can say things like "Record this program only on this channel when it airs on Tuesday, Thursday or Sunday". If it had had time-of-day ranges it would have been perfect. Also, things that aren't marked KUID are deleted in the order that they appear on the "Now Playing" list (added to the top as they're recorded and deleted from the bottom); you can change this order at will by grabbing an entry and dragging it up or down, like adjusting priorities in TiVo's "Season Pass" dialog. Then there are the little things, like being able to see at a glance in the guide which things are already scheduled to be recorded. (For some unknown reason TiVo refuses to add this ).

I still haven't bothered to find out what "Galleon" is .

Many TiVo users are ecstatic over all of the network-enabled features that I have little to no use for (TiVoCast, Unbox, Rhapsody, etc, etc). It's possible that I would have more use for these things if I didn't use my laptop as an HTPC (I'm entering this post while using my 46" LCD flatpanel as a monitor ). All I ask from my DVR is that it do DVR things--good guide navigation including searches, reliable recording and playback with copious and flexible scheduling options and a good facility for managing stored recordings, all wrapped in an intuitive, efficient and pleasant-to-use UI. TiVo is quite good, but it's not my dream DVR (which doesn't actually exist in the real world ).

Having used TiVo S3 for a year, it wouldn't break my heart to have to go back to Passport, particularly the latest versions, which have a bunch of features added since the last one that I used. TWC systems have generally avoided upgrading to the latest, since they've known that they were headed toward Navigator. Strangely, some Cox systems are planning to roll out Passport--which now belongs to Gemstar--on SA stuff (see this), though TiVo's working on a port for Cox of thing they did on Moto boxes for Comcast. I think that the psuedo-TiVo GUI is always going to be an extra-cost option, while Passport will take the place of SARA. Under those circumstances, selling the TiVo GUI to non-TiVo users could be challenging.


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## gatzke

They announced in late November a USB workaround for switched video. It should be available in Q2 2008. I would assume they are working into testing, but I have not seen anything on it around.

I spent a lot of time to finally find out I can't get half my HD channels due to SDV. If I did not love the Tivo so much, I would be quite angry. After a year on a SA 8300 HD with Sarah, I was going nuts. Having access to my HTPC for TV, DVDs, and home videos is great.

How long until we actually see the USB add-on in the hands of consumers?

Will it do on demand as well as SDV?

I think Time Warner is screwing Tivo users and abusing their monopoly, so I sent the following missive off to the FCC:



> to	[email protected],
> cc	[email protected],
> [email protected],
> date	Dec 31, 2007 10:59 AM
> subject	Missing HD Channels: Time Warner abusing cable monopoly with Switched Digital Technology
> 
> We recently upgraded to a Tivo HD device.
> 
> After three visits from Time Warner representatives on 12/26, 12/27, and 12/28 we finally were told that we cannot receive all HD channels due to Time Warner's use of Switched Digital Technology/
> 
> This is an unfair abuse of a cable monopoly. The FCC has mandated that cable companies must allow for third party devices to work on cable networks. Changing the cable technology effectively cripples the effectiveness of third party devices.
> 
> Time warner should be forced to find a technical solution that allows for third party two-way cable communication.
> 
> Until a technical solution is provided to customers, all affected users should be provided free cable service, including cable card fees and HD channel fees.
> 
> Sincerely,


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## mikeyts

gatzke said:


> They announced in late November a USB workaround for switched video. It should be available in Q2 2008. I would assume they are working into testing, but I have not seen anything on it around.
> 
> I spent a lot of time to finally find out I can't get half my HD channels due to SDV. If I did not love the Tivo so much, I would be quite angry. After a year on a SA 8300 HD with Sarah, I was going nuts. Having access to my HTPC for TV, DVDs, and home videos is great.
> 
> How long until we actually see the USB add-on in the hands of consumers?
> 
> Will it do on demand as well as SDV?
> 
> I think Time Warner is screwing Tivo users and abusing their monopoly, so I sent the following missive off to the FCC:


I'm fairly certain that the FCC is well aware of SDV and how it screws over unidirectional CableCARD device users. I've heard many positive comments about SDV issued from a few comissioners, so I believe that they're fairly in favor of the technology--anything that allows cable to continue to compete well with satellite is okay with them.

The USB dongle, which has been much discussed in this thread, is the cable industry's response to the Consumer Electronic Association's filed complaint to the FCC about SDV and other interactive services and the expensive-to-implement route that cable wanted them to take in implementing compliant devices. The CEA outlined an approach in that complaint called "Digital Cable Ready Plus" (or DCR+) which would have required a lot of time and effort to get off the ground, and moreover wouldn't have helped anyone using current generation equipment. The cable industry countered the CEA's proposal (in part) with the USB "Tuning Resolver". To strengthen their proposal, they've gone ahead and worked with OEMs like TiVo to implement working prototypes and come out with a plan for near-term distribution of the things. As far as I know, the FCC hasn't responded to either proposal yet, but cable's proactive efforts are likely to get their thing "officially" adopted, with support for it required by future FCC rules.

So far, of the cable providers, only TWC has been so gung-ho in implementing SDV. Of the three largest MSOs (Comcast, TWC and Cox), Comcast has only deployed in two systems and Cox in only three (stating that they expect that to be it through 2008), with both companies taking a let's-carefully-check-it-out attitude; as of a mid-November report, TWC had at least installed SDV in no less than 15 markets.

Good luck on that free-service-until-the-tuning-resolver-is-available thing .


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## classicsat

gatzke said:


> How long until we actually see the USB add-on in the hands of consumers?


I am guessing perhaps fall 08 at the earliest in some markets. And that may be for the Motorola unit. I haven't heard of an Scientific Atlanta or other one (not that I've looked).


> Will it do on demand as well as SDV?


Probably not. While the hardware likely could handle other interactive services, TiVo would have to do a lot of work to make it work, if the cable providers were to allow it which that has a fat chance of happening. With more interactive features coming to the Series 4, I would expect TiVo to put those eggs in the Series 4 basket.

IMO, just be happy SDV is being fixed.


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## moyekj

mikeyts said:


> As for "suggestions", in my mind, it's probably the worst conceive feature of TiVo. Utterly, profoundly _useless_. In any case, I already watch way too much television to need some lame excuse for AI trying to help me find more (I know, I know--lots of people like it. I wouldn't object to it if it were a Wishlist criteria that I could use to see a list of scheduled stuff that the AI thinks that I might like without requiring that I automatically record all of them)


 I agree that suggestions are pretty useless and was one of the 1st things I turned off (right after the Tivo sounds). However even with suggestions turned off you can still go get a list of upcoming suggested recordings from Tivo if you wish (I never bother with it), so it's not like you are forced to have recordings to see potential suggestions.


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## mikeyts

moyekj said:


> I agree that suggestions are pretty useless and was one of the 1st things I turned off (right after the Tivo sounds). However even with suggestions turned off you can still go get a list of upcoming suggested recordings from Tivo if you wish (I never bother with it), so it's not like you are forced to have recordings to see potential suggestions.


I hadn't realized that item was there under Find Programs. Not that I have a use for it, but it's nice that you don't have to auto-record them to see them.


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## bicker

moyekj said:


> I agree that suggestions are pretty useless


I disagree. I cannot tell you how often I fall back on suggestions. My wife and I watch television together, so it doesn't make sense, when I have an hour to kill and she isn't around, to watch something from Now Playing -- I'll probably just have to watch it again when she's ready for it. So the suggestions are there for cases like that, for programming that we don't really _plan _to watch, so either of us can have something related to our interests to watch when the other isn't around. It does an incredibly good job of predicting what we'd like.


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## mikeyts

bicker said:


> It does an incredibly good job of predicting what we'd like.


There's the difference--if you've tried suggestions and they work for you, that's cool. If you've tried them and after many months the only things that it suggests that you might want to watch are things that it knows that you actually have watched in the past (my case), then it seems silly and useless .

I think that an algorithm based on random numbers would probably choose more things that appealed to me.


----------



## bicker

While the software will often put choices in that are related, the primary source for suggestions will be programs we've watched. So I think a lot of our success has to do with how we've applied Thumbs Up and Thumbs Down. It is important to remember what Thumbs Up and Thumbs Down is for: We're not voting for our favorite; we're explicitly and strictly providing hints to the software about what we want recorded as suggestions. There is no other purpose for Thumbs Up and Thumbs Down. So while everything we watch will have a Thumbs Up, we'll focus on putting two and three Thumbs Up on programs (again, explicitly) that we want recorded as suggestions. This is especially effective for the things that typically are used as filler: Showbiz Tonight is a good example. I won't watch it every day, but maybe once every week or two, but there is almost always a recent episode or two sitting there waiting for me. (Soup started out that way, but we decided we like it enough to be sure we record every episode now.) Food Network and HGTV shows are other good ones; we don't religiously watch every episode of these shows, so as long as there is a recent episode available whenever we want one, all is good.

Very infrequently will we take advantage of the new (to us) program suggestions, i.e., we like Criminal Minds, so it recorded Without a Trace. However, this did prompt me to add a Season Pass for Without a Trace when it started up in syndication from episode 1, and that's working out very well for us this week.

Anyway, I think we're getting *far* away from the topic here.


----------



## dswallow

bicker said:


> Anyway, I think we're getting *far* away from the topic here.


Doesn't SDV stand for "Suggested Digital Video"?


----------



## drcos

Actually in some cases, I would think "Somewhat Demented Viewers" (present company excluded, of course)

I was not aware there is no SA solution, but since Cisco bought SA, I'm sure that will be remedied rather quickly


----------



## lrhorer

mikeyts said:


> Hmmm. "Critical" is a very relative term, as you apply it.


Actually, I would say "subjective" rather than "relative", but yes, of course. That said, I submit anyone who doesn't consider TiVoWeb Plus or an equivalent to be critical has never used TiVoWeb Plus.



mikeyts said:


> I wonder just what percentage of TiVo users would find your first 4 missing "critical" features to be of any use or concern to them ?


Anyone who wants to make actual use of their hardware. I must say I am constantly flabbergasted by people who pay good money for a device and then don't bother to make use of its major capabilities. I am also nearly as flabbergasted by people who do not customize their hardware to meet their needs as closely as possible. Hell, the first thing I do when I buy a bloody screwdriver is re-grind the tip to get better gripping capabilities.



mikeyts said:


> TTG/TTCB would be nice, if I could get it to work. I've stored this season of _Friday Night Lights_ on an HDD on my PC using freeware TiVo Desktop; recently I went back to watch those 9 episodes and each and every one of them is nigh unwatchable, riddled with macroblocking and audio and video skips that were not present in the original recording.


That's very interesting. I've used TTCB quite a bit (using Galleon, not TiVo Desktop), and had never seen what you describe, but just last night we watched a show which had the same problems as you describe. It wasn't unwatchable, but I did wind up tuning on Closed Captioning just so we wouldn't miss the odd bit of conversation. I think a call to TiVo tech support is definitely called for.



mikeyts said:


> People must have found ways to deal with this, but what good is a feature if you have to find this forum and dig through discussions to successfully use it?


This must have started happening quite recently. I've not seen it before.



mikeyts said:


> As for "suggestions", in my mind, it's probably the worst conceive feature of TiVo. Utterly, profoundly _useless_.


Quite the contrary. I have found the TiVo to be astoundingly good at figuring out what I might like and recording it. After only 1 or 2 week's worth of watching a new TiVo and being diligent about applying the thumbs up and thumbs down, it can start to record a high percentage of programs I like. I find that better than 50% of the programs are ones I like. What's more, it's very convenient to let suggestions record certain series I like to occasionally watch or which are in massive syndication without risking an episode overwriting one of my scheduled recordings.



mikeyts said:


> In any case, I already watch way too much television to need some lame excuse for AI trying to help me find more (I know, I know--lots of people like it.


That's just the point. It's not lame, and it is under your direct control. It's only lame if the user is lame. It frequently catches great material of which I was unaware, and regularly records great material of which I am aware, but for whatever reasons do not wish to include on a Wishlist or a Season Pass.



mikeyts said:


> I wouldn't object to it if it were a Wishlist criteria that I could use to see a list of scheduled stuff that the AI thinks that I might like without requiring that I automatically record all of them).


Well, first of all, you can. Unless I am mistaken, you can look at the TiVo Suggestions list even if you have Suggestions turned off. More to the point, however, is the question, "How is it being a 'requirement' a burden to your experience?" It doesn't require you personally to do anything. It doesn't impact the operation of the DVR - it's recording 24 hours a day no matter what. It doesn't impact your scheduled programs. No Suggestion will ever overwrite a scheduled recording or be recorded in place of a scheduled recording. It doesn't even really impact the Now Playing list significantly. If groups (folders) are turned on, the suggestions are all in one little folder. If groups are turned off, it's trivially easy to skip over those programs marked as Suggestions.



mikeyts said:


> However, Passport Echo has much more flexible "Season Pass" scheduling--you can say things like "Record this program only on this channel when it airs on Tuesday, Thursday or Sunday".


That could certainly come in handy. Have you suggested it over on TiVo Suggestion Avenue?



mikeyts said:


> If it had had time-of-day ranges it would have been perfect.


I'm not quite sure I see how that would be useful, but it doesn't hurt to have a feature I wouldn't use. 'Suggest it!



mikeyts said:


> Also, things that aren't marked KUID are deleted in the order that they appear on the "Now Playing" list (added to the top as they're recorded and deleted from the bottom);


I'm not sure I follow. Are you saying re-sorting the NPL will cause the delete order to change every time it's re-sorted? No, no I don't like that at all. Not one bit. It's a terrible idea.



mikeyts said:


> you can change this order at will by grabbing an entry and dragging it up or down, like adjusting priorities in TiVo's "Season Pass" dialog.


That only really works if the NPL isn't sortable. 'Given a choice between being able to more easily change a delete date and not being able to sort the NPL, I'll take that latter, hands down. One can always change the delete date with a couple of extra keystrokes on the remote to select "Keep until".



mikeyts said:


> Then there are the little things, like being able to see at a glance in the guide which things are already scheduled to be recorded. (For some unknown reason TiVo refuses to add this ).


I'd be just as happy if they got rid of the guide altogether. Although much better than the SARA guide, all guides are useless on a properly designed DVR. It's like adding a buggy whip holder to a Lamborghini. Indeed, one of my most seething hatreds of the SARA system as it based all recording vectors on a guide. OTOH, as I said, having a feature available which I don't care to use but am not forced to use is not a problem, so suggest away.



mikeyts said:


> I still haven't bothered to find out what "Galleon" is .


It's a 3rd party HME / HMO application which supplies lots of great features. There are lots of neat 4th party applications written for Galleon, as well. Among other things, it provides a much better utility to handle weather reports, traffic information, music (both from the PC and streaming from the web), e-mail, RSS feeds, video, and TTG / TTCB. Currently there are 22 applicatiojns available for Galleon, including those I just listed. It's the only application which allows the user to select which shows to transfer to the PC right from the Tivo itself, or indeed from any other Tivo to the PC. It's available for Windows, Linux, and Mac.



mikeyts said:


> (I'm entering this post while using my 46" LCD flatpanel as a monitor ).


I have PCs connected to my 62" Mitsubishi and my Optoma projector with a 140" screen, as well (right now I'm at my desk). That's not really the point.



mikeyts said:


> All I ask from my DVR is that it do DVR things


How are Amazon Unbox and TiVocast not DVR things? I select them like any other video, They are in the NPL for me to watch like any other video, and I delete them when I'm done like any other video.

Not only that, but the music player (under Galleon) is far more stable than any I've used on the PCs, and pulling up the weather and traffic reports on the TiVo is much easier and more convenient than on the PCs, especially if I'm already watching the TiVo, not working on the PC.



mikeyts said:


> TiVo is quite good, but it's not my dream DVR (which doesn't actually exist in the real world ).


Surely not. Mine either, especially since mine would also be free. 



mikeyts said:


> I think that the psuedo-TiVo GUI is always going to be an extra-cost option, while Passport will take the place of SARA. Under those circumstances, selling the TiVo GUI to non-TiVo users could be challenging.


Don't ask me to explain or even understand the thinking of the marketing types.


----------



## lrhorer

moyekj said:


> I agree that suggestions are pretty useless and was one of the 1st things I turned off (right after the Tivo sounds).


How do you know it's useless if you never tried to use it? TiVo Suggestions finds easily 2 or 3 programs a week I would never have known were there, and records easily 10 or 20 shows a week I do know are there and like to watch from time to time. Indeed, while the suggestions list often contains "second string" programming, If all the scheduled recordings were to be suddenly lost, I would be quite well served watching only the Suggestions. Certainly browsing the recorded suggestions list is far, far better than browsing a stupid TV Guide. Browsing the TV guide is a complete waste of time. Unless it's right at the top or bottom of the hour, a guide can only show me things I might be able to watch in the future, and 98% or better of the things it shows me you couldn't pay me to watch. There is not even one chance in a thousand browsing any guide will find me a program I want to watch right now, while browsing the recorded TiVo suggestions folder is guaranteed to bring up at least 10 or 20 shows I like and can watch right now, while only showing me a comparatively much smaller list of shows I don't want to watch now and a vastly smaller list of shows I don't want to watch ever.


----------



## lrhorer

mikeyts said:


> There's the difference--if you've tried suggestions and they work for you, that's cool. If you've tried them and after many months the only things that it suggests that you might want to watch are things that it knows that you actually have watched in the past (my case), then it seems silly and useless .


What has that to do with it? 99% of the things I want to see I've seen before. I would far, far rather watch one of my favorite movies for the 200th time than some new piece of garbage. Indeed, nothing goes on my server and very little on the TiVo in the theater room that I have not seen at least once.



mikeyts said:


> I think that an algorithm based on random numbers would probably choose more things that appealed to me.


Of course, YMMV, but I have to wonder how much thought you put into using thumbs up and thumbs down. Both are important. Of course, it could be your likes and desires are quite broad in scope while your viewing habits are quite narrow, or vice-versa. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that, but it would make predicting your needs very difficult. In my case, when I got the newer of the two S3 units, it began recording M*A*S*H, Golden Girls, Eureka, ER, Law and Order (various incarnations), Star Trek (various incarnations), Modern Marvels, Designing Women, The Twilight Zone, John Wayne movies, Clint Eastwood movies, and Harry Potter within a month despite my never having recorded any of these specifically (other than two or three of the Wayne and Eastwood movies), strictly from analyzing my thumbs up and thumbs down selections.

It also began recording things like Gray's Anatomy and Survivor, but a quick thumbs down took care of those.

It's probably worth noting the Suggestions lists on all 4 TiVos are very similar even though I made absolutely no conscious effort to make them so. While I certainly cannot say I like every item recorded in Suggestions, the percentage of items I like is vastly higher than any guide coud ever offer, and the percentage of programs I really hate is astronomically smaller - if that's not too much of an oxymoron.


----------



## lrhorer

bicker said:


> Anyway, I think we're getting *far* away from the topic here.


Yeah, you're right. And now back to your regularly scheduled programming...


----------



## mikeyts

drcos said:


> Actually in some cases, I would think "Somewhat Demented Viewers" (present company excluded, of course)
> 
> I was not aware there is no SA solution, but since Cisco bought SA, I'm sure that will be remedied rather quickly


Since, for the moment, TWC is by far the biggest adopter of SDV and mostly uses networks composed of SA equipment, a solution compatible with that (and BigBand Networks' SDV stuff) is the most urgently needed. However, I feel certain that SA has also developed prototype tuning resolvers--I believe that we know about the Motorola one due to a corporate leak and not any announcement from them.

It appears that a major gating event now is IP search for the CableLabs specification; they can't officially issue it (and no one can finalize their design) until they determine that the current spec doesn't cross any established patents. They expect that to happen early this year.


----------



## lrhorer

mikeyts said:


> Since, for the moment, TWC is by far the biggest adopter of SDV and mostly uses networks composed of SA equipment, a solution compatible with that (and BigBand Networks' SDV stuff) is the most urgently needed.


Amen. I don't want to see others left in the cold, but since I'm on TWC, I need a solution. Of course, and even better solution might be dropping TWC and going with Grande. They have service in my neighborhood, and they're cheaper.



mikeyts said:


> However, I feel certain that SA has also developed prototype tuning resolvers


I have specific reasons to believe SA is working on a resolver. Whether they have a working prototype and at what level they are including TiVo in their development I can't say.



mikeyts said:


> I believe that we know about the Motorola one due to a corporate leak and not any announcement from them.


On this I have no idea.



mikeyts said:


> It appears that a major gating event now is IP search for the CableLabs specification; they can't officially issue it (and no one can finalize their design) until they determine that the current spec doesn't cross any established patents. They expect that to happen early this year.


Until it's sitting on the dock in shrink wrap, it's vapor. CableCards (or an equivalent) were supposed to be available in 1987.


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## lrhorer

drcos said:


> Actually in some cases, I would think "Somewhat Demented Viewers" (present company excluded, of course)


Who says I'm "Somewhat Demented"? I've never been "Somewhat".


----------



## BillP Studios

Seems like if they're giving a $40 coupon to help current analog users to receive new digital signals, we all should get a coupon so we don't have to purchase or lease the new SDV adapter/dongle.

Time Warner here in Albany made the decision to move 29 channels to SDV. That means for at least six month I'm paying for channels I can't watch.

20 are premium channels and the other 9 are brand new HD channels that I was really looking forward to.


Just had to get that off my chest. 


Bill


----------



## bicker

Don't hold your breath.


----------



## gatzke

I just got the following response from Time Warner in response to my angry missive to the FCC:



> Good morning:
> Thank you for choosing Time Warner Cable for your entertainment and communication needs. We appreciate the opportunity to address your questions and concerns.
> 
> We apologize for the problems you have experienced in accessing all digital and High Definition Channels currently available via CableCARD. This issue is due the current availability of standard or one-way cable cards on the market.
> 
> The problem with being unable to access Switched Digital, AKA two-way dependant programming via CableCARD is not due to Time Warner Cable being the sole cable TV provider in your area or as mistakenly referred to in your online request a monopoly. Alternate TV programming sources in your area include AT&T, Dish and over the air High Definition receivers.
> 
> CableCARD usage with Time Warner Cable:
> 
> As several Digital programming and channels require two-way connections for viewing, current UDCP or one-way CableCARDs will be unable to access all Digital programming and features offered via two-way set-top converter.
> 
> Two-way or Open CableCARDs will be able to access two-way dependant programming but will not be available via Time Warner Cable until the end of the first quarter of 2008. This information was included on Time Warner Cables South Carolina web page at the following link:
> 
> http://www.timewarnercable.com/SouthCarolina/products/CableCard.html
> 
> If you have additional questions regarding Time Warner Cable services, please visit our Frequently Asked Questions section: http://www.timewarnercable.com/CustomerService/FAQ/TWCFAQCategories.ashx or contact us toll free at 1-866-892-7201 for assistance.
> 
> Thank you for using Online Customer Support.


Time Warner is the only cable provider in my area. Satellite and OTA are not cable, so TWC is a monopoly cable provider in my market.

The key issue is they have migrated to a technology (SDV) that cuts out third party providers against the wishes of the FCC.

But the more interesting thins is that 2 way cards are coming to my area soon, but only the "Open Cable Cable Card" (which I think is Cable Card 2.0).

I am pretty sure the Tivo HD and S3 are not going to work with cable card 2.0, so I assume I have to wait on the SDV USB fix that may be out and available in a year or so.

Are there any Cable Card 2.0 devices out other than those leased by providers?

It is hard for me to fully recommend Tivo HD to my friends when it cuts out half your HD channels, so I assume this issue is hurting Tivo due to TWC's abuse of monopoly.

So no free cable for me! (Unless the FCC steps in...)


----------



## bicker

gatzke said:


> Time Warner is the only cable provider in my area. Satellite and OTA are not cable, so TWC is a monopoly cable provider in my market.


This is a meaningless statement. It is similar to saying that Ford is a monopoly provider of F-150s. It is well-established that satellite companies are competitors to cable companies, for purposes of determining whether a company is a monopoly provider of advanced (i.e., that requiring CableCards) subscription television service.


----------



## mikeyts

bicker said:


> This is a meaningless statement. It is similar to saying that Ford is a monopoly provider of F-150s. It is well-established that satellite companies are competitors to cable companies, for purposes of determining whether a company is a monopoly provider of advanced (i.e., that requiring CableCards) subscription television service.


Thanks--for some reason I was having trouble coming up with an apt simile. You hit it on the nose . Cable is a _partial_ monopoly (a phrase that I'll admit is a bit oxymoronic), since a substantial portion of the U.S. population lives in circumstances where they currently have no other choice of multichannel subscription television provider, but that situation likely won't last. It's probable that everyone will eventually have access to television service from both cable and one or more telcos at a minimum.

If cable wasn't in competition with DBS and the telcos, they probably wouldn't be nearly so interested in SDV. If it weren't for D*'s threat to offer "up to 150 HD channels" (and Verizon's claiming the same by the end of '08) cable wouldn't be in such a hurry to beef up their HD offerings; if it weren't for SDV, they pretty much couldn't respond to the competition.


----------



## bicker

Indeed, and in the end, that aspect of cable television service that is still considered a utility/monopoly, i.e., the provision of local broadcast television channels -- THAT is regulated, typically costing only $12-$13 per month, and that service does NOT require CableCards (except in TiVos, and that's TiVo's fault, since they elected not to provide manual channel mapping).


----------



## gatzke

> This is a meaningless statement. It is similar to saying that Ford is a monopoly provider of F-150s. It is well-established that satellite companies are competitors to cable companies, for purposes of determining whether a company is a monopoly provider of advanced (i.e., that requiring CableCards) subscription television service.


Cable is currently the only way to pipe multiple channels into my house in a manner where I don't need a box on every TV. In addition to my main TV, I have four more TVs and I don't want to buy dish boxes on them (although I may have to buy Digital boxes anyway)

I think Cable is the only way to use my existing coax. I am probably wrong, but I thought you have to run new cable so each box is connected to the dish. If they were true competition, dish would sell me one box I plug one coax into my house and all my devices easily get a boatload of channels.

Cable is the only way for a lot of condo and apartment dwellers. Some HOAs don't allow the dish either (mine).

Saying cable competes with DBS and telecos is like saying cars compete with bikes and planes. They all are transportation methods and all use different technology routes, but give you different advantages and costs for similar service.

I appreciate that SDV may make cable companies competitive, but it still stinks that I have to miss out on services. Ideally they would have the USB Tivo thing working before SDV rolled out, or charge me proportional to the number of channels I actually can watch.


----------



## bicker

gatzke said:


> Cable is currently the only way to pipe multiple channels into my house in a manner where I don't need a box on every TV.


Oh gosh, so you're fixating even *more* finely than I insinuated earlier; limiting your scope to your house, only, and stating that the essential service is the delivery of television channels without a box. So instead of what I suggested before, that's like saying, "*Burlington* Ford has a monopoly on selling F-150s without me having to drive more than 10 miles to the dealership."

And what's worse, you're highlighting an exemption the FCC gave the satellite companies but did not give the cable companies.

Do you realize how far off-kilter your argument is?

Don't get me wrong: I feel for your worries. However, it is a _personal _issue, not an _anti-trust_ issue.



gatzke said:


> Some HOAs don't allow the dish either (mine).


HOAs aren't allowed to preclude satellite service. To assert anything in that regard is to assert a right to be so lazy so as to not have to stand up for your rights. It's simply indefensible.



gatzke said:


> Saying cable competes with DBS and telecos is like saying cars compete with bikes and planes.


No, it isn't. This isn't me talking; this is our society speaking, from the voice of its duly-elected and duly-appointed officials.


----------



## lew

A HOA can restrict satellite dishes to areas actually owned by the homeowner. Generally the HOA, not the individual homeowner, owns the roof and exterior walls for condo developments. I'm using the term condo in the legal sense. Townhouses are frequently not condos, but attached houses.

A HOA can exist for regular detached homes (generally a gated community), townhouses (basically attached homes) or condos.

Many residents of condos have no legal place to place a dish. Those people are basically limited to a balcony or patio which might not have a line of site.

Teleco, particularly FiOS, provides meaningful competition in many areas.

I have the option of two satellite companies, a cable company and FiOS. OTA is not really available.
That's competition.

That doesn't change the fact that some customer only have one cable system available to them. Having to move effectively limits competition.



bicker said:


> HOAs aren't allowed to preclude satellite service. To assert anything in that regard is to assert a right to be so lazy so as to not have to stand up for your rights. It's simply indefensible.


----------



## bicker

lew said:


> A HOA can restrict satellite dishes to areas actually owned by the homeowner. Generally the HOA, not the individual homeowner, owns the roof and exterior walls for condo developments. I'm using the term condo in the legal sense. Townhouses are frequently not condos, but attached houses.


You're all over the place with terms. HOA and condo are different things, and indeed the best way of determining which is which is to ask the question: Who fixes the roof? If it is the association, then we're talking condo. If it is the homeowner, then we're talking HOA.

Note my comments were directed at HOAs, not condos. You can check the archives for my comments regarding condos, which indeed do face restrictions.


----------



## CharlesH

bicker said:


> You're all over the place with terms. HOA and condo are different things, and indeed the best way of determining which is which is to ask the question: Who fixes the roof? If it is the association, then we're talking condo. If it is the homeowner, then we're talking HOA.


I own a townhouse (i.e., one of several houses attached together side by side), but the HOA maintains the roof (including replacement when necessary) and paints the exteriors. I think the only place a resident can put a dish is on their balcony or patio, which is meaningful only if it has a line of sight to the satellite.


----------



## lew

I suspect terms like HOA are used differently in different parts of the country.

Frequently the correct term would be condominium association but many people also use the term HOA. This would particularly true in a large development that consisted of townhouses, traditional homes and condos.

The previous poster said his HOA restricted satellite dishes. His HOA would have the legal authority to do that if poster owned a unit in a condo.

The best of of determining is looking at insurance. A condo insures the building against fire.



bicker said:


> You're all over the place with terms. HOA and condo are different things, and indeed the best way of determining which is which is to ask the question: Who fixes the roof? If it is the association, then we're talking condo. If it is the homeowner, then we're talking HOA.
> 
> Note my comments were directed at HOAs, not condos. You can check the archives for my comments regarding condos, which indeed do face restrictions.


----------



## NSPhillips

Aren't all these discussions of where you can put up a dish kind of pointless on a forum for a product that only functions with cable?


----------



## bicker

Yup, sure are.


----------



## jimhutchins

NSPhillips and bicker make a good point. If you're participating in this thread, you probably aren't a Dish or DirecTV customer. For whatever reason, you've chosen (or have been "limited to") cable and you have a HD TiVo product.

I think the crux of the issue for many of us is the (relatively) sudden change that limited the functionality/usability/value of our TiVo HD devices.

Personally, I invested about $1,400 in TiVo HD Equipment and services (two $300 TiVo HD's, one $200 DVR Expander, two $300 3-year service commitments). Just a couple months later, my cable company (Bright House) finally delivered additional HD programming, but they did it with SDV, so I can't access it with my TiVo (yet).

The problem here is that this doesn't feel "fair" to most of us. We bought our TiVo's with the understanding that we'd be able to receive *ALL* HD programming if we (subjected ourselves to the pain of) installing CableCARD's. That isn't how it is working out (at least so far).

Unfortunately, being "unfair" isn't illegal. Being "unfair" just sucks and that's where it ends.

There are plenty of threads that review the pros and cons of all of the various TV sources, so I won't rehash them here. I think what most of us are feeling (and many are expressing) is a profound frustration at the complexity and compromises that seem to be so tightly linked with trying to get a reasonable selection of HD programming.

I think that most of us just want access to as much HD programming as possible and we want to be able to view and record that HD programming on whatever device we choose (implicitly a TiVo HD or TiVo Series 3 if you're reading this thread).

So (shouting at the wind and waving my fist in the air): I want my TiVo's to work with my cable to give me access to all of the HD programming that I pay for. That's it. End of story. End of rant. Good night and good luck.


----------



## bicker

jimhutchins said:


> Personally, I invested about $1,400 in TiVo HD Equipment and services


Do keep in mind that this doesn't matter one bit. _How much_ you pay for something doesn't have any bearing on anything. I think people misdirect their outrage stemming from just how much they've spend, outrage that perhaps is best directed at themselves for spending more money on something for which they had no real guarantee would provide them the value they wanted for as long as they wanted. The is a strong aspect of personal responsibility that comes into play, here.



jimhutchins said:


> The problem here is that this doesn't feel "fair" to most of us.


It doesn't feel "fair" -- granted. Again, I believe that's a distortion of the reality. It is fair: Every party involved is doing what it is supposed to be doing (except perhaps for overzealous governmental regulators). The _only_ gap is between what the customers took it onto themselves to foster expectations for, and the reality those customers encountered.



jimhutchins said:


> Unfortunately, being "unfair" isn't illegal. Being "unfair" just sucks and that's where it ends.


And let me explain why I believe that even considering it "unfair" is off-target. Rather, it is "unfortunate", not unfair. The word "unfair" carries with it a connotation of nefarious intent. It may be because some of the most common definitions of unfairness are explicit about that, such as, "Contrary to laws or conventions, especially in commerce; unethical". If you mean the kind of "unfairness" that is simply a lack of equity due to unfortunate circumstances, without fault, then I can agree with that description. Again, no one is to blame here, except perhaps those who expected more than we were explicitly promised (and again, government regulators, for their self-centered brinksmanship).



jimhutchins said:


> I think what most of us are feeling (and many are expressing) is a profound frustration at the complexity and compromises that seem to be so tightly linked with trying to get a reasonable selection of HD programming.


This is really an important point. This whole space is unnecessarily complex, because the government insists on interfering beyond the bounds of what is reasonable and necessary. Lifeline cable (broadcast local HD channels) is all that is necessary for government to get involved with. Beyond that, government should never have gotten involved, except to sanction localities that obstructed reasonable requests by new service providers to begin operating within their borders. Here is wonderful example of something good regulated into badness.


----------



## jimhutchins

bicker said:


> Do keep in mind that this doesn't matter one bit. _How much_ you pay for something doesn't have any bearing on anything. I think people misdirect their outrage stemming from just how much they've spend, outrage that perhaps is best directed at themselves for spending more money on something for which they had no real guarantee would provide them the value they wanted for as long as they wanted. The is a strong aspect of personal responsibility that comes into play, here.


I have to disagree here. I spent $1,400 with the expectation that I'd be able to watch all the HD the cable company has to offer with my HD TiVo's if I got CableCARD's for them. I based my decision to purchase a THREE YEAR subscription on (I think) a reasonable assumption that I would be able to use my TiVo HD's as advertised and as intended for at least those three years. I was perfectly willing to fork over ~$39/month (net effective cost) for that functionality. I was not and am not willing to pay $700/month (the net effective cost of the two months where I had full functionality). My objection here is that the functionality has been truncated VERY early in my TiVo's projected life and during my subscription. That changes the value proposition and thus the cost becomes a valid factor.


----------



## bicker

jimhutchins said:


> I spent $1,400 with the *expectation *that I'd be able to watch all the HD the cable company has to offer with my HD TiVo's if I got CableCARD's for them.


Did you give all that $1,400 to the cable company, and receive from them a guarantee that in return for that money you would be able to do what you suggested? No. Of course not. You gave most of that money to TiVo, who didn't even have the power to provide you such assurances, even if they were willing to do so. So this goes back to *you* creating an *expectation*. Therefore, if you want to assign blame for things not living up to that expectation, you need to assign it to yourself. Again, personal responsibility.



jimhutchins said:


> I based my decision to purchase a THREE YEAR subscription on (I think) a reasonable assumption that I would be able to use my TiVo HD's as advertised and as intended for at least those three years.


Again, TiVo never advertised that it would work with SDV. TiVo's lawyers have made sure that their assurances, in contracts and in advertisements, kept them clear of any responsibility for things beyond their control, like SDV. It's a very hard, cold truth, but we have to learn to live with it.


----------



## jimhutchins

bicker said:


> Did you give all that $1,400 to the cable company, and receive from them a guarantee that in return for that money you would be able to do what you suggested? No. Of course not. You gave most of that money to TiVo, who didn't even have the power to provide you such assurances, even if they were willing to do so. So this goes back to *you* creating an *expectation*. Therefore, if you want to assign blame for things not living up to that expectation, you need to assign it to yourself. Again, personal responsibility..


I voluntarily gave (TiVo) my $1,400. For that, I take full personal responsibility. TiVo (like nearly all corporations) made no guarantees. HOWEVER, if you go to TiVo.com, the information that TiVo provides says that the TiVo HD "Works with *any cable provider* using CableCARDs" they even have a double-asterisks that warns "TiVo® HD and Series3 HD DVR: Does not support satellite service. Two CableCARDs may be required for dual tuner functionality and to receive dual digital cable channels. Cable service required to receive cable channels."

Even if you dig into the Product Features, Product Specifications, Product FAQs, and CableCARD FAQ's on TiVo's site, there is STILL no mention of the SDV limitation.

So, yes, I believe that TiVo (to whom I gave all that money) created an EXPECTATION that THEIR product which they describe as having been "Designed specifically for cable customers" will (fully) work with my cable service.

I don't begrudge my cable provider using SDV. They have service issues that I DO hold against them, but SDV was a reasonable business and technical decision for Bright House to make.



bicker said:


> Again, TiVo never advertised that it would work with SDV. TiVo's lawyers have made sure that their assurances, in contracts and in advertisements, kept them clear of any responsibility for things beyond their control, like SDV. It's a very hard, cold truth, but we have to learn to live with it.


SDV has been an issue for more than six months (note the date on the beginning of this thread). TiVo's web site, advertising, and literature STILL lack any mention of the SDV limitation. For that, as a consumer, I can certainly hold TiVo responsible. The implementation of SDV is beyond TiVo's control, the non-disclosure of TiVo's inability to (currently) support SDV isn't. They could modify their web site before you post your next reply to me. I'm betting they won't.

So, the bottom line for me is that TiVo has a corporate responsibility to disclose this technical issue (whether beyond their control or not). TiVo's lawyers had them put footnote after footnote on the bottom of nearly every TiVo HD web page. I can and do hold them responsible for failing to add a footnote about SDV.


----------



## mikeyts

jimhutchins said:


> So (shouting at the wind and waving my fist in the air): I want my TiVo's to work with my cable to give me access to all of the HD programming that I pay for. That's it. End of story. End of rant. Good night and good luck.


See, that's part of the argument that I don't get. It's all new HD programming that you didn't have access to before, yet somehow you feel that you're paying for it. When you invested in TiVo, there was probably a ton of content already on the cable that you couldn't access with them, but which was available to cable STB lessors, on free and subscription VOD channels. Theoretically, you were paying for that as well, since those box lessors weren't charged anything more for access to that, other than charges ostensibly being paid for their box. The only reason why the expansion of channels as SDV services bugs you is because you want access to this new content whereas you didn't particularly want that other stuff.

The cable providers are in a no win situation. They only way that they can make a significant addition to their HD programming offerings to combat satellite's "up to 150 HD channels" advertising onslaught is to dump a huge portion of their analog tiers (almost of all of it, if they wanted to eventually offer 150 HD channels) or go to SDV. Any other way of expanding their bandwidth would have required drastic equipment updates throughout their systems, taking years to complete, costing probably billions of dollars nationwide and resulting in new services that couldn't be accessed by Series3 TiVos or any other current digital cable tuning devices, since it wouldn't have expanded their tuning range beyond 870 MHz. Dumping large numbers of analog channels was going to enrage their analog TV using customers and going to SDV would piss off their CableCARD customers. There are an estimated 300 million analog-only televisions currently in use in this country and an estimated 300 thousand CableCARD users. So, who would you choose to piss off?

I'm sure that the cable providers who've deployed SDV are prepared to lose every last one of their CableCARD-using subs (but hoping that it won't come to that). They're not prepared to immediately lose large portions of their analog television dependent subs.


----------



## lew

Very well said. The cable companies need to add more HD stations and SDV is the only way to do it NOW.

Analog OTA will soon be history. Cable companies may be able to go all digital at that point, customers will sort of understand they need some kind of box for their tv sets to work. The problem is cable systems may not be able to wait a year. The second problem is some cable systems may see the need to keep some or all of the analog channels.



mikeyts said:


> See, that's part of the argument that I don't get. It's all new HD programming that you didn't have access to before, yet somehow you feel that you're paying for it. When you invested in TiVo, there was probably a ton of content already on the cable that you couldn't access with them, but which was available to cable STB leasors, on free and subscription VOD channels. Theoretically, you were paying for that as well, since those box leasors weren't charged anything more for access to that, other than charges ostensibly being paid for their box. The only reason why the expansion of channels as SDV services bugs you is because you want access to this new content whereas you didn't particularly want that other stuff.
> 
> The cable providers are in a no win situation. They only way that they can make a significant edition to their HD programming offerings to combat satellite's "up to 150 HD channels" advertising onslaught is to dump a huge portion of their analog tiers (almost of all of it, if they wanted to eventually offer 150 HD channels) or go to SDV. Any other way of expanding their bandwidth would have required drastic equipment updates throughout their systems, taking years to complete, costing probably billions of dollars nationwide and resulting in new services that couldn't be accessed by Series3 TiVos or any other current digital cable tuning devices, since it wouldn't have expanded their tuning range beyond 870 MHz. Dumping large numbers of analog channels was going to enrage their analog TV using customers and going to SDV would piss off their CableCARD customers. There are an estimated 300 million analog-only televisions currently in use in this country and an estimated 300 thousand CableCARD users. So, who would you choose to piss off?
> 
> I'm sure that the cable providers who've deployed SDV are prepared to lose every last one of their CableCARD-using subs (but hoping that it won't come to that). They're not prepared to immediately lose large portions of their analog television dependent subs.


----------



## bicker

jimhutchins said:


> HOWEVER, if you go to TiVo.com, the information that TiVo provides says that the TiVo HD "Works with *any cable provider* using CableCARDs"


So sue them. Seriously. If you really believe TiVo actually promised you what you're implying that they promised you, then sue them. You won't win, because you are pointing to only one piece of information TiVo made available to you; other pieces of information TiVo made available indicated otherwise. Remember, you were never able to get PPV or VOD with TiVo. That's not covered in that statement you quoted, and folks haven't been able to access those aspects of cable service since the beginning.

And let's be clear, I *wish* what you're alleging was correct. I'm *disappointed* that it's not.


----------



## ldudek

Just some observations and comments.

First let me admit that I just looked over the last page, didn't read every little comment and just got the "jist" of what is being said. I smeeked so sue me.

Second IMHO Bicker usually delivers a pretty good argument. He's honest and I've seen him admit when he is wrong. Now having said that it may seem to many that he sides with the cable company frequently. It may seem that way but only because he is giving an honest statement.

Now having said that I want to know why in all this discussion about cable cards, SDV, people not getting it in their area there was no mention about the dongle. If it was mentioned, I apologize I didn't see it. Will it be out second quarter of this year? I kind of doubt it as it seems anytime cable says anything they usually are off on their predictions, and Bicker before you slice and dice me on this one I will admit that TiVo is frequently off too. But I do believe it will be out some time this year.

If you didn't take the time to research your area, SDV, and such then really that's nobody's fault but your own. I know I did when I bought mine.

Oh and one last thing. Bicker I liked the "sue them" comment. Hey, why not a CLASS ACTION LAW SUIT.


----------



## gatzke

mikeyts said:


> See, that's part of the argument that I don't get. It's all new HD programming that you didn't have access to before, yet somehow you feel that you're paying for it.


I had a crappy SA 8300 HD PVR box from my cable company, so I had access to all the HD they provide.

I bought a Tivo HD assuming that with a cable card I would get the same HD channels.

I had no indication that cable cards were limited in HD channels. Eventually I found after the fact the small print on their web page that said some "services" are not available to cable card subscribers. Even if I had seen that before my Tivo purchase, I would have assumed they mean no PPV or on Demand whcih are services, not channels.

I am not super happy, but at least I am back on a Tivo again. Maybe in a year we get the USB SDVfix...


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## BobCamp1

ldudek said:


> All and one last thing. Bicker I liked the "sue them" comment. Hey, why not a CLASS ACTION LAW SUIT.


You're way too late, that was suggested back in post #311. If it had been posted in the mid 200's, I would have won $30 from my office pool.

Is it me or is this thread just going in circles?

Anyway, the Motorola solution is due by June 30, 2008, a.k.a. "second quarter". The SA solution, which is needed much more as most of the SDV implementation is with SA systems, is TBD.


----------



## ldudek

BobCamp1 said:


> You're way too late, that was suggested back in post #311. If it had been posted in the mid 200's, I would have won $30 from my office pool.
> 
> Is it me or is this thread just going in circles?
> 
> Anyway, the Motorola solution is due by June 30, 2008, a.k.a. "second quarter". The SA solution, which is needed much more as most of the SDV implementation is with SA systems, is TBD.


Who says "All and one last thing?" I do apparently. I fixed that.

I was unaware of the SA TBD thing. Can you point me as to where that info is located?


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## mikeyts

Actually, I believe that in some filing to the FCC the cable providers have claimed that they expect to have solutions ready for distrbution by the end of the second calendar quarter of 2008. I don't think that any official announcement of any solution has been made by Motorola--some guy purported to to have close contacts in Motorola wrote in his blog that they have a prototype and that we should expect it to resemble the now-useless DCT-700 digital-only STB (cable providers can't purchase boxes now with built-in conditional access methods and the DCT-700 lacks a CableCARD slot); the only statement from a Motorola representative that I've been able to ferret out on the net simply stated that their development of a tuning resolver was going fine, without giving any details of when it should be done or what it will look like. Bits of consumer electronics don't get much simpler than this--I've seen cell phones that were at least an order of magnitude more complex completed in six months. When they say that they'll have something ready to ship by the middle of the year, I don't doubt it.


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## jimhutchins

gatzke said:


> I had a crappy SA 8300 HD PVR box from my cable company, so I had access to all the HD they provide.
> 
> I bought a Tivo HD assuming that with a cable card I would get the same HD channels.
> 
> I had no indication that cable cards were limited in HD channels. Eventually I found after the fact the small print on their web page that said some "services" are not available to cable card subscribers. Even if I had seen that before my Tivo purchase, I would have assumed they mean no PPV or on Demand whcih are services, not channels.
> 
> I am not super happy, but at least I am back on a Tivo again. Maybe in a year we get the USB SDVfix...


This very closely mirrors the scenario that surrounded my purchases and my feelings. I did research, but apparently not enough (I didn't notice this thread). I agree that I would lose if I sue TiVo. I agree that they have plenty of weasel room. I'm just not super happy.


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## GiantsFan24

Geez, some of you serial posters sure like to overreact to (more-or-less) innocuous comments. What's wrong with someone feeling like the cablecos move to SDV was unfair to TIVO S3/HD users? I know I did. When I bought my S3 a year ago, there was lots of big text saying "HD!"; no big text saying, "except if..." I was not aware that my cable provider was contemplating going SDV. And I don't know why I should have been expected to know that. Or how, for that matter, since they weren't publicizing it. That being said, I don't blame TIVO or TWC. I understand the business and technical decisions both made, and I look forward to the dongle, whenever it should arrive. In the meantime, I have to use the POS SA8300HDC DVR. And I gotta tell ya, that feels unfair!


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## mikeyts

GiantsFan24 said:


> Geez, some of you serial posters sure like to overreact to (more-or-less) innocuous comments. What's wrong with someone feeling like the cablecos move to SDV was unfair to TIVO S3/HD users?


If you don't want people to react to your comments then don't post . Alternatively, you can preface it with something like, "Look, I understand that the cable providers really have no alternatives for providing a lot more HD channels to using SDV, but on an emotional level, it _feels_ as though I'm being cheated somehow. I know that it's not true, but I can't help feeling that way. That's all I wanted to say."

Carefully reading jimhutchins' posts, he did kind of say that, so our responses were kind of redundant. He did respond to the responses, though, which kept them coming .


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## bicker

ldudek said:


> Second IMHO Bicker usually delivers a pretty good argument. He's honest and I've seen him admit when he is wrong. Now having said that it may seem to many that he sides with the cable company frequently. It may seem that way but only because he is giving an honest statement.


Thanks for you kind words. There is also another dynamic at work. I don't regularly post "yup, what he said" messages. If someone else is making the point well-enough, I won't chime in. Of course, human nature being what it is, there are far far far more people willing to ***** about big-company suppliers than people willing defend them, so generally, so generally when I do agree with complaints about a big-company supplier, others have already made the point as well as necessary, so you won't see me post.



ldudek said:


> Will it be out second quarter of this year?


I haven't seen anything more than the initial projection, which I wouldn't count on.



ldudek said:


> I kind of doubt it as it seems anytime cable says anything they usually are off on their predictions, and Bicker before you slice and dice me on this one I will admit that TiVo is frequently off too.


As you can see, I agree with you on this. They released a projection, which I don't see any good reason to rely on. The real problem is that some people are actually fostering their own expectations based on that projection. That's idiocy IMHO. You base expectations on firm and explicit promises, nothing less.



ldudek said:


> But I do believe it will be out some time this year.


Again, I totally agree.



ldudek said:


> If you didn't take the time to research your area, SDV, and such then really that's nobody's fault but your own. I know I did when I bought mine.


Agree again.

Do you see, now, why I generally don't post when someone has already said what I feel needs to be said?


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## bicker

gatzke said:


> Eventually I found after the fact the small print on their web page that said some "services" are not available to cable card subscribers.


Which is the whole point. Anyone expecting TiVo to support all services provided by the cable company simply didn't do their due diligence.


----------



## bicker

BobCamp1 said:


> Is it me or is this thread just going in circles?


What do you expect, Bob? Some folks are simply unwilling to accept the reality and will continue beating this dead horse over and over again, condemning cable companies, condemning TiVo, etc. And other folks are willing to oblige them by posting objections to their repetitive tirades, when said condemnations contain something that they disagree with. So the thread will go on like that until people stop repeating the condemnations that have already been made earlier in the thread, and/or something actually does change, which is probably going to happen late this year.


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## bicker

ldudek said:


> I was unaware of the SA TBD thing. Can you point me as to where that info is located?


I think Bob was pointing out the *lack* of any information indicating that SA was working on a resolution. He cannot point to information if what he's saying is that no information exists.


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## bicker

GiantsFan24 said:


> What's wrong with someone feeling like the cablecos move to SDV was unfair to TIVO S3/HD users?


There isn't anything "wrong" with feelings. Let's turn it around: What's wrong with someone feeling like it _wasn't _unfair? Both are valid points; neither deserve an unrebutted soap-box.



GiantsFan24 said:


> When I bought my S3 a year ago, there was lots of big text saying "HD!"; no big text saying, "except if..."


Are you suggesting that TiVo is the only device that has fine print? The whole point of advertising -- the "big text" -- is to highlight the positive attributes of the product. The disclaimers -- the "except if..."s -- are always less prominent, and often written in language that only a lawyer could understand. You want to see a real doozie? Check out your cell phone contract!



GiantsFan24 said:


> That being said, I don't blame TIVO or TWC. I understand the business and technical decisions both made, and I look forward to the dongle, whenever it should arrive.


That's really the best way of looking at it. :up:


----------



## lrhorer

gatzke said:


> I just got the following response from Time Warner in response to my angry missive to the FCC:


This is total horse pookey, and you need to let them know you know that. All CableCards are 2-way and have been since the very first one rolled off the line. CableCard 1.0 cards are just as capable of 2 way communications as any other, and Open Cable 2.0 specs have nothing to do with CableCards per se. They have to do with the hosts, not the cards, and no CableCard of any sort will allow a one-way host like the TiVo to handle SDV. Tell him in no uncewrtain terms he is full of $#!+, and he needs to learn something about his own business rather than submit packs of outright lies.



gatzke said:


> I am pretty sure the Tivo HD and S3 are not going to work with cable card 2.0, so I assume I have to wait on the SDV USB fix that may be out and available in a year or so.


The Open Cable spec, as I said, concerns hosts, not the CableCards. The S3 supports both S-cards (CableCard 1.0 spec) and M-cards (CableCard 2.0 spec), but only in single stream mode. The HD TiVO supportds M-cards in multistream mode. I have one in my HD Tivo, and it works just fine, receiveing any two simulataneous non-SDV channels. I'm on Time Warner San Antonio.

The Dongle - which is a poor idea as allegedly prototyped - is supposed to be available for Motorola systems in Q2 this year, but that may just be a leak. Nothing has been said publicly about an SA solution, or if SA is even looking at a solution. This doesn't necessarily mean they aren't of course, just that they are better at keeping their mouths shut than Motorola.



gatzke said:


> Are there any Cable Card 2.0 devices out other than those leased by providers?


Open Cable 2.0 is not a ratified spec, so I'm not sure how to answer that, except that none of the various SDV implementations is currently supported in a consumer device. If you are on Time Warner, then your system is probably Scientific Atlanta / BigBand. Most Comcast systems (I believe) use Motorola, which is OCAP compliant and meets the currently suggested spec for Open Cable 2.0. SA systems do not.

By the way, the C series of Scientific Atlanta STBs and DVRs use the same M-cards the TiVo does, and it is these most TWC systems are deploying for SDV right now. His comments concerning needing "2-way" cards is pure @#%@^.


----------



## lrhorer

bicker said:


> So the thread will go on like that until people stop repeating the condemnations that have already been made earlier in the thread, and/or something actually does change, which is probably going to happen late this year.


What, exactly, do you mean by "something". A firm committment to supporting the TiVo platform would be "something", and I can see that happening much more quickly than the end of the year. (By "TiVo platform", I of course mean a device which works with the S3 series of TiVos, not necesssarily a device dedicated to them.) An actual device sitting on the shelves would definitely be "something", and I can hope it will happen before the end of Q2. I fear, however, you might be right in estimating Q4, and maybe not then. Far stranger things have happend, however, and I'm going to keep my hopes up. An actual, reasonable, teeth-bared edict from the FCC would really be "something", but I wouldn't bet on end of the decade for that, let alone end of this year.


----------



## lrhorer

gatzke said:


> Ideally they would have the USB Tivo thing working before SDV rolled out, or charge me proportional to the number of channels I actually can watch.


Ideally the FCC would have forced a reasonable and workable set of regulations regarding 2-way hosts on CableLabs and the CATV industry prior to 2006. That way TiVo could have designed and engineered an SDV capable box from the get-go. As it is, they've been forced into Open Cable 1.0 limitations with no way to receive CableLabs certification if they attempt an Open Cable 2.0 box.


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## MichaelK

holy cow-

maybe we can get a sticky at the top of the forum that says "cable is a monopoly-no it isn't" and then people can b*tch and bicker can smack them around all in one thread....

i was away for a while and saw a few pages of posts new in this thread- thought maybe there was some info but after like the 10th "yes it is" "no it isn't" post i just kind of skimmed so i think that's all that transpired of late. Anything new really happening?

I appreciate Bicker's opinion's (dont necessarily agree all the time) but this argument is getting old already.


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## KraziJoe

MichaelK said:


> holy cow-
> 
> maybe we can get a sticky at the top of the forum that says "cable is a monopoly-no it isn't" and then people can b*tch and bicker can smack them around all in one thread....
> 
> i was away for a while and saw a few pages of posts new in this thread- thought maybe there was some info but after like the 10th "yes it is" "no it isn't" post i just kind of skimmed so i think that's all that transpired of late. Anything new really happening?
> 
> I appreciate Bicker's opinion's (dont necessarily agree all the time) but this argument is getting old already.


No it's not...


----------



## gatzke

Yes it is! I think that settles it...

So I assume that since TWC is using SA boxes and cable cards in my area, I have no hope of seeing a dongle in Q2 (or actually in the field in Q4?). Good thing I am leaving the country for half a year or more... 

This makes me want to find a way to steal HD cable, since they can't supply what I am paying for. I know they call most of the SDV HD channels "Bonus" so I am not entitled. I know they have small print about limitations on cable card users. I am paying for the HD tier but only get 75&#37; of the channels. I think this stinks, but when has the cable company not screwed its customers?

The Tivo integrates well with my Beyond TV + Hauppage PVR 500 card, playing SD videos just fine on the Tivo HD. I hope to try out a HD receiver (HD Homerun) to get clear QAM cable onto the PC as well. Now if I could just get some way to grab SDV into a clean mpeg2 file somewhere...


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## pmiranda

gatzke said:


> So I assume that since TWC is using SA boxes and cable cards in my area, I have no hope of seeing a dongle in Q2 (or actually in the field in Q4?).
> ...snip...
> The Tivo integrates well with my Beyond TV + Hauppage PVR 500 card, playing SD videos just fine on the Tivo HD.


A little bird told me SA is not as far behind as you fear, but like all other things TW/SA/TiVo, I'll believe it when I see it.

I'm curious exactly what steps you have to do to get BeyondTV programs into TiVo? Can you just drag the files into "My TiVo Recordings" or do you have to do some manual processing in between? I was thinking about buying BeyondTV and an IR blaster so I can get SDV off a cableco settop but I didn't want to waste money on something that was a pain to use with the SDV dongle "on the way".


----------



## lrhorer

pmiranda said:


> A little bird told me SA is not as far behind as you fear, but like all other things TW/SA/TiVo, I'll believe it when I see it.


Yeah, another little bird told me the same thing, but it's not a bird I trust overly much. When my TiVos are getting all the scheduled SDV programming, I'll believe it. Or maybe I'll just switch from TWC to Grande. I've been threatening to do that for a while. Grande is certainly cheaper.



pmiranda said:


> I'm curious exactly what steps you have to do to get BeyondTV programs into TiVo?


I can't really say for certain. I looked up BeyondTV, and the support site says it can write MPEG-2 files, which really should be compatible with the TiVo, but should and are can be two different things. You might have to run them through a pre-processor like QuickFix in VideoRedo. Try it and see. You alos might try pyTiVo if TiVo Desktop doesn't work (or maybe just because pyTiVo works better than TiVo Desktop).


----------



## pmiranda

lrhorer said:


> I can't really say for certain.


Yeah, that's why I asked somebody that says they did it. I don't intend to be mean when I say this, but you don't have to reply to every post on this thread.


----------



## gatzke

pmiranda said:


> I'm curious exactly what steps you have to do to get BeyondTV programs into TiVo? Can you just drag the files into "My TiVo Recordings" or do you have to do some manual processing in between?


You can try out Beyond TV for a month for free.

Using a PVR 500 card with hardware encryption for two channels, it writes normal MPeg2 files in a directory of your choosing on your PC. Running tivo desktop allows my Tivo HD to see that PC on the network and it treats all the video on the PC as a single group in "my playing" list. This is not especially good, since the PC has 1 TB+ (lots of video files). The Beyond TV names the files rationally enough to at least tell what show it was. No transcode needed, just select the file and start it downloading to you my playing list, then watch as it streams.

I think it may also work with the HD homerun, which can record two SD or clear QAM HD. I would go with that one, since it does HD and it does not need a slot, just a connection on your wired network and a cable in.

BTV actually gives me stability issues, so I am not 100% behind it. It seems to need a daily reboot. Not sure if it is due to watching live TV overnight or what? They are looking at my logs to see if it is something I have done in my config, but it for the most part works and is very snappy.

The PC is also down right now since I had to send back my PCV 500 Hauppage card. Terrible signal on some channels, but some were ok. Maybe I just have a bad card. After months of PC headache, the Tivo is nice (only one week of cable card SDV headache...)

The coolest part is using a slingbox on the Tivo to stream tivo back to the PC. I can move stuff to the PC if I wanted, but it is so much easier to just stream it to the bedroom PC.


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## gatzke

gatzke said:


> BTV actually gives me stability issues, so I am not 100% behind it. It seems to need a daily reboot. Not sure if it is due to watching live TV overnight or what? They are looking at my logs to see if it is something I have done in my config, but it for the most part works and is very snappy.


Apparently I have something wrong with my hardware, probably a flaky IDE controller. So maybe Beyond TV is not to blame, although it should have been able to gracefully fail on me. Another good thing about Tivo, limited hardware combinations so they should be able to minimize hardware issues or at least handle them somewhat well. I have never had a Tivo hardware problem (knock on wood) so I don't really know how good they are about HD failure or other issues.



gatzke said:


> The PC is also down right now since I had to send back my PCV 500 Hauppage card. Terrible signal on some channels, but some were ok. Maybe I just have a bad card. After months of PC headache, the Tivo is nice (only one week of cable card SDV headache...)


Hauppage sent me back a working PVR 500 MCE card and it works very well in Beyond TV to make two simultaneous SD Mpeg 2 recordings. All my quality problems are gone now, just the HD stability issue on the HTPC. For about the same cost, I think I would still try the HDHomerun instead of the PVR 500 card.

Funny thing is, with a Slingbox on the Tivo running to the HTPC, my wife likes to just watch the Tivo in the bedroom. Slight loss of quality, but it simplifies reconciliation of the to-do list since the HTPC and Tivo don't communicate. So maybe the Tivo will be hers and I can fill the HTPC up with Sci-Fi and animated comedies... I would like to expand the HD on the Tivo, but I am waiting on a blessed 1 TB drive to come out for the Tivo HD. They can't suppress it forever, can they?


----------



## JimWall

Here is some good news. In Mason Oh (near cincinnati) My Tivo S3 started working with Time Warner HD channels which before were only showing a Pay Per View advertisement. Channels were added last fall (espn2 hd, tbs hd, history hd and a couple others). I assumed they were not working because of SDV. Last week the channels were working on one and not the other S3. I rebooted the other S3 and next day they were also working on it. I called time warner cable to find out what changed and whether it was permanent. The customer service person didn't have a clue but I guess they moved the channels from SDV to the normal. Maybe there were enough FCC complaints but who knows?


----------



## mercurial

JimWall said:


> Here is some good news. In Mason Oh (near cincinnati) My Tivo S3 started working with Time Warner HD channels which before were only showing a Pay Per View advertisement. Channels were added last fall (espn2 hd, tbs hd, history hd and a couple others). I assumed they were not working because of SDV. Last week the channels were working on one and not the other S3. I rebooted the other S3 and next day they were also working on it. I called time warner cable to find out what changed and whether it was permanent. The customer service person didn't have a clue but I guess they moved the channels from SDV to the normal. Maybe there were enough FCC complaints but who knows?


Similar experience as what I posted about here in Raleigh/Cary, NC several weeks ago. Of course I seem to be seeing a LOT of compression on some of the HD channels now so maybe there was an SDV hiccup and it's just a temporary work around. On some of the SD digital channels, I can even tell the frame rate has dropped (or effectively dropped) a bit.


----------



## PacketBoy

mercurial said:


> Similar experience as what I posted about here in Raleigh/Cary, NC several weeks ago. Of course I seem to be seeing a LOT of compression on some of the HD channels now so maybe there was an SDV hiccup and it's just a temporary work around. On some of the SD digital channels, I can even tell the frame rate has dropped (or effectively dropped) a bit.


What part of Raleigh / Cary is Caraleigh in? hahaha (-:


----------



## SCSIRAID

Perhaps its near Raleighwood?


----------



## mercurial

PacketBoy said:


> What part of Raleigh / Cary is Caraleigh in? hahaha (-:





SCSIRAID said:


> Perhaps its near Raleighwood?


The part that's "in Cary" but has a "Raleigh zip".... Endless fun and excitement trying to give directions or deal with utilities/municipal services...


----------



## TimmyZ

I've been watching and reading the "Comcast TiVO" thread over on the AVS boards, waiting for over a year now for Comcast to release their version of TiVO. And now that Comcast is finally rolling out their version, and reading all of the issues that people are having, it's got me wondering again - Comcast TiVO vs. TiVO HD.

The Comcast TiVO interface and features will never match the real thing. TiVO to Go, the Music interface, sharing between units. I'm tired of waiting, and I'm really worried that it will be a much inferior product, when compared to the real thing. So I think I've talked myself into wanting to purchase a TiVO HD.

My only concern is SDV. I've seen and read reports that Denver, CO (where I am) has started rolling out SDV. And as of yet, SDV isn't supported on TiVO hardware. It could be another year - and who knows, maybe even longer - before it is.

Can someone tell me which Denver channels (or areas) are SDV, and if Comcast is only using SDV to deliver new channels? I've read on Wiki, that an entire head end will deliver SDV, or not. Then I've read on this board, people talking about only certain channels that are switched. Now I'm confused. Which is correct?

I really hate this Comcast Motorola box with the IGuide - I want my TiVO... but I don't want to lose channels I watch either. Does anyone know, or can you point me toward a list of these channels?

Thanks!
Timm


----------



## Brad Smith

bdraw said:


> *Time Warner Cable* _ SDV in 6 of 23 markets including_
> 
> Austin, TX
> Albany, NY
> Charlotte, NC
> Greensboro, NC
> Rochester, NY
> San Antonio, TX


TWC in Lincoln, NE, has several SDV channels as well.


----------



## vstone

I suspect that the TWC SC system is also SDV.


----------



## Talkincat

Brad Smith said:


> TWC in Lincoln, NE, has several SDV channels as well.


TWC in Milwaukee also has a ton of SDV channels. 6, I think. Among basic cable channels that are available in HD, I believe more are SDV than aren't.


----------



## gatzke

vstone said:


> I suspect that the TWC SC system is also SDV.


I suffer from SDV in Columbia, SC. About half my "free" HD programming is not available on the Tivo HD and 1/4 of my paid HD tier channels are SDV.


----------



## sidsub

TWC in Austin, TX just added 7 or 8 new HD channels. They're of course all SDV (in addition to several HD channels that were already that way). I want that tuning resolver now!!!


----------



## Nugget

sidsub said:


> TWC in Austin, TX just added 7 or 8 new HD channels. They're of course all SDV (in addition to several HD channels that were already that way). I want that tuning resolver now!!!


I'd love to drop my DirecTV and switch to cable but living in Austin I'm pretty much stuck until there's an SDV solution.


----------



## cdp1276

sidsub said:


> TWC in Austin, TX just added 7 or 8 new HD channels. They're of course all SDV (in addition to several HD channels that were already that way). I want that tuning resolver now!!!


You and me both!! They are starting to roll out more HD content in my area too and they are all SDV. Here is our current list of the following are now SDV on TW Rochester:
1015 MTV HD
1037 A&E HD
1049 TBS HD
1053 ESPN2 HD
1054 Universal HD
1055 National Geographic HD

Do we have a status on the TiVo dongle that is suppose to resolve this?

As you can see I have a growing list of channels that I can't get. It is good to see the TiVo S3 now knowing which channels are SDV and giving us a blue bar saying channel not available in your area.

http://www.timewarnercable.com/rochester/products/cablecard.html


----------



## mikeyts

The OpenCable Tuning Resolver Interface Specification is now public. Enjoy, tech-heads .


----------



## bicker

I wonder what the significance is of the specification just being released. Does this provide any more insight into the timetable (i.e., "not soon")?


----------



## jlb

mikeyts said:


> The OpenCable Tuning Resolver Interface Specification is now public. Enjoy, tech-heads .


Love this:



> *3 TERMS AND DEFINITIONS*
> This specification uses the following terms:
> 
> *CableCARD™ *
> A PCMCIA card distributed by cable providers and inserted into a Host device to
> enable premium services in compliance with the OpenCable specifications, also called
> "Card" and "Point of Deployment" (POD) module.
> 
> *POD Module*
> Point of Deployment Module (a.k.a. CableCARD)


Nice circular reference. Efficient.


----------



## mikeyts

bicker said:


> I wonder what the significance is of the specification just being released. Does this provide any more insight into the timetable (i.e., "not soon")?


Actually, it's a good sign. One of their barriers to releasing the spec was doing an IP search to make sure that their design didn't cross any existing patents. So that's done and people can manufacture to the spec without fear of surprise litigation.


----------



## morac

I notice that there is a special message sent by the resolver in the case where a channel is requested, but not by the user:


page 23 said:


> 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.


I'm assuming a value of 6 would be used for suggestions. This makes sense since requests can then be given priority depending on what it being done. For example, I'm assuming a "speculative recording" (ie: Suggestion) would be given the lowest priority.

Also see section 10.2 for examples of confirmation windows to confirm you are watching the channel.


----------



## bicker

jlb said:


> Nice circular reference. Efficient.


That's not a circular reference. It is a forward reference. It is not uncommon for one word to say its definition is the same as the definition for another word, and then have that other word mention that there is another word that is synonymous.


----------



## husky55

The concern I have is there is no clear schedule of the SDV dongle rollout for Tivo from the cable cos. Some vague date like 2H 2008. Will our Tivos become dinosaurs in this new SDV HD world?


----------



## mikeyts

husky55 said:


> The concern I have is there is no clear schedule of the SDV dongle rollout for Tivo from the cable cos. Some vague date like 2H 2008. Will our Tivos become dinosaurs in this new SDV HD world?


And what reason would they have to publish a precise schedule to the public? To make you feel better? I don't think so. That type of crap will get you sued for missing the date by a month or two. In the engineering world you don't issue completion guarantees unless you have to. by the end of the 2nd half of calendar '08 is good enough.


----------



## moyekj

This thought occurred to me in the unencrypted QAM thread...

I wonder if the tuning resolver could be used in units without cablecard? It may offer channel mapping capabilities of it's own such that unencrypted channels would be properly mapped to the cable company channel #s and solve the unencrypted QAM without cablecard problem.


----------



## pmiranda

moyekj said:


> I wonder if the tuning resolver could be used in units without cablecard?


It kinda sounds like it from the spec, although in a twist of fate, the FCC rules might actually require a cablecard in the TR if it can operate without one in the TiVo


----------



## morac

Apparently CableLabs just got the tools to test the tuning resolver. This means they haven't had a chance to test it yet. I'm also wondering how ready it will actually be if they do deploy it by 2nd quarter. I'm wondering what would be worse, not having the tuning resolver or having it and finding that it flakes out half the time because they didn't have a chance to test it fully before deployment.


----------



## mikeyts

morac said:


> Apparently CableLabs just got the tools to test the tuning resolver. This means they haven't had a chance to test it yet. I'm also wondering how ready it will actually be if they do deploy it by 2nd quarter. I'm wondering what would be worse, not having the tuning resolver or having it and finding that it flakes out half the time because they didn't have a chance to test it fully before deployment.


As an engineer with 30 years experience (12 of them in development of large scale networking devices), I think that they've given themselves plenty of time to get this thing to market. It depends on how many resources the various players (Motorola, SA, TiVo, the cable providers, etc, etc) have devoted to the effort--with enough people and dollars it could conceivably be done in significantly less time. This is, conceptually, _not_ a very complicated project--I've been on teams that got out new products with many hundreds of thousands of lines of integrated code, much of it newly written, in less time.

Chill, people, and stop fretting about it .


----------



## mercurial

morac said:


> Apparently CableLabs just got the tools to test the tuning resolver. This means they haven't had a chance to test it yet. I'm also wondering how ready it will actually be if they do deploy it by 2nd quarter. I'm wondering what would be worse, not having the tuning resolver or having it and finding that it flakes out half the time because they didn't have a chance to test it fully before deployment.


Or dealing with the compression TWC is using around here that's really killing a bunch of SD channels right now. I'd almost not get some channels than see some of the painful artifacts.


----------



## CharlesH

I suspect that the resolver will pretty much be a stripped-down set-top box, rather than something developed from scratch. Remove the audio and video hardware, and add the software to talk the host device. That functionality is pretty much the only new software that has to be written; all the other stuff, such talking the SDV protocol to the head end, pulling channel maps off the cable, and such, is already there. For that reason, there is technically no reason that it also couldn't handle VOD and PPV for the host, but it seems that OCAP in the host is the way they want to go.


----------



## ah30k

It was already stated to be the same form factor as the DCT-700


----------



## mikeyts

ah30k said:


> It was already stated to be the same form factor as the DCT-700


More like rumored. Motorola hasn't officially said anything about it at all. What we "know" about it we "know" from the blog of someone with "inside Motorola contacts". Take it all with a big bucket of salt.


----------



## lrhorer

ah30k said:


> It was already stated to be the same form factor as the DCT-700


If it is in fact true, it's only true for Motorola systems. Most of us are not on Motorola systems.


----------



## lrhorer

mikeyts said:


> As an engineer with 30 years experience (12 of them in development of large scale networking devices), I think that they've given themselves plenty of time to get this thing to market.


I don't think that's really the issue. There's not going to be any large scale re-tooling, and the functional blocks already exist, so no, no motivated engineering team should have a problem getting this out, unless of course infighting among the various UDCP manufacturers caused a big delay. Between the fact the TiVo is virtually the only device which will be able to make use of the TR and the fact the standard has now been published, this problem is pretty much moot.



mikeyts said:


> It depends on how many resources the various players (Motorola, SA, TiVo, the cable providers, etc, etc) have devoted to the effort


*THAT's* the issue, and it boils down to how motivated the marketing authorities in the respective companies are to induce the accounting executives to approve resources for the engineering teams to produce the product. In some companies, that level may be less than zero, with one or more members of the senior executive team being actively opposed to its development. We all know what "The check's in the mail" means.



mikeyts said:


> --with enough people and dollars it could conceivably be done in significantly less time.


Yeah, but with any significant amount of opposition within the company's power structure, the company might well never spend a single penny to develop the dongle. Without an FCC mandate, there won't be anything forcing the company to bother, and since most markets don't have competing CATV systems, the fact the S3 and other UDCP devices are pretty much locked into using a CATV provider implies there can be real marketing arguments for not wanting to develop the dongle in the first place.


----------



## ah30k

ah30k said:


> It was already stated to be the same form factor as the DCT-700





lrhorer said:


> If it is in fact true, it's only true for Motorola systems. Most of us are not on Motorola systems.


True, my frame of reference is Mot so I tend to only think that way. How do you figure 'most of us are not on Mot systems'? I was under the impression Mot had a rather significant market share.


----------



## lrhorer

mikeyts said:


> And what reason would they have to publish a precise schedule to the public? To make you feel better? I don't think so.


Well, some companies do. One of our major vendors, Nortel , for example is usually very good about forecasting release dates. They usually hit them, too. It's one reason we're loyal to them. They keep us informed of their development plans and meet their commitments. It's not breaking any law not to do so, however.


----------



## lrhorer

ah30k said:


> True, my frame of reference is Mot so I tend to only think that way. How do you figure 'most of us are not on Mot systems'? I was under the impression Mot had a rather significant market share.


A significant market share is not most. Less than half of all subscribers are on Motorola systems, so by definition most are not on Motorola systems. It's been some time since I looked at the stats, but there may not be a single majority SDV vendor. If there is, it's Scientific Atlanta.


----------



## lrhorer

CharlesH said:


> I suspect that the resolver will pretty much be a stripped-down set-top box, rather than something developed from scratch.


That's a reasonable way to handle it. So is taking a DOCSIS modem and adding a USB 2.0 port and some software.



CharlesH said:


> pulling channel maps off the cable, and such, is already there. For that reason, there is technically no reason that it also couldn't handle VOD and PPV for the host, but it seems that OCAP in the host is the way they want to go.


The host software required to interface with the dongle is minimal. VOD, PPV, and other non-primitive 2-way functions are vastly more sophisticated, not to mention being highly proprietary to each CATV system. There are only a handful of SDV protocols and hardware for handling scheduled programs. The number of proprietary interactive systems is vast.


----------



## ah30k

lrhorer said:


> A significant market share is not most. Less than half of all subscribers are on Motorola systems, so by definition most are not on Motorola systems.


I guess that is where I must have been off. I thought Mot had more systems share than SA. Where do you get your data?

Yes, SA is ahead on SDV but not for long.


----------



## mikeyts

lrhorer said:


> I don't think that's really the issue. There's not going to be any large scale re-tooling, and the functional blocks already exist, so no, no motivated engineering team should have a problem getting this out, unless of course infighting among the various UDCP manufacturers caused a big delay. Between the fact the TiVo is virtually the only device which will be able to make use of the TR and the fact the standard has now been published, this problem is pretty much moot.


TiVo is virtually the only device that can use this thing _now_, but conceivably new, low-end DCR devices could be designed to be able to use it from the beginning. I think that's the suggestion. "No, we don't need to spend a ton of time and money completing the definition of and providing compliance to the CEA's proposed 'Digital Cable Ready Plus' standard--with this simply little device, which we've already defined and prepared for distribution with the aid of a few key CEA members, the OEMs can make future low-end products which can tune SDV services _without_ having to feature an expensive OCAP platform. (It doesn't address IPPV and VOD like DCR+ does, but of course SDV's the important thing)".


> *THAT's* the issue, and it boils down to how motivated the marketing authorities in the respective companies are to induce the accounting executives to approve resources for the engineering teams to produce the product. In some companies, that level may be less than zero, with one or more members of the senior executive team being actively opposed to its development. We all know what "The check's in the mail" means.


"The check's in the mail", will only keep your landlord from kickin' your ass out for a very short time. They're trying to deliver on this almost _before_ the FCC can require it in order to make it the solution of choice, since it'll be a solution that's already available or very close to being available. I still think that the FCC will need to require it, forcing the smaller providers to stock and provide the things.


----------



## mikeyts

lrhorer said:


> That's a reasonable way to handle it. So is taking a DOCSIS modem and adding a USB 2.0 port and some software.


Every DOCSIS modem I've seen for years has had a functioning USB 2.0 port. Cable modems are a lot closer to being physically a match for what's needed than any tuning STB, which have unnecessary graphics chips and audio chips and IR receivers and way too much memory. If Moto's using the DCT-700 as a base for development instead of a cable modem, it's because the Tuning Resolver is being engineered by the tuner STB team and they're a separate group from the networking equipment team who are already familiar with writing code for the DCT-700.


lrhorer said:


> Well, some companies do. One of our major vendors, Nortel , for example is usually very good about forecasting release dates. They usually hit them, too. It's one reason we're loyal to them. They keep us informed of their development plans and meet their commitments. It's not breaking any law not to do so, however.


Oh, I am absolutely certain that the cable equipment OEMs have detailed internal schedules which feature versions of the Tuning Resolver as a deliverable, allocating resources to the production of it. You can't run a company on vague ideas of when products will be ready. They know exactly when they expect it to be done and refine that date all the time. I'll bet that they share that estimate with the cable providers, but giving that exact date to the public is another matter. You don't do that unless you have to and they don't have to. It might give us all the warm fuzzies, but there's no upside for the OEMs.


----------



## CharlesH

lrhorer said:


> The host software required to interface with the dongle is minimal. VOD, PPV, and other non-primitive 2-way functions are vastly more sophisticated, not to mention being highly proprietary to each CATV system. There are only a handful of SDV protocols and hardware for handling scheduled programs. The number of proprietary interactive systems is vast.


I was assuming that the STB already had the proprietary software to handle VOD and PPV, and what would have to be done is replace the GUI for those functions by a standardized API over USB.


----------



## snowbunny

My older S2 (single tuner) lifetime TiVo is having serious trouble with its hard drive (upgraded hard drive, no problems until now). With the dongle repeatedly slipping schedule, I have no idea what to do -- try to have the S2 repaired? Buy a new S2 (but what about my lifetime)? Buy a new S3/HD with lifetime, which will mean losing many SDV channels? I'm getting repeated complaints from the kids and my visiting relatives about not being able to receive channels on the S3 -- it's simply that bad with as many SDV channels as we have (and we're not trying to even watch HD yet).

I'd really hoped the dongle would be on time as reported last fall... apparently not. We do not have any other competitor in the area for cable so are at the mercy of TWC.

Would you pay to have the S2 repaired if possible, and if not, which S2 would you buy?


----------



## moyekj

snowbunny said:


> With the dongle repeatedly slipping schedule....
> 
> I'd really hoped the dongle would be on time as reported last fall... apparently not.


 Please cite where the dongle (AKA tuning resolver) was PROMISED by anyone to be available last fall? AFAIK the only information available was a somewhat vague Q2 2008 that Motorola MAY have something ready to go. Plus I've seen no information from Scientific Atlanta (Cisco) on what their solution may look like or when it may be available.


----------



## mikeyts

There has been no published "schedule" to be "slipped". The only thing we have is an estimate that at least some version of it should be being distributed to customers by the end of the second quarter of calendar '08. Unless every company which plans to manufacture a version of the Tuning Resolver has chosen to assign it to a team of 2 or 3 of their least talented engineers, that was a pretty generous estimate. Until we get some official notification that no version of it will be ready before the end of June, there has been no schedule "slip".

If I were you, snowbunny, I might consider leasing a TWC DVR in the interrim. (I'm actually considering leasing a non-DVR STB to get access to all the pay and subscription HD VOD that's starting to become available). Where are you located that SDV has become such a big problem (consider placing your location in your forum user profile).


----------



## jrm01

moyekj said:


> Please cite where the dongle (AKA tuning resolver) was PROMISED by anyone to be available last fall? AFAIK the only information available was a somewhat vague Q2 2008 that Motorola MAY have something ready to go. Plus I've seen no information from Scientific Atlanta (Cisco) on what their solution may look like or when it may be available.


Does the Tuner Resolver have to be specific for SA vs. Motorola? I thought that it would only be interacting with the host (Tivo) and the neighborhood hub (which I thought was third party, not Mot or SA). Since it would be independant from cablecard and headend gear does it matter?


----------



## mikeyts

jrm01 said:


> Does the Tuner Resolver have to be specific for SA vs. Motorola? I thought that it would only be interacting with the host (Tivo) and the neighborhood hub (which I thought was third party, not Mot or SA). Since it would be independant from cablecard and headend gear does it matter?


It's gonna have to speak the network SDV protocol, and whereas some of that stuff is by third parties, its still proprietary and there are multiple versions in use.


----------



## classicsat

In a nut shell, it is SA or Motorola hardware provided by your cable provider. By it being from the respective manufacturer of their existing cable gear, it will be somewhat easy for a provider to integrate into their system.


----------



## snowbunny

moyekj said:


> Please cite where the dongle (AKA tuning resolver) was PROMISED by anyone to be available last fall? AFAIK the only information available was a somewhat vague Q2 2008 that Motorola MAY have something ready to go. Plus I've seen no information from Scientific Atlanta (Cisco) on what their solution may look like or when it may be available.


My original quote was that the last estimate I saw for dongle availability was *from* last fall, and the projection was Q1 2008.

I'm in Austin so am hard hit by SDV. I want to scream when my mother asks me why one TV can't tune in her favourite channels.... but the other one (with the dying TiVo) can.... I keep telling her that no, it's not broken, it's a technical incompatibility that will be fixed but I don't know when. Lather, rinse, repeat.


----------



## mikeyts

snowbunny said:


> My original quote was that the last estimate I saw for dongle availability was *from* last fall, and the projection was Q1 2008.


Again, it'd be interesting to know where you saw that estimate. We're a pretty eagle-eyed group; little is published online on this subject that escapes us and no official (or unofficial for that matter) estimate of Q1CY08 "dongle" availability was ever reported here.

TiVo made their announcement in this this PR, issued jointly with the National Cable & Telecommunications Association on November 26th. ("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"). Prior to that, there was no announcement of when it would become available as made by any of the involved parties (cable industry, CableLabs or TiVo). It was actually the first real confirmation that they were just going to go ahead and make and distribute the thing, without waiting for the FCC to respond to the CEA's request for "DCR Plus" and their objections to it. Prior to this announcement it was just something they'd suggested to the FCC as a solution to one of the CEA's complaints.


----------



## menos

Mark down the Oklahoma City, OK market as one of those that Cox is releasing new HD channels as 'future SDV deployment'. No indication when they will actually go SDV but all new channels, including the 3 released yesterday, will NOT be available for cable card customers.


----------



## lrhorer

mikeyts said:


> TiVo is virtually the only device that can use this thing _now_, but conceivably new, low-end DCR devices could be designed to be able to use it from the beginning.


Yeah, maybe. It's certainly possible, but I don't find it likely. After all, after reliability issues, the #1 complaint of CATV subscribers for the last 30 years has been they don't want additional boxes laying around their house. I find it unlikely the receiver manufacturers will ignore this, especially in light of their stance on separable security in the first place. The bottom line is, from the average subscriber's viewpoint, why purchase a TV that requires a CableCard and a box, when an even cheaper set just requires a box? It seems unlikely to me this point would be lost on receiver manufacturers, especially since it saves them money, as well.



mikeyts said:


> "No, we don't need to spend a ton of time and money completing the definition of and providing compliance to the CEA's proposed 'Digital Cable Ready Plus' standard--with this simply little device, which we've already defined and prepared for distribution with the aid of a few key CEA members, the OEMs can make future low-end products which can tune SDV services _without_ having to feature an expensive OCAP platform. (It doesn't address IPPV and VOD like DCR+ does, but of course SDV's the important thing)"."


Why bother at all? The consumer doesn't care whihc box he has to have, merely that he has to have one. The receiver manufacturer is much better served by simply not providing CableCard abilities at all.

In addition, while a full featured DVR like the TiVo makes features like VOD and a number of other interactive features mostly moot, this is not true for a simple receiver.



mikeyts said:


> The check's in the mail", will only keep your landlord from kickin' your ass out for a very short time.


Any analogy can be carried too far, and this one has definitely been stretched beyond it's limits. A better one is the landlord who says the super will be by next week to fix the leaky faucets. What are the tenants going to do if he doesn't? Move? Sue the landlord over a leaky faucet? I've seen snow jobs on CATV subscribers from the installer all the way up to the CEO, and I would not be shocked if this weren't another one.



mikeyts said:


> They're trying to deliver on this almost _before_ the FCC can require it in order to make it the solution of choice, since it'll be a solution that's already available or very close to being available. I still think that the FCC will need to require it, forcing the smaller providers to stock and provide the things.


I think the odds of the FCC coming up with a ruling on this any time in the near future are exceedingly low. I could easily be wrong, of course. We'll see.


----------



## lrhorer

ah30k said:


> I guess that is where I must have been off. I thought Mot had more systems share than SA. Where do you get your data?
> 
> Yes, SA is ahead on SDV but not for long.


OK, maybe I should have specified SDV systems, but since we're talking about SDV, I had more or less assumed the SDV system was a given. More systems currently supplying SDV are using Scientific Atlanta than Motorola, which means my original point still stands. More than half of us already left in the cold by the introduction of SDV channels will still be left in the cold by the introduction of a Motorola dongle.


----------



## ah30k

lrhorer said:


> OK, maybe I should have specified SDV systems, but since we're talking about SDV, I had more or less assumed the SDV system was a given. More systems currently supplying SDV are using Scientific Atlanta than Motorola, which means my original point still stands. More than half of us already left in the cold by the introduction of SDV channels will still be left in the cold by the introduction of a Motorola dongle.


You assume that the only people here concerned about SDV are those who are currently being impacted. There are many who are here out of impending SDV losses.


----------



## mfogarty5

lrhorer said:


> Yeah, maybe. It's certainly possible, but I don't find it likely. After all, after reliability issues, the #1 complaint of CATV subscribers for the last 30 years has been they don't want additional boxes laying around their house. I find it unlikely the receiver manufacturers will ignore this, especially in light of their stance on separable security in the first place. The bottom line is, from the average subscriber's viewpoint, why purchase a TV that requires a CableCard and a box, when an even cheaper set just requires a box? It seems unlikely to me this point would be lost on receiver manufacturers, especially since it saves them money, as well.
> 
> Why bother at all? The consumer doesn't care whihc box he has to have, merely that he has to have one. The receiver manufacturer is much better served by simply not providing CableCard abilities at all.


Your are overlooking OCAP and one of the benefits of OCAP is that the consumer won't have to have a box at all. In fact, Panasonic is releasing an OCAP plasma later this year. While I understand that the cable company software will be downloaded to the plasma, the point is no box is required, only a CableCard.

If one is satisfied with the cable company UI, why rent an ugly box when you can get away with renting a card?

Taking the Panasonic/Comcast example one step further, what if subscribers could download the Comcast TiVo software right to their new OCAP tv?


----------



## lrhorer

mikeyts said:


> Every DOCSIS modem I've seen for years has had a functioning USB 2.0 port.


Well, none of mine do, and I have several. Either way, however, providing a USB port is no big deal.



mikeyts said:


> Cable modems are a lot closer to being physically a match for what's needed than any tuning STB, which have unnecessary graphics chips and audio chips and IR receivers and way too much memory.


Which is why I suggested this as a viable method of coming up with the dongle. Either way, it's not difficult - just a kludge.



mikeyts said:


> Oh, I am absolutely certain that the cable equipment OEMs have detailed internal schedules which feature versions of the Tuning Resolver as a deliverable, allocating resources to the production of it.


Which could easily be, "When Hell Freezes over", and "not a flippin' brass farthing". I'm not saying it is, mind you.



mikeyts said:


> You don't do that unless you have to and they don't have to. It might give us all the warm fuzzies, but there's no upside for the OEMs.


It depends on the company and their perceived benefits from doing so versus their perceived risk if they fail to meet a deadline. Do I really need to point to how many promised deadlines companies like Microsoft, Apple, Sony, or for that matter TiVo have released to the public? Or how many have been missed? I can think of at least 3 major published deadlines missed by Cisco and at least 2 by Microsoft without even trying. There's a reason why the term "vaporware" exists. It can even be strategic to announce a deadline one knows one cannot meet in an attempt to pre-empt customers from abandoning an incumbent platform when a competitor is gong to beat one to the draw on a new system.

I'm not saying you're wrong about either Motorola or Scientific Atlanta, just that not every company does business that way, and it's entirely their choice that they do. What you call "warm fuzzies", many marketing and PR executives call "The Golden Goose", and while a company must always balance risk against potential gain, any company who ignores the "warm fuzzies" of the end user (whether they are direct customers or not) does so at risk of extreme financial peril. I'll admit, however, in this case they have little to lose. The end user is locked into whatever technology the vendor feels like producing.


----------



## ah30k

Anyone wonder where TiVo is in their schedule for their software that needs to interact with the dongle?


----------



## lrhorer

ah30k said:


> You assume that the only people here concerned about SDV are those who are currently being impacted. There are many who are here out of impending SDV losses.


No, I'm not. My point was simply a large number - more than half of all extant Sereis III class subscribers - won't be helped by a Motorola dongle. It's also true of a large fraction of those who are not currently impacted but will be.


----------



## ah30k

lrhorer said:


> No, I'm not. My point was simply a large number - more than half of all extant Sereis III class subscribers - won't be helped by a Motorola dongle. It's also true of a large fraction of those who are not currently impacted but will be.


You can sigh all you want, but I call it like I see it. In your post here you said more than half of us are on SA systems (or something like that). If the extant S3 users are evenly distributed across the cable population and the S3 user population is represented by this forum then your answer is wrong.

Just say that you meant to type in that most of the currently affected users are on SA and then we agree.


----------



## lrhorer

mfogarty5 said:


> Your are overlooking OCAP and one of the benefits of OCAP is that the consumer won't have to have a box at all.


I'm not overlooking it in the least. The discussion revolves around devices which will require a dongle, not around those which do not. Oh, and by the way, the lack of an external STB is not a feature of OCAP. It is the primary reason for separable security and CableCard in the first place. The problem is, there is no standard for bidirectional hosts.



mfogarty5 said:


> In fact, Panasonic is releasing an OCAP plasma later this year. While I understand that the cable company software will be downloaded to the plasma, the point is no box is required, only a CableCard.


Only if the CATV vendor in question supports OCAP. Scientific Atlanta doesn't. Of course, it will still function perfectly as a unidirectional host, but no interactive services, inlcuding SDV, unless the vendor has OCAP hardware.



mfogarty5 said:


> If one is satisfied with the cable company UI, why rent an ugly box when you can get away with renting a card?


You missed the point entirely. The question is why should a receiver manufacturer go to the trouble of designing a dongle-ready set when they can simply produce a non-separable security set and let the CATV provider handle it when the perceived value to the customer is the same?



mfogarty5 said:


> Taking the Panasonic/Comcast example one step further, what if subscribers could download the Comcast TiVo software right to their new OCAP tv?


That makes no sense at all.

1. The Comcast Tivo is a DVR, not a TV. Almost nothing of its functionality is of any use to a TV.

2. The subscriber is not allowed to download anything as far as OCAP is concerned. Downloading under OCAP is entirely the prerogative of the CATV vendor. The subscriber has no choice either way and cannot exert control either for the software to be loaded or prevent it from being loaded.

3. OCAP is not a UI nor an OS. It's middleware. The TiVo software consists of an OS (Linux 2.4) and a UI, plus some supplied or available middleware.

4. Although all OCAP software by design must be compatible with any OCAP device, the OS and all operational software including the UI are specific to a device. TiVo software won't run on a TV unless the software is modified to run on the platform or the hardware is modified to emulate the TiVo hardware. Downloading OCAP software won't modify the UI only allow it (or force it, if you will) to provide additional specific capabilities. The general capabilities must already exist in the UI - but of course they must in the first place for the device to be OCAP compliant.


----------



## morac

lrhorer said:


> No, I'm not. My point was simply a large number - more than half of all extant Sereis III class subscribers - won't be helped by a Motorola dongle. It's also true of a large fraction of those who are not currently impacted but will be.


I'll mention that Comcast, the largest U.S. cable provider, has already stated that they will be using Motorola for SDV. They will start deploying SDV this year.


----------



## vstone

Regarding downloading Tivo software to a TV set, presumably one without a hard disk. Even without DVR capabilities, the Tivo interface is far better than that on most STBs, which are mostly made by MOTO and SA. Presumably the Tivo IF could reworked a bit, presuming that Comcast (in this case) were willing to pay for it (I doubt it).

Is Panasonic still planning on releasing a cable STB? Is Panasonic willing to go big time with the same type of interface that their VCR's and DVR's have had. Will they be willing to have just whatever the cable company want to give them? 95&#37; of this theoretical cable box IF would be the same as an OCAP TY set.


----------



## ksmith80209

TimmyZ said:


> I've been watching and reading the "Comcast TiVO" thread over on the AVS boards, waiting for over a year now for Comcast to release their version of TiVO. And now that Comcast is finally rolling out their version, and reading all of the issues that people are having, it's got me wondering again - Comcast TiVO vs. TiVO HD.
> 
> The Comcast TiVO interface and features will never match the real thing. TiVO to Go, the Music interface, sharing between units. I'm tired of waiting, and I'm really worried that it will be a much inferior product, when compared to the real thing. So I think I've talked myself into wanting to purchase a TiVO HD.
> 
> My only concern is SDV. I've seen and read reports that Denver, CO (where I am) has started rolling out SDV. And as of yet, SDV isn't supported on TiVO hardware. It could be another year - and who knows, maybe even longer - before it is.
> 
> Can someone tell me which Denver channels (or areas) are SDV, and if Comcast is only using SDV to deliver new channels? I've read on Wiki, that an entire head end will deliver SDV, or not. Then I've read on this board, people talking about only certain channels that are switched. Now I'm confused. Which is correct?
> 
> I really hate this Comcast Motorola box with the IGuide - I want my TiVO... but I don't want to lose channels I watch either. Does anyone know, or can you point me toward a list of these channels?
> 
> Thanks!
> Timm


Bump. I'm in the same boat in Denver. Anyone have an answer?


----------



## bicker

As far as I can tell, Denver has not yet deployed SDV:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=293562


----------



## timstack8969

I was reading that comcast is now test SDV in Cherry Hill, NJ and Denver, CO. My question is that there must be someone in these area's with the HD TIVO how are they able to watch the channels now without that adapter that they are coming out with in 2008?


----------



## morac

timstack8969 said:


> I was reading that comcast is now test SDV in Cherry Hill, NJ and Denver, CO. My question is that there must be someone in these area's with the HD TIVO how are they able to watch the channels now without that adapter that they are coming out with in 2008?


While I don't live in Cherry Hill (though it's close by) I can answer this. The answer is that currently they can't. It's no different than the TiVo HD/S3 users in Time Warner areas that use SDV.


----------



## smb56

Cox Cable Middle Ga. has just put out 3 new channels all in SDV. CNN-HD, Food Network - HD and HGTV-HD. Calls into Cox have netted me the response of "corporate made a decision and with their being no 2 way communications between a cable card and the cable company, you can't get the newer channels. We are running out of band width". The band width they are talking about only has 17 HD channels which about half are worth watching. If anyone has any info as to the rollout of the SDV "dongle", I would love to hear about it. The marketing people here at Cox just are finding out about SDV and really don't have a clue about it. 

smb56


----------



## skaggs

Letter sent by Albany TWC concerning moving existing broadcast HD channels to SDV:


> February 13, 2008
> 
> Dear Valued Customer,
> 
> Time Warner Cable would like to thank you for choosing us to be your video provider. Below you will find important information regarding upcoming changes that will affect your ability to access certain channels on your one-way CabIeCARD-equipped retail device.
> 
> The current generation of CableCARD-compatible devices sold at retail, known as Unidirectional Digital Cable Products ("UDCPs") or Digital Cable Ready devices, only allow you to access our "one-way" services. in order to access On Demand programming, the Interactive Program Guide, switched digital video ("SDV"). and other "two-way" services, you must use digital cable equipment that includes two-way capabilities, such as a TWC-provided set-top box.
> 
> SDV is a particularly exciting technological breakthrough that makes it possible for us to offer many additional services, including new HD channels and I-ID versions of popular existing channels, to all of our customers. In fact, we recently launched several new services in your area using SDV - services that many of you, because you also use a digital cable set-top box with two-way capabilities, currently enjoy. SDV allows us to provide these additional services while continuing to offer existing services because channels delivered using SDV are only transmitted over the cable system on an "as needed" basis. As a result, SDV uses system capacity, or bandwidth, more efficiently than the traditional, "always on" method. However, in order to launch all the new services our customers want, we must first migrate some existing services to SDV in order to make additional bandwidth available.
> 
> Starting on Tuesday, March 18th, 2008, Time Warner Cable will begin providing a number of our existing channels via SDV. The list is as follows:
> 
> TBS HD (channel 1805)
> A&E HD (channel 1838)
> Universal HD (channel 1860)
> 
> Once these channels become two-way services, they no longer will be accessible on UDCPs, which lack the necessary interactive capabilities to request that a channel be made available. This means you will need digital cable equipment with two-way capabilities to view them, just as you need such equipment to access the other interactive services that we offer. In addition, you should be aware that in the future other channels currently accessible on a UDCP may be migrated to SDV, and new services will be launched using that two-way technology. Time Warner Cable digital cable set-top boxes provide the capability to view two-way services. in addition, in the future, we expect that devices available for purchase at retail will enable access to the two-way services that we provide.
> 
> If you would like to obtain equipment from Time Warner Cable that provides access to two-way services, we offer many attractive pricing plans that include such devices, which we'd be happy to review with you. Please contact us at 866-321-2225 to discuss these options or if you have any questions.
> 
> We thank you again for your patronage.
> Time Warner Cable of Albany


Why is the FCC allowing this?

I can see if they want to add NEW channels, but taking channels away from us cable card users has to be in violation of some kind of FCC rule.

Why mandate cable cards in the first place if the cable companies are just going to find a way to make you rent their equipment?

I subscribe to the HD Tier and Universal HD is in the HD Tier. How do I get all the channels in the HD Tier if they make them SDV?


----------



## morac

skaggs said:


> Time Warner Cable digital cable set-top boxes provide the capability to view two-way services. in addition, in the future, we expect that devices available for purchase at retail will enable access to the two-way services that we provide.


I notice there's no mention of the tuning resolver. Unless that's what they mean by "purchase at retail", but I would take that to mean two-way capable devices like the expected Tru2way compatible TiVo.


----------



## mikeyts

skaggs said:


> Why is the FCC allowing this?
> 
> I can see if they want to add NEW channels, but taking channels away from us cable card users has to be in violation of some kind of FCC rule.
> 
> Why mandate cable cards in the first place if the cable companies are just going to find a way to make you rent their equipment?
> 
> I subscribe to the HD Tier and Universal HD is in the HD Tier. How do I get all the channels in the HD Tier if they make them SDV?


So far as I can tell, no specific rule in the FCC regs regarding support of CableCARDs is violated by their doing this. It probably violates the spirit of the regulations (particularly if you've read the "Report and Order" which generated them), but not the letter.

Unidirectional CableCARD is a failure, pure and simple. The FCC did not back them very firmly--if they had, they wouldn't have given the cable providers a 2 year extension on using them in leased boxes, and they'd have had to have used S-Cards, which could only have improved their support for them.

We're all just screwed until the Tuning Resolver arrives, whenever that may happen.


----------



## mikeyts

morac said:


> I notice there's no mention of the tuning resolver. Unless that's what they mean by "purchase at retail", but I would take that to mean two-way capable devices like the expected Tru2way compatible TiVo.


And why would you expect them to mention the tuning resolver? The person who penned that letter probably never heard of it, and if they did, what motive would they have to tell people that it was coming, when people who don't know about it might toss their TiVos and lease cable company equipment, with which they could additionally buy VOD and IPPV ?

Do not expect the cable providers to do any more to promote the Tuning Resolver than they did to promote uDCR (which is to say, nothing). There's nothing in it for them and they'd just like for the people using those devices to quietly stop.


----------



## bicker

mikeyts said:


> So far as I can tell, no specific rule in the FCC regs regarding support of CableCARDs is violated by their doing this.


Combined with the lack of any action taken, based on previous conversions to SDV, it is the same as saying that it doesn't violate the regulations.



mikeyts said:


> Unidirectional CableCARD is a failure, pure and simple.


Yup.


----------



## m_jonis

mikeyts said:


> So far as I can tell, no specific rule in the FCC regs regarding support of CableCARDs is violated by their doing this. It probably violates the spirit of the regulations (particularly if you've read the "Report and Order" which generated them), but not the letter.
> 
> Unidirectional CableCARD is a failure, pure and simple. The FCC did not back them very firmly--if they had, they wouldn't have given the cable providers a 2 year extension on using them in leased boxes, and they'd have had to have used S-Cards, which could only have improved their support for them.
> 
> We're all just screwed until the Tuning Resolver arrives, whenever that may happen.


Yes, "whenever" that arrives. And, I interpret TW letter to mean that you'll have to pay for it, contrary to Tivo's assertion that they "expect it to be free".

Of course, I think Tivo is deluding themselves (they also expect it to be available Q2, 2008?)

I think cable will drag its feet as long as it can and the FCC will let them get away with it.


----------



## moyekj

m_jonis said:


> Yes, "whenever" that arrives. And, I interpret TW letter to mean that you'll have to pay for it, contrary to Tivo's assertion that they "expect it to be free".
> 
> Of course, I think Tivo is deluding themselves (they also expect it to be available Q2, 2008?)
> 
> I think cable will drag its feet as long as it can and the FCC will let them get away with it.


 The way I understood it, Motorola was predicting to have hardware available by Q2, 2008, but that could be delayed. That doesn't mean Tivo will be ready by then - heck they may have to start a beta program around then once they can get hold of more hardware which may mean a couple more months beyond that. Then who knows when your local cable franchise may get some - and what's their incentive to order them early and in mass quantities? There will probably be a waiting list once/if available locally. So I'm going under the (perhaps pessimistic) assumption that if you are in a Moto headend you may be lucky to have something by end of 2008, if you are in an SA headend sometime after that... By then we may start seeing an S4 with built in tuning resolver or some form of 2-way comm.


----------



## MichaelK

mikeyts said:


> ...
> That prediction did not come from a Motorola statement, but from a PR issued by TiVo and the NCTA:


bummer- I was hoping motorola said it. That would have some basis in truth at least.

The NCTA/Cablelabs flat out lies at times.

Look at thier LEGAL filings to the FCC about M-card availibility and then see when the m-cards really arrived. There was a significant disconect in their filind and reality if I'm remembering correctly.


----------



## mikeyts

m_jonis said:


> Yes, "whenever" that arrives. And, I interpret TW letter to mean that you'll have to pay for it, contrary to Tivo's assertion that they "expect it to be free".
> 
> Of course, I think Tivo is deluding themselves (they also expect it to be available Q2, 2008?)
> 
> I think cable will drag its feet as long as it can and the FCC will let them get away with it.


No, I'm dead certain that what the letter was referring to was the wave of <tru2way> products expected at retail as early as possibly late this Spring. Those can have code for the cable providers' IPGs downloaded into them, giving access to IPPV and VOD in addition to SDV tuning, all without use of leased cable provider equipment other than a single M-Card. The tuning resolver is going to have to be distributed by the cable providers; there are areas like where I like (San Diego) served by two or more providers using incompatible equipment which will require a different tuning resolver for each, and it would be very difficult for cable subs to select the proper one for their system if they tried to sell them at retail.

The FCC has to answer the CEA's complaint that implementing OCAP adds far too much to the cost of a product when all they need is a mechanism for SDV tuning (and, preferably, IPPV and VOD); that complaint asks that the FCC order development of support for a light-weight interactive solution that they're calling "Digital Cable Ready Plus". The NCTA responded by saying that they could solve the problem much faster and more cheaply with the Tuning Resolver. If they drag their feet _at all_ in delivering the Tuning Resolver, the FCC is likely to order the implementation of DCR Plus with some sort of delivery deadline, which will cost the cable industry much, much time and money and discourage the creation of <tru2way> products. They have plenty of incentive to deliver this as quickly as possible. They want to say, "See--we already have the Tuning Resolver ready, generously made available to the consumer for little or no charge, which is all you _really_ need." Even with that, the FCC could choose to order DCR+, but cable wants to offer up a solution without being ordered to virtually before a decision can be rendered.


moyekj said:


> The way I understood it, Motorola was predicting to have hardware available by Q2, 2008, but that could be delayed.


That prediction did not come from a Motorola statement, but from a PR issued by TiVo and the NCTA:


> 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.


----------



## mikeyts

MichaelK said:


> bummer- I was hoping motorola said it. That would have some basis in truth at least.
> 
> The NCTA/Cablelabs flat out lies at times.
> 
> Look at thier LEGAL filings to the FCC about M-card availibility and then see when the m-cards really arrived. There was a significant disconect in their filind and reality if I'm remembering correctly.


So far as I know, M-Cards became available by 1 July 2007, which was the FCC's revised deadline (they filed in 2004 for a 2 year extension on a 1 July 2005 deadline in order to finish M-Card and OCAP, which they were granted). In early 2007, they filed to get an extension to allow them to finish DCAS, which was denied. No one was forced to deploy M-Card, but any cable provider purchasing new boxes for lease purposes with built-in conditional access methods after 1 July 2007 would be in violation of FCC regs.


----------



## MichaelK

mikeyts said:


> So far as I know, M-Cards became available by 1 July 2007, which was the FCC's revised deadline (they filed in 2004 for a 2 year extension on a 1 July 2005 deadline in order to finish M-Card and OCAP, which they were granted). In early 2007, they filed to get an extension to allow them to finish DCAS, which was denied. No one was forced to deploy M-Card, but any cable provider purchasing new boxes for lease purposes with built-in conditional access methods after 1 July 2007 would be in violation of FCC regs.


If I recall the NCTA in respnse to tivo's repeated complaints about no m-cards said they expected availibility would be before the July 1, 2007 deadline (which to my knowledge said NOTHING about needing m-cards availible only that cable had to use cards of some sort themselves and they decided m-cards were best to deal with their own dvrs') . And then regardless they were not readily avilible in many places until much later in the year.

Too lazy to research so I could be wrong but that's my recollection of what really happened.


----------



## mikeyts

They may well have lied to TiVo about when M-Cards would be available. The FCC requirement had nothing to do with M-Cards specifically; it just forbid them to buy any new boxes after the deadline with built-in conditional access. Which approved separable security mechanism their new boxes used was up to them--the point was to get them to start using _something_ so that the CE industry could design products that were compatible to a standard being used by the cable industry itself. The cable industry was not itself using S-Cards in unidirectional hosts, and people using them could not access their lucrative interactive offerings, so their support for products which used them was woefully poor and lackadaisical


----------



## MichaelK

MichaelK said:


> If I recall the NCTA in respnse to tivo's repeated complaints about no m-cards said they expected availibility would be before the July 1, 2007 deadline (which to my knowledge said NOTHING about needing m-cards availible only that cable had to use cards of some sort themselves and they decided m-cards were best to deal with their own dvrs') . And then regardless they were not readily avilible in many places until much later in the year.
> 
> Too lazy to research so I could be wrong but that's my recollection of what really happened.


NCTA June 26,2006 status report to the FCC found here:
http://www.ncta.com/DocumentBinary.aspx?id=457



> *Multistream CableCARDs.* The Commission also asked for periodic reports on the
> effort to develop and deploy a multistream CableCARD. As reported in our March 30, 2006
> report, CableLabs has qualified a Multistream CableCARD device from CISCO/Scientific-
> Atlanta.
> 
> ...
> 
> It is expected that Multistream
> CableCARDs will be available from major MSOs within the next few months.


At BEST the M-cards showed up on July 1, 2007 (had a few minutes to find the filing but not enough to scour the boards here for posts of people looking for cards after July1, 2007 which I think was common?) That IMHO is more then a "few months" from June 26, 2006.

I know there are frequently debates about what few and serveral mean, but I would guess most people think a year is more then a few months.


----------



## mikeyts

So? It was an estimate, and in the meantime they decided that they didn't really want to deploy M-Cards at all, preferring to to wait for DCAS, which they filed for and were denied. Stuff happens.

The point is that they had little motive to introduce M-Cards before the deadline. The FCC had no requirement that they introduce them, _ever_, just that they stop buying boxes to lease that didn't use some kind of separable security, M-Card being their best available alternative.

The Tuning Resolver, on the other hand, is something that they suggested as a solution of their own accord, which they're trying to present to the FCC as a fait accompli trump-card to CE's suggested DCR+ scheme. They have every incentive to get it out on time and depending upon how many resources they allocated to it, they've given themselves plenty of time.


----------



## MichaelK

mikeyts said:


> So? It was an estimate, and in the meantime they decided that they didn't really want to deploy M-Cards at all, preferring to to wait for DCAS, which they filed for and were denied. Stuff happens.
> 
> The point is that they had little motive to introduce M-Cards before the deadline. The FCC had no requirement that they introduce them, _ever_, just that they stop buying boxes to lease that didn't use some kind of separable security, M-Card being their best available alternative.
> 
> The Tuning Resolver, on the other hand, is something that they suggested as a solution of their own accord, which they're trying to present to the FCC as a fait accompli trump-card to CE's suggested DCR+ scheme. They have every incentive to get it out on time and depending upon how many resources they allocated to it, they've given themselves plenty of time.


So the first "estimate" in a regulatory filing has less validity then some press release? The PR machine's spin holds more water then a filing to the federal government in your mind?

Second- the FCC does NOTHING fast in regards to cable and open access. - the law was passed over 10 years ago and the FCC gave cable delay after delay after delay. Didn't they get 2 years total delays on the July 2007 deadline for cable cards becasue they kept saying OCAP and/or downloadable security was the solution they were just about to get to time and again?

they've presented OCAP and downloadable security as the end all solution and gotten extension after extension to make those work so whats to stop them from doing something similar with the tuning resolver.

I dont think it's going to be years or anything but I dont trust the NCTA one bit to tell the truth about a date for the tuning resolver. So the folks guessing about year end for moto and some time after that for SA dont sound off the wall to me.

Just my 2 cents.

Luckily for me- so far my provider is SDV free. They have been purchased by comcast but we have Moto hardware around hear so I hope that by the time the borg take over and push sdv on the system that the tuning resolver is availible.


----------



## MichaelK

also want to throw out the only real reason the FCC cared about M-cards and made cable report on the progress was becasue tivo complained a bunch that 2 s-cards was such apain for a competing DVR. Now a primary reason for the tuning resolver is tivo's complaining about sdv too - there are others but tivo was probably one of the loudest- well now tivo is trying to play nice with them so I dont know that there is any major force from the fcc to do ANYTHING. COuld be I suppose but i really doubt it from the FCC at this point. They are too busy blocking the Sirius XM merger to care about SDV....


----------



## tgirard

I got this list from a TWC tech today. These are SDV channels for the Albany, NY area:

/edit - sorry... this list is current as of 2/20/2008



Code:


Channel(s) Handled By SDV (86)

1
20 (WYPX)
110 Disney East
215 Discovery Health
375 (EWTN)
434 Turner Classic Movies
551 (Fox Business News)
570 CSPAN
575 CSPAN2
**675 (NHL)
677 (NBATV)
708 (HBO West)
709 (HBO2 West)
710 (HBO Signature West)
711 (HBO Family West)
712 (HBO Comedy West)
713 (HBO Zone West)
714 (HBO Latino West)
725 (Cinemax West)	 726 (More MAX West)
727 (Action MAX West)
728 (Thriller Max West)
747 (Showtime 2 West)
748 (Showtime 3 West)
749 (Showtime Extreme West)
750 (Showtime Beyond West)
754 (Showtime Next West)
755 (Showtime Family Zone West)
756 (Showtime Women West)
763 (TMC West)
764 (TWC Extra West)
776 Starz West
777 Starz Cinema West
788 Encore West
901 Univision
1107 TWTV7
1109 QVC
1115 Home Shopping Network	 1120 ShopNBC
1823 Weather Channel HD
1839 History Channel HD
1841 HGTV HD
1842 Food HD
1851 Fox Business News HD
1846 CNN Channel HD
1864 Lifetime Movie Network HD
1873 Versus/Golf Channel HD
** 1874 Outdoor Channel
** 1875 (NHL HD)
1876 National Geographic Channel HD
1890 Starz East HD
1981 Starz West HD
1910-1919 NBA League Pass
1930 thru 1943 NHL/MLB services
1950-1956 ESPN Game Plan


----------



## Audiodynamics

I have both an S3 Lifetime and a THD. I know this has been covered before, but is the "Tuning Resolver" needed for both HD TiVo types or just the S3? 

In other words, does the THD have the updated hardware required to allow 2-Way Communication?

I for one would like to see M-Card's dual stream capability implemented on the S3. Comcast CT is whacking me for 2 Addl. Outlet fees for the S3. Should I call and ***** about this?


----------



## tgirard

Audiodynamics said:


> In other words, does the THD have the updated hardware required to allow 2-Way Communication?


You'll still need a tuning resolver/dongle/box/whatever. The THD (like the S3) does not do 2-way comm back to the headend.


----------



## Audiodynamics

tgirard said:


> You'll still need a tuning resolver/dongle/box/whatever. The THD (like the S3) does not do 2-way comm back to the headend.


Thanks! That's what I thought.


----------



## FoxFireX

Well, I just finished an interesting phone conversation. I had emailed a couple of addresses at my cable provider blindly, just to make my own impassioned plea (don't take away any more channels! *sniff*) and got a call back from it to discuss. I don't think there was anything earth-shattering that he told me, but I did pick up a couple of at least mildly interesting nuggets from the conversation. One is that they're slightly renaming the device -- it's now to be called the "Tuning Adapter". That's "adapter" with an "E" not "adaptor" with an "O". This was apparently a very big issue that required a lot of discussion with very powerful people to reach a consensus regarding. 

Also, he said the planned release date for this is the end of 2Q, 2008, "probably this summer". I asked the question (just to be sure) that we were talking calendar year, not fiscal, and he said that would make the most sense, since it involves lots of companies with presumably lots of fiscal years, so if things hold to their current plans, we'd be expecting availability in June.

Final bit is that his understanding is that the housing will be based on the set top box, rather than being a cable modem footprint. He also mentioned that the old "dongle" term made him think thumb drive, but that it wouldn't be that at all.

I know a lot of this is covered ground in the thread already, but it's kind of nice to hear the same story from a cable rep. I also know that I haven't provided any names or backup information, so please feel free to take it all with a grain of salt, or to take it not at all. I just hadn't asked whether it would be okay to post any of this, so I'd rather not be more specific just in the very unlikely circumstance that I shouldn't have repeated something. Not that there's anything particularly suspect there, but whatever.  Feel free to dismiss if you wish, or take it for what it's meant to be: Confirmation that at least someone in cable-land is on the same general page as we are about when/how this is going to happen.


----------



## logicman1

FoxFireX said:


> ... One is that they're slightly renaming the device -- it's now to be called the "Tuning Adapter". That's "adapter" with an "E" not "adaptor" with an "O". This was apparently a very big issue that required a lot of discussion with very powerful people to reach a consensus regarding. ...


 - I'm guessing the powerful people are attorneys afraid that the name Tuning Resolver might somehow leave their companies open to legal action by customers in some obscure way.


----------



## Breadfan

I've just been bitten by the dreaded SDV here in Fort Smith, Arkansas. Cox just added several new HD channels and I get none of them. I called to complain and was just told that without 2-way communication the cable cards just cannot get the new channels.

I'm pretty angry but the benefits I get from having TiVo outweigh having the extra HD channels.
That being said, if they had added the channels before I bought the TiVo a couple of months ago AND I had known about the whole SDV thing I probably would have stayed with the cable DVR until it was resolved.


----------



## SCSIRAID

FoxFireX said:


> Well, I just finished an interesting phone conversation. I had emailed a couple of addresses at my cable provider blindly, just to make my own impassioned plea (don't take away any more channels! *sniff*) and got a call back from it to discuss.
> 
> What provider? Are you on a Motorola or Scientific Atlanta system?


----------



## FoxFireX

Time Warner, and I believe we're running SA equipment.


----------



## SCSIRAID

FoxFireX said:


> Time Warner, and I believe we're running SA equipment.


Excellent... me too... I believe this is the first mention of the tuning resolver errr... tuning 'adapter' and a potential date from anyone at a cableco using SA equipment. Maybe there is hope....


----------



## Breadfan

I sent an e-mail to Cox the other day to complain about this and the girl who responded said she understood my frustration because she had the same thing happen to her. Actually she said she had been assured that the cable card would work the same as a box and then found out differently later.


----------



## Big Rick

FoxFireX said:


> Well, I just finished an interesting phone conversation.


Would you mind either setting your "Location:" setting, or mentioning your location in your postings? There is very little useful information if you don't let us know who your provider is and what community you're in.

Thank you.


----------



## FoxFireX

Location updated and provider mentioned upthread. I know I didn't give a lot of details, but it's mostly because I didn't have a whole lot to give. There were a couple of bits that were specific to my area, but I tried to only bother mentioning things that were more generally applicable.


----------



## Eccles

Can someone please clarify whether SDV _completely _screws CableCard devices, or only partially. By that I mean, will an HD TiVo in Austin _never _be able to receive any channels which are switched, or would it only be able to receive them if they were currently being served up (i.e. had been recently requested by a two-way device on the same hub)?

The reason I ask is that I'm wondering if it might be possible to kludge together a kind of ersatz "resolver" - actually more of a "reserver" - using an S2 TiVo and a non-DVR STB on the same cable drop as an HD TiVo, with the S2 set to record a minute or so of each of the limited number of channels that a household actually watches, on a rotating basis, thus keeping all of them actively served up at all times. Would an HD TiVo then be able to find them via Guided Setup, and be able to tune them back in in those same carriers when they were needed?


----------



## ah30k

Eccles, You will never (edit - see two posts down) be able to tune them even if they are currently on. See the thread on Brighthouse, FL which already removed the channels from the CableCARD channel map in preparation for going SDV. They can't get the channels now and they aren't even switched yet.


----------



## Eccles

ah30k said:


> Eccles, You will never be able to tune them even if they are currently on. See the thread on Brighthouse, FL which already removed the channels from the CableCARD channel map in preparation for going SDV. They can't get the channels now and they aren't even switched yet.


Bummer, and here I was hoping to stick it to the man.


----------



## ah30k

Let me correct myself... you will never be able to tune them without the Tuning Resolver which may or may not ever appear.


----------



## mikeyts

Eccles said:


> Can someone please clarify whether SDV _completely _screws CableCard devices, or only partially. By that I mean, will an HD TiVo in Austin _never _be able to receive any channels which are switched, or would it only be able to receive them if they were currently being served up (i.e. had been recently requested by a two-way device on the same hub)?
> 
> The reason I ask is that I'm wondering if it might be possible to kludge together a kind of ersatz "resolver" - actually more of a "reserver" - using an S2 TiVo and a non-DVR STB on the same cable drop as an HD TiVo, with the S2 set to record a minute or so of each of the limited number of channels that a household actually watches, on a rotating basis, thus keeping all of them actively served up at all times. Would an HD TiVo then be able to find them via Guided Setup, and be able to tune them back in in those same carriers when they were needed?


Even if there were a way to do this, you could not ensure that all of the channels that you use would always be available. One possibility in an SDV system is that all of the bandwidth allocated to the switched set is in use and you're out of luck; the use of switched tuning is predicated on this being unlikely to happen if they choose the channels in the set carefully. So, even with authorized equipment it's possible that you ask for a channel and it responds, "Sorry; I can't give you that channel now, try again later.".


----------



## bicker

Anything is possible.


----------



## lrhorer

Eccles said:


> Can someone please clarify whether SDV _completely _screws CableCard devices, or only partially.


It doesn't "screw CableCard devices" at all. All SDV units employ CableCards. SDV is a 2-way service, and as such requires a 2-way host. It's that simple.



Eccles said:


> By that I mean, will an HD TiVo in Austin _never _be able to receive any channels which are switched, or would it only be able to receive them if they were currently being served up (i.e. had been recently requested by a two-way device on the same hub)?


The decryption key and channel map has to be passed to the unit requesting the stream, whether the stream happens to already be there or not. It's very little different than a premium non-SDV channel. The fact HBO is present on your CATV drop doesn't mean you can get HBO until your CATV provider gives your CableCard the information it needs to receive HBO. The only differences are, with SDV, the channel in question may appear on any carrier in the system, and your receiver must request the information from the headend as well as requesting that the headend send out the program. With a non-SDV encrypted channel, the program will always be found on the same carrier, and the information concerning the decryption is sent out once and stored permanently on the CableCard subsystem.



Eccles said:


> The reason I ask is that I'm wondering if it might be possible to kludge together a kind of ersatz "resolver" - actually more of a "reserver" - using an S2 TiVo and a non-DVR STB on the same cable drop as an HD TiVo, with the S2 set to record a minute or so of each


S2 TiVos don't support CableCards. Neither the S2 nor the S3 / TiVo HD are two way. The fact the STB will make sure the stream is there is irrelevant. Unless the headend sends the channel map and the encryption key specifically for the CableCard that will be receiving the program to that CableCard, the CableCard will never know what to decrypt, how to decrypt it, or to which frequency to tell the host to tune.



Eccles said:


> of the limited number of channels that a household actually watches, on a rotating basis, thus keeping all of them actively served up at all times. Would an HD TiVo then be able to find them via Guided Setup, and be able to tune them back in in those same carriers when they were needed?


The whole point of SDV is to allow any any content to be served up on any carrier at any time. The odds a particular "channel" wil wind up on a given carrier or even stay there is small. Since the CableCard won't have the encryption key, the point is moot, however.


----------



## Eccles

lrhorer said:


> It doesn't "screw CableCard devices" at all. All SDV units employ CableCards. SDV is a 2-way service, and as such requires a 2-way host. It's that simple.


Excuse me for not using the correct semantics: "does it screw _unidirectional _CableCard devices". But since we're being picky, I presume you meant "all _current _SDV units employ CableCards", because my >6-year-old old SA Explorer sure as hell doesn't have one, and it handles SDV just fine. 



> The decryption key and channel map has to be passed to the unit requesting the stream, whether the stream happens to already be there or not.


I understand that. My question was whether the current lineup was pushed to a (one-way) card-enabled device when first provisioned, and it was able to cache that information locally, and thus be able to receive the same channel again at a later date if it happened to still be on the same carrier, rather than explicitly requesting it every time.



> S2 TiVos don't support CableCards. Neither the S2 nor the S3 / TiVo HD are two way. The fact the STB will make sure the stream is there is irrelevant. Unless the headend sends the channel map and the encryption key specifically for the CableCard that will be receiving the program to that CableCard, the CableCard will never know what to decrypt, how to decrypt it, or to which frequency to tell the host to tune.


Unless, as I was pondering, the channel was forced to "stay put". But of course if the information is never sent except in response to a request, then the caching aspect is indeed moot.



> The whole point of SDV is to allow any any content to be served up on any carrier at any time. The odds a particular "channel" wil wind up on a given carrier or even stay there is small.


...unless the channel is being requested again every few minutes, and is thus never released back into the pool of channels eligible to be switched. By constantly requesting a channel, you could effectively lock it to a given carrier, in much the same way that constantly renewing a DHCP lease can result in an effectively-static IP address.


----------



## pmiranda

Eccles said:


> ...unless the channel is being requested again every few minutes, and is thus never released back into the pool of channels eligible to be cached. By constantly requesting a channel, you could effectively lock it to a given carrier, in much the same way that constantly renewing a DHCP lease can result in an effectively-static IP address.


I know exactly what you mean, and while that might get you SDV channels on some other QAM tuning device, it won't get you SDV channels on a TiVo since the TiVo relies on the cablecard channel map to decide what channels to tune, and that channel map has all SDV channels removed.

As for the people beating you up over your choice of words, just ignore them...they have nothing new to argue over so they like to pounce on people that don't want to follow every nuance of this giant, nearly-worthless thread.


----------



## Eccles

pmiranda said:


> the TiVo relies on the cablecard channel map to decide what channels to tune, and *that channel map has all SDV channels removed.*


Indeed, *that *is the critical point that breaks my hypothesis. Thanks.


----------



## lrhorer

pmiranda said:


> As for the people beating you up over your choice of words, just ignore them...they have nothing new to argue over so they like to pounce on people that don't want to follow every nuance of this giant, nearly-worthless thread.


First of all, I didn't beat him up, and secondly it wasn't his choice of words that is at issue. It is the fundammental problem which is at issue. The problem is not SDV, and SDV doesn't screw up anything, per se. The problem is that the FCC pointedly and deliberately excluded unidirectional devices from being able to handle 2-way services in it's specifications for all UDCP devices and then failed to provide a specification for bidirectional hosts. Then the proposed contemporary standard which does provide specifications for bidirectional hosts is produced with totally unacceptable reservation in it and is left unratified. This leavs the door wide open to what exactly has happened: the existence of more than one incompatible SDV format and a near inability to produce a reasonably priced universal consumer receiver which can take advantage of 2-way interactive sevice like SDV.


----------



## dig_duggler

Brighthouse in Birmingham, AL has implemented SDV. Just affecting two channels now but over time it will be all of them.

Boo.


----------



## mikeyts

dig_duggler said:


> Brighthouse in Birmingham, AL has implemented SDV. Just affecting two channels now but over time it will be all of them.
> 
> Boo.


That's unlikely, if their engineering department is any good. SDV only pays off if you choose the channels well--"switching" highly popular channels that will virtually be viewed by someone in every network segment 24/7/365 doesn't help.


----------



## dig_duggler

mikeyts said:


> That's unlikely, if their engineering department is any good. SDV only pays off if you choose the channels well--"switching" highly popular channels that will virtually be viewed by someone in every network segment 24/7/365 doesn't help.


I don't know enough about it, but that's what the technical manager (who seemed to know his stuff as much as you can gather in a 3 minute conversation) told me. His words were approximately "eventually we'd like to go all SDV. That's the goal."


----------



## bicker

Yeah, he didn't mean it literally.


----------



## lrhorer

bicker said:


> Yeah, he didn't mean it literally.


He probably does, although "eventually" is a really big word. There are cost and management efficiencies involved in having a single platform for deployment. Add to that the fact that volume drives economies of scale, and at some point is not unlikely the cost to the MSO for delivering an SDV QAM is no higher than delivering a static QAM. At that point, it doesn't matter whether SDV is more efficient for all channels, or not.

I also suspect the market share of every individual channel will continue to shrink until eventually there are very few, if any, channels whose market share will guarantee them a slot in any given node at any given time. Beyond that point, every channel will benefit from SDV. Somewhere below a 1% market share, a channel will no longer delivered to the majority of nodes in the system at any given time.

Frankly,I hope that day comes very, very soon.


----------



## moyekj

Now it's official. Add Cox, Orange County, CA to the list of providers deploying SDV. The deployment goes live April 8 2008. See:
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=6059324#post6059324


nocturne1 said:


> Finally got some announcement from Cox about SDV and Cablecards. Basically, they are saying that SDV is going live on 4/8, and a digital STB will be required to see the following channels:
> 
> - Pay per view channels
> - Paquete Latino Tier
> - Foreign Language Channels - TV-5, ART, RAE, ZEE TV, The Filipino Channel, TV Japan, TV Asia, and CTI Zhong Tian
> - The following digital cable channels - CCTV-9, California Channel, CMT Pure Country, CSPAN2, CSPAN3, Fine Living, Fit TV, Fox Reality, Fuel, FUSE, Game Show Network, G4TechTV, HRTV, Jewelry TV, Leased Access (109), Shop NBC, TVG, and WeatherScan Local.
> 
> It also states that new channels added to Digital and HD may not be available to cablecard customers. They are offering a digital or HD receiver for $1.99 a month for the first year (normally $5.25/mo). This offer is only good through 6/30/08.
> 
> No mention of any tuning resolver, although I doubt that they'd ever put it in a mass-mailer like this anyways.


In addition to the above, there are already 9 HD channels as well that cannot be viewed with UDCPs:
CNNHD, DISCOVERY HD, GOLF/VS HD, NFLHD, TLCHD, FOODHD, HGTVHD, HISTORYHD, APLHD


----------



## lrhorer

jrm01 said:


> In reference to the diagram: The switching is not done at the head-end, nor the distribution hub, it is done at the Optical Node, the point where fiber ends and coax begins.


I know this was an old post, but I just now spotted it. This is false. The equipment which handles the switching is quite large - typically it occupies several 7' relay racks. The node is the size of a bread-box, and either hangs off a telephone pole or else sits in side a pedestal. Most CATV companies use a pedestal which is smaller than a doghouse to house a node, unless they collocate the power supply with the node. The node does nothing at all other than convert the signal from optical to RF.


----------



## lrhorer

Just FYI Here's San Antonio's current lineup. 'Lots and lots of SDV, but only a few in which I'm really interested. Still, there are half a dozen or so HD SDV channels I'd like to get (Discover HD, A&E HD, Animal Planet, National Geographic, etc.)

* = SDV + = Non-SDV HD

2 - 76 Analog

77	TV Guide Network	
80	News 4 WOAI Weather Plus	
81	LATV	
92	KLRN Encore	
93	V-me	
94	KLRN Create	
98	Educational Access	
99	Nickelodeon	
100	HD Movies On Demand*	
101	HD Showcase On Demand*
104	NBC - WOAI HD +
105	CBS-KENS 5 HD +
107	My Network TV - KMYS HD +
108	PBS - KLRN HD +
111	FOX - KABB HD +
112	ABC - KSAT HD +
113	TBS HD*	
115	The Science Channel HD*
122	NHL HD*	
124	ESPN HD +
125	ESPN2 HD*
127	TNT HD +
128	A&E HD*	
129	The Discovery Channel HD*
130	HD Theater +
134	MHD*
135	CNN HD*
136	The Weather Channel HD*
147	Food Network HD*
149	TLC HD*
150	Fox Sports Net HD/Special Events--Channel 150 is not a full-time channel. Programming will be televised as scheduled. +
154	Fox Business Network HD*
155	Animal Planet HD*
157	National Geographic HD*
160	MOJO (NBA TV HD pre-empted on MOJO) +
162	HDNet +
163	HDNET Movies +
164	Universal HD +
166	LMN HD*	
167	HGTV HD* 
168	Versus/Golf Channel HD*	
174	The History Channel HD*
180	HBO HD +	
181	HBO West HD*
182	Showtime HD +
183	Showtime HD West*
184	Cinemax HD +
185	Cinemax HD West*
186	The Movie Channel HD +
187	Starz HD +	
188	Starz West HD*
192 - 199	HD Movies on Demand*
200	S&#237; TV (Espanol)	
201	FLIX	
203	Ovation	
204	Boomerang	
205	NBA TV	
206	Biography	
207	G4-video game television	
208	Speed Channel	
209	Outdoor Channel	
210	Do it Yourself Network	
211	SoapNet	
212	CNBC World	
213	Investigation Discovery	
214	Fine Living	
215	The Science Channel	
216	Discovery Kids	
217	The Military Channel	
218	Nicktoons	
219	FitTV	
220	Discovery Home Channel	
221	VH1 Classic	
222	BET on Jazz	
223	Fox Soccer Channel	
224	Toon Disney	
225	BBC America	
226	Fuse	
227	GSN	
228	Lifetime Real Women	
229	The N	
230	Noggin	
231	MTV2	
232	Texas Cable News	
233	SLEUTH	
234	Current	
235	Bloomberg TV	
236	CSPAN 3	
237	History International	
238	Great American Country	
239	Nick Too	
242	AmericanLife TV Network	
244	CNN International	
245	Fox Business Network	
248	Fox Reality	
249	LOGO	
256	ESPN Classic	
257	ESPNews	
258	ESPNU	
259	ESPN Deportes	
260	FCS Atlantic	
261	FCS Central	
262	FCS Pacific	
263	The Tennis Channel	
264	FUEL	
265	CSTV*	
266	NHL Network	
267	Sportsman Channel*	
279	V-me (Espa&#241;ol)	
280	Canal Sur (Espa&#241;ol)	
281	Video Rola (Espa&#241;ol)	
282	Cine Latino (Espa&#241;ol)	
283	Discovery en Espa&#241;ol	
284	&#161;SORPRESA! (Espanol)	
285	MTV Tr3s* (Espa&#241;ol)	
286	Cartoon Network en Espa&#241;ol	
287	Boomerang en Espa&#241;ol	
288	Fox Sports en Espa&#241;ol	
290	CNN en Espa&#241;ol	
291	HTV (Espa&#241;ol)	
292	Infinito (Espa&#241;ol)	
293	La Familia Cosmovision (Espa&#241;ol)	
294	HITN* (Espa&#241;ol)	
295	EWTN en Espa&#241;ol*	
296	Toon Disney En Espanol*	
297	Shop Latino	
300	Encore	
301	Encore Love	
302	Encore Westerns	
303	Encore Mystery	
304	Encore Action	
305	Encore Drama	
306	Encore Wam	
307	Fox Movie Channel	
308	Independent Film Channel	
309	Sundance Channel	
310	Starz	
311	Starz Edge	
312	Starz InBlack	
313	Starz Kids & Family	
314	Starz Cinema	
315	Starz West*	
316	Starz Edge West*	
317	Starz InBlack West*	
318	Starz Comedy	
319	Starz Cinema West*	
320	HBO East	
321	HBO 2 East	
322	HBO Signature East	
323	HBO Family East	
324	HBO Comedy East	
325	HBO Zone East	
326	HBO West*	
327	HBO 2 West*	
328	HBO Signature West*	
329	HBO Family West*	
330	HBO Comedy West*	
331	HBO Zone West*	
332	HBO Latino East (Espa&#241;ol)	
333	HBO Latino West (Espa&#241;ol)*	
338	WMAX East	
339	OuterMAX East	
340	Cinemax East	
341	MoreMAX East	
342	ActionMAX - East	
343	ThrillerMAX East*	
344	Cinemax West*	
345	MoreMAX West*	
346	ActionMAX West*	
347	ThrillerMAX West	
348	@MAX East	
349	5StarMAX East	
350	Showtime East	
351	Showtime 2 East	
352	Showtime Showcase East	
353	Showtime Extreme East	
354	Showtime Beyond East	
355	Showtime West*	
356	Showtime 2 West*	
357	Showtime Showcase West*	
358	Showtime Extreme West*	
359	Showtime Beyond West*	
361	Showtime Next East	
362	Showtime Women East	
363	Showtime Family Zone East	
365	TMC East	
366	TMC XTRA East	
367	TMC West*	
368	TMC XTRA West*	
380	HBO HD +
381	Showtime HD +
382	Cinemax HD +
383	Starz HD +
384	TMC HD	+
385	HBO West HD*
386	Showtime West HD*
387	Cinemax West HD*
388	Starz West HD*
401 - 490	Music Choice
492	TBN - KHCE	
495	The Word Network	
499	Pay-Per-View Special Events HD	
500	Pay-Per-View Movie Previews	
501 - 508	Pay-Per-View Events	
509 - 523	Pay-Per-View & MOD Movies	
540	Playboy TV	
541	Playboy en Espa&#241;ol	
542	TEN	
545	Rendezvous On Demand	
546	Adult On Demand I	
600	NBA League Pass Preview Channel	
601 - 609	NBA League Pass	
612	NBA League Pass HD	
620 - 625	ESPN Game Plan	
627 - 630	MLB Extra Innings	
631 - 640	NHL Center Ice/MLB Extra Innings	
650 - 655	ESPN Full Court	
660 - 663	MLS Direct Kick	
701	TV Japan*	
705	SBTN*	
711	Zee TV*	
712	TV Asia*	
715	DEUTSCHE WELLE - TV*	
716	DW-One*	
720	The Filipino Channel*	
800	Hollywood Celebrity Products	
801	Shop Latino	
802	Gems TV	
803	Jewelry Television	
804	The Jewelry Channel	
805	Shop At Home	
806	America Auction Network	
807	Cable Response TV	
808	TVSS	
810	Celebrity Shopping	
811	Access TV	
902	Movies On Demand: Classic*
903	Movies On Demand: Kids and Teens*
904	Movies On Demand: Action*
905	Movies On Demand: Comedy*	
906	Movies On Demand: Thrillers*
907	Movies On Demand: Drama*
915	The Disney Channel On Demand*
916	International Movies On Demand*
917	Espa&#241;ol On Demand*
918	Free Movies On Demand*
919	HD Movies On Demand*
920	Movies On Demand*
921 - 930	New Release Movies On Demand*
931	Howard TV On Demand*
932	Events On Demand*
933	Outrageous On Demand*
935	Adult On Demand II*
936	Rendezvous On Demand*
940	HBO On Demand*
941	Cinemax On Demand*
942	Showtime On Demand*	
943	TMC On Demand*
945	Bevo On Demand*
951	Cutting Edge On Demand*
952	Lifestyle On Demand*
953	Entertainment On Demand*
954	A&E On Demand*
955	BBC America On Demand*
956	HD Showcase On Demand*	
957	CNN Showcase On Demand*	
959	Golf Channel On Demand*
960	San Antonio On Demand*
962	truTV On Demand*
963	Kids/Pre-School On Demand*
964	Kids On Demand*
966	Oxygen On Demand*
967	National Geographic On Demand*
968	Speed Channel On Demand*
970	Music On Demand*
973	Azteca America On Demand (Espa&#241;ol)*
974	TV Guide Spot On Demand*
975	TNT On Demand*
976	TBS On Demand*
977	Espa&#241;ol On Demand 2*
980	Music Choice On Demand: Pop & Rock*
981	Music Choice On Demand: Urban & Latin*
988	San Antonio On Demand*
989	News 4 WOAI On Demand*	
990	Exercise TV On Demand*
992	Sportskool*
999	Movies On Demand Previews*
1301	Automotive On Demand*
1303	SI On Demand*
1305	Movie Trailers On Demand*
1307	Journey TV*
1308	Election '08 On Demand*
1310	Expo TV On Demand*


----------



## JPALMETTO

Has anyone heard of a class action to settle or at least speed up the resolution to these issues? It seems that both TiVo and cable providers, among others are to blame for selling devices that can not work together.
Thoughts?


----------



## ah30k

JPALMETTO said:


> Has anyone heard of a class action to settle or at least speed up the resolution to these issues? It seems that both TiVo and cable providers, among others are to blame for selling devices that can not work together.
> Thoughts?


I think you should consult a lawyer and let us know how it goes. People may be interested in joining if you provide some details.


----------



## dswallow

JPALMETTO said:


> Has anyone heard of a class action to settle or at least speed up the resolution to these issues? It seems that both TiVo and cable providers, among others are to blame for selling devices that can not work together.
> Thoughts?


Considering it's expected in the second quarter of this year, do you honestly believe between lawyers, courts, appeals and foot dragging that anything could ever be accomplished in an adversarial manner in 3 months or less?


----------



## ajwees41

JPALMETTO said:


> Has anyone heard of a class action to settle or at least speed up the resolution to these issues? It seems that both TiVo and cable providers, among others are to blame for selling devices that can not work together.
> Thoughts?


I haven't heard of cable companies selling devices only renting cable cards.


----------



## mikeyts

JPALMETTO said:


> Has anyone heard of a class action to settle or at least speed up the resolution to these issues? It seems that both TiVo and cable providers, among others are to blame for selling devices that can not work together.
> Thoughts?


Yours is about the 500th post I've read suggesting a class action. You should do a search of all TiVo Community forums for the phrase "class action"--I'll bet that all of the people who've suggested it here would make a significant class if they bound together . They're due to start distributing the Tuning Resolver solution sometime in the second quarter of this year; we should wait to see if they fail to make this deadline or if they try to unreasonably profit from our being forced to use the TR before considering suit.


----------



## bicker

Well, I wouldn't be surprised if the tuning resolver doesn't make that June 30 date. However, you cannot even begin to expect any lawyer to take the idea of a class action lawsuit seriously until a few months after that. Even then, it is going to be hard to establish standing. At this point, consumers have been given nothing in return for consideration that would establish standing for them as plaintiffs. TiVo's device is doing what it should. The cable company's service is doing what it should. Unless the FCC acts against the cable companies, there is no viable avenue there. 

So the only even quasi-rational approach is to sue the FCC. 

Good luck.


----------



## logicman1

JPALMETTO said:


> Has anyone heard of a class action to settle or at least speed up the resolution to these issues? It seems that both TiVo and cable providers, among others are to blame for selling devices that can not work together.
> Thoughts?


Lawyers get paid by the hour. I don't necessarily see "speed up" fitting into the equation.


----------



## Elementalism

Well today was the first I had heard about SDV. I havent noticed anything on Charter in the Albertville area of Minnesota. But hopefully the dongle will be out before they decide to implement anything.

TiVoHD is great so far!

btw does this change deny access to people who rent DVR's from the cable company? Are the cable companies going to have to replace each DVR to work with SDV?


----------



## MichaelK

lrhorer said:


> I know this was an old post, but I just now spotted it. This is false. The equipment which handles the switching is quite large - typically it occupies several 7' relay racks. The node is the size of a bread-box, and either hangs off a telephone pole or else sits in side a pedestal. Most CATV companies use a pedestal which is smaller than a doghouse to house a node, unless they collocate the power supply with the node. The node does nothing at all other than convert the signal from optical to RF.


Curious-

Can you explain further?

Is there a home run fiber from each node then to the head end? Or is there like a single fiber broken into bands and each node gets delivered a segment?

I guess it works the same for SDV as they do internet? But I wouldnt know how that works either.


----------



## MichaelK

Elementalism said:


> ...
> TiVoHD is great so far!
> 
> btw does this change deny access to people who rent DVR's from the cable company? Are the cable companies going to have to replace each DVR to work with SDV?


Likely the cable company dvrs with their built in 2-way communications for vod and ppv and the like can get software updates in the middle of the night to work just fine.

mahybe some old first generation units wouldn't be able but even that I doubt.


----------



## Elementalism

MichaelK said:


> Likely the cable company dvrs with their built in 2-way communications for vod and ppv and the like can get software updates in the middle of the night to work just fine.
> 
> mahybe some old first generation units wouldn't be able but even that I doubt.


I didnt read through the entire thread but what is stopping the cablecards in the Tivo's from doing the same? When i browse the options of the Cablecard one of the them is "two way communication" which is disabled. But i am assuming it should be something that can be turned on?


----------



## mikeyts

Elementalism said:


> I didnt read through the entire thread but what is stopping the cablecards in the Tivo's from doing the same? When i browse the options of the Cablecard one of the them is "two way communication" which is disabled. But i am assuming it should be something that can be turned on?


Your assumption is wrong. Neither TiVo S3 or TiVo HD is physically capable of two-way communication

You didn't just not read through the entire thread, you apparently failed to read the first post. It's a very carefully composed introduction to this issue (the definition of a FAQ) and it says exactly what I just said under the bold heading "What does this mean for Series 3 and TiVo HD?". If you're interested in this topic, you should go back and read it thoroughly. If you have questions after that, we'll be happy to try to answer them .


----------



## Rayd8tor

lrhorer said:


> Just FYI Here's San Antonio's current lineup. 'Lots and lots of SDV, but only a few in which I'm really interested. Still, there are half a dozen or so HD SDV channels I'd like to get (Discover HD, A&E HD, Animal Planet, National Geographic, etc.)
> 
> * = SDV + = Non-SDV HD
> 
> 2 - 76 Analog
> 
> 77	TV Guide Network
> 80	News 4 WOAI Weather Plus
> 81	LATV
> 92	KLRN Encore
> 93	V-me
> 94	KLRN Create
> 98	Educational Access
> 99	Nickelodeon
> 100	HD Movies On Demand*
> 101	HD Showcase On Demand*
> 104	NBC - WOAI HD +
> 105	CBS-KENS 5 HD +
> 107	My Network TV - KMYS HD +
> 108	PBS - KLRN HD +
> 111	FOX - KABB HD +
> 112	ABC - KSAT HD +
> 113	TBS HD*
> 115	The Science Channel HD*
> 122	NHL HD*
> 124	ESPN HD +
> 125	ESPN2 HD*
> 127	TNT HD +
> 128	A&E HD*
> 129	The Discovery Channel HD*
> 130	HD Theater +
> 134	MHD*
> 135	CNN HD*
> 136	The Weather Channel HD*
> 147	Food Network HD*
> 149	TLC HD*
> 150	Fox Sports Net HD/Special Events--Channel 150 is not a full-time channel. Programming will be televised as scheduled. +
> 154	Fox Business Network HD*
> 155	Animal Planet HD*
> 157	National Geographic HD*
> 160	MOJO (NBA TV HD pre-empted on MOJO) +
> 162	HDNet +
> 163	HDNET Movies +
> 164	Universal HD +
> 166	LMN HD*
> 167	HGTV HD*
> 168	Versus/Golf Channel HD*
> 174	The History Channel HD*
> QUOTE]
> 
> Bummer. Just got my new TivoHD today, and TWC was coming to install the cards tomorrow evening. I thought only 2 channels I subscribe to were on SDV, but according to your list most of them are. That sucks royally. I just get the tivo and now more than like will be stuck with the POS SA8300. Argh. I can't win here. I'm assuming you tested this list against what you actually get on your box which means that the TWC web page is WAY WRONG on their SDV channel listing. But that should not suprise me.
> 
> Brian


----------



## Firekite

Bah! I just did the same thing.

We'll see. Someone please report back regarding the results, whether all those channels are really being denied to CableCard users.

How is that even legal?


----------



## mikeyts

Firekite said:


> Bah! I just did the same thing.
> 
> We'll see. Someone please report back regarding the results, whether all those channels are really being denied to CableCard users.
> 
> How is that even legal?


It's legal, or rather it's not prohibited by any regulation. This stuff started being deployed over a year ago in various markets (mostly by TWC) and there have been copious complaints to the FCC by people who post here, to no avail. It's also difficult to figure out what cable providers will do to compete with the mountain of HD channels being offered by satellite without resorting to the use of SDV, leaving you with two choices: no SDV and no more new HD channels, or new HD channels via SDV that you can't directly access with unidirectional CableCARD devices.

You guys are very late to this party. Someone first noticed the encroachment of SDV in your area last April and there was a discussion of it in this thread.

Take heart, though--the cable industry and TiVo have promised a solution that will enable current TiVo S3 and TiVo HD models to access SDV channels called the "Tuning Resolver". This is an external device which will be connected on the cable between the wall and TiVo and additionally connected to TiVo via USB. It's expected to become available sometime in the 2nd quarter of this year (which will start next month). We can only wait and see.


----------



## bicker

Everything the FCC has done has made it clear that the separable security mandate was directed solely to benefit consumer electronics makers, providing many the ability to enter a market that previously was closed to them. Every time folks try to cast the separable security mandate as something directed to benefit consumers, the reality of how the FCC has enforced it (or not) belies such assertions. The FCC has provided a competitive market for consumers through other means (really, through their fostering of the satellite suppliers).


----------



## Firekite

mikeyts said:


> You guys are very late to this party.


That may be, but until fairly recently there was no HD TiVo offering, and when they were introduced, they were prohibitively priced, so I've been stuck with the god-awful Scientific Atlanta junk. I wouldn't have bothered switching to TiVo if it had just remained god-awful but _functional_. After the second 8300 DVR continued to have fairly constant audio stuttering and loss, I've given up. A friend of mine just got a Series 2 TiVo, and it seems to be fantastic (except no HD), so I've ordered a Series 3 and hope this mythical dongle arrives post-haste. As I've just now (as in yesterday) started digging into it, I've just now discovered all the BS associated with it.

And yes, Bicker, you've been a constant advocate for the cable companies and dismiss criticisms of the way they've handled their customers and the distinct lack of respect involved. I pay $191 every month to TWC for my phone, cable, and internet, and I specifically expect to NOT be bent over and sodomized for it if I dare to pay for and use superior hardware. Whether the FCC _intended_ to benefit consumers or not is really beside the question when cable companies are violating the spirit (and sometimes the letter) of the law. Even if, as you claim, the separable security mandate were directed solely to benefit consumer electronics makers, I'm _fairly certain_ that TiVo is EXACTLY one of those consumer electronics makers that shouldn't be strong-armed out of the market by the cable companies, replaced with their own proprietary, drastically inferior hardware. The FCC, as usual, has done a terrible job of protecting the consumer, We The People they're _supposed_ to be serving watching out for in the first place, and arguments that they've provided a competitive market by artificially bolstering the satellite providers is neither relevant to the discussion and the problem nor even accurate in the first place. DTV prevents the use of TiVo altogether, and the only cable service provider is TWC, which has of course hamstrung the use of TiVo and such by a) making it a tremendous pain in the rear to use CableCARDS and even charging for their use (a fairly small amount, sure, but the use of their set-top box is free, and we're saving them even that) and b) switching to a different technology that prevents CableCARDS from being able to receive all the channels we as consumers pay to receive, and they've yet to provide _any_ remedy or relief.

So yes, you can continue to being an advocate for the FCC and cable companies and continue to insist that we're all being unreasonable for expecting to receive some basic level of cooperation and the channels we've paid for, but it's likely you'll continue to be wrong.


----------



## bicker

Firekite said:


> Whether the FCC _intended_ to benefit consumers or not is really beside the question when cable companies are violating the spirit (and sometimes the letter) of the law.


If they are, then prove it. I don't mean that argumentatively; I mean it literally. If what they're doing is a violation, get some entity, which is generally acknowledge in our society to be authoritative, to agree with you. That's the mechanism to effect change. I understand _completely_ why you may be reticent to try -- because you figure it will be a waste of time, but (and this is the point I've been trying, but perhaps failing, to make) the fact that it will be a waste of time means that what they're doing isn't a violation. All of us here want things to be better for us TiVo owners. We wouldn't be here otherwise. However, that doesn't make our desires actuality. 



Firekite said:


> Even if, as you claim, the separable security mandate were directed solely to benefit consumer electronics makers, I'm _fairly certain_ that TiVo is EXACTLY one of those consumer electronics makers that shouldn't be strong-armed out of the market by the cable companies, replaced with their own proprietary, drastically inferior hardware.


This is the first really good point made in rebuttal to something I've posted in this thread, recently.

Guess who has standing to pursue the point you've made with the authorities: That's right: TiVo. The ball is in their court. We have no choice but to defer to their discretion with regard to how to pursue this, because they're the ones with standing.



Firekite said:


> The FCC, as usual, has done a terrible job of protecting the consumer, We The People they're _supposed_ to be serving watching out for in the first place


That isn't true. The FCC is required to balance the needs of consumers and business, not favor consumers.



Firekite said:


> and arguments that they've provided a competitive market by artificially bolstering the satellite providers is neither relevant to the discussion and the problem


That would only be true if the FCC was supposed to favor consumers. They're not.



Firekite said:


> nor even accurate in the first place. <snip>


I'm interested in seeing your explanation of this. The statements that followed didn't seem to follow up on that assertion.



Firekite said:


> DTV prevents the use of TiVo altogether


And applying the separable security regulation to DBS would obviate that concern.



Firekite said:


> So yes, you can continue to being an advocate for the FCC


WHOA!!!! I'm definitely NOT an advocate for the FCC. If anything, the opposite!



Firekite said:


> and cable companies


And that's not even completely accurate; I'm an advocate for reality -- how things are. I don't mind change, but I object to folks fostering expectations in themselves or others that things are or necessarily must be different from how they really are. I'm not sure, but I think I could be very politically flexible, with regard to many things, basically being "okay" with however things go, within certain parameters, because I see the benefits each way has to offer, so my advocacy is not towards the left or the right but rather, explicitly, towards the middle.



Firekite said:


> and continue to insist that we're all being unreasonable for expecting to receive some basic level of cooperation and the channels we've paid for, but it's likely you'll continue to be wrong.


However, I'm not wrong. That's the point. I'm talking about reality, and every day you don't get what you want the truth of what I'm saying is underscored.


----------



## Breadfan

Shouldn't we at least get some kind of discount? As far as I can tell the ONLY difference on my cable bill is they deducted the box/DVR rental fee and added the CC fee. I'm paying the same price for programming as someone able to get more channels than I can.


----------



## JimboG

mikeyts said:


> It's also difficult to figure out what cable providers will do to compete with the mountain of HD channels being offered by satellite without resorting to the use of SDV, leaving you with two choices: no SDV and no more new HD channels, or new HD channels via SDV that you can't directly access with unidirectional CableCARD devices.


There's a third option. Cable companies could kill off analog channels and add far more linear HD channels without rate shaping or degrading those new HD channels. Comcast killed off almost all analog in Chicago and a Liberty Media-owned cable company in Puerto Rico did the same thing over a year ago.

The coming death of analog over the air television gives the cable companies ample cover to go all digital. If granny doesn't want to buy a new digital TV at Wal-mart, she will need a box of some kind. It could be a digital OTA box with $40 government subsidy, a leased digital box from the satellite company or a leased digital box from the local cable company. There really isn't any justification for wasting >450 MHz on crappy analog channels.


----------



## moyekj

JimboG said:


> There's a third option. Cable companies could kill off analog channels and add far more linear HD channels without rate shaping or degrading those new HD channels. Comcast killed off almost all analog in Chicago and a Liberty Media-owned cable company in Puerto Rico did the same thing over a year ago.
> 
> The coming death of analog over the air television gives the cable companies ample cover to go all digital. If granny doesn't want to buy a new digital TV at Wal-mart, she will need a box of some kind. It could be a digital OTA box with $40 government subsidy, a leased digital box from the satellite company or a leased digital box from the local cable company. There really isn't any justification for wasting >450 MHz on crappy analog channels.


 Some cable companies are actually using the fact that they still carry analog channels as a competitive advantage over Satellite. The fact that you can split the signal multiple times and easily distribute around the house without needing set tops at each end point is still pretty compelling. They have a very large customer base using lifeline or basic cable that do not subscribe to digital services, so they don't want to risk losing them either. Finally, once the analog OTA broadcasts cease to exist, they hope to pick up previously OTA analog only customers.
So there are some pretty compelling reasons for them to keep analog channels . IMO what they should do is to starting cutting out the least popular analog channels and eventually end up with a smaller core of analog channels which are the most popular ones.


----------



## mikeyts

Firekite said:


> That may be, but until fairly recently there was no HD TiVo offering, and when they were introduced, they were prohibitively priced, so I've been stuck with the god-awful Scientific Atlanta junk.


When I said that you were late to the party, I meant the "TiVo users complaining about SDV" party. You guys were asking people in San Antonio to test their inability to receive TWC SDV channels on TiVo and report back here when that was confirmed a year or more ago. Old, old news that you're just now waking up and reading about. The people who participate in this thread are well aware of what's going on (as are TiVo and the other CE vendors and the FCC).


bicker said:


> Guess who has standing to pursue the point you've made with the authorities: That's right: TiVo. The ball is in their court. We have no choice but to defer to their discretion with regard to how to pursue this, because they're the ones with standing.


It should be pointed out that TiVo has been trying to deal with this. They and other CE vendors got together with the cable industry and concocted the Tuning Resolver solution which will enable TiVo and any other unidrectional CableCARD device with upgradeable firmware and an unused USB connection to tune SDV channels (if it materializes, which many here endlessly speculate that it will not). A group of other CE vendors proposed a broader solution to the FCC called "Digital Cable Ready Plus" which would give light-weight access to a set of interactive services, specifically SDV, VOD and IPPV. "DCR+" would not help current TiVo S3 and TiVo HD owners, however. The cable industry and TiVo countered by proposing the use of the Tuning Resolver device, which they're going ahead to produce and offer without waiting for the FCC to rule on DCR+, using the fact that it takes the FCC nine months to a year to make a ruling on anything; if they implement the Tuning Resolver soon enough, it'll be being distributed before the FCC can render a decision on whether to require the development of DCR+.

Cable has been promoting a standard for interactive services involving Multi-stream CableCards (M-Cards), bidirectional host communication and a Java execution profile called OCAP (OpenCable Applications Platform). This "CableCARD V2" solution, collectively labelled "<tru2way>", is pretty costly to add to a device, prohibiting its implementation in low-cost televisions and STBs, which is why the CE OEMs have proposed DCR+. However, given DCR+, the CE OEMs have little incentive to implement <tru2way> in many products (or any, for that matter), which screws with the cable industry's plans, big time.

The National Cable and Telecommunications Association likes to point out that of the many millions of unidirectional CableCARD devices shipped, only a tad over 300,000 owners have chosen to use CableCARDs (the cable industry's own unsubtle discouragement of the their use has more than a little to do with that). It's less than 1% of all cable subscribers, and they're clearly willing to risk losing them all. (Note that TiVo Series3 and TiVo HD users are a subset of that fraction of a percent of cable subs). In the past model year, very few CE OEMs have elected to put CableCARD slots in their products, so as an issue support of CableCARDs in unidirectional host devices never became very important and its relevance is rapidly diminishing.


----------



## Firekite

mikeyts said:


> You guys were asking people in San Antonio to test their inability to receive TWC SDV channels on TiVo and report back here when that was confirmed a year or more ago.


No, that's not quite right. I was asking to verify that the list of SDV channels they were given was accurate, that they really couldn't access those channels that were alleged to be SDV in our specific area.



> In the past model year, very few CE OEMs have elected to put CableCARD slots in their products, so as an issue support of CableCARDs in unidirectional host devices never became very important and its relevance is rapidly diminishing.


Currently my SA DVR is connecting out via HDMI to my Onkyo receiver, and from there the out is connected to my TV. Why wouldn't TiVo offer the option to receive the HDMI signal in the same way so that a generic set-top box would work for tuning via IR like some of the old-school setups? I understand you may lose the ability to tune to two channels at once, but still, even that would work in general, would it not?


----------



## mikeyts

Firekite said:


> No, that's not quite right. I was asking to verify that the list of SDV channels they were given was accurate, that they really couldn't access those channels that were alleged to be SDV in our specific area.


OK--still, it's old news and if you really want confirmation, you should probably start a new post or re-open this one. It is not on topic in this thread.


> Currently my SA DVR is connecting out via HDMI to my Onkyo receiver, and from there the out is connected to my TV. Why wouldn't TiVo offer the option to receive the HDMI signal in the same way so that a generic set-top box would work for tuning via IR like some of the old-school setups? I understand you may lose the ability to tune to two channels at once, but still, even that would work in general, would it not?


HDMI is an uncompressed high-volume transfer protocol (a 1080i image is something like 1.5 gigabits/sec or more, about 100 times as much information as is coming into the cable box for the displayed channel). Raw, this information would fill a 500GB drive in about 40 minutes and it would be challenging to stream it onto and off of an HDD at those speeds. Encoding it (back) into MPEG at that rate can be done but would be expensive. Some of it is also encrypted (if it was protected in its orignal MPEG form), and there is no protocol to authorize recordng encrypted HDMI. Essentially, it's not intended to be recorded. It's greatly preferable to have a CableCARD or CableCARD-like system with built-in access to SDV and other interactive services, which is what <tru2way> is. Unfortunately, TiVo HD and TiVo S3 were too early to incorporate the emerging <tru2way> standard, though TiVo apparently has an upcoming product that will be compliant. So, for the interrim, a Tuning Resolver device is planned to give TiVo S3, TiVo HD and possibly other unidirectional CableCARD devices the ability to tune SDV channels.


----------



## Rayd8tor

Well the Fellas from TWC just left, and will be coming back. Were supposed to bring a Mcard, but mistakenly brought Scards. Oh well. They will be back tomorrow. It's runnning fine, and the channel list given by Irhorer was spot on. So now I'm stuck with the decision of dropping the HD tier all together. Since TWC gives the local network channels free in HD to anyone who has a box or a cable card, and I really don't get any of the channels in the HD tier now due to SDV I figure I'll drop that option all together. 

Firekite, 
Do you get any of the music channels? Mine don't work with the TivoHD, and according to the TWC brocure they should. I figure I'd ask and see before they guys come back tomorrow evening.


----------



## mikeyts

Rayd8tor said:


> So now I'm stuck with the decision of dropping the HD tier all together. Since TWC gives the local network channels free in HD to anyone who has a box or a cable card, and I really don't get any of the channels in the HD tier now due to SDV I figure I'll drop that option all together.


Being aced out of 20 linear HD channels _is_ harsh, but besides the HD locals, you still have access to:150 Fox Sports Net HD +
127 TNT HD +
124 ESPN HD +
130 HD Theater +
163 HDNET Movies +
162 HDNet +
164 Universal HD +
160 MOJO (NBA TV HD pre-empted on MOJO) +​I don't know how they're packaged in San Antonio, but on my local TWC system, the last four are offered for an additional $5/month as the "HD VIP Pak", and Fox Sports Net HD comes with the Sports Pak . (BTW, marking "Fox Sport Net HD" with "Special Events" is unnecessary--it is not a 24 hour channel in any market; you get the version for your local area which only covers locally relevant games. San Antonio probably gets the FSN HD Southwest schedule, which is relatively full, compared to some areas).

Also, if you subscribe to the appropriate premium channel tiers, you can still get:382 Cinemax HD +
380 HBO HD +
182 Showtime HD +
383 Starz HD +
384 TMC HD +
186 The Movie Channel HD +​Count your blessings .

Do they charge extra for an "HD tier" in San Antonio? In San Diego, you generally get the HD channel is you get the SD version.


----------



## pmiranda

Firekite said:


> Currently my SA DVR is connecting out via HDMI to my Onkyo receiver, and from there the out is connected to my TV. Why wouldn't TiVo offer the option to receive the HDMI signal in the same way so that a generic set-top box would work for tuning via IR like some of the old-school setups? I understand you may lose the ability to tune to two channels at once, but still, even that would work in general, would it not?


That might violate the HDMI and/or HDCP specs for content protection, although it might be possible to still offer buffering of live, copy-never content and recording of other content by using the copy bits which I think are still sent along HDMI?

The biggest reason not to do this (other than losing a tuner and still requiring an external set-top) is the cost of getting that raw bitstream compressed on the fly. The silicon to do this is really starting to get reasonably priced these days, but it was still prohibitively expensive when the S3 was built.

Personally, I vastly prefer the S3's architecture and I can't wait to get my tuning resolver, although it won't be as sweet until TW starts carrying Speed HD.


----------



## Rayd8tor

mikeyts said:


> Also, if you subscribe to the appropriate premium channel tiers, you can still get:382 Cinemax HD +
> 380 HBO HD +
> 182 Showtime HD +
> 383 Starz HD +
> 384 TMC HD +
> 186 The Movie Channel HD +​Count your blessings .
> 
> Do they charge extra for an "HD tier" in San Antonio? In San Diego, you generally get the HD channel is you get the SD version.


Yes. they charge for the HD tier now. I think it's like $6 a month or something close. Here is the catch though, recently TWC started touting "The home of FreeHD". I called and what that means is that if you have one of their boxes, of any kind including cable cards, then you get the local network channels in HD free of charge. Having realized that I'm paying for the HD Tier, and now have Tivo and now don't get hardly any of the main channels I want, DiscoveryHD, NatGeoHD,HistHD,AnimalHD,A&EHD, it's smarter for me to drop the HD tier all together and just get the Networks free. After I factor in dropping that Tier and getting rid of the POS 8300, i'm saving money in the long run. At least until this mythical SDV Dongle/Repetor arrives. what is wierd to me is that with Tivo touting that its coming 2nd Qtr 08, why is it that you can't seem to find any rock solid information on the progress of the thing. I'd have thought that if it was just about ready to be released there would be information from someone or some website about the thing and how well it works. Another question I have is who am I going to get this thing from? TWC or directly from TIVO? Just makes me a bit nervous not being able to find any solid info on it.


----------



## cableguy763

The tuning resolver will be supplied by the cable co's. Each cable co can have a different return data carrier freq, modulation. Thus the cable co will have to set it up to work with their return system and SDV vendor. No word on price, if any.


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## mikeyts

Rayd8tor said:


> Yes. they charge for the HD tier now. I think it's like $6 a month or something close. Here is the catch though, recently TWC started touting "The home of FreeHD". I called and what that means is that if you have one of their boxes, of any kind including cable cards, then you get the local network channels in HD free of charge.


That's just pure marketing buzz. FCC regulations require that any rebroadcast of an over-the-air transmission be included in the core basic tier (the set of channels that you get for the lowest cable subscription price); it is a violation of regulations for anything in the core basic tier to be scrambled or encrypted. This has been true since before the beginning of HDTV transmission and its rebroadcast on cable--they couldn't charge you extra for the local DTV channels if they wanted to.

For $6/month I'd probably keep the HD tier, particularly if you get HD Net, HD Net Movies, Universal HD, TNT HD and ESPN HD in that, but that's just me. It certainly isn't as good a value as getting the other 20 channels as well, but I'll pay anything reasonable for additional good HD programming and $6/month is peanuts in terms of cable content pricing (I'd probably be willing to pay $6/month for _The Closer_ in HD on TNT HD alone ).

Don't expect the cable companies to advertise the availability of the tuning resolver boldly. Keep an eye on these forums; I'm sure that TiVo will let us know when it starts shipping. Presumably no one in the field has one yet, so no one can be writing about how well it works. If you're at all technical, you can read CableLabs' OpenCable Tuning Resolver Interface Specification. (CableLabs is the cable-provider-funded organization which created the CableCARD standard).

If you're really nervous you can take your TiVo HD back--you just got it. TiVo's supposed to be coming out with a "Series4" <tru2way>-compliant unit probably this fall or next spring.


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## ah30k

mikeyts said:


> TiVo's supposed to be coming out with a "Series4" <tru2way>-compliant unit probably this fall or next spring.


Hadn't heard this before (the fall/spring part). I might have just overlooked the news. Where did you hear this?


----------



## routerman

JimboG said:


> There's a third option. Cable companies could kill off analog channels and add far more linear HD channels without rate shaping or degrading those new HD channels. Comcast killed off almost all analog in Chicago and a Liberty Media-owned cable company in Puerto Rico did the same thing over a year ago.
> 
> The coming death of analog over the air television gives the cable companies ample cover to go all digital. If granny doesn't want to buy a new digital TV at Wal-mart, she will need a box of some kind. It could be a digital OTA box with $40 government subsidy, a leased digital box from the satellite company or a leased digital box from the local cable company. There really isn't any justification for wasting >450 MHz on crappy analog channels.


This is definitely a viable option that addresses the inherent inefficiencies of analog transmissions. My guess is that the Cable companies look at these changes in relation to the numbers of subscribers affected. The numbers of customers affected is much greater when killing an analog channel than moving an existing or adding a new channel to SDV.

It is still a numbers game whether we want to believe it or not...


----------



## mikeyts

ah30k said:


> Hadn't heard this before (the fall/spring part). I might have just overlooked the news. Where did you hear this?


Just BS speculation on my part. I wouldn't be particularly surprised if they managed to introduce such a box this Fall, but would be surprised if it didn't emerge by Fall 2009.


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## Firekite

mikeyts said:


> OK--still, it's old news and if you really want confirmation, you should probably start a new post or re-open this one. It is not on topic in this thread.


Fair enough. The list of channels was posted in this thread, which is why I asked for confirmation, and that confirmation has been given, but in the future I'll keep that in mind.

As to the rest of it, thanks for the info. I'm not aware enough of the difference between the (compressed?) signal coming over the cable lines and what actually is sent to the TV screen, etc, so it's good to know TiVo execs aren't missing something big


----------



## alyssa

mikeyts said:


> Take heart, though--the cable industry and TiVo have promised a solution that will enable current TiVo S3 and TiVo HD models to access SDV channels called the "Tuning Resolver". This is an external device which will be connected on the cable between the wall and TiVo and additionally connected to TiVo via USB. It's expected to become available sometime in the 2nd quarter of this year (which will start next month). We can only wait and see.


Thanks for the summation. 
On the FYI vain, I just received a letter from TWC. The notable quote is:
"In order to access on Demand Programming , the interactive Programing guide, switched digital video and other two way services *you must use digital cable equipment that includes two-way capabilities such as TWC- provided set top boxes*."

eta; the letter was with regards to the Portland ME & NH cable service.
TW hwas added a few HD channels in SDV (history, NG etc), but they are saying a bunch of the sports & movie west channels are switching to sdv.


----------



## nocturne1

cableguy763 said:


> The tuning resolver will be supplied by the cable co's. Each cable co can have a different return data carrier freq, modulation. Thus the cable co will have to set it up to work with their return system and SDV vendor. No word on price, if any.


Have any of the cable providers actually committed to doing this? Yes, TiVo is working with CableLabs. But I haven't seen anything myself that says that the cable guys are actually going to put resources into testing/certifying/deploying that solution.


----------



## bicker

I do remember Comcast saying they'd go along with it, but I don't remember where I saw that.


----------



## cableguy763

nocturne1 said:


> Have any of the cable providers actually committed to doing this? Yes, TiVo is working with CableLabs. But I haven't seen anything myself that says that the cable guys are actually going to put resources into testing/certifying/deploying that solution.


CableLabs was created by the cable co's. Any product that is cablelabs certified, cable has to support. Cable is really not developing this, it's the vendors that make cable equipment i.e. Motorola, SA, and BigBand.


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## m_jonis

nocturne1 said:


> Have any of the cable providers actually committed to doing this? Yes, TiVo is working with CableLabs. But I haven't seen anything myself that says that the cable guys are actually going to put resources into testing/certifying/deploying that solution.


Nothing in writing yet (that I've seen).

At best, there's a picture of a prototype unit for Motorola devices. But nothing from SA (that's been published anyway).


----------



## nocturne1

cableguy763 said:


> CableLabs was created by the cable co's. Any product that is cablelabs certified, cable has to support. Cable is really not developing this, it's the vendors that make cable equipment i.e. Motorola, SA, and BigBand.


Trust me, it's not as simple as that. There's a number of technologies developed by CL that haven't made it to all of the providers, as they don't always choose to implement them. And it takes more than being certified to being supported/allowed on the network. It sucks, but it's true...


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## mikeyts

nocturne1 said:


> Have any of the cable providers actually committed to doing this? Yes, TiVo is working with CableLabs. But I haven't seen anything myself that says that the cable guys are actually going to put resources into testing/certifying/deploying that solution.


The individual cable providers have not made individual pronouncements, but the National Cable and Telecommunications Association has; one assumes that the NCTA, in part the cable industry's lobby group, does not make statements saying what its members will do without member concensus. The Tuning Resolver was put forth as a solution in an NCTA filing with the FCC (which is a response to this June 2007 FCC request for comments on this November 2006 proposal by the Consumer Electronic Association that they be given a light-weight alternative to implementing OCAP to get interactive function into low-cost products, something the cable providers would _much_ rather not give them). The NCTA has further made joint press releases with TiVo about progress, one of which stated their expectation that cable providers would begin distributing the Tuning Resolver sometime in the 2nd quarter of calendar 2008:


> 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.


It should be noted that that PR contained a comment by a Time Warner Cable exec:


> We're strongly committed to ensuring that our subscribers who use CableCARD-enabled retail devices, including TiVo DVRs, have a satisfying and successful installation experience," added Mike LaJoie, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Office, Time Warner Cable.


Given its normal pace of action, the FCC will be about due to respond to the comments that they requested by the end of the 2nd quarter; this response would normally include new regulations requiring something to be done about the issue. The cable providers, through the NCTA, have stated what they would like to do about it, which includes distribution of the Tuning Resolver. They've expressed plans to start distributing the TR before the FCC can order anything.


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## hsfjr

Rayd8tor said:


> Firekite,
> Do you get any of the music channels? Mine don't work with the TivoHD, and according to the TWC brocure they should. I figure I'd ask and see before they guys come back tomorrow evening.


I can tune the music channels on my TiVoHD here on TWC-Austin... (but I've de-selected them in my channel list since I never intend to record them).

I keep checking here (the whole site) pretty much every day looking for the things I am anxious for... (Tuning Resolver, Desktop 2.6, next software release, etc...)

I did just spend some evenings cleaning up my channel list for items I get in duplicate or not at all (SDV), and the above posted list for TWC-Austin (without double-checking line for line) reflects my experience with my channel line-up now... (I am not actually IN Austin, so I may have some minor differences)


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## Rayd8tor

hsfjr said:


> I can tune the music channels on my TiVoHD here on TWC-Austin... (but I've de-selected them in my channel list since I never intend to record them).


Well that is interesting. I do not get them, and was told last night by the installer and the TWC person he was getting to hit the card that in order to get the music channels you needed a box to receive them. According to them the music channels are not SDV. I wonder how your getting them and I'm not, because I sure would like to get them since I'm paying for them. There should not be that big of a difference from Austin's setup vs. San antonios.


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## MichaelK

bicker said:


> Everything the FCC has done has made it clear that the separable security mandate was directed solely to benefit consumer electronics makers, providing many the ability to enter a market that previously was closed to them. Every time folks try to cast the separable security mandate as something directed to benefit consumers, the reality of how the FCC has enforced it (or not) belies such assertions. The FCC has provided a competitive market for consumers through other means (really, through their fostering of the satellite suppliers).


Probably I'd agree with that 100%, but how does the SDV not harm this effort to take care of the CE folks?

It makes any separable security mandate almost moot in regions where SDV is deployed.

Maybe the tuning resolver changes that to a degree, but I dont think that's the end came in the CE people's play book.


----------



## mikeyts

MichaelK said:


> Probably I'd agree with that 100%, but how does the SDV not harm this effort to take care of the CE folks?
> 
> It makes any separable security mandate almost moot in regions where SDV is deployed.
> 
> Maybe the tuning resolver changes that to a degree, but I dont think that's the end came in the CE people's play book.


The CE industry has stated what they want, but what they want doesn't help existing owners of TiVo S3 and TiVo HD. The CE industry wants "Digital Cable Ready Plus", a light-weight alternative to <tru2way> which will allow them to add access to SDV, VOD and IPPV services to low-end cable products. The thing is, if they actually do get DCR+, I don't see where they have much incentive for them to create any plethora of <tru2way> products, which is what the cable industry wants them to do.

Cable will argue that the biggest part of the problem is that the high cost of including <tru2way> complaince currently forms a barrier to low-end products accessing SDV channels and that they solve that by making the tuning resolver available to customers; access to IPPV and VOD content isn't all that compelling in the low-end. Compatibility with the tuning resolver will only cost a few bucks to add to a new product--it's a USB port and a tiny bit of software.


----------



## bicker

MichaelK said:


> It makes any separable security mandate almost moot in regions where SDV is deployed.


Only where all channels are SDV.

Regardless, the separable security mandate is a failure, now -- rejected by CE manufacturers. Samsung pulled CableCard from most of its HL-S models (as compared to HL-R). Other manufacturers have also made it clear that they have no interest in serving this market. Customers are simply not willing to pay enough to make it worthwhile. Ask yourself why Motorola, even, isn't selling DCH- series boxes to customers.

So there really isn't anything left for the FCC to protect with regard to what the separable security mandate was all about.


----------



## lrhorer

Rayd8tor said:


> Having realized that I'm paying for the HD Tier, and now have Tivo and now don't get hardly any of the main channels I want, DiscoveryHD, NatGeoHD,HistHD,AnimalHD,A&EHD, it's smarter for me to drop the HD tier all together and just get the Networks free. After I factor in dropping that Tier and getting rid of the POS 8300, i'm saving money in the long run.


Fascinating. We both apply precisely the same logic to the same situation and yet arrive at different conclusions. Of course, neither of us is either "right" or "wrong", we just have different criteria applied to what we consider "best". In short, what's "best" for me and what's "best" for you are two different things. "Vive la differance", I say.



Rayd8tor said:


> At least until this mythical SDV Dongle/Repetor arrives.


"Mythical" is a good term for it. Until it's sitting on the counter waiting for me to pick up, it's vapor.



Rayd8tor said:


> what is wierd to me is that with Tivo touting that its coming 2nd Qtr 08, why is it that you can't seem to find any rock solid information on the progress of the thing.


I think the answer to that is it's not very likely we're going to see one any time soon - soon being defined as "within the next 6 months". Hopefully I'm wrong, or else they'll see the light and come up with a better solution.



Rayd8tor said:


> Another question I have is who am I going to get this thing from? TWC or directly from TIVO? Just makes me a bit nervous not being able to find any solid info on it.


Probably the local CATV provider. I can't see TiVo wanting to stock a half dozen different devices which won't work with Customer X's TiVo unless they knwo which one to order and will quit working as soon as Customer X moves to another city.


----------



## lrhorer

MichaelK said:


> Is there a home run fiber from each node then to the head end?


In the context of your question, yes, although it depends on the geographical size of the CATV system. Large CATV systems may have more than one headend, and they usually have more than one hubsite. The hubsite is where the QAM is created and injected into the fiber. Each individual datastream is created at the headend or headends and usually sent as a raw broadband data stream to the hubsite, where each individual program stream is extracted and muxed together with two or more other program streams and modulated into a QAM. A hole bunch of frequency division muxed QAM signals are combined into the RF spectrum along with the analog videos and any other signals on the CATV system. The entire 750MHz or 1GHz spectrum is then AM modulated onto a 1310nm lightware carrier using a semiconductor LASER. That is injected into the fiber and carried to the node. I bleieve some systems actually make use of two downstream fibers each with half the RF spectrum embedded into its carrier.

Small CATV systems whose plant area is not more than 5 miles or so in radius may not employ hubsites and almost surely have only one headend.


MichaelK said:


> Or is there like a single fiber broken into bands and each node gets delivered a segment?


Each cable sheath leaving the headend or hub as the case may be may carry as many as 288 individual independant fiber strands. There is a single (or as I mentioned in some cases two) continuous strand of fiber in the fiber bundle carrying the information out to the node, and usually a single fiber carryng the information from the node back to the headend. It is posssible, however, for a single fiber to carry both upstream and downsteam signals, but the economics make it more attractive for most systems to use two fibers.



MichaelK said:


> I guess it works the same for SDV as they do internet? But I wouldn't know how that works either.


The two services are based upon identical technologies, yes.


----------



## orangeboy

hsfjr said:


> I can tune the music channels on my TiVoHD here on TWC-Austin... (but I've de-selected them in my channel list since I never intend to record them).


I keep my music channels on the list, but just give them all 3 thumbs down


----------



## lrhorer

mikeyts said:


> That's just pure marketing buzz. FCC regulations require that any rebroadcast of an over-the-air transmission be included in the core basic tier (the set of channels that you get for the lowest cable subscription price); it is a violation of regulations for anything in the core basic tier to be scrambled or encrypted. This has been true since before the beginning of HDTV transmission and its rebroadcast on cable--they couldn't charge you extra for the local DTV channels if they wanted to.


No, but they can refuse to give you the CableCard if you don't get the HD tier, in which case the user won't receive the HD local channel.


----------



## MichaelK

bicker said:


> Only where all channels are SDV.
> ...


I think it's more like where a significant portion are SDV- significant being in the eye of any one particular consumer.



bicker said:


> ...
> Regardless, the separable security mandate is a failure, now -- rejected by CE manufacturers. Samsung pulled CableCard from most of its HL-S models (as compared to HL-R). Other manufacturers have also made it clear that they have no interest in serving this market. Customers are simply not willing to pay enough to make it worthwhile. Ask yourself why Motorola, even, isn't selling DCH- series boxes to customers. ...


Agreed it hasn't done what they wanted it to but mostly that's because it was too little too late and so was behind the curve- security wasn't the problem it's the fact that there were no open standards to even provide the services from 5-10 years ago (like ippv and program guides) never mind the services of today like SDV and vod . I could guess 25 reasons why moto doesn't sell the box in retail just like you could guess at 25 reasons why they don't. I haven't seen them say why they don't. My #1 guess it that without a guarantee of the 2 way services running on the box they would need to disable all those features or deal with a torrent of returns and worse from customers who live or move into areas with SA or other headends that wouldn't permit the 2 way features to work.



bicker said:


> ...So there really isn't anything left for the FCC to protect with regard to what the separable security mandate was all about.


not really sure what you are saying. Isn't OCAP/tru2way going to still use separable security? (at least for the time being). Isn't Panasonic pretty much in that space? And if I'm remembering 1996 when the law was passed retail cable boxes weren't exactly being produced by all the major CE's. Ditto about all the differnt dates the FCC ruled on the issue. So not sure the law or FCC have been attempting to protect any incumbants in the market so much as create a new market for others. (and who knows the real reason for that- to benefit consumers, benefit ce, put the screws to cable, allow best buy to get in on the cable box action....not sure anyone really knows the truth except the pols and bureaucrats as well as the lobbyists that swayed them themselves- and not sure if any of them will tell the truth publicly anyway.)


----------



## bxojr

This may already have been answered, so any pointers are appreciated.

I'm curious about whether anyone with the required technical knowledge has dug through the spec for the tuning resolver and can say whether it could theoretically support video on demand, if the cable companies decided they wanted to support that. (I realize that's a big "if.")

Or are we going to have to wait for the Series 4?


----------



## MichaelK

I've asked before and the concensus is it's not going to happen. To complicated apparently with billing involved and getting "guide" data down to the tivo.


----------



## lrhorer

Rayd8tor said:


> Well that is interesting. I do not get them, and was told last night by the installer and the TWC person he was getting to hit the card that in order to get the music channels you needed a box to receive them. According to them the music channels are not SDV. I wonder how your getting them and I'm not, because I sure would like to get them since I'm paying for them. There should not be that big of a difference from Austin's setup vs. San antonios.


There surely can be. I don't know the specifics, but assigning them to an SDV QAM would be one reason why. OTOH, I can't imagine why the CATV provider would do so. Nonetheless, when I first got CableCards, I couldn't get the music channels, then for a while I could, and now I can't again.


----------



## lrhorer

Rayd8tor said:


> Bummer. Just got my new TivoHD today, and TWC was coming to install the cards tomorrow evening. I thought only 2 channels I subscribe to were on SDV, but according to your list most of them are. That sucks royally.


That depends on how many you actually want. As I said, there are maybe half a dozen or so I'd like to get.



Rayd8tor said:


> I just get the tivo and now more than like will be stuck with the POS SA8300. Argh. I can't win here.


Trust me, the loss of a few HD channels pales compared with the releif at not having to use the 8300HD. POS is an understatement.



Rayd8tor said:


> I'm assuming you tested this list against what you actually get on your box which means that the TWC web page is WAY WRONG on their SDV channel listing.


Well, I can't test the PPV / VOD channels one way or the other, and I might have made a mistake or two, but I think the list is pretty accurate, or was when it was posted. Several channels have been added, deleted, and moved since then. Some might have been moved from linear to SDV.


----------



## lrhorer

Firekite said:


> That may be, but until fairly recently there was no HD TiVo offering


I wouldn't really call a year and a half ago "fairly recently". It was announced at CES more than 2 years ago, and development began long before that.



Firekite said:


> Whether the FCC _intended_ to benefit consumers or not is really beside the question when cable companies are violating the spirit (and sometimes the letter) of the law. Even if, as you claim, the separable security mandate were directed solely to benefit consumer electronics makers


Whatever the letter or the wording, the intent was to benefit consumers, electronics makers, and CATV providers. As I've mentioned again and again, a lack of separable security has been a major pain to all three. That the FCC botched the attempt has nothing to do with the fact everyone wanted it. They all just wanted different versions of it, and couldn't agree on one version despite over 15 years of negotiations. That's when and why the FCC finally stepped in, and then blew it. Rather than developing (or forcing CableLabs to develop) a broadly based standard based upon superior engineering without undue regard for what CATV vendors, consumer electronics manufacturers, Hollywood, or consumers wanted, they tried to soft-pedal their interference and acquiesce to everyone's desires. The result: a huge hole into which no 3rd party manufacturer wants to step - for excellent reasons, and both consumers and CATV providers left virtually where they started. The only one really benefiting in the least from this mess is the CATV equipment manufacturers.



Firekite said:


> I'm _fairly certain_ that TiVo is EXACTLY one of those consumer electronics makers that shouldn't be strong-armed out of the market by the cable companies, replaced with their own proprietary, drastically inferior hardware.


It's not the cable companies who are actively attempting this, despite the fact their actions are indeed having that result. They really have no choice, certainly not in the long term. After allowing for theft, loss, and breakage they make very little or no net profit on delivering STBs, and their margins are thin on DVRs. Add to that the massive headache of trying to keep track of hundreds of thousands of boxes sitting in environments and locations which are completely out of their control, and the large payments they make to customers who claim the STB caused a fire in their house or electrocuted them, and it is a revenue stream (or lack thereof) with which on the whole they would just as soon not deal. If every customer were to purchase a 2-way receiver with separable security, the CATV companies would be very happy indeed never to have to purchase another single STB. It's the revenue stream the STB allows them to produce they want, not the minuscule revenue from the STB itself. That and the fact the additional services allow them to compete more successfully (at least from a marketing and PR perspective) with satellite services.

If the CATV equipment manufacturers had been forced to a single standard from the outset, we wouldn't have this problem. The only ones who actively want the TiVo and other 2-way devices strong-armed out of the business is the CATV equipment manufacturers. They want to sell their own STBs and DVRs to the CATV companies. It's true CableLabs obstinance is allowing them to do just that because of a very different agenda of their very own, but that's a different matter. Believe me, the CATV companies would love to be able to buy equipment from more than 1 manufacturer, rather than being locked into a single proprietary system. They would not necessarily do so, but the fact they had the option would allow them to bring purchasing pressures to bear against their equipment provider.



Firekite said:


> The FCC, as usual, has done a terrible job of protecting the consumer, We The People they're _supposed_ to be serving watching out for in the first place, and arguments that they've provided a competitive market by artificially bolstering the satellite providers is neither relevant to the discussion and the problem nor even accurate in the first place.


They've done a terrible job, period, to the detriment of everyone including the CATV providers, the 3rd party manufacturers, and consumers. Even the CATV equipment manufacturers are very likely going to be negatively impacted by this mess, although as of yet they have not been to any significant extent.



Firekite said:


> the only cable service provider is TWC


You need to look around. TWC is not the only cable service provider. There are more than 50 CATV companies in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. Forty-eight are members of CableLabs. There are two of them here in San Antonio (TWC and Grande Communications), competing directly with one another. It's true most consumers only have a choice of one, even though I and many others in San Antonio, New Braunfels, San Marcos, Austin, and surrounding areas have a choice of two.



Firekite said:


> which has of course hamstrung the use of TiVo and such by a) making it a tremendous pain in the rear to use CableCARDS


It's not even a tiny fraction of the pain in the rear it is to use the Scientific Atlanta 8300HD.



Firekite said:


> and even charging for their use (a fairly small amount, sure, but the use of their set-top box is free


I don't know what market you are in, but here in San Antonio under TWC the STB is most certainly not free. Each STB costs $7.95 a month. What's more, comparing their STB with the TiVo is comparing apples and oranges. The SA 8300HD DVR rents for $17.90 a month, plus $9.94 for each additional DVR.
For me, that would be over $45 a month just for the DVRs.



Firekite said:


> and we're saving them even that) and b) switching to a different technology that prevents CableCARDS from being able to receive all the channels we as consumers pay to receive, and they've yet to provide _any_ remedy or relief.


This is not usually the case. Most if not all CATV providers have not reduced the number of channels - including HD channels - the Series III class DVRs were able to receive at the time they were released (except for those which have been removed entirely, of course). The new channels are almost all going on to SDV, but most providers are keeping the older channels on linear QAMs. Of course, your local CATV provider might choose their lineup differently, but the fact is for the most part at this point in time the older channels are also the most popular and as such derive the least benefit (or none at all) for the CATV provider if delivered via SDV. It's very low market share channels and things like VOD and IPPV which benefit most from SDV.

The largest number of SDV channels are VOD and IPPV. VOD is made almost totally moot by having a DVR (especially a TiVo) in the first place. IPPV by definition is not charged to the consumer until they watch the ordered event, so by definition, you aren't paying for them. The point everyone seems to be missing, however, is that if the providers weren't deploying SDV, the consumer would still be paying the same amount (or more) for their cable service and yet still would not be getting those channels. For the most part, SDV hasn't lost most consumers anything. Yes, in SDV systems those of us who have TiVos are getting somewhat fewer channels than those who do not, but we're also usually paying less. My CATV bill dropped nearly $40 a month by going with TiVos, and the service I am getting is worth a great deal more than what I had with CATV provided DVRs and STBs. Balance that against the 6 or 7 channels I don't get but would like to get, and it's not a bad deal.

Oh, and yet once again, CableCards have always been able to receive SDV. CableCards are *not, not, NOT!!!* the issue, and neither is SDV itself. The issue in its entirely is the lack of any single standard (or the existence of multiple standards, if you will) for bidirectional hosts. If there were a unified standard for bidirectional hosts, then Tivo and anyone else on the planet who wanted to could manufacture a 2-way host compatible with over 98% of the CATV systems in America - including SDV and every other 2-way protocol, barring only those few grandfathered under exclusions for CC 1.0. As it is now, while every box produced by the CATV equipment manufacturers is 100% compatible with every single one of their customers' systems, no consumer electronics equipment manufacturer can produce a 2-way box which is compatible with more than 40% of their customers' systems, and that is just not an acceptable situation for the 3rd party manufacturers, including TiVo. The CATV equipment manufacturers' customer is also not going to pick up their equipment and move to another city with an incompatible system, but the 3rd party manufacturer's customer is not unlikely to do just that.

If anyone wants the CATV systems to get behind an effort rather than attempting to block it, then they need to push for a unified standard for bidirectional hosts, not try to get SDV shut down. Writing to the FCC complaining about SDV (or complaining about it in this forum) isn't going to help in the least. Of course, pushing for a unified standard may not help, either, but it has a vastly greater chance of suceeding and accomplishing the same effective goal.


----------



## mikeyts

lrhorer said:


> No, but they can refuse to give you the CableCard if you don't get the HD tier, in which case the user won't receive the HD local channel.


Only if you're a TiVo user, and only because you need the channel map downloaded to the CableCARDs in order to use the TiVo guide data. The user should be receiving the channel, and can tune it with any clear-QAM-capable receiver, including TiVo; I have used the "raw" channel and subchannel number to manually tune local DTV channels on my TiVo while waiting to get service set up. Even in places where TWC advertises themselves as "the home of free local HDTV", I don't think that they'll give you CableCARDs for free.

Again, this is only a problem for TiVo users, so far as I know. It's really TiVo's problem--they should develop a way to keep track of channel mappings on various cable system (actually, the cable providers are required by regulations to keep valid PSIP loops running in QAMs containing local DTV rebroadcasts, but I get the impression that few of them are compliant with that requirement).


----------



## bicker

MichaelK said:


> I think it's more like where a significant portion are SDV- significant being in the eye of any one particular consumer.


You said, "It makes any separable security mandate almost moot *in regions* where SDV is deployed." The mandate isn't moot in a region because one particular customer perceives it to be. Individual perception only affect individual experience.

I will grant that we can say that SDV nullifies the effect of the separable security mandate in areas where the majority of the most popular 20 cable channels are on SDV.



MichaelK said:


> Agreed it hasn't done what they wanted it to but mostly that's because it was too little too late and so was behind the curve


Sorry, but that sounds like nothing more than empty euphemisms. Let's stick to hard, cold fact for this: CE manufacturers offered it, and enough people simply didn't want to pay extra for it. What we in this thread might think is important Average Joe simply might not care about.



MichaelK said:


> My #1 guess it that without a guarantee of the 2 way services running on the box they would need to disable all those features or deal with a torrent of returns and worse from customers who live or move into areas with SA or other headends that wouldn't permit the 2 way features to work.


I doubt two way features would be the #1 reason: Ask the folks at TiVo how they like handling calls from customers having trouble getting CableCards working, and/or keeping them working as time goes on.



MichaelK said:


> not really sure what you are saying.


I was saying that since CE manufacturers have given up on separable security, for market-driven reasons, there is no reason for the FCC to continue to ban integrated security. JMHO.


----------



## bicker

lrhorer said:


> They've done a terrible job, period, to the detriment of everyone including the CATV providers, the 3rd party manufacturers, and consumers.


And I believe that was deliberate. We have a divided country. While we've been trending in one direction for thirty years, towards a pro-business environment, there is still enough consumerist mojo out there that entities like the FCC still need to project the appearance of placating consumers on occasion. However, when they do so, they do so in a practically inoperable manner, i.e., the separable security ban.


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## mike_camden

I'm on Comcast and have received the music channels without problem on a TivoHD. Even when they messed up the channel mapping and I was unable to receive the vast majority of digital channels, I still received the music channels. The first time they tried to fix my channel mapping, I lost a bunch of channels (including the music channels) for a couple of hours, but they eventually fixed it all, and I have had all of my subscribed channels including music choice channels since late August.


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## MichaelK

bicker-

while i would agree the ban on integrated security has done nothing positive at this stage- i dont think the availability of separable security should be a problem for anyone. That wasn't exactly a surprise and they had years and years and extension after extension to implement.

In my mind it should have been a ban on any proprietary systems (2-way, ppv, vod, sdv, whatever)- see irhorer's post. As he put it so well- why would moto want to sell their dch boxes when at best it would only work in 40&#37; of the markets because the 2 ways standards dont exist? 

For example - it's hard to argue that europe's consumers, telco's, and handset manufacturers haven't benefited with the single GSM system they have for their cell networks. 

But even assuming the ban is silly- I dont think the rules forcing separable security (cablecards) to be available is a problem at all. At some point it is just more efficient for the cable company's and the consumers and the CE people all to have one system they can gravitate to (see gsm). For example- they will use M-cards for tru2way- right? Panasonic and comcast at least seem to be heavily into that and I think it just might wind up being an end game (or at least a significant stop towards the end game for this time period).


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## mikeyts

MichaelK said:


> while i would agree the ban on integrated security has done nothing positive at this stage


How can you, presumably a TiVo S3 or TiVo HD user, possibly say that? Without the ban on separable security, neither product would exist (nor would this subforum of TiVo Community).


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## MichaelK

mikeyts said:


> How can you, presumably a TiVo S3 or TiVo HD user, possibly say that? Without the ban on separable security, neither product would exist (nor would this subforum of TiVo Community).


I think you are wrong.

tivo s3's existed well before the integration ban came along- and at a point when it wasn't even clear the integration ban would actually be implemented widely.

there where 2 stages to the regulations

the first stage some years ago required all cable companies to provide cablecards to all that asked. THAT helped make the tivo S3 possible and in my mind was a great thing.

the next stage was last July the FCC basically said that cable MUST use cable cards themselves. To me I haven't seen a single benefit to that. There used to be other cablecard devices to be bought. Now you can essentially buy tivo or a closeout of some sort. I have to agree with bicker on this one- there has been no positive change to the market between when cable had to provide cards and when cable had to use cards themselves. In my head forcing cable into using cards themselves does nothing without forcing them to also use some universal open standard for 2-way.

Perhaps one could argue that forcing cable to use cards too made M-cards actually show up. That might be a positive difference I suppose. But OCAP/true2way would have forced that and that's not an FCC regulation (yet). Also the FCC was already riding cable about M-cards independantly of the ban.

look at cablevision for example- they are one of the big 4/5 cable company's. They have a ban exemption (or at least a cablecard exemption) They do not need to use cablecards in their own devices. Yet the rule requiring them to rent people a cablecard does apply. So people can use their S3's or THD's in cablevision areas.

Thinking some more I guess one could argue that the cable company's using cablecards themselves got them to figure out how to use cablecards themselves. But that seems unclear.

1) just reading the comcast thread regularly seems they still don't know how to set up cablecards in tivo well. 
2) it seems that once tivo came on the scene with a viable cablecard product many cable company's quickly worked out the major kinks in their systems. 
3) Third cable still treats tivo's different from their own cablecard installs- there seems to be plenty of headends that you can pick up a rental box (which might have a cablecard preinstalled) but still can't pick up a cablecard to self install- mines one of them. 
4) if there was an improvement in any particular area maybe the ocap/true2way would have made it occur anyway in a few months...

that's just how I see it. I'm willing to listen if you have some thoughts as to how the integration ban (not the initial order requiring cards to all that want them) has had a positive effect.

actually- by my current thinking I think I have to give Bicker an attaboy. He said all along beforehand that the ban was stupid and wasteful. I disagreed- looks like at this point he was correct. i thought that forcing cable card would have made the cable people learn to install them in tivos and made it so tivo's were treated the same. That never came to be universally.

to be clear- the original rule requiring cards to all who want has had a HUGE positive effect,


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## DaveDFW

I just read that the 11 new HD channels for Time-Warner in Dallas are going to be SDV.

Time for FiOS! 

TTYL
David


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## lrhorer

mikeyts said:


> Only if you're a TiVo user, and only because you need the channel map downloaded to the CableCARDs in order to use the TiVo guide data.


You're right, I should have qualified that statement.



mikeyts said:


> Again, this is only a problem for TiVo users, so far as I know. It's really TiVo's problem--they should develop a way to keep track of channel mappings on various cable system


Yeah, there's a thread somewhere on this forum about this.


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## lrhorer

bicker said:


> And I believe that was deliberate. We have a divided country. While we've been trending in one direction for thirty years, towards a pro-business environment, there is still enough consumerist mojo out there that entities like the FCC still need to project the appearance of placating consumers on occasion.


Of course both of our opinions on this matter are completely unsupported, so I don't suppose it really matters, but I think you're wrong on this. First of all, had that been their agenda, they could easily have taken steps which would have been much less painful for everyone but the consumer and no more so for the consumer. There's a favorite old expression of mine: "Never attribute to malice that which may be adequately explained by stupidity." It often applies in every day life and it almost always applies when a government agency is involved. I think it definitely does in this case.

More significantly, however, the fact is most of the business interests in this matter have been served at least as badly or worse than consumers by the FCC's actions - or lack thereof. Only the smallest business interests in this mess - the CATV equipment manufacturers - are benefitting from it or would reasonably be predicted to benefit from it. Of course it's entirely possible someone at Scientific Atlanta or Motorola managed to bribe a few people at the FCC. I certainly wouldn't put it past any of them. I don't think, however, that's the case.

No matter what, we only have a very tiny window where the technological entrenchment can be reversed before the investments and / or potential costs to the CATV providers and the CATV equipment manufacturers for migrating the technology becomes unreasonably large.

As to the consumerist mojo, I suspect they couldn't care less. What are the consumers going to do? Fire them? When was the last time you ever even heard - let alone had hard data - about a bureaucrat being fired for not giving a damn about the public? Other than the bureau chiefs, a bureaucrat has to work really hard at delibertely being fired in order to get fired for any reason.


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## lrhorer

mikeyts said:


> How can you, presumably a TiVo S3 or TiVo HD user, possibly say that? Without the ban on separable security, neither product would exist (nor would this subforum of TiVo Community).


You mean integrated security? Assuming so, it's not necessarily true. Integrated security and separable security are not fundamentally incompatible. As long as the CATV equipment's protocols and hardware are compatible with devices hosting separable security, an STB manufacturer could develop a device for a single platform without much impact on the situation, or at least hypothetically so. Of course, banning integreated security altogether guarantees the proliferation of separable security, which was the putative reason for implementing the ban.


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## mikeyts

lrhorer said:


> You mean integrated security? Assuming so, it's not necessarily true. Integrated security and separable security are not fundamentally incompatible. As long as the CATV equipment's protocols and hardware are compatible with devices hosting separable security, an STB manufacturer could develop a device for a single platform without much impact on the situation, or at least hypothetically so. Of course, banning integreated security altogether guarantees the proliferation of separable security, which was the putative reason for implementing the ban.


Yeah, I meant integrated security. I guess that the ban on integrated security could be considered a separate matter from the mandate to support separable security. It's probably more correct to state that without support for separable security, TiVo S3 and TiVo HD would never have been brought to market. I can't see TiVo creating different versions of their product for different networks--it'd be a marketing nightmare if nothing else, particularly in markets like the one that I live in, where networks involving both S-A's PowerKey and Moto's Digicipher serve the various communities. The FCC could have continued to allow the cable providers to purchase and deploy devices with integrated security; the ban is intended to make them dependent on properly functioning separable security. Pre-ban, their support for separable security was so deplorably poor that it can only get better. If nothing else, if they get it working reliably with the equipment that they use, manufacturers can obtain that equipment and study it to make sure that their own products work the same way with CableCARDs.


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## lrhorer

MichaelK said:


> tivo s3's existed well before the integration ban came along- and at a point when it wasn't even clear the integration ban would actually be implemented widely.


That's not quite the salient issue. The rule requiring a band on integration was established in 1998. The deadline was extended several times, but when the TiVo was in development, it was clear the ban would be enforced at some point.



MichaelK said:


> there where 2 stages to the regulations
> 
> the first stage some years ago required all cable companies to provide cablecards to all that asked. THAT helped make the tivo S3 possible and in my mind was a great thing.


The first stage was to force all CATV systems to begin deploying CableCard compatible systems.



MichaelK said:


> the next stage was last July the FCC basically said that cable MUST use cable cards themselves. To me I haven't seen a single benefit to that.


It enforces the move to separable security systems. The CATV companies had to deploy CableCard services in their markets, but could continue to purchase and deploy compatible STBs which didn't use CableCards as well as incompatible STBs. Now they can purchase and deploy neither.



MichaelK said:


> There used to be other cablecard devices to be bought.


If you mean other UDCPs, such as TVs, wich employ CableCards, there still are. If you mean other DVRs, then not. If you mean CC 1.0 compatible consumer devices which did not employ CableCards, then also not.



MichaelK said:


> Now you can essentially buy tivo or a closeout of some sort.


I haven't the faintest clue what you mean by this.



MichaelK said:


> I have to agree with bicker on this one- there has been no positive change to the market between when cable had to provide cards and when cable had to use cards themselves. In my head forcing cable into using cards themselves does nothing without forcing them to also use some universal open standard for 2-way.


This would not have been true if it were not for the development of SDV. For some CATV systems it is still true. A number of CATV providers obtained waivers to the 7/1/2007 deadline and are continuing to deploy STBs which are not compatible with CC 1.0. With the widespread development of SDV, however, most MSOs are eagerly switching to CC 1.0 equipment.



MichaelK said:


> Perhaps one could argue that forcing cable to use cards too made M-cards actually show up. That might be a positive difference I suppose. But OCAP/true2way would have forced that


Not particularly. S-Cards are every bit as compatible with OCAP and true2way as M-Cards.


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## lrhorer

I'd like to clarify what I think the real issue is, here. You have several different groups each with a different agenda, and they are all adding fuel to different parts of the fire:

1. The Public: Hates STBs. Wants to be able to purchase a TV which will eliminate the need for an STB. The proliferation of leased DVRs has clouded this issue, because the DVR replaces the STB.

2. Consumer Electronics Manufacturers: Doesn't really care about STBs one way or the other. Would like to be able to provide a model which meets the consumers' demands for no STBs as a marketing tool, but it is not their priority agenda.

3. CATV providers: Want security. Mostly Hate the ban on integrated security. Would like to get rid of the headaches associated with STBs, but since they don't lose any money by delivering STBs, it is also not their priority agenda. Would love to be able to purchase compatible DVRs (and STBs, if they must) from more than 1 vendor in order to keep costs down. Want OCAP becasue it allows them to control the consumer's equipment and decide unilaterally what software will be in use by the consumer. Some may be salivating over the prospect of being able to spy on consumers in their homes.

4. Hollywood: Demands Security. Wishes DVRs didn't exist. Holds significant financial interest in many CATV providers.

5. CATV Equipment Manufacturers: Love the ban on integrated security because they get to sell tons of new STBs and DVRs. Love the fact they have been able to develop proprietary systems which effectively prevent their current customers from buying devices from anyone else, allowing them to severely inflate their prices once a customer has bought their CATV equipment for initial deployment.

6. The FCC: wants people to think they're doing their jobs so they can collect pay without actually having to do anything. Mostly incompetent. 'Typical government agency.


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## Firekite

lrhorer said:


> No, but they can refuse to give you the CableCard if you don't get the HD tier, in which case the user won't receive the HD local channel.


I was under the impression that the CableCARD was to decrypt encrypted digital cable signals, which would be required for digital cable regardless of whether you opted for an HD package.



lrhorer said:


> I wouldn't really call a year and a half ago "fairly recently".


Yeah, it's been on shelves for a little over a year, now, and introduced at extraordinarily exorbitant prices. Jay Leno was broadcast in HD in the spring of '99, and with TiVo's HD solutions being on the shelf for only a little over a year, early 2007 or late 2006, yeah I would still consider it "fairly recently." In fact, that's why I said so.



> Whatever the letter or the wording, the intent was to benefit consumers, electronics makers, and CATV providers. As I've mentioned again and again, a lack of separable security has been a major pain to all three. That the FCC botched the attempt has nothing to do with the fact everyone wanted it.


You seem to imply that the CATV industry wanted to support this third-party hardware. I'm not sure I agree. They've only abided by the minimum regulatory requirements while often actively discouraging it, even if grudgingly making it available.



> The only one really benefiting in the least from this mess is the CATV equipment manufacturers.


...but not CATV providers, who get paid monthly by their customers for the abominably bad hardware?



> It's not the cable companies who are actively attempting this, despite the fact their actions are indeed having that result. They really have no choice, certainly not in the long term. After allowing for theft, loss, and breakage they make very little or no net profit on delivering STBs, and their margins are thin on DVRs.


I would love your source on that. The reality is that you may be right, or you may not, I don't know, but offering a DVR is a great marketing tool even if you only break even otherwise.



> Add to that the massive headache of trying to keep track of hundreds of thousands of boxes sitting in environments and locations which are completely out of their control


What are you talking about? It's possibly the most basic asset management task ever, and if you fail to come up with the hardware, they just charge you an arm and a leg for it (on top of what you've paid monthly up to that point). Anything not recovered is sold off to debt collectors and the difference is written off. Little energy is wasted.



> and the large payments they make to customers who claim the STB caused a fire in their house or electrocuted them, and it is a revenue stream (or lack thereof) with which on the whole they would just as soon not deal.


They have insurance, and their attitudes and the both subtle and overt discouragement of using 3rd party devices as well as their total lack of respect for them in their designs suggest that your assertions are exactly backwards.



> Believe me, the CATV companies would love to be able to buy equipment from more than 1 manufacturer, rather than being locked into a single proprietary system.


What are you talking about? There's more than one company that can and does manufacture cable boxes, regardless of who's won which contract.



> You need to look around. TWC is not the only cable service provider.


Yes, they are. They are here in most of the San Antonio area, at least. The only competition is Grande Cable, which is available only in limited spots, and AT&T's U-verse, which also has limited availability and doesn't seem to support S3 or TiVo HD at all. Many apartment complex contract to allow only one or the other, so if you're an apartment renter, you've got no choice at all in the matter.



> I don't know what market you are in, but here in San Antonio under TWC the STB is most certainly not free. Each STB costs $7.95 a month.


Yet you insist they're a loss-leader.



> The SA 8300HD DVR rents for $17.90 a month, plus $9.94 for each additional DVR.


No, it's $9.95 for the DVR, and I only have one so I don't know what additional charges may be (as far as I know it's $9.95 for each).



> It's very low market share channels and things like VOD and IPPV which benefit most from SDV.


Then why are they switching channels to it and making all new channels set up for it? Discovery Channel is "very low market share"? Really? Who here doesn't watch Mythbusters if nothing else? And all the HGTV channels and Food Channel and such that so many people seem to tune into, especially if they're homemakers? Come on. I have no interest in VOD and IPPV. All I care about are my HD channels, and they're mostly not available to me via CableCARD here in San Antonio.



> Yes, in SDV systems those of us who have TiVos are getting somewhat fewer channels than those who do not, but we're also usually paying less.


Care to explain that? We're still paying for the same channels and yet aren't getting them. You're exchanging $9.95 a month for a TWC DVR for $12.95 a month just for the TiVo service. And you can only get that after you've spent hundreds on the TiVo hardware itself. And in the end, while you have superior hardware, your viewing options have been cut off at the knees. SDV is doing us no favors.



> Oh, and yet once again, CableCards have always been able to receive SDV. CableCards are *not, not, NOT!!!* the issue, and neither is SDV itself.


What? What are you talking about? So our TiVos can indeed receive SDV channels? Really?



> If anyone wants the CATV systems to get behind an effort rather than attempting to block it, then they need to push for a unified standard for bidirectional hosts, not try to get SDV shut down.


I was unaware that there was a call for the latter.


----------



## Firekite

bicker said:


> Let's stick to hard, cold fact for this: CE manufacturers offered it, and enough people simply didn't want to pay extra for it. What we in this thread might think is important Average Joe simply might not care about.


What are you talking about? With CableCARDS, the only thing you get are channels. Nothing else, not even the program guide. As a result, nobody really wanted the CableCARD systems in their TV's, which is the only place they were generally available since about four years back until a little over a year ago when the REAL reason to have such a standard (TiVo) finally came out, at which point it was too little, too late. It would've been fine, but switching to SDV has killed TiVo off (or at least made it a very difficult decision) for many of us.



lrhorer said:


> 1. The Public: Hates STBs. Wants to be able to purchase a TV which will eliminate the need for an STB. The proliferation of leased DVRs has clouded this issue, because the DVR replaces the STB.


That's quite the assertion. I'm not convinced the public hates STBs, but either way DVRs have become the new STB, and everyone wants one and hates living without it after getting used to it.



> 3. CATV providers: Want security. Mostly Hate the ban on integrated security. Would like to get rid of the headaches associated with STBs


You seem to have some sort of unique inside information into the cable industry. What's your source? Do you work for one, which would explain the insight, or what? I've not heard these assertions from anyone else, whether friends who actually work for TWC or anyone here or elsewhere on the net.



> Would love to be able to purchase compatible DVRs (and STBs, if they must) from more than 1 vendor in order to keep costs down.


There's absolutely nothing to stop them from doing so now. Scientific Atlanta holds no special permit from the FCC that grants them government-protected monopoly status or something, and other manufacturers make these boxes (Motorola not the least of which). Regardless, a whole slew of different boxes wouldn't be as efficient to deal with as one. They only thing more competition gets them is more leverage to lower acquisition costs and therefore increase their margin on the DVRs.



> Want OCAP becasue it allows them to control the consumer's equipment and decide unilaterally what software will be in use by the consumer. Some may be salivating over the prospect of being able to spy on consumers in their homes.


Neither one of those things sound very good.


----------



## MichaelK

lots of things to reply to-

but a few points-

- cable doenst need to buy TONS of new boxes just becasue of the integration ban. I'm farily certain they are permitted to continue to deploy their old integrated boxes as long as they want- it's just that any NEW boxes need to have cablecard (unless of course they have waivers). So it's not some huge windfall to SA and moto. They will now get to sell a shiny new cable card with each box. So that might be. BUT becasue everyone now has to go to a cablecard box anyway- SA and moto now have a disadvantage- 3rd party's can now get in. See Panasonics dealings with comcast. Comcast is no longer a slave to moto or SA for STB's- now with cablecards and OCAP they are buying panasonic boxes. 

-SA and Moto dont have govenerment dont have govermnet issued permits but they do possess control of the security systems to connect their boxes to thier head end systems. Until cablecard you basically couldn't connect anything but a moto box to a moto head end or a SA box to an SA head end. So once Moto or SA got their foot in the door selling the head end then the cable people were looked for life to that company untill they tossed out the head end and built a new one. So while legally there is no monopoly or duopoly- there is quite a barrier to entry for any new comers. 

and yes the reason cablecard slots are being dropped from current generation devices is becasue of SDV- hence the discussion in the sdv thread. Once the SDV thing is squared away with a 2-way standard (OCAP, TRU2WAy, or whatever) then probably you will see them go back in- at least panasonic sounds like it plans to add them to back in.


----------



## lrhorer

Firekite said:


> I was under the impression that the CableCARD was to decrypt encrypted digital cable signals, which would be required for digital cable regardless of whether you opted for an HD package.


Not at all. First of all, every locally broadcast network channel by law must be delivered free of encryption. Any digital receiver can receive them. The CATV company is also free to deliver any other digital content it likes unencrypted should it so choose.



Firekite said:


> You seem to imply that the CATV industry wanted to support this third-party hardware.


You bet. One of the greatest headeaches they had to endure was constantly trying to explain to customers why their "Cable Ready" TVs needed an external box. Since the late 1970s, the #2 customer complaint, right behind cost, was the requirement for an STB. Hundreds of calls a day come in, and installers continue to be constantly harrased when they tell new customers they need to have STBs inststalled - at $7.95 a pop, no less.



Firekite said:


> I'm not sure I agree. They've only abided by the minimum regulatory requirements while often actively discouraging it, even if grudgingly making it available.


There's a difference between wanting a feature to be available and liking the version of the feature which rolls out the door. There's also a differecne between wanting to deliver something on one timeline and being forced to deliver it on a much shorter one than one desires. Most of them wanted to get downloadable conditional access systems working, but few if any were able to do so by the 2007 deadline.



Firekite said:


> ...but not CATV providers, who get paid monthly by their customers for the abominably bad hardware?


There is a diferecne between revenue and profit. CATV providers barely make a profit on STBs, if at all.



Firekite said:


> I would love your source on that.


I am the source.



Firekite said:


> The reality is that you may be right, or you may not, I don't know, but offering a DVR is a great marketing tool even if you only break even otherwise.


Absolutely. An STB is a different matter, although even then their margins on DVRs are not that high. Once again there is a big difference between offering something to consumers and being required to force something on consumers.



Firekite said:


> What are you talking about? It's possibly the most basic asset management task ever,


No, managing the materials in a limited number of sites controlled exclusively by the company itself is the most basic asset management tqsk ever, and even that can be xtremely difficult. Some years ago, Worldcom misplaced 35,000 muxes valued at $60,000 each. They were never found. They had fewer than 1000 facilities, at the time. Imagine trying to keep track of equipment in over 20 million facilities, none of which are controlled by the company. I've been living in my current house for over 7 years, now, and during that entire time TWC has not for any period more than 3 months long had a proper inventory of what equipment of theirs is in my house.



Firekite said:


> and if you fail to come up with the hardware, they just charge you an arm and a leg for it (on top of what you've paid monthly up to that point). Anything not recovered is sold off to debt collectors and the difference is written off. Little energy is wasted.


Quite to the contrary, it's a major resource drain. First of all, writing something off does not count as profit. Secondly, since by definition the person who has incurred the bad debt usually no longer resides at the former place of residence nor has the same phone number, debt collection is more often than not ineffective, and it does cost money.



Firekite said:


> They have insurance


No, they don't. Most MSOs are self insured. Even if not, the premiums for ththe equipment - if they botherted to insure it, would be exhorbitant.



Firekite said:


> What are you talking about? There's more than one company that can and does manufacture cable boxes, regardless of who's won which contract.


At one time that was the case. It is no longer so. No other equipment in the world will work with Motorola's headend SDV equipment other than Motorola unless they license Moto's protocols. Ditto Cisco.



Firekite said:


> Yes, they are. They are here in most of the San Antonio area, at least.


That's not what you said.



Firekite said:


> Yet you insist they're a loss-leader.


Well, not quite. They do usualy make a small profit. Not much, though. Given the unusually short average lifetime of a leased STB, they don't do much better than break even. Compare that to the average $40 a month they make off IPPV. Some customers regularly have IPPV bills of over $150 a month.



Firekite said:


> No, it's $9.95 for the DVR, and I only have one so I don't know what additional charges may be (as far as I know it's $9.95 for each).


You said you're in San Antonio. Go to the web site and you'll see it. It's $9.95 for the service plus $7.95 for each DVR, or at least that's what it used to be and how much I saved by switching back in 2006. The proce structure could be different, now, but not how I read it.



Firekite said:


> Then why are they switching channels to it and making all new channels set up for it? Discovery Channel is "very low market share"?


Discovery is not SDV. Even Discovery HD theater is not SDV. Only Discovery in HD is SDV, and yes, the number of people who have HD sets is still fairly low. Multiply that fraction by the market share, adn you wind up withe a very low subscription target indeed. Assuming roughly 1000 receivers per node, the odds any single node is not requesting Discovery in HD is pretty good.



Firekite said:


> Really? Who here doesn't watch Mythbusters if nothing else?


This is the Series III forum, so everyone here probably watches HD, and I suspect the percentage who watch Discovery is also somewhat higher than the citywide norm. If every single node in the city has the channel on at least 1 receiver 24 hours a day, then SDV does nothing at all. SDV starts to pay off if the market shre for the specific stream in question is deployed to something less than 1 receiver in 1000 for at least 1 hour out of 24.

Of course, there is another paradigm, as well. If the CATV company's roster is full, and they have to purchase a new QAM, putting even a popular new channel on an SDV QAM may make sense. They don't get the benefits for the new channel, but they do for the other channels sharing the QAM.



Firekite said:


> All I care about are my HD channels, and they're mostly not available to me via CableCARD here in San Antonio.


Like it or not, you are not the averrage consumer.



Firekite said:


> Care to explain that? We're still paying for the same channels and yet aren't getting them.


Name 5 channels you used to receive in September 2006 that you can no longer receive on your S3 / TiVo HD today. HD versions of the channels you can still receive in SD do not qualify.



Firekite said:


> You're exchanging $9.95 a month for a TWC DVR for $12.95 a month just for the TiVo service.


I have lifetime service on two TiVos and pay $7.31 a month on the other. Those three TiVos replace 4 STBs and a Scientific Atlanta 8300HD. My service fees dropped $40 (after accounting for 5 CableCards), as I said.



Firekite said:


> And you can only get that after you've spent hundreds on the TiVo hardware itself.


Are you suggesting Tivo should give them to you free?



Firekite said:


> And in the end, while you have superior hardware, your viewing options have been cut off at the knees. SDV is doing us no favors.


It's a massive mess, but the mess has nothing to do with SDV and everything to do with the lack of a unified standard for 2-way hosts.



Firekite said:


> What? What are you talking about? So our TiVos can indeed receive SDV channels? Really?


No, because the TiVo is not a 2-way host. 'Take those very same CableCards, stick them into a Scientific Atlanta or Motorola STB or DVR,a dn they work just fine with SDV. Fix the [email protected]#$$% regulations so it will be practical for TiVo to build a 2-way host, and if they decide building one is profitable, they can.



Firekite said:


> I was unaware that there was a call for the latter.


Consumers, CATV providers, and Consumer Electronics Manufacturers have all been screaming for it since the early 1980s. None of them want to compromise on a solution, however.


----------



## MichaelK

point
counter point

reminded me of 
"jane you ignorant sl##)


----------



## lrhorer

Firekite said:


> What are you talking about? With CableCARDS, the only thing you get are channels. Nothing else, not even the program guide.


'Not true. First of all, the CableCards are a security device, not a content device, but they allow for a broad array of one and two way servies. Oh, and my Mitsubishi TV derives a TV guide through its CableCards, BTW. It's only available when the CableCards are inserted.



Firekite said:


> As a result, nobody really wanted the CableCARD systems in their TV's


Not at all. Customers were mightily pi$$ed off when they paid a pretty fair chunk of extra dollars for "Cable-Ready" TVs in the early 80's only to be told they could not get any pay channels unless they rented an STB. Believe me, I got an earful on a regular basis, and so did the GM and the CEO.



Firekite said:


> That's quite the assertion. I'm not convinced the public hates STBs, but either way DVRs have become the new STB, and everyone wants one and hates living without it after getting used to it.


1. They are indeed popular, but saying everyone wants one is an overstatement. Even if they were free, there would no doubt be some people who didn't want one. As it is, many choose not to get one.

2. The really operate word is *one*. Most people want one DVR, but most people have more than 1 TV. Most would rather not have a second DVR or an STB on their additional sets.



Firekite said:


> You seem to have some sort of unique inside information into the cable industry. What's your source? Do you work for one, which would explain the insight, or what?


I used to work as an engineer for one, and I still have close unofficial ties to a number of people working for several different companies in the industry. I would never divulge confidential information, but this isn't confidential.



Firekite said:


> There's absolutely nothing to stop them from doing so now. Scientific Atlanta holds no special permit from the FCC that grants them government-protected monopoly status or something


Yeah they do, actually. It's called a patent (patents - plural, actually), although they're issued by the patent offiice, not the FCC. Still, it represents a permit to prevent anyone else from manufacturing and distributing the covered devices under penalty of law.



Firekite said:


> and other manufacturers make these boxes (Motorola not the least of which).


No Motorola STB or DVR will work in a Scientific Atlanta system or vice-versa. If they did, we wouldn't be in this mess, because TiVo, Panasonic, Mitsubishi, Sony, etc could all manufacture devices which could be taken to virtually any city and used to receive SDV servces.



Firekite said:


> They only thing more competition gets them is more leverage to lower acquisition costs and therefore increase their margin on the DVRs.


Exactly (although it counts for STBs, as well). Some MSOs purchase in excess of 100,000 STBs/ DVRs a month. If they can save even $1 each, that's $1.2 million in reduced expenses a year.


----------



## Firekite

lrhorer said:


> Hundreds of calls a day come in, and installers continue to be constantly harrased when they tell new customers they need to have STBs inststalled - at $7.95 a pop, no less.


Here in SA, TWC does not charge $7.95 a month or any other fee for STBs (at least for the initial unit). If they do, it's buried (not a line item in the bill) in the general cost for cable service. I'm not sure how many people are just now being introduced to the concept of digital cable, but I would be honestly surprised if there were a significant number of people who were shocked and angry when the tech installed their STB for them.



> There's a difference between wanting a feature to be available and liking the version of the feature which rolls out the door.


So they didn't like it. Boo hoo. I'm sorry, but it's difficult for me to feel a tremendous amount of sympathy in this case, especially when they had, what, at least 5 or 6 years to get their preferred system working?



> There is a diferecne between revenue and profit. CATV providers barely make a profit on STBs, if at all.


I don't expect that they do, at least directly, but if it weren't beneficial to them, why would they decide to do use them?



> I am the source.


That's not very helpful, nor is it exactly accurate. Your other, later answer was at least more informative, that you used to be an engineer (of some sort) in the industry and still have contacts that clue you in from their perspective, which is helpful information when evaluating the credibility these sweeping, authoritative statements you're making.



> Once again there is a big difference between offering something to consumers and being required to force something on consumers.


So they're required to force systems on consumers that break the CableCARD standard, rendering them useless for every channel on that incompatible standard?



> Imagine trying to keep track of equipment in over 20 million facilities, none of which are controlled by the company. I've been living in my current house for over 7 years, now, and during that entire time TWC has not for any period more than 3 months long had a proper inventory of what equipment of theirs is in my house.


To me that's much more a scathing indictment of TWC than an argument that it isn't easy. And while there aren't 20 million facilities in San Antonio, I've never had a problem with phone support (including call centers in Canada) being able to look up my equipment, ping it, reset it, etc, whenever necessary. I will point out that of the three TWC people (granted not an exhaustive survey) I've spoken with about the change-over, including one in person, they've all told me I'm making a mistake and that it's much better to stick with TWC's hardware and rolled their eyes and generally tried to discourage me from switching. If they're so eager to get out of the DVR business like you claim, why would they have that attitude?



> debt collection is more often than not ineffective, and it does cost money.


Debts are fairly quickly sold off to collectors and losses written off as such.



> No other equipment in the world will work with Motorola's headend SDV equipment other than Motorola unless they license Moto's protocols. Ditto Cisco.


It's not legislated that way. CATV providers have chosen to paint themselves in a corner that way rather than insisting on an open standard or just inventing one themselves. Nobody forced them to do so.



> That's not what you said.


You're right. I guess I should've clarified "in the area" to avoid giving the impression I meant "in the entire known universe."



> Discovery is not SDV. Even Discovery HD theater is not SDV. Only Discovery in HD is SDV


Which is exactly what I said. This whole freaking discussion has been about HD and the lack of channels available to subscribers due to the implementation of SDV. I said Discovery Channel, not HD Theater, and yes, I mean in HD. When I pay for HD service and someone tells me to be happy because it's still available in SD, they might as well serve me week-old salisbury steak instead of the Kobe beef I paid for and tell me to be happy because it's still cow.



> the number of people who have HD sets is still fairly low.


Across the nation? Perhaps. In my neighborhood, though, I have very strong doubts that there's no HD TV in the house, and if you're going to assume 1000 receivers per node in my area, you're talking about 1000 fairly affluent households, people with both HDTVs and the education to interest themselves and/or their children in something like the Discovery Channel, especially considering the popularity of shows like Mythbusters with pretty much everyone under 40. I'd say the odds are a little higher than you're arguing that someone might be watching Discovery at any given time.



> If every single node in the city has the channel on at least 1 receiver 24 hours a day, then SDV does nothing at all. SDV starts to pay off if the market shre for the specific stream in question is deployed to something less than 1 receiver in 1000 for at least 1 hour out of 24.


Yes, exactly, which is the reason they're moving to it. Even if the savings are minuscule, it appears to be worth brushing off CableCARD-using subscribers.



> Of course, there is another paradigm, as well. If the CATV company's roster is full, and they have to purchase a new QAM, putting even a popular new channel on an SDV QAM may make sense. They don't get the benefits for the new channel, but they do for the other channels sharing the QAM.


This is supposed to make me feel better or lessen ill will toward the CATV company, especially when noting that telling CableCARD users "tough luck now pay me my money" doesn't even offer any direct benefit for that popular new channel?



> Like it or not, you are not the averrage consumer.


Really. So my HDTV-equipped neighbors don't care about HD? That they wouldn't rather be watching the same program in HD? Or is that just because I've attempted to get a TiVo and am not necessarily perfectly happy with whatever junk TWC sticks me with and tells me to like it?



> Name 5 channels you used to receive in September 2006 that you can no longer receive on your S3 / TiVo HD today. HD versions of the channels you can still receive in SD do not qualify.


I don't even know how to respond to that properly without insults and bad words. I'm at a loss to figure out your point. You've gone from being frustrating to not making any sense. The issue at hand is the number of HD channels I'm paying to receive that I cannot unless I pay TWC for their proprietary and vastly inferior DVR, specifically due to their implementation of SDV without any remedy in place for those subscribers who use the standard CableCARDs.



> I have lifetime service on two TiVos and pay $7.31 a month on the other. Those three TiVos replace 4 STBs and a Scientific Atlanta 8300HD. My service fees dropped $40 (after accounting for 5 CableCards), as I said.


Do you really have a point? Or are you trying a politician-like game of semantics? If I pay off my truck tomorrow, I can claim that my monthly bills have dropped, but my bank account balance has dropped considerably as well. You're implying that switching from a monthly service fee to a bevy of TiVos has saved you money, and it may well in the long term, but you neglect to mention the vastly higher amount of money you shelled out for those TiVos and lifetime service plans. And I'm still unsure as to what any of this has to do with SDV and getting shut out and brushed off by TWC due to their SDV implementation.



> Are you suggesting Tivo should give them to you free?


Are you suggesting you sincerely believe that's what I said?



> It's a massive mess, but the mess has nothing to do with SDV and everything to do with the lack of a unified standard for 2-way hosts.


I honestly don't know what to think when you say something like that. If the mess has nothing to do with SDV, then why is it that SDV breaks compatibility with CableCARDS? SDV is specifically what's keeping me from being able to receive the full range of channels I pay for every month. Its root cause may be the cable industry's inability to pull their head out long enough to come up with a solution, but that's not _my_ problem. Instead, the cable industry _makes_ it my problem by forcing me to pay them for their own proprietary hardware in order to receive the service I pay for. And what is the technology that forces that on me? SDV. The topic of this thread. The part of the "massive mess" that's been dumped on our heads.



> Fix the [email protected]#$$% regulations so it will be practical for TiVo to build a 2-way host, and if they decide building one is profitable, they can.


It's amazing how the entertainment industry managed to settle on the DVD standard without the federal government having to _make_ them. While I'm no fan of the government in general or the FCC in particular, saying it's the government's fault rather than the industry's when the government hasn't done anything to prevent them from hashing out a standard doesn't really make sense.



> None of them want to compromise on a solution, however.


And yet I'm supposed to be yelling at the government?



lrhorer said:


> Firekite said:
> 
> 
> 
> What are you talking about? With CableCARDS, the only thing you get are channels. Nothing else, not even the program guide.
> 
> 
> 
> 'Not true.
Click to expand...

OK, so every single TWC I've ever spoken to about them (including before my recent TiVo purchase) has been lying to me. I will get TWC's program guide in my CableCARD-equipped TV with no STB just like I would with the STB. Awesome news. Obviously someone needs to educate the entire industry, or perhaps they're all just _that_ dishonest in order to discourage people from saving the company money and time.



> 1. They are indeed popular, but saying everyone wants one is an overstatement. Even if they were free, there would no doubt be some people who didn't want one. As it is, many choose not to get one.


Really. You're really going to say that. Someone's going to choose to decline a DVR for an STB when there's no price difference. Someone's going to insist that they get an STB without the DVR's capabilities. Perhaps you can explain why?



> 2. The really operate word is *one*. Most people want one DVR, but most people have more than 1 TV. Most would rather not have a second DVR or an STB on their additional sets.


So? Due to the implementation of SDV, they HAVE to have an STB in order to receive the full range of channels they pay for. Now they have no choice. And to act as though it's the number of DVR's at issue is seriously going beyond the call of duty. It's like you're reaching so hard, going so far out of your way to try to pick apart and contradict anything I say that you've abandoned any pretense of an effort to maintain relevance or even just to make sense.



> Yeah they do, actually. It's called a patent (patents - plural, actually), although they're issued by the patent offiice, not the FCC. Still, it represents a permit to prevent anyone else from manufacturing and distributing the covered devices under penalty of law.


And who exactly holds the patent that prevents TWC from going with a different supplier, that prevents the industry from crafting and agreeing on an open standard, or any other action that would cause this to be a moot point? No patent says they have to award a contract to one company or another.



> No Motorola STB or DVR will work in a Scientific Atlanta system or vice-versa. If they did, we wouldn't be in this mess, because TiVo, Panasonic, Mitsubishi, Sony, etc could all manufacture devices which could be taken to virtually any city and used to receive SDV servces.


Obviously. You're not really winning any points for SDV, there, though.



> Some MSOs purchase in excess of 100,000 STBs/ DVRs a month. If they can save even $1 each, that's $1.2 million in reduced expenses a year.


And yet they don't seem too intent on making that happen. They could save ALL of the money EVERY year if they'd get out of the STB/DVR business altogether, something you insist the CATV providers are all too eager to do. Except that apparently that's not a good enough motivator, and it's become quite clear that customer satisfaction doesn't exactly rank high on the priority list.

So let's recap. According to you, consumers hate STBs. CATV providers _really_ hate STBs. CATV providers make little to no money whatsoever on STBs and are saddled with the massive burden of keeping track of all these units. CATV providers burn through huge amounts of cash in purchasing and generally being involved with STBs. And yet the CATV provider's solution, rather than to come up with an open standard, is to buy into a proprietary system (that at best skirts the letter of the law) where they're paying untold sums of cash to saddle themselves with the very thing they hate and their customers hate and everyone hates and nobody benefits from except for the specific vendor of the chosen proprietary system.

Either every CATV provider is functionally retarded or your assertions are inaccurate. I've left out other options because for now I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt that you're not intentionally misleading people or so _heavily_ biased that you don't which way is up anymore.


----------



## Eccles

*pulls up a chair and breaks out the popcorn*


----------



## sfhub

lrhorer said:


> Yeah they do, actually. It's called a patent (patents - plural, actually), although they're issued by the patent offiice, not the FCC. Still, it represents a permit to prevent anyone else from manufacturing and distributing the covered devices under penalty of law.


A patent, by itself, doesn't prevent anyone else from manufacturing. It forces other manufacturers to do so under your terms. Only if the company has no intention of licensing does it prevent.

Pace Micro has both SA and Motorola compatible STBs. TW and Comcast wanted less expensive alternatives for STBs and Pace was there to satisfy the demand. They license the CA technology from SA and Motorola.


----------



## MichaelK

While I dont disagree with much of lrhorers points.

I am sick of this cable propaganda line that HD is a fringe.

http://broadcastengineering.com/hdtv/mass_adoption_hdtv_0318/



> More than 47 million households in the United States will pay for some type of HDTV service by the end of 2008  an increase of 17 million homes from the level at the end of 2007, according to a new forecast from Pike & Fischer in Silver Spring, MD.


If I understand correctly then there are about 85 million pay tv homes in the US. That means by year end more people then not will be PAYING for HDTV.

Never mind the people that dont pay extra for HDTV but still want it- like everyone on cablevision since they include HD for free (so their ads say), like the small but vocal minority here that connects their S3s to cable but doesnt want a cablecard, and lots of other people who are happy with the FREE parts of HDTV on cable (I have 24 free HD channels on my cable system, 4 movie channels that are free if you buy the corresponding multiplex, and if you really insist on paying its 1.99 for hdnet/hdmet movies/wealthhd)- so myself maybe I decide the 1.99 isnt worth those 3 channels and stop paying for any HD yet still I'd be getting 24-28 channels which are a large reason I'm with the local cable company.

Even now implying that 17+million out of the 85 million homes is not worth serving is silly. Thats 20% and most likely contains the top tier of disposable income and the top tier of most profitable customers since they have that extra cash.

So if cable really believes and continues to believe HD is a fringe not worth serving then DBS and FIOS are going to hand them a strong kick in the pants over the coming months.

Cable needs to upgrade it's canned responses and PR machine to get rid of the "you are fringe" response. And instead say "we're working as best we can as quick as we can to worth through this transition" The you are fringe response almost comes off to me as blaming the HD customer like there are some kind of problem or annoying segment.


----------



## MichaelK

sfhub said:


> A patent, by itself, doesn't prevent anyone else from manufacturing. It forces other manufacturers to do so under your terms. Only if the company has no intention of licensing does it prevent.
> 
> Pace Micro has both SA and Motorola compatible STBs. TW and Comcast wanted less expensive alternatives for STBs and Pace was there to satisfy the demand. They license the CA technology from SA and Motorola.


while I dont disagree with any of those facts. I think it's clear that competition in the STB space is minimal- the 1996 law pretty much says as much and that was the point of separable securty. The fact that basically pace is the only 3rd party manufacturer in a market space with millions of millions of units beling sold a year kind of points to that. SA and moto's terms might be ugly and that wouldn't be cable's fault. Sa and moto hold all the cards.

So I think cable is more then happy to get an open standard- problem is as has been said above that they want it the way they want it without compromise so that anyone else gets anything from it (which is probably to be expected) . Look at comcast's dealings with panasonic to make OCAP/True2way a reality. For whatever reason panasonic wasn't making boxes when they had to deal with Moto and SA for licenses- now they dont need to deal with the duopoly and they are jumping right in with 2 feet. They are making piles of lease boxes for comcast and a line of 2-way products for retail. So in the end it does benefit cable to get an open standard. The only problem is the lack of compromise.


----------



## classicsat

On STBs:


Firekite said:


> I don't expect that they do, at least directly, but if it weren't beneficial to them, why would they decide to do use them?


They need them to be able to sell their interactive services.

Currently, nobody except their security providers and their licensees, makes a fully two-way solution, so they need to issue their own STBs.



> So they're required to force systems on consumers that break the CableCARD standard, rendering them useless for every channel on that incompatible standard?


To remain competitive, yes.

If the mess has nothing to do with SDV, then why is it that SDV breaks compatibility with CableCARDS?
[/quote] 
It has everything to do with SDV, SDV being a two way service.


> It's amazing how the entertainment industry managed to settle on the DVD standard without the federal government having to _make_ them. While I'm no fan of the government in general or the FCC in particular, saying it's the government's fault rather than the industry's when the government hasn't done anything to prevent them from hashing out a standard doesn't really make sense.


The one DVD "Standard" could happen because there was no real standard to begin with. Cable on the other hand, is built on two (or more) hardware platforms, with a number of software providers, which is the legacy the providers have to work with.



> And yet I'm supposed to be yelling at the government?





> And who exactly holds the patent that prevents TWC from going with a different supplier, that prevents the industry from crafting and agreeing on an open standard, or any other action that would cause this to be a moot point? No patent says they have to award a contract to one company or another.


In the context of that statement, it is purely contractual and/or economic reasons to stay with one hardware platform.

Supposing there were one headend hardware standard, an on software interface for interactive services, they'd have to change out a number of existing STBs and headend equipment to meet the new standard, or at least dispose the ones they have.


----------



## bxojr

I thought this story was interesting. Not that Cablevision is deploying SDV (I don't suppose that's a surprise), but the fact that they're offering CableCARD subscribers a free STB for a year as compensation.

From what I hear, we haven't seen anything like that kind of conciliatory attitude from TWC. I'm lucky enough that TWC in my area hasn't deployed SDV yet, but it could happen at any time. If they offered me a free STB to get me through until the tuning resolver is out (especially if it's a DVR), I think I'd be reasonably satisfied.


----------



## mikeyts

lrhorer said:


> 'Not true. First of all, the CableCards are a security device, not a content device, but they allow for a broad array of one and two way servies. Oh, and my Mitsubishi TV derives a TV guide through its CableCards, BTW. It's only available when the CableCards are inserted.


I have a Mitsubishi LT-46231 46" 1080p LCD panel and it's not getting that listing from the CableCARD. It's the Gemstar "TV Guide On Screen" product (see this), which is generally loaded from information carried in the VBI of some local channels, probably gradually transitioning to datacast subchannels of local DTV broadcasters. It did used to not seem to work without a CableCARD installed, but now I notice that it's working just fine (I haven't used the TV directly in months) with just a split of the cable on the antenna 1 input, no CC. (Of course, I moved recently and it's unaware that I've changed cable provider, so it has some channel numbers wrong; I've corrected my ZIP code on the TV's menu, so I presume it'll determine the available channel line-ups for my area and fix that over night).


----------



## MichaelK

not to wander off track but the fcc actually mentioned that people should be able to get the program guide from the cable company using whatever standards cablelabs developed. That was in like 1998 when they issued the regs to enforce the 1996 law. IT's amazing to me that 10 years later and still you can't get a 3rd party device that gets guide data from the cable headend. Maybe later this year with ocap/tru2way but still that will be 10 long years. 

So it's no wonder if you cant get guide data 10 years later that SDV has proven to be a problem....


----------



## classicsat

MichaelK said:


> not to wander off track but the fcc actually mentioned that people should be able to get the program guide from the cable company using whatever standards cablelabs developed.


My understanding is that the cable providers have the idea that guide data is an interactive feature requiring two -way capabilities.


----------



## mikeyts

MichaelK said:


> not to wander off track but the fcc actually mentioned that people should be able to get the program guide from the cable company using whatever standards cablelabs developed. That was in like 1998 when they issued the regs to enforce the 1996 law. IT's amazing to me that 10 years later and still you can't get a 3rd party device that gets guide data from the cable headend. Maybe later this year with ocap/tru2way but still that will be 10 long years.
> 
> So it's no wonder if you cant get guide data 10 years later that SDV has proven to be a problem....


What the FCC ended up codifying in the regs is that cable providers are supposed to place PSIP loops in any QAM carrier which has a rebroadcast of an over-the-air channel in it. The FCC seems to be primarily concerned with over-the-air rebroadcasts on cable and very little with the rest of the commercial stuff, except to prohibit the cable providers from acing us out of being able to record it at all.


----------



## Firekite

MichaelK said:


> SA and moto's terms might be ugly and that wouldn't be cable's fault. Sa and moto hold all the cards.


They hold the supply. The CATV providers hold the demand and apparently are the sole customer of companies like Scientific Atlanta, almost a reverse monopoly. If I have only one customer, and that customer is pumping millions of dollars into my company to keep food on my table, then why is it that the customer who allegedly wants so desperately to get out of the business and let me deal directly with the consumer instead doesn't seem to have any problem with the status quo in reality and doesn't put up a fight for open standards and instead fight against the standards that eventually forced upon them as a result? I don't think it's so much that the lack of compromise the _cause_ so much as one of the many _symptoms_ manifesting from a lack of _competence_. And I'm paying these people nearly $200/mo for the privilege (no premiums or PPV or anything, just cable, internet, and basic phone).

I can't wait until something new like AT&T's U-verse (which does charge $10/mo for HD but delivers more HD channels) finally rolls out to my neighborhood, and hopefully Verizon will finally move into south Texas and FiOS will add another source of competition. TWC has the cable monopoly in the area and _has_ had for far too long.



classicsat said:


> On STBs:
> 
> They need them to be able to sell their interactive services.


No, they don't. They could hash out an open standard for two-way communication and get the hell out of the STB business, as they've allegedly been chomping at the bit to do for years, now. Cable didn't used to be digital. They decided to move to digital. Fine, no problem. Except they didn't feel it was important enough to come up and implement with an open standard for doing so that would allow them to finally offload this allegedly burdensome STB/DVR business altogether.



> Firekite said:
> 
> 
> 
> So they're required to force systems on consumers that break the CableCARD standard, rendering them useless for every channel on that incompatible standard?
> 
> 
> 
> To remain competitive, yes.
Click to expand...

No, actually. They are not required by anyone to force new and proprietary systems on customers. They are not required to broadcast HD channels via CableCARD-incompatible SDV. Not even to remain competitive. Giving me the middle finger isn't being competitive, giving me only one choice for DVR isn't being competitive, and according to lhorer the monthly fee I pay for that one and only DVR choice is more trouble than it's worth to the cable company. That doesn't sound like they're working on a competitive edge, there, does it?



> The one DVD "Standard" could happen because there was no real standard to begin with. Cable on the other hand, is built on two (or more) hardware platforms, with a number of software providers, which is the legacy the providers have to work with.


What? You're telling me that when they decided they wanted to implement digital cable that they were unable to design a working, open standard for it? That the old-school analog cable channels prevented them from installing what would've been a new, open standard for digital cable? I don't think so. You might as well tell me that DVD was impossible because home video manufacturers were producing VHS and any new system would have to work with those old manufacturing lines.



> In the context of that statement, it is purely contractual and/or economic reasons to stay with one hardware platform.


So they're either pitiably poor businesspeople and are painfully shortsighted or lhorer's wrong and that they're actually _loving_ being the sole provider of fully functional STBs and DVRs?



> Supposing there were one headend hardware standard, an on software interface for interactive services, they'd have to change out a number of existing STBs and headend equipment to meet the new standard, or at least dispose the ones they have.


Which is what they did when they moved to digital... Would've been a lot smarter to do it just _once_, don't you think?

I'm sorry, but massive, monopolistic (or at best oligarchical) businesses running roughshod over consumers and then claiming to be the hapless victim in all this is really, really hard for me to accept. They either don't care or are ridiculously incompetent. They're not getting much in the way of sympathy from me either way.


----------



## MichaelK

Firekite said:


> They hold the supply. The CATV providers hold the demand and apparently are the sole customer of companies like Scientific Atlanta, almost a reverse monopoly. If I have only one customer, and that customer is pumping millions of dollars into my company to keep food on my table, then why is it that the customer who allegedly wants so desperately to get out of the business and let me deal directly with the consumer instead doesn't seem to have any problem with the status quo in reality and doesn't put up a fight for open standards and instead fight against the standards that eventually forced upon them as a result? I don't think it's so much that the lack of compromise the _cause_ so much as one of the many _symptoms_ manifesting from a lack of _competence_. And I'm paying these people nearly $200/mo for the privilege (no premiums or PPV or anything, just cable, internet, and basic phone).
> 
> I can't wait until something new like AT&T's U-verse (which does charge $10/mo for HD but delivers more HD channels) finally rolls out to my neighborhood, and hopefully Verizon will finally move into south Texas and FiOS will add another source of competition. TWC has the cable monopoly in the area and _has_ had for far too long.....


some interesting thoughts about the reverse monopoly. But it seems like one side always has the upper hand when it comes to negotiations even when both sides need each other. Look at how the players union makes MLB look stupid time and time again. The both need each other to survive but the players always seem to win.

good look with ATT u-verse. Apparently it only has the room for one HD show at a time and cant use cablecards anyway. So you can throw your daul tuner hd tivo in the trash to use that.


----------



## MichaelK

classicsat said:


> My understanding is that the cable providers have the idea that guide data is an interactive feature requiring two -way capabilities.


here's the link to the fcc order that I think created all the enabling regulations

http://www.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Cable/Orders/1998/fcc98116.pdf



> Section 629 covers not just equipment used to receive video programming, but also equipment used to access "other services offered over multichannel video programming systems." Such equipment includes televisions, VCRs, cable set-top boxes, personal computers, program guide equipment, and cable modems. The focus of Section 629, however, is on cable television set-top boxes and cable modems, devices that have historically been available only on a lease basis from the service provider.


seems pretty clear that they thought "program guide equipment" should be opened up with a standard that all could use. So even if it is 2-way then cable should have made a standard that others could use by now. (rereading I suppose since it's not a "focus" that means you can take decades to get around to it.)


----------



## MichaelK

mikeyts said:


> What the FCC ended up codifying in the regs is that cable providers are supposed to place PSIP loops in any QAM carrier which has a rebroadcast of an over-the-air channel in it. The FCC seems to be primarily concerned with over-the-air rebroadcasts on cable and very little with the rest of the commercial stuff, except to prohibit the cable providers from acing us out of being able to record it at all.


I _THINK _that reg was from a different proceeding or topic. I think it was meant just to enable or help out the transition from NTSC to ATSC. I dont think it was them washing their hands of their earlier thinking about commercial availibility of cable devices.

Also I dont think they have to place PSIP in for any over the air channel- my understanding is if they get a feed with the PSIP in it then they must pass it on. But if they are being fed by the station over a fiber or something without PSIP then they can go without the data embedded. The onus seems to be on the station to get the cable headend a feed with the PSIP in tact.

at least thats my understanding of that bit- I've been wrong before so if someone has links to that ruling I'd love to read it.


----------



## Firekite

MichaelK said:


> some interesting thoughts about the reverse monopoly. But it seems like one side always has the upper hand when it comes to negotiations even when both sides need each other.


Sure, and even the individual people engaging in the negotiations can be significant. But surely it would need to be agreed to by the uppermost echelons of management. And the CATV provider is the one that has the choice in the matter. This is a rather extreme case where if Time Warner tells them to get lost, where else do they have to peddle their proprietary product? Obviously it's not enough of a concern for them to move forward with a better system.



> good look with ATT u-verse. Apparently it only has the room for one HD show at a time and cant use cablecards anyway. So you can throw your daul tuner hd tivo in the trash to use that.


It's being returned anyway at this point. I don't want to do away with Discovery and several other channels. And if I were willing to do that, I would probably be canceling service altogether, as I would be left with primarily locals only anyway (that interest me, at least), and just go over the air. I've seen the U-verse hardware (well, software) a few times, and while I don't think it's as good as TiVo, it's good enough that I would be satisfied with it.

If the unavailable channels were as few as TWC claims, I would suck it up and just wait for the mythical dongle. Unfortunately, that list is vastly incomplete and/or out of date. "Time Warner San Antonio's Programming for CableCard is outright lousy. The only channels available in HD are TNT, ESPN, Discovery HD Theater, Fox SportsNET, MOJO, and Universal HD... Meaning I'm not getting 19 channels that should be available." No thanks.


----------



## mikeyts

MichaelK said:


> I _THINK _that reg was from a different proceeding or topic. I think it was meant just to enable or help out the transition from NTSC to ATSC. I dont think it was them washing their hands of their earlier thinking about commercial availibility of cable devices.
> 
> Also I dont think they have to place PSIP in for any over the air channel- my understanding is if they get a feed with the PSIP in it then they must pass it on. But if they are being fed by the station over a fiber or something without PSIP then they can go without the data embedded. The onus seems to be on the station to get the cable headend a feed with the PSIP in tact.
> 
> at least thats my understanding of that bit- I've been wrong before so if someone has links to that ruling I'd love to read it.


The regulation of which I speak is Code of Federal Regulations Title 47, §76.640(b)(1)(iv):


> (iv) For each digital transport stream that includes one or more services carried in-the-clear, such transport stream shall include virtual channel data in-band in the form of ATSC A/65B: ATSC Standard: Program and System Information Protocol for Terrestrial Broadcast and Cable (Revision B) (incorporated by reference, see §76.602), when available from the content provider.


(It goes on to describe the minimum content of the PSIP loop). I have to believe that if the content provider has a PSIP loop in his over-the-air transmission, it doesn't matter how they provide their content to the cable company, that information is "available". Of course "available" is, like so many of the terms used in wording these regulations, imprecise and undefined. Perhaps the information could be considered "unavailable" because the broadcaster chooses not to provide it at its whim .

I _KNOW_ that this regulation was added as part of the plug-and-play DTV-over-cable "Second Report and Order", FCC 03-225 A (the order to add §76.640 to Title 47 starts at the bottom of PDF page 48; their discussion of PSIP is at the bottom of PDF page 11, in section "C. Tuning and Guide Information").

EDIT: As I re-read that paragraph from the regs, I see that I was wrong about one thing--it's not just streams including rebroadcast over-the-air content that they're supposed to add PSIP for, but _any_ service carried in the clear. All of the over-the-air rebroadcasts have to be carried in the clear as part of the core basic cable tier (you cannot buy any cable at all without getting all of those channels, and none of them may be encrypted, scrambled or marked to in any way prohibit free copying). Typically, there are several other non-over-the-air channels in that tier, all of which have to be carried in the clear. However, they explicitly don't have to broadcast PSIP for a service unless it's available from the content provider and it seems unlikely that the providers of any of those channels would have PSIP available for them (typically stuff like TBS, WGN and CSPAN).


----------



## lrhorer

classicsat said:


> My understanding is that the cable providers have the idea that guide data is an interactive feature requiring two -way capabilities.


Nope. My Mitsubishi 62" DLP gets TV Guide data from digital streams using the CableCard. It doesn't work exceptionally well, but it does work.


----------



## mikeyts

lrhorer said:


> Nope. My Mitsubishi 62" DLP gets TV Guide data from digital streams using the CableCard. It doesn't work exceptionally well, but it does work.


When you say "TV Guide data", you're referring to the Gemstar "TV Guide On Screen" stuff? In what fashion do you believe that it uses the CableCARD for this (also, what specific model do you own)? As I said, my Mitsubishi panel is picking that stuff up just fine without a CableCARD.


----------



## classicsat

Firekite said:


> They hold the supply. The CATV providers hold the demand and apparently are the sole customer of companies like Scientific Atlanta


Almost sole. They have other customers, but those are insignificant compared to the cable providers proper.
Also a lot of the headend and plant (made by much the same companies) is such as it wouldn't matter.



> If I have only one customer, and that customer is pumping millions of dollars into my company to keep food on my table, then why is it that the customer who allegedly wants so desperately to get out of the business and let me deal directly with the consumer
> 
> 
> 
> Because "your" boxes need set up for their network, hence they need to at least order them configured, or accept delivery to their warehouse for configuration.
> 
> 
> 
> instead doesn't seem to have any problem with the status quo in reality and doesn't put up a fight for open standards and instead fight against the standards that eventually forced upon them as a result?
Click to expand...

Because your customes have an investment in the current system, including STBs in the field. What they are trying to do is come up with a system where they can retain as much of their existing system as possible, and try to make the 3rd party boxes open to their system.


> I can't wait until something new like AT&T's U-verse (which does charge $10/mo for HD but delivers more HD channels) finally rolls out to my neighborhood, and hopefully Verizon will finally move into south Texas and FiOS will add another source of competition. TWC has the cable monopoly in the area and _has_ had for far too long.


Currently, either "fiber" provider has exclusive territory.


> No, actually. They are not required by anyone to force new and proprietary systems on customers. They are not required to broadcast HD channels via CableCARD-incompatible SDV. Not even to remain competitive. Giving me the middle finger isn't being competitive, giving me only one choice for DVR isn't being competitive, and according to lhorer the monthly fee I pay for that one and only DVR choice is more trouble than it's worth to the cable company. That doesn't sound like they're working on a competitive edge, there, does it?


Their competition is satellite and other content sources.


> What? You're telling me that when they decided they wanted to implement digital cable that they were unable to design a working, open standard for it?


It isn't they were technically unable to develop a standard, it is that they didn't want to, or have to, at the time they developed digital cable. By the time it came to "open"their systems, they were well entrenched.


> So they're either pitiably poor businesspeople and are painfully shortsighted or lhorer's wrong and that they're actually _loving_ being the sole provider of fully functional STBs and DVRs?


It is a bit of both. They love having a "system" box, as it allows them to sell value added services and otherwise have a strong degree of control a straight 3rd part box does not offer, or worse, they feel it "steals" from them, revenue a "system" may otherwise ran them.



> Which is what they did when they moved to digital... Would've been a lot smarter to do it just _once_, don't you think?


They cannot change their system now though. Hindsight is 20/20 though.


> I'm sorry, but massive, monopolistic (or at best oligarchical) businesses running roughshod over consumers and then claiming to be the hapless victim in all this is really, really hard for me to accept. They either don't care or are ridiculously incompetent. They're not getting much in the way of sympathy from me either way.


They don't care, as long as the can protect their revenue.


----------



## classicsat

Firekite said:


> If Time Warner tells them to get lost, where else do they have to peddle their proprietary product? Obviously it's not enough of a concern for them to move forward with a better system.


Rogers and Videotron (major Canadian users of Scientific Atlanta gear). Or get out of the proprietary STB business and get into the open STB business.


----------



## lrhorer

Firekite said:


> They hold the supply. The CATV providers hold the demand and apparently are the sole customer of companies like Scientific Atlanta, almost a reverse monopoly. If I have only one customer...


You still seem to be missing the point there isn't just one customer. There are no fewer than 50. Of course that's a lot fewer than the 100 million CATV subscribers, but it's also a lot more than one.



Firekite said:


> and that customer is pumping millions of dollars into my company to keep food on my table, then why is it that the customer who allegedly wants so desperately


The term "desperately" is inaccurate. The CATV providers certainly have items much higher on their list of agendas than implementing separable security. That doesn't mean it isn't on their list, however. I'm sure that the vast majority of Americans want very much indeed for gasoline costs to drop back down below the $2 mark, but how many of us would be willing to give up our jobs, our homes, and our health to accomplish that goal?



Firekite said:


> No, they don't. They could hash out an open standard for two-way communication...


Whihc is precisely what they did. It's called Open Cable Specification 2.0, and it was penned quite some years ago.



Firekite said:


> Except they didn't feel it was important enough to come up and implement with an open standard for doing so that would allow them to finally offload this allegedly burdensome STB/DVR business altogether.


Yes, they did and they did. The standard is completely workable. The problem is it is unacceptable to 3rd party manufacturers and to consumers. Now that we're a couple of years down the road, it's also becoming unacceptable to the majority of CATV equipment manufacturers and to the CATV system which have installed systems which are incompatible with CC 2.0.



Firekite said:


> They are not required by anyone


He did not say it was an individual or a company. It is market pressures which are forcing them to try to be competitive with satellite services.



Firekite said:


> to force new and proprietary systems on customers.


At this point by definition any new system is proprietary. It's also the case that delivering additional services requires a new system. Ergo, the only choice is between not delivering new services, thereby ceding a large share of the market to DirecTV and Dish TV, or deploying proprietary systems. If you were faced with the prospect of losing 25% or even more of your income or ticking off less than 1% of your customers, which would you do?



Firekite said:


> They are not required to broadcast HD channels via CableCARD-incompatible SDV.


SDV is not incompatible with CableCards. SDV is 100% compatible with CableCards, and every single CableCard is compatible with SDV.



Firekite said:


> Not even to remain competitive. Giving me the middle finger isn't being competitive


It most certainly is when the revenue stream being impacted by their actions only represents an extremely tiny fraction of the potential loss by their not taking action. Fewer than 1% of CATV customers own TiVos, but more than 50% of CATV customers are taking the move to satellite or FIOS services under advisement.



Firekite said:


> giving me only one choice for DVR isn't being competitive, and according to lhorer the monthly fee I pay for that one and only DVR choice is more trouble than it's worth to the cable company. That doesn't sound like they're working on a competitive edge, there, does it?


Yes, it does. Re-read my posts. The revenue from STBs and DVRs is small, but the revenue from the services provided by STBs and DVRs is huge, and the marketing value of those services (even those which are not revenue generating, such as Video Rewind and VOD) is huge. Provided overriding issues such as security and the cost of support are handled reasonably, many senior management teams of various MSOs would be thrilled to be able to hand off the heartburn of delivering STBs and DVRs for their customers. There's another catch, though. No matter how ubiquitous 3rd party equipment might eventually become, the MSO is still going to be required to supply leased receivers. Since they are never going to be able to completely get rid of the headache, and since support of 3rd party equipment brings its own headaches (and costs), the impetus to encourage 3rd party devices is just not what it otherwise might be.



Firekite said:


> What? You're telling me that when they decided they wanted to implement digital cable that they were unable to design a working, open standard for it?


No, he's not, because they did.



Firekite said:


> That the old-school analog cable channels prevented them from installing what would've been a new, open standard for digital cable?


No, the fact that no CATV equipment manufacturer produced any such devices and the fact the FCC said they had to implement CC 1.0 equipment did.



Firekite said:


> I don't think so. You might as well tell me that DVD was impossible because home video manufacturers were producing VHS and any new system would have to work with those old manufacturing lines.


Do you know anyone who purchased a Betamax system? CED disc? LASERDisc? HD DVD? An 8 track tape player? How happy are those people with those purhcases?



Firekite said:


> So they're either pitiably poor businesspeople and are painfully shortsighted or lhorer's wrong and that they're actually _loving_ being the sole provider of fully functional STBs and DVRs?


It's been nearly 30 years since separable security was first seriously proposed, and nearly 25 years since 2-way digital services were first deployed. Given that some MSOs could potentially face bankruptcy within the next 3 years if they don't do something about the threat from other providers, and given that there is little reason to believe another 25 to 30 years won't pass before a unified standard gets ratified, just how are they being short sighted? This especialy since better than 98% of their custojmers and potential customers couldn't care less about whether the channels are delivered on SDV or linear systems, but do care about the number of channels available - just like you seem to do. Be honest with yourself for a moment. If your TiVo were able to receive all the SDV channels, would you care in even the tiniest measure that MythTV owners still cannot?



Firekite said:


> Which is what they did when they moved to digital... Would've been a lot smarter to do it just _once_, don't you think?


All else being equal, yes, but taking the real-world situation into account, no. Notice also, it wasn't a choice they had available. It is simply a fact no such system was available for widespread deployment at the time. It should have been, but it wasn't.



Firekite said:


> They either don't care or are ridiculously incompetent. They're not getting much in the way of sympathy from me either way.


They couldn't care less about your sympathy. Heck, I couldn't care less about your sympathy, and I very much want a solution to this mess which leaves me able to receive all the scheduled programming regardless of it's broadcast protocols. All they want is your money. Actually, they don't even want that if it means they lose more of someone else's money than they get from you. Like it or not, no consideration of any type which impacts a minority of customer dollars is going to override a consideration which impacts the majority of customer dollars. Get 30 or 40 million people to buy S3 TiVos, and the situation will be very, very different I assure you.


----------



## MichaelK

Firekite said:


> Sure, and even the individual people engaging in the negotiations can be significant. But surely it would need to be agreed to by the uppermost echelons of management. And the CATV provider is the one that has the choice in the matter. This is a rather extreme case where if Time Warner tells them to get lost, where else do they have to peddle their proprietary product? Obviously it's not enough of a concern for them to move forward with a better system.
> 
> ....


I think it's a bit more complex- first what happens when time warner tells them to go screw and then time warners head end breaks? What happens tomorrow when time warner needs to buy 100,000 dvr's while they wait for OCAP to show up? Basically telling moto or sa to go screw instantly ruins there ability to remain a going concern. TW would go out of business and comcast would buy the systems up at firesale prices.

Now why dont comcast and TW and cablevision and cox stick up to moto and SA together? I'm pretty sure the FTC would arrest all the CEO's for collusion. Beyond that I'm not even sure you could get the big boys to play nice together ling neough to collude.

so there's some reality to work with.

Cables end game is to have OCAP and downloadable secuirty so then they CAN tell moto and SA to go screw. Witness comcasts dealing with Panasonic for piles of new OCAP boxes. WIth OCAP theycan buy boxes from anyone. And if You want a new head end and all your STB's are ocap with downloadable security then you can change headend brands at will too. No need to match your headend to the boxes in the feild. So cable is close to their nirvana- and they'll do it all without having to make standards that help anyone but themselves.



Firekite said:


> ...It's being returned anyway at this point. I don't want to do away with Discovery and several other channels. And if I were willing to do that, I would probably be canceling service altogether, as I would be left with primarily locals only anyway (that interest me, at least), and just go over the air. I've seen the U-verse hardware (well, software) a few times, and while I don't think it's as good as TiVo, it's good enough that I would be satisfied with it.....


the MAJOR problem I think u-vers has unless they have fixed it is unlike fios they use twisted pair for for the last few hundred feet- so the bandwidth is limited and you can only tune on HD thing PER HOUSE. So it's not just that you cant have a dual tuner dvr- you can't even have 2 HD TV' with their boxes. Maybe that's changed but you really need to look to see what the status is. Verizon actually runs fiber to the house so has more bandwidth then anyone.


----------



## MichaelK

lrhorer said:


> Nope. My Mitsubishi 62" DLP gets TV Guide data from digital streams using the CableCard. It doesn't work exceptionally well, but it does work.


please explain- I have never heard of this.

what standard is being used between the head end the the tv to enable that? Is it an open standard or just something that maybe Mitsu worked out with Moto in private?


----------



## MichaelK

mikeyts said:


> The regulation of which I speak is Code of Federal Regulations Title 47, §76.640(b)(1)(iv)It goes on to describe the minimum content of the PSIP loop). I have to believe that if the content provider has a PSIP loop in his over-the-air transmission, it doesn't matter how they provide their content to the cable company, that information is "available". Of course "available" is, like so many of the terms used in wording these regulations, imprecise and undefined. Perhaps the information could be considered "unavailable" because the broadcaster chooses not to provide it at its whim .
> 
> I _KNOW_ that this regulation was added as part of the plug-and-play DTV-over-cable "Second Report and Order", FCC 03-225 A (the order to add §76.640 to Title 47 starts at the bottom of PDF page 48; their discussion of PSIP is at the bottom of PDF page 11, in section "C. Tuning and Guide Information").
> 
> EDIT: As I re-read that paragraph from the regs, I see that I was wrong about one thing--it's not just streams including rebroadcast over-the-air content that they're supposed to add PSIP for, but _any_ service carried in the clear. All of the over-the-air rebroadcasts have to be carried in the clear as part of the core basic cable tier (you cannot buy any cable at all without getting all of those channels, and none of them may be encrypted, scrambled or marked to in any way prohibit free copying). Typically, there are several other non-over-the-air channels in that tier, all of which have to be carried in the clear. However, they explicitly don't have to broadcast PSIP for a service unless it's available from the content provider and it seems unlikely that the providers of any of those channels would have PSIP available for them (typically stuff like TBS, WGN and CSPAN).


from what I understand if the tv station gives them a fiber feed it might come from a place in the chain before the PSIP is added (perhaps to get higher quality to the head end). So in those cases there is no pip "availible" in the stream for the cable people to pass along


----------



## lrhorer

Firekite said:


> And the CATV provider is the one that has the choice in the matter.


Not at this point, they don't. When they bought the systems several years ago, they did, but now they realistically don't.



Firekite said:


> This is a rather extreme case where if Time Warner tells them to get lost, where else do they have to peddle their proprietary product? Obviously it's not enough of a concern for them to move forward with a better system.


You're missing the point. They've already bought their respective systems, at a cost of over $10 billion. Telling their specific vendor to get lost means collectively chucking $10 billion and spending $10 billion for some other proprietary system. Why would they do that, when hone of the available systems are in any way superior in terms of the revenue they will bring to the CATV provider?



Firekite said:


> It's being returned anyway at this point.


That is your right. You couldn't pay me enough to have to deal with the W$%#$^ SA 8300HD, and nothing else on the market provides even a fraction of the features I consider critical in the TiVo.



Firekite said:


> I don't want to do away with Discovery and several other channels.


I believe you said you were in San Antonio on TWC. If so, that's false. Discovery is available in SD and Discovery HD theater is available in HD on the Series III platform on TWC in San Antonio.



Firekite said:


> And if I were willing to do that, I would probably be canceling service altogether, as I would be left with primarily locals only anyway (that interest me, at least), and just go over the air.


That's a considerable exaggeration. There are only 6 locals broadcast in HD, but the list of HD channels available to the TiVo is considerably higher than that. Twice as many, in fact:

104 NBC - WOAI HD +
105 CBS-KENS 5 HD +
107 My Network TV - KMYS HD +
108 PBS - KLRN HD +
111 FOX - KABB HD +
112 ABC - KSAT HD +
124 ESPN HD +
127 TNT HD +
130 HD Theater +
160 MOJO (NBA TV HD pre-empted on MOJO) +
162 HDNet +
163 HDNET Movies +
164 Universal HD +
180 HBO HD +
182 Showtime HD +
184 Cinemax HD +
186 The Movie Channel HD +
187 Starz HD +

It's true the number of channels not available to the TiVo is considerably higher, but many of them are semi-duplicates of ones you can receive, and others may not as yet have very much in the way of true HD content on them. Many are not HD at all:

125 ESPN2 HD*
113 TBS HD*
115 The Science Channel HD*
122 NHL HD*
128 A&E HD*
129 The Discovery Channel HD*
134 MHD*
135 CNN HD*
136 The Weather Channel HD*
147 Food Network HD*
149 TLC HD*
154 Fox Business Network HD*
155 Animal Planet HD*
157 National Geographic HD*
166 LMN HD*
167 HGTV HD*
168 Versus/Golf Channel HD*
174 The History Channel HD*
181 HBO West HD*
183 Showtime HD West*
185 Cinemax HD West*
188 Starz West HD*
265 CSTV*
267 Sportsman Channel*
285 MTV Tr3s* (Español)
294 HITN* (Español)
295 EWTN en Español*
296 Toon Disney En Espanol*
315 Starz West*
316 Starz Edge West*
317 Starz InBlack West*
319 Starz Cinema West*
326 HBO West*
327 HBO 2 West*
328 HBO Signature West*
329 HBO Family West*
330 HBO Comedy West*
331 HBO Zone West*
333 HBO Latino West (Español)*
343 ThrillerMAX East*
344 Cinemax West*
345 MoreMAX West*
346 ActionMAX West*
355 Showtime West*
356 Showtime 2 West*
357 Showtime Showcase West*
358 Showtime Extreme West*
359 Showtime Beyond West*
701 TV Japan*
705 SBTN*
711 Zee TV*
712 TV Asia*
715 DEUTSCHE WELLE - TV*
716 DW-One*
720 The Filipino Channel*

But yet again you seem to be missing the point. None of the latter list would be available at all to anyone if it were not for SDV.



Firekite said:


> "Time Warner San Antonio's Programming for CableCard is outright lousy. The only channels available in HD are TNT, ESPN, Discovery HD Theater, Fox SportsNET, MOJO, and Universal HD... Meaning I'm not getting 19 channels that should be available." No thanks.


I think you miscounted a few on both sides, there. See above. By my count there are 12 linear HD channels in addition to the 6 local HD channels. Many markets do not have 18 total HD channels available, period.

I count at least 22 HD channels not available on the TiVo, but no fewer than 4 of those are merely West Coast schedules of the regular East Coast broadcasts. A DVR makes those rather moot. Of the remaining 18 or so, yes I would very much like to get A&E, Discovery, NGC, Animal Planet, The Science Channel, TLC, History, and maybe TBS in HD, but I do get them in SD, and for the moment that is sufficient, if hardly ideal.

Frankly I can't imagine anyone actually being upset at not being able to view The Weather Channel, CNN, Fox Business Network, and Food TV in HD. Given the quality of most of their video, I can't get all excited over Lifetime or Home & Garden, either.


----------



## lrhorer

MichaelK said:


> please explain- I have never heard of this.
> 
> what standard is being used between the head end the the tv to enable that? Is it an open standard or just something that maybe Mitsu worked out with Moto in private?


Well, since the system I am on is Scientific Atlanta, not Motorola, the latter is extremely unlikely. It's similar to Closed Captioning. The information is carried in the VBI of local broadcasts, usually PBS, but in this case only in digital broadcasts. It is up to the individual CATV provider to decide which of the VBI streams to pass through and which to block, but it requires no new or uncommon equipment. I don't have a CableCard in my TV any longer (they're in the TiVo now), so I can't provide a screen shot. but I assure you it is there and it works. Note the CATV provider is not *required* to deliver the info, but the technology is available. I tried to find the TV Guide manual on the Mitsubishi website, but they deliver the main TV users manual and the TV Guide users manual separately, and I could not find a copy of the TV Guide manual on the site. The only things I found are very brief references to setting up and using the TV Guide on pages 43, 48, and 60 of this URL.


----------



## lrhorer

mikeyts said:


> When you say "TV Guide data", you're referring to the Gemstar "TV Guide On Screen" stuff? In what fashion do you believe that it uses the CableCARD for this (also, what specific model do you own)? As I said, my Mitsubishi panel is picking that stuff up just fine without a CableCARD.


That may be true. I believe it is true of OTA and it should be true of cable, as well, except that my TV, at least, can't pick up any of the digital channels without CableCard, and can't employ the Guide on analog channels. This may be a design flaw and may have been fixed in later models. Mine was purchased in late 2005. Since I got an S3 in September 2006, I really haven't looked any further into it. The point is, a guide in no way requires 2-way communications. All Satellite receivers, including DirecTiVos, have guides without 2-way interaction.

Edit: Oh, to answer your question, I believe it's a WD-62628. It's not on the front panel, and between my failing eyesight and my physical disabilities, getting the info off the back of the set is far beyond the amount of trouble to which I am willing to go for this purpose.


----------



## Firekite

My god. It's like trying to argue politics with a sophomore philosophy major. I realize that you're an apologist for the cable companies, but it's getting so ridiculous that it's difficult to maintain my cool while reading your responses, must less coming up with level-headed responses to all the increasingly tangential and mind-boggling assertions. You _really_ want to know if those who bought 8 track players are happy with their purchases?? And that nonsensical response to a challenge to your assertion that it just wasn't possible for CATV industry to figure out a standard that allowed them to invest in open technologies that let them finally shed the whole STB business? Are you _drunk?_

I will note that in trying to put the best possible face on cable, you're dancing so fine a line between technical and semantical truth that you're occasional stumbling into lies, such as that no SDV channel would be possible without SDV and even worse the _bald-faced lie_ that "SDV is 100% compatible with CableCards, and every single CableCard is compatible with SDV," and into the willfully misleading and stubbornly hard-headed like insisting that Discovery is available via CableCARD--because the old SD channel hasn't been cut off yet, despite it having been made crystal clear that this discussion isn't about SD, but about HD, the entire reason for getting a S3 or HD TiVo rather than just an S2. You're also willing to go so far into hyperboleland that you're insisting that any solution for stranded CableCARD customers would mean instantly dumping every single piece of technology they have now and then acquiring all new technology and having to install it overnight, and that they couldn't possibly have figured out where the industry was going 15 and 20 years ago and choosing to entrench themselves in a superior solution that would've given everyone what you claim they've wanted all along: the providers, the CE manufacturers, and the consumer.

If your vehement assertions are accurate, then the CATV industry (and TWC in particular) have made some really, really dumb decisions along the line, and they apparently do not feel enough pain in the way of STBs, DVRs, regulatory compliance, and angry customers to do anything about it, nor do they apparently feel compelled to demand a better DVR product from their vendor.

EDIT (to cover your most recent reply): No. You're wrong. TWC themselves say you're wrong. Unless you're using their STB, you will not get the program guide, even info on which channel you're tuning to and what is showing at the moment. You can only decrypt the channel itself if all you've got is a CableCARD. So you'll receive the channel, but nothing else. You can pull it from other sources if your equipment can do so (e.g. TiVo pulling it over the net), but any such solution is done separately from TWC's signal being decrypted by the CableCARD.


----------



## mikeyts

MichaelK said:


> from what I understand if the tv station gives them a fiber feed it might come from a place in the chain before the PSIP is added (perhaps to get higher quality to the head end). So in those cases there is no pip "availible" in the stream for the cable people to pass along


It's gotta be far enough along the chain that local ads and programming have been grafted in and the feed has been transcoded down from the typical 45 Mbps that it comes off the network satellite transponder at. (So far as I can tell estimating bit rates from the size of recordings, the local channels that I can pull in at my location are at very, very close to the same rate on cable as they are on the air). In any case, if its not in the version of the stream that they give to the cable providers over fiber, it's coming from somewhere when they put it in their broadcast stream and could be provided to the cable system separately if they wanted to go to the trouble. Again, that word "available" is useless vague.


----------



## lrhorer

Firekite said:


> My god. It's like trying to argue politics with a sophomore philosophy major. I realize that you're an apologist for the cable companies


I am not an apologist for them. Not to put too fine a point on it, I hate them. I hate their politics, I hate the way they treat their employees, and I hate the fact they seem to be almost completely incapable of telling the truth even at the best of times. I think their services are overpriced and their policies aggravating at best. Their technical support is horrible and their customer service vomitous. These, among other things, were major reasons I left their employ, quite some years ago. Now they are one of my most ardent, as well as sleaziest competitors. None of that, however, eliminates my understanding of the economics, logistics, and engineering of the systems which I helped to evaluate and deploy many years ago and their descendants.



Firekite said:


> You _really_ want to know if those who bought 8 track players are happy with their purchases??


Let me acquaint you with the notion of a rhetorical question. It is asked in order to provoke thoughtful consideration on the part of the individual being asked the question. No, I certainly don't need you to tell me how those people feel. I know all too well from personal experience. The point which you so blithely seem to have missed is once an entity purchases the infrastructure and a significant amount of delivery media for a particular technology, one is stuck with either trying to live with a dead-end technology or spending a tremendous amount of money to obtain replacement infrastructure and media for which they have already paid once. A consumer might possibly go out and re-purchase their entire library on a whim, but a business cannot.



Firekite said:


> And that nonsensical response to a challenge to your assertion that it just wasn't possible for CATV industry to figure out a standard that allowed them to invest in open technologies that let them finally shed the whole STB business? Are you _drunk?_


1. Drop the sarcastic ad-hominem, and I mean *NOW*.

2. Please bother to read what I write. Not only did I never say it was impossible for them to figure out a standard, I specifically pointed out on more than one occasion that they *DID* figure out and publish just such a standard. 'Three fully compatible standards, actually: CableCard 1.0, CableCard 2.0, and Open Cable 2.0, which includes OCAP. The fact the latter two are self-serving and have sections in them politically or economically unacceptable to other parties doesn't mean they did not create them or that they are technologically infeasible or unworkable. They have already done precisely what you say they should do. Could they have done a better job? Perhaps. Should they have accepted compromise solutions to the proposed specifications? In my opinion, surely. That doesn't mean it wasn't created at all, or in fact that the solution is in any way technologically inferior. It isn't.



Firekite said:


> I will note that in trying to put the best possible face on cable


I'm not trying to put any face on cable. They suck big time. It's just they do not suck for any of the reasons you claim. Straw man arguments and false accusations help no one. Criticize them for what they did wrong or didn't do right, not for things beyond their control.



Firekite said:


> you're occasional stumbling into lies, such as that no SDV channel would be possible without SDV


I have posted several thousand words in this thread and others concerning SDV, and I never once made that claim. Quote the sentence where I said that or retract the claim. The closest I came to anything resembling this (and it's not even close) is that none of the 50 or so new regular schedule SDV channels could be delivered if not for SDV. I didn't mention the 300 or so On Demand and IPPV channels, but it applies to them, as well.

I will allow, however, that you might have been confused by statements which require more than a superficial understanding of general logistics to be able to verify, so I will rephrase:

None of the 50 plus new regular schedule offerings and several hundred VOD and IPPV channels (including more than 2 dozen HD offerings) could have been added without deploying SDV unless a similar number of linear channels or a large fractional number of analog channels were removed. 'Better?

I'll quantify it for you even more: The existing CATV plant in San Antonio has an upper limit of 750MHz on the distribution side. The lower 547MHz of that spectrum are being used by analog channels, FM radio, upstream communications, etc. That leaves 203MHz or room for 33 QAMs. If we arbitrarily divide each QAM into 24 slices, then the most common rate shaping requires 2 slices for each SD channel and 11 slices for each HD channel. That's a total of 66 HD channels and 33 SD channels, or a compromise offering 5.5 additional SD channels for each HD channel removed. VOD is essentially impossible without SDV, and the number of IPPV channels would have to be severely limited.

So you tell me (and don't dodge the questions), after we eliminate SDV we only have room for perhaps 50 HD channels and 210 SD channels, with no VOD or Video rewind. What do you eliminate that will please not only you but also the other 300,000 subscribers? Why should *they* lose their VOD and Video Rewind features just to make you happy? How much extra are you willing to pay for your service to make up for all the lost IPPV revenue and customers lost to Satellite services because cable can't offer as many HD channels?

With SDV, the cable company can ultimatley offer hundreds of HD channels and possibly thousands of SD channels, each potentially bearing revenue. Why should they give that up to make you (the TiVo owner) happy, when it doesn't do anything to make anyone else happy?



Firekite said:


> and even worse the _bald-faced lie_ that "SDV is 100% compatible with CableCards, and every single CableCard is compatible with SDV,"


Not only is it not a bald faced lie, it is 100% accurate, under severe penalty of law should any device not conform to the spec. You think it's wrong? Please provide the make and model number of any CableCard which cannot be used with any CableCard compliant system, system bugs aside. Or the flip-side, name any SDV system which is incompatible with CableCard specs. There aren't any. (Here's a clue: there are only three of them.) No Cablecard would ever be approved by CableLabs unless it met their specifications for CC 1.0 or CC 2.0, which again by law requires the devices to work with any and every digital host and every digital transport system in the United States except a very tiny number of small grandfathered systems. That includes all SDV systems.

How many times must I repeat this?

It is the *host* which is or is not incompatible with SDV, not the CableCards.
It is the *host* which is or is not incompatible with SDV, not the CableCards.
It is the *host* which is or is not incompatible with SDV, not the CableCards.
It is the *host* which is or is not incompatible with SDV, not the CableCards.
It is the *host* which is or is not incompatible with SDV, not the CableCards.
It is the *host* which is or is not incompatible with SDV, not the CableCards.
It is the *host* which is or is not incompatible with SDV, not the CableCards.

Is that enough? Exactly what do you not understand about the fact all CableCards are 100% compatible with SDV systems? Do I need to repeat the above another 100 times before it sinks in? Exactly what do you not understand about the fact SDV is expressly a 2-way protocol fully compliant with CC1.0 and CC 2.0, and while every CableCard is 100% compatible with SDV, no unidirectional host is compatible with SDV? That includes the TiVo. That does not include the CATV provider's STBs and DVRs, which use precisely the same CableCards your TiVo does. It would not include any device made by any manufacturer which was compatible with the local 2-way protocols, but outside the CATV equipment manufacturers, none such exist.



Firekite said:


> despite it having been made crystal clear that this discussion isn't about SD, but about HD


Fine, consider it a nit-pick if you like, but your statemement - both in and out of context - made it sound like we could not receive the Discovery Channel at all.



Firekite said:


> the entire reason for getting a S3 or HD TiVo rather than just an S2.


That might be *your* entire reason. It most certainly was not mine. My list is extremely long, and while CableCard support is definitely on the list, I waited patiently for nearly 5 years for TiVo to come out with an acceptable upgrade to the Series I. The Series II did not qualify, by a long shot. (And I suppose the fact an S2 sooner probably rather than later isn't going to be able to receive anything at all is not a good reason to decide against one?)



Firekite said:


> You're also willing to go so far into hyperboleland that you're insisting that any solution for stranded CableCARD customers would mean instantly dumping every single piece of technology they have now and then acquiring all new technology


Don't be silly. Unlike you, I have been through quite a large number of staged technology rollouts in a CATV system, so I know precisely what is involved. This one, however, would be unusually painful and eqpensive. The moment any single QAM in the network is converted from, say, Motorola SDV to BigBand SDV management, that QAM becomes unuseable for every user in the city. To most intents and purposes, jumping from Scientific Atlanta to Motorola means all 200 or so QAM modulators (at something over $85,000 each) must be replaced in very short order, and every STB and DVR must be replaced as well.

Nor did I suggest there is only one solution. There are lots of possible solutions, but none of them are good and none of them are going to be liked by everyone in the mix. The *best* solution is a unified standard for all bidiectional hosts, and that does indeed mean most CATV providers would have to replace or retrofit all their SDV equipment. The only ones who would not, if any, would be those whose plant employs the system chosen to be the standard.

For that matter, the system we have right now works, it just means no 3rd party solution can be delivered which works fully with every CATV system. Neither consumers nor 3rd party manufacturers are going to want to deal with purchased devices which only work on a fraction of all systems.

You seem to be unwilling to get this fact through your head. A Scientific Atlanta STB / DVR will not work with a Motorola headend, and vice versa. There is no STB or DVR currently available to any CATV provider which will work with some other manufacturer's equipment.



Firekite said:


> where the industry was going 15 and 20 years ago and choosing to entrench themselves in a superior solution


Read my lips: *There was no such solution at that time. There still is no such solution at this time*. No one can buy something which doesn't exist. No one can install something which hasn't even been engineered, yet.



Firekite said:


> given everyone what you claim they've wanted all along: the providers, the CE manufacturers, and the consumer.


Wanting something doesn't mean one can go buy it off a shelf. Wishing a manufacturer would produce a product does not make it profitable for them to do so.



Firekite said:


> If your vehement assertions are accurate, then the CATV industry (and TWC in particular) have made some really, really dumb decisions along the line


I thought you said I was a CATV apologist? That is precisely what happened, although limiting it to TWC isn't fair, because they haven't made any particularly different decisions than anyone else. Also, "intransigent" and "thoughtlessly intractable" might be better terms than "dumb". Also, the CATV industry wasn't the only one who made ultimately detrimental decisions, although I wouldn't argue if you wanted to say theirs were the worst. The only candidate in my mind for a worse decisions was the FCC who decided again and again to do nothing.



Firekite said:


> and they apparently do not feel enough pain in the way of STBs, DVRs, regulatory compliance, and angry customers to do anything about it


There are almost surely fewer than 5000 Series III / TiVo HD customers in San Antonio, possibly fewer than 2000. Yet there are more than 300,000 customers, total. That means that more than 295,000 customers couldn't care less about this issue, but given TWCs record, I'm willing to bet over 100,000 have some other gripe. Which group should be allocated the most resources?



Firekite said:


> nor do they apparently feel compelled to demand a better DVR product from their vendor.


Once again, you're wrong, at least in the case of Scientific Atlanta DVRs. The number of complaints about the 8300HD is record setting, and SA (Cisco) did procure new software for the 8300. It's called Passport Echo, and it's been deployed in a number of systems around the country. The catch is the SA 8300 comes with SARA software, not Passport Echo. The CATV company has to pay extra - quite a bit extra I'm given to understand - for the Passport software. I don't know whether TWC has decided corporate wide not to purchase the Passport software or if it has left the decision to the local company, but San Antonio and Austin, at least, are not getting the Passport software. Although still not a TiVo by a very long shot, the Passport software is reportedly vastly better than SARA.



Firekite said:


> EDIT (to cover your most recent reply): No. You're wrong. TWC themselves say you're wrong. Unless you're using their STB, you will not get the program guide, even info on which channel you're tuning to and what is showing at the moment.


OK, we're talking at cross purposes on this one, and perhaps that's my fault. The exact same interactive guide provided with the SA boxes is not available. Channel 77 (non-interactive) is, and other interactive guides such as the TV Guide on my Mitsibishi are. Since all grid guides are worse than useless, I don't consider it an important point, however.

Oh, and BTW, the odds any information you get out of TWC is accurate are vanishingly small. The number of people there who habitually lie continuously is only exceed by those who haven't a clue about what they are speaking. This whether the statements are verbal or in print. Those who don't lie and do know their business are extremely difficult to find.



Firekite said:


> You can only decrypt the channel itself if all you've got is a CableCARD. So you'll receive the channel, but nothing else. You can pull it from other sources if your equipment can do so (e.g. TiVo pulling it over the net), but any such solution is done separately from TWC's signal being decrypted by the CableCARD.


Nope, you're wrong, or half wrong. The CableCard decrypts the steam - all of it. What the receiver can do with that stream depends on what is in the stream and of what the receiver is capable. The TV Guide Interactive Program Guide available on some TVs performs the exact same functions as that of the SA STBs. Note the CableCards in the SA STBs don't provide the guide, either. They just descrypt the stream which is used by the box to create the Onscreen Guide. The SA boxes are able to do so only because they are compatible with the SA gear in the headend. Unless they've changed the protocol lately, however, it's not an SDV protocol. Whether the PBS signal carrying the guide is technically "TWC's signal being decrypted by the CableCARD" or not is some pretty fine hair splitting, if you ask me, but OK, if you insist, I'll agree it is being "pulled from other sources".

'Truth be told, since I never use any onscreen guide of any sort, I really couldn't care less about this particular issue.


----------



## Firekite

lrhorer said:


> None of that, however, eliminates my understanding of the economics, logistics, and engineering of the systems which I helped to evaluate and deploy many years ago and their descendants.


Thank you for the additional information, as it helps put some much-needed perspective on your posts and affects the tone in which they're read (at least for me). I think in the end we simply disagree about the economics and logistics involved.



> The point which you so blithely seem to have missed is once an entity purchases the infrastructure and a significant amount of delivery media for a particular technology, one is stuck with either trying to live with a dead-end technology or spending a tremendous amount of money to obtain replacement infrastructure and media for which they have already paid once.


I'm well aware of the point you were attempting to make, however badly. I'm pretty sure everything's moving to Blu-ray now that HD-DVD is dead, and yet it doesn't look like Warner's going bankrupt for betting on the wrong horse, to use one of your examples. Regardless, one isn't stuck if one's only buried up to one's ankles. That seems an odd time to dig furiously so that you can be in totally over your head, and you seem to be drawing a false dichotomy between bending over for your vendor, to whom you've sold your soul, while thanking them for it and the polar opposite of severing all contact with them and heading in an entirely new direction. There _are_ options in the middle, not the least of which is what some people call "migration."



> 1. Drop the sarcastic ad-hominem, and I mean *NOW*.


Are you really convinced that's the best approach, exaggerating (if not outright mislabeling) an alleged offense and then _ordering_ the alleged offender to do your bidding, as though you had the authority to do so?



> 2. Please bother to read what I write. Not only did I never say it was impossible for them to figure out a standard, I specifically pointed out on more than one occasion that they *DID* figure out and publish just such a standard. 'Three fully compatible standards, actually: CableCard 1.0, CableCard 2.0, and Open Cable 2.0, which includes OCAP. The fact the latter two are self-serving and have sections in them politically or economically unacceptable to other parties doesn't mean they did not create them or that they are technologically infeasible or unworkable. They have already done precisely what you say they should do.


I _have_ bothered to read what you write. The problem is with what you write. See, that's a great example of my problem in attempting to discuss any of this with you: you're attempting to take any statement with a child-like literalism that's truly frustrating. First with things like the insistence that I would not be locked out of Discovery by pretending not to know we're talking about HD in the S3 forum and listing off an SD channel and a separate HD Theater channel, and now this. Yes, they _technically_ came up with a standard, but they did so without taking into account consumers or CE manufacturers. Even you admit that it was a thoroughly self-serving standard that is politically or economically unacceptable to everyone else. By the way, that _necessarily_ makes them "unworkable." They didn't come up with a real, workable open standard that worked for everyone, which you know damn well is what we're talking about. You also tip your hand to your mindset when you make statements like the following:


lrhorer said:


> At this point by definition any new system is proprietary.





> I'm not trying to put any face on cable. They suck big time. It's just they do not suck for any of the reasons you claim. Straw man arguments and false accusations help no one. Criticize them for what they did wrong or didn't do right, not for things beyond their control.


After all that, even after all your admissions regarding the things entirely within their control that they did wrong, you're insisting that...they did them right and that they were also out of their control? That doesn't make sense.



> Firekite said:
> 
> 
> 
> you're occasional stumbling into lies, such as that no SDV channel would be possible without SDV
> 
> 
> 
> I have posted several thousand words in this thread and others concerning SDV, and I never once made that claim. Quote the sentence where I said that or retract the claim.
Click to expand...

Here are two:


lrhorer said:


> None of the latter list would be available at all to anyone if it were not for SDV.





lrhorer said:


> none of the 50 or so new regular schedule SDV channels could be delivered if not for SDV.


Moving on...



> That leaves 203MHz or room for 33 QAMs. If we arbitrarily divide each QAM into 24 slices, then the most common rate shaping requires 2 slices for each SD channel and 11 slices for each HD channel. That's a total of 66 HD channels and 33 SD channels, or a compromise offering 5.5 additional SD channels for each HD channel removed.


I'll just give you the benefit of the doubt that your arbitrary number is the optimal number and point out that I really don't see how this makes delivery of additional HD content impossible without SDV. It especially wilts when held up to the fact that there are only a (relative) handful of markets using SDV in the first place, and somehow the rest of the markets are delivering the content without SDV. Perhaps it's magic, a supernatural achievement by the Wizard of Cabletron that allows Dicovery Channel HD to be delivered without putting in this brand-new SDV system.



> So you tell me (and don't dodge the questions), after we eliminate SDV we only have room for perhaps 50 HD channels and 210 SD channels, with no VOD or Video rewind.


You wouldn't necessarily have to eliminate SDV if you really wanted to deliver obscure, nearly-no-demand, special-interest channels like all the 700's you listed, there (The Filipino Channel and such). I'm not sure I would consider the Discovery Channel, History Channel, ESPN2, and others to be obscure, special-interest channels. My problem isn't strictly that SDV exists. My problem is two-fold: 1) that no open, workable industry standard was developed to allow 3rd parties to make use of this allegedly panacean solution that is the only possible solution in existence, and 2) their choices regarding which channels are moved to SDV. There are only 40 HD channels available today, and that includes each and every HD channel regardless of their SDV status, including the fairly useless ones and the premium-only channels you have to explicitly pay for individually like Cinemax and Starz. I have no problem with VOD, IPPV, or other such specialty services being on SDV. Frankly, if we assume that every single other variable in the equation is some sort of cosmically immovable object, then SDV in that case makes sense. It would've been much better if a proper open standard were available to allow 3rd party hardware to make such services available to consumers, but that's very low down on the priority list. With TiVo, for instance, VOD goes from being a slow but interesting idea to a novelty accessory at best. But I don't think people would be so upset if PPV events required a cable box. No, they could easily arrange things such that all subscribers would be served satisfactorily while not actively forcing everyone to use their own proprietary hardware.

And you continue to insist on false dichotomies wallowing in hyperbole, that the only option is to either have things arranged exactly as-is or eliminate SDV altogether along with VOD and IPPV. Why do you do this?

To use your own numbers and assertions and assuming they're correct, 50 HD channels and 210 SD channels all without SDV should be enough to please nearly every single customer they have. Everything else (music channels, VOD, IPPV, truly obscure channels) can ride the SDV wave as much as they'd like. Personally, I'd like to see a _much_ heavier emphasis on HD than SD, and I truly doubt I'm the lone exception on my local node. As was pointed out by MichaelK, demand for HD is not some fringe thing.



> How many times must I repeat this?


As many as it takes until you realize you're wrong. The situation is that no 3rd party CableCARD device, whether my TV or TiVo or anything else, can receive SDV channels. One day this may be remedied, but no such remedy exists today.



> Exactly what do you not understand about the fact all CableCards are 100% compatible with SDV systems? Do I need to repeat the above another 100 times before it sinks in? Exactly what do you not understand about the fact SDV is expressly a 2-way protocol fully compliant with CC1.0 and CC 2.0, and while every CableCard is 100% compatible with SDV, no unidirectional host is compatible with SDV?


This is getting so ridiculous that I'm having a hard time believing you're not winding me up. You're now building an argument of semantics on the foundation of your aforementioned child-like literalism. The introduction of SDV broke cable systems' compatibility with unidirectional hosts. SDV is incompatible with unidirectional hosts, meaning any and all CableCARD devices in San Antonio that aren't the exclusive proprietary systems owned and leased to customers by TWC. No semantics game you try to play can change that fact. It is my fervent hope that since my area has now moved to SDV, a workable two-way, SDV-capable solution such as the mythical USB dongle will be made available, even though that will still only work with a relative handful of existing devices. Until such time as that happens, any non-TW CableCARD device continues to be hamstringed by SDV.



> Fine, consider it a nit-pick if you like, but your statemement - both in and out of context - made it sound like we could not receive the Discovery Channel at all.


I could maybe, MAYBE accept that from you the first time around, that you simply weren't thinking and therefore failed to grasp the deep and difficult meaning of my labyrinthine words. But even after it was made clear to you, you continued to insist on feigning ignorance.



> That might be *your* entire reason. It most certainly was not mine.


OK, I'm willing to grant that you might be an exception. But when people walk into Circuit City or whatever and decide which TiVo to get, they can either pay little to nothing (after rebates) for an SD-only Series2 or pay vastly more for a Series3 (perhaps with the additional option of still significantly more for a TiVo HD). If they want HD, they have no choice in the matter. They must choose a TiVo Series3 HDTV DVR, which is the topic of this section of the forum where this discussion is taking place. If they don't care about HD, there's no compelling reason to spend so much on the newer version. If someone takes their viewing so seriously and has the money and the want-to to pay for a Series3, I can't imagine that they wouldn't be hooking it up to an HDTV, that they're going to be buying it for an old SD unit. Like I said, you may be an exception, but perhaps taking some of your own advice regarding assuming you are the typical case is a good idea, here.



> Don't be silly.


I'm trying desperately not to be. It's hard, however, when you say things like, "Telling their specific vendor to get lost means collectively chucking $10 billion and spending $10 billion for some other proprietary system."



> The moment any single QAM in the network is converted from, say, Motorola SDV to BigBand SDV management, that QAM becomes unuseable for every user in the city.


Yet more of your deliberately misleading if technically correct statements: every user in the city is NOT served by a single QAM. Additionally, I'm fairly certain your TiVo boxes will still somehow magically not become unusuable. The latter point means your hyperbole is incorrect, and the former means that there's migration is not only possible but very likely preferable.



> To most intents and purposes, jumping from Scientific Atlanta to Motorola means all 200 or so QAM modulators (at something over $85,000 each) must be replaced in very short order, and every STB and DVR must be replaced as well.


By the way, 200 times $85,000 equals $17,000,000, not $10,000,000,000. I'm doubting the replacement of every single STB and DVR would come out to the remaining $9.98 billion. And even then your argument is based on moving from one proprietary system to another rather than to an open system.



> The *best* solution is a unified standard for all bidiectional hosts, and that does indeed mean most CATV providers would have to replace or retrofit all their SDV equipment.


Thank you for admitting that.



> For that matter, the system we have right now works, it just means no 3rd party solution can be delivered which works fully with every CATV system. Neither consumers nor 3rd party manufacturers are going to want to deal with purchased devices which only work on a fraction of all systems.


It's interesting how you'll make a statement and then nearly completely contradict it in the same sentence. And you're right in that last sentence, which is the whole freaking problem, our being forcefully required to use only with TWC hardware.



> There is no STB or DVR currently available to any CATV provider which will work with some other manufacturer's equipment.


... What about the Pace and Panasonic boxes, to name just a couple? You'll go so far into the gray-lie zone that it's starting to look inky.



> Read my lips: *There was no such solution at that time. There still is no such solution at this time*.


Yes, *because they neglected to come up with one*. And for god's sake leave your lips out of this.



> I thought you said I was a CATV apologist?


And yet your pro-CATV arguments still can't manage to keep them from looking terrifically stupid.



> There are almost surely fewer than 5000 Series III / TiVo HD customers in San Antonio, possibly fewer than 2000. Yet there are more than 300,000 customers, total. That means that more than 295,000 customers couldn't care less about this issue, but given TWCs record, I'm willing to bet over 100,000 have some other gripe. Which group should be allocated the most resources?


OK, on this one I'm curious as to whether you're truly taking this stand or playing the role of a TWC marketing exec, the Director of Spin, hoping desperately that the person you're talking to is your average consumer who you can confuse and befuddle. I AM ONE OF THOSE THREE HUNDRED THOUSAND TWC CUSTOMERS. I DO NOT HAVE A SERIES3 TIVO. WHY? BECAUSE TWC MAKES IT IMPOSSIBLE TO BE BOTH WITHOUT GIVING UP A SIGNIFICANT AMOUNT OF THE SERVICE YOU PAY FOR. Your entirely random number of 5,000 based on pure and utter out-of-the-air speculation is not only very likely incorrect, but it's also meaningless in the context of your argument. TiVo customers in San Antonio aren't the only ones who couldn't care less. Rather, they're the only ones who care _so much_, who are _so_ hardcore that they're willing to take it in the rear from TWC in order to keep their TiVo. To say that anyone who isn't that hardcore necessarily "couldn't care less" is a falsehood, whether a deliberate lie or an honest mistake due to some mixture of being so biased and so thoughtless that such a thing didn't occur to you. If you were to present the Series3 and HD TiVos alongside whichever TWC DVR they're using currently, I would be shocked if over 98.3% of them would choose the SA DVR over the TiVo as you claim they would.



> Once again, you're wrong, at least in the case of Scientific Atlanta DVRs. ... The CATV company has to pay extra - quite a bit extra I'm given to understand - for the Passport software.


So they're not demanding a better product. They accepted utter crap and they're now accepting paying "quite a bit extra" for a proper product. Doesn't sound like they're demanding anything, actually, and as you point out it's a moot point in San Antonio because they're not doing it _at all_.



> Nope, you're wrong, or half wrong. ... The TV Guide Interactive Program Guide available on some TVs performs the exact same functions as that of the SA STBs.


But it's _not_ that of the SA STBs. Like I said, if any such solution exists, it's from an entirely separate source.



> Whether the PBS signal carrying the guide is technically "TWC's signal being decrypted by the CableCARD" or not is some pretty fine hair splitting, if you ask me, but OK, if you insist, I'll agree it is being "pulled from other sources".


I disagree with your assertion on the "hair splitting," but it's pretty tangential to the argument and not the real issue at hand, so I don't really consider all that big a deal. If you hadn't brought it up and insisted to the contrary, I wouldn't have even bothered with it.



> Truth be told, since I never use any onscreen guide of any sort, I really couldn't care less about this particular issue.


You don't? Really? Not even with your TiVo? I wasn't even aware you could avoid it.


----------



## Budget_HT

It sounds to me like one of you is describing the ideal end state, while the other is trying to explain the complexity and costs (orders of magnitude) of getting there from where we are today.

Even a startup company that has the opportunity to select industry-standard, state-of-the-art transport media and terminating equipment will at some point be saddled with OLD technology, since the end-state goals and supporting evolving technologies are both moving at a very fast pace. 

Owners of existing plant are always looking for cost-effective ways to stay competitive and profitable while keeping their mainstream customers (who generate the greatest amount of revenue) happy enough to not leave.

Billions of dollars of sunk investment in geographically-specific plant must be considered in any strategy to leap forward from present capabilities to a next-generation set that satisfies owners/investors and customers. Owning and operating fixed plant to deliver services is VERY different from manufacturing and distributing widgets to be sold outright. Sure there is after-sale support, but that is not a ball and chain that prevents rapid introduction of newer, better widgets. There may be some retooling needed in the manufacturing facility, but, IMHO, that investment hardly begins to compare to multiple instances of plant placed over hundreds of square miles as needed to deliver to every passed home.

I don't see how the two of you could ever agree, considering you're looking from very different perspectives.


----------



## Firekite

It's not a question of being saddled with old technology. SDV is new. It's a question of choosing the _wrong_ technology due to shortsightedness, greed, obstinacy, and just plain poor business dealings, failures that continue through today and will doubtlessly endure through tomorrow. I'm condemning the CATV providers (specifically TWC in San Antonio) for this, and lrhorer is arguing that the failures I'm pointing out are not actually failures, that they do not suck for the reasons I'm saying they suck. And in defending these companies he himself allegedly dislikes and disrespects, he goes so far as to draw ridiculous false dichotomies, straw men, fling red herring all over the room, all while prone to hyperbole, being willfully misleading, and being deliberately obtuse and hyper-literal as though context and reading comprehension were unknown to him, which they surely are not.

It's not _just_ a question of different perspectives.


----------



## ah30k

Firekite said:


> It's not a question of being saddled with old technology. SDV is new. It's a question of choosing the _wrong_ technology due to shortsightedness, greed, obstinacy, and just plain poor business dealings


Spoken like a great armchair quarterback who is responsible to no one. I'm sure your cable company would have done much better making decisions over the last 30 years. Oh, I guess we'll never know.


----------



## Firekite

No, we won't. What a pointless post you've made.

It does kind of amuse me, though, that there are still people who insist that no person or business is open to criticism from objective observers unless those observers have personally done a better job in the past. If you're painfully aware of a band's poorly executed, formulaic music, you must be a better and more accomplished musician yourself to have an opinion (or ears, apparently). If you see a pretty poor painting, you have to have had a string of successful gallery openings to comment. If you see a poorly run business, you have to have made the cover of Entrepreneur Magazine to recognize it as such--while others on the internet who know nothing about you make ridiculous assertions that unless you've run a CATV provider business 30 years ago you cannot comment on the wisdom and effectiveness of their choices. I forget...what's the Latin name for this fallacy, again?


----------



## ah30k

OK, since you are being objective (with terms such as shortsightedness, greed, obstinacy, and just plain poor business dealings) could you please tell me what you would have changed in the MSOs buildout and what that change would have cost the shareholders of the company. What kills me is people tossing around inflammatory terms judging companies business decisions when they have none of the pressures of delivering value to shareholders. Tell me again what they did wrong and what you would have done different to increase shareholder value.


----------



## Surrealone

WOW I came here to get info on SDV.


----------



## Eccles

Surrealone said:


> WOW I came here to get info on SDV.


Try the _first _20 pages; the last 20 have devolved into a dicksizing contest.


----------



## lrhorer

Firekite said:


> Regardless, one isn't stuck if one's only buried up to one's ankles.


True. I would say it's beyond the ankles, but not beyond their hips, yet. The thing is, it gets a bit deeper every day, and since there is no solution at this time, and the previous solution took nearly 20 years, what does that say about the situation? Let's try this on for size. *Exactly* what do you suggest they do? You are the one who is so convinced there is a simple solution. 'No more hand waving. Give me dollars and cents, and explain why it's a good idea for the CATV companies. The fact you like it is irrelevant. Why should they like it?



Firekite said:


> There _are_ options in the middle, not the least of which is what some people call "migration."


That's easy to say when one hasn't a clue of what one is speaking. Obviously, you are a qualified engineer with 25 years in the industry, while I am a complete novice, so lay out the plan for me. How many QAMs will they convert per day, and how many of their customers will be left without how many channels for how long until they are done? How much does each new receiver cost, and what will they do with the 800,000 converters which are useless when they are done? What about the $6 or $7 million dollars worth of QAM modulators? Finally, and most importantly, from whom will they buy this magical new system. Scientific Atlanta doesn't sell it. Jerrold doesn't sell it. Magnavox doesn't sell it. C-Cor doesn't sell it. RMS doesn't sell it. Motorola doesn't sell it. Pace doesn't sell it. Blonder Tongue doesn't sell it. Clearly you know some CATV equipment manufacturer of which I am unaware who can easily deliver nearly a million boxes to San Antonio alone. Who is it?



Firekite said:


> Yes, they _technically_ came up with a standard, but they did so without taking into account consumers or CE manufacturers.


Just as you are suggesting a course of action which takes only your desires into account. They did a vastly better job than you are doing at making allowances for the other parties in the mix.



Firekite said:


> Even you admit that it was a thoroughly self-serving standard that is politically or economically unacceptable to everyone else.


This is why I insist upon literal interpretations of your messages. I said nothing of the sort. You accuse me of hyperbole, yet when I make a statement such as "They want separable security", you pretend to quote in rebuttal, "who allegedly wants so desperately". I say, "The fact the latter two are self-serving and have sections in them politically or economically unacceptable to other parties", and you change it to "a thoroughly self-serving standard that is politically or economically unacceptable to everyone else." The standards are not "thoroughly" self serving and they are not unacceptable to "everyone" else.

There are two sections of OCAP which are unacceptable to people like me. Most people probably don't care, but even if they do, it represents a deal impediment which could very easily be modified. CableLabs has no reason to do so, however. I want to be able to say, "No" to downloading software into my equipment should I so decide, but the spec doesn't require the CATV company give me the choice. They can give me a choice if they want and would still be perfectly within the spec, but they are not required to give it to me. People who check the "get updates from Microsoft automatically" probably don't care about this. They also probably make up the bulk of the consumer base. I'd be happy if not.

I also want to be able to obtain 3rd party software and load it myself onto the TiVo, but the spec would allow them to refuse to provide service to me if I did so, which consequently pretty much eliminates the likelihood any such software would ever be developed.

There are also a couple of small sections in the hardware spec that 3rd party manufacturers don't like much, but a little leaning from the FCC or even consumers and that could easily have gone away, as well. If the FCC had been doing their job, this all would have evaporated 15 years ago.

None of it was insurmountable, or in fact is even yet insurmountable.

Note there are very real security and support issues for the CATV company surrounding the problematic sections of the specs, and they would have been foolish in the extreme to blithely open their network up to malicious or inadvertent attack from 3rd party software and hardware. Failure to take proper precautions in those areas could easily result not only in serious impacts to their ability to provide service, but also severe threats to their customers. What would you say if because of delinquent OCAP specifications, someone was able to hack into the CATV system and completely erease the hard drive on your TiVo, making it worthless? Worse, what would you say if they were able to hack into your home network and steal your identity? There are very good reasons why those specifications were written. It's just when they solved the problem the provisions allow them to be more restrictive in their administration of the network than is necessary or should be, and nothing would prevent them from going to that length.



Firekite said:


> By the way, that _necessarily_ makes them "unworkable." They didn't come up with a real, workable open standard that worked for everyone


It is workable from every standpoint. That someone objects to it is inevitable. That it should have been ratified, hopefully in a modestly modified form, but wasn't is far from entirely their fault. The simple fact is there is no way the equipment manufacturers will even accept any unified standard unless they are forced to do so. Cable does not have that authority.



Firekite said:


> After all that, even after all your admissions regarding the things entirely within their control that they did wrong, you're insisting that...they did them right and that they were also out of their control? That doesn't make sense.


What the FCC does is not within their control. What the CATV equipment manufacturers do is not within their control, except in the very most indirect and strictly limited fashion. What the CE manufacturers do is not within their control. Cable providers collectively most assuredly must take the blame for some of the failures in the negotiations for a spec for separable security, but then so must the other parties. By the way, the other parties were just as free to come up with a published spec for separable security. Mostly they did not, and the few who did came up with impractical or unworkable solutions. Yet you insist the CATV company is entirely to blame because they didn't unilaterally come up with the solution? Why didn't the 3rd party manufacturers come up with the solution? They are the ones who have to make the equipment for consumers. Why didn't the CATV equipment manufacturers com up with a unified solution? They came up with three equally workable proprietary ones. All they had to do was agree on producing one, rather than three. How is that somehow not malfeasant, but CableLabs's effort, which was equally workable but failed to offer any opportunity to corner the CATV equipment market, was? Unless the government forces them to, there is no way the CATV equipment manufacturers would ever accept an open standard. How is that cable's fault?



Firekite said:


> I'll just give you the benefit of the doubt that your arbitrary number is the optimal number


Do you know what arbitrary means? There is no "optimal" number, and the number has nothing to do with SDV. The MPEG2 HD streams broadcast by the networks require approximately 5.5 times the bandwidth of an SD MPEG stream. I used the number 22 because it is evenly divisible by both 5.5 and 2, and results in an integral number of slices allocated to both SD and HD streams. Use whatever number you want.



Firekite said:


> and point out that I really don't see how this makes delivery of additional HD content impossible without SDV.


...Because you apparently haven't a clue what SDV is or how it works.



Firekite said:


> It especially wilts when held up to the fact that there are only a (relative) handful of markets using SDV in the first place, and somehow the rest of the markets are delivering the content without SDV.


No, they aren't. Name one linear market anywhere with a 750MHz system, 77 analog channels, 51 HD channels, and 300 plus SD channels. There isn't one. Add VOD and Video Rewind, and the number of unique streams soars to several thousand.



Firekite said:


> My problem isn't strictly that SDV exists. My problem is two-fold: 1) that no open, workable industry standard was developed to allow 3rd parties to make use of this allegedly panacean solution that is the only possible solution in existence


Not just one, but no fewer than 3 of them exist. You're saying no standard exists over and over doesn't make it so. Get somone with the clout to force all the CATV equipment manufacturers to settle on a single one, and Bob's your uncle. Hmm, I wonder who has that clout? TWC? Motorola knows TWC isn't going to buy their hardware, so why should they be the ones to cave? Cox? They've given Scientific Atlanta the middle finger, so why should SA abandon their standard just because Cox says so?



Firekite said:


> 2) their choices regarding which channels are moved to SDV. There are only 40 HD channels available today, and that includes each and every HD channel regardless of their SDV status, including the fairly useless ones and the premium-only channels you have to explicitly pay for individually like Cinemax and Starz. I have no problem with VOD, IPPV, or other such specialty services being on SDV.


Leaving the fact you can't count aside, you simply have no idea about what you are speaking. VOD and Video Rewind up the number of "channels" in use manyfold. With VOD and Video Rewind, there may easily be 200 or 300 streams carrying Thursday night's episode of ER, each one shifted by a few seconds or minutes.



Firekite said:


> And you continue to insist on false dichotomies wallowing in hyperbole, that the only option is to either have things arranged exactly as-is or eliminate SDV altogether along with VOD and IPPV. Why do you do this?


Because I'm stupid and haven't a clue about what I am speaking. Because I am not an engineer. Because I have no idea what digital video is or how it works. Because I've never had to purchase CATV equipment and don't realize that it's virtually free. Because I don't know how SDV works or what its advantages over classical transmission systems are. Yeah, that must be it.



Firekite said:


> To use your own numbers and assertions and assuming they're correct, 50 HD channels and 210 SD channels all without SDV should be enough to please nearly every single customer they have.


Then why is DirecTV crowing about having 150 HD channels online by the end of this year? At the rate TWC is going, they'll have more than 75. Why should other subscribers give up 20 or 30 HD channels just so you can get them as well? Having you disconnect altogether makes much more sense.



Firekite said:


> Everything else (music channels, VOD, IPPV, truly obscure channels) can ride the SDV wave as much as they'd like. Personally, I'd like to see a _much_ heavier emphasis on HD than SD, and I truly doubt I'm the lone exception on my local node.


1. Every single video channel carried by TWC San Antonio has Video Rewind available. This automatically allocates several thousand channels for SDV use. Obviously you are volunteering to take all calls from customers who are irate because they've lost Video Rewind.

2. By a "much heavier emphasis on HD", I presume you mean more HD channels? Any time the number of channels grows, by inevitable consequence the average market share of each channel must drop. The CATV system enjoys significant monetary benefits any time a channel whose penetration does not equal 100% on a node by node basis is placed onto SDV. I doubt that more than 5 or 6 of the HD channels have a 100% penetration on a node by node basis, and it's very unlikely any new ones will even come close. If half the city had HD sets, it would be a different matter, but they don't.


Firekite said:


> pointed out by MichaelK, demand for HD is not some fringe thing.


Yet again the kettle speaks. While "fringe" channels are most certainly excellent grist for the SDV mill, the CATV provider can enjoy significant benefits from moving channels with market shares in excess of 5% to SDV. By the statements in the article, less than 50% of viewers currently have HD, so on average that means if a channel enjoys a 10% market share, the HD version of it only enjoys a 5% market share. The fact HD sets tend to be clumped into specifc areas of town makes the market share on a node by node basis even smaller. If there are 50 channels broadcast in both SD and HD, then the vast majority of those channels must have less than a 2% market share, and the HD versions of those must have less than 1%. The CATV engineering staff would have to be idiots not to put the majority of those channels on SDV. The fact you don't like it is irrelevant.



Firekite said:


> As many as it takes until you realize you're wrong. The situation is that no *3rd party CableCARD device*, whether my TV or TiVo or anything else, can receive SDV channels. One day this may be remedied, but no such remedy exists today.


(Emphasis added by me.) No, actualy, it looks like I may have gotten through a little bit. It is the 3rd party devices, not the CableCards, which are incompatible with SDV. Shall I say it again? No? I don't know if you think your mouth will burst into flames if you say it, or something, but it is the *3rd party devices* that don't work with SDV, not the CableCards. 'Stick it into an SDV compatible device, and the CableCard works famously with SDV. Yet until now you continually insisted CableCards don't work with SDV. The statement is simply and completely false no matter how one slices it.



Firekite said:


> The introduction of SDV broke cable systems' compatibility with unidirectional hosts.


SDV and other 2-way protocols long predate the existence of the first 3rd party unidirectional CableCard host. TiVo and everyone else knew fully well the S3 wouldn't be compatible with systems already online and those soon to come before the first schematic of an S3 went on a TiVo engineer's desk. That's not to say it's TiVo's fault, either. They waited to deploy the S3 as long as they could and then some. If anything, TiVo breaks SDV, not the other way around, although that isn't accurate either. Whether you like it or not and whether you understand it or not, the situation is far more complex than pedestrian platitudes can quantify.



Firekite said:


> SDV is incompatible with unidirectional hosts, meaning any and all CableCARD devices in San Antonio that aren't the exclusive proprietary systems owned and leased to customers by TWC. No semantics game you try to play can change that fact.


I wouldn't dream of playing with that statement, because it is the first nearly fully accurate one you have made in this entire dialogue. You should have said "CableCard *hosts*, not CableCard devices, because the CableCards themselves are devices and are not proprietary, but even I'll allow that's a very tiny nit.

OK, so I'm baiting you, right? Wrong. I want you (and everyone else) to quit screaming about CableCards, quit screaming about SDV, quit screeaming about their local CATV company and start screaming at the FCC to get off their arses and enact a unified standard for bidirectional hosts. Demanding that TWC or anyone else get rid of SDV accomplishes nothing good but does do a great deal of damage. The problem is the hosts. Get it? Fix the hosts and we're all good. Get it?



Firekite said:


> It is my fervent hope that since my area has now moved to SDV, a workable two-way, SDV-capable solution such as the mythical USB dongle


And you criticize the CATV companies for being shortsighted? First of all, from a technical and engineering standpoint the USB dongle is the second worst of the practical methods of delivering SDV to an S3 TiVo. More importantly, however, the fact is the existence of a dongle only entrenches the proprietary protocols even deeper. If the CATV companies are collectively loathe to abandon their respectively chosen technology now, how much more so are they likely to be so when they've bought several million dollars worth of dongles on top of their current expenditures?



Firekite said:


> pay little to nothing (after rebates) for an SD-only Series2 or pay vastly more for a Series3 (perhaps with the additional option of still significantly more for a TiVo HD). If they want HD, they have no choice in the matter.


I have news for you. The TiVo HD is typically $100 - $150 *cheaper* than the S3. What's more, there are other OTA HD DVR options, just no other CabeCard options. Certainly it's much cheaper all the way around to go with just analog basic SD cable and OTA HD.



Firekite said:


> I can't imagine that they wouldn't be hooking it up to an HDTV, that they're going to be buying it for an old SD unit. Like I said, you may be an exception, but perhaps taking some of your own advice regarding assuming you are the typical case is a good idea, here.


Once again, I never said that. I'll allow I wasn't specific, but I knew perfectly good and well when I purchased my first S3 in September 2006, my second one in June 2007, and my TiVo HD in December 2007 that they were not directly compatible with SDV,and that SDV would be widely deployed within 1 or 2 years. It was no secret.



Firekite said:


> I'm trying desperately not to be. It's hard, however, when you say things like, "Telling their specific vendor to get lost means collectively chucking $10 billion and spending $10 billion for some other proprietary system."


That is exactly the situation. The CATV industry has spent over $10 billion in the last several years on proprietary technology. Abandoning those technologies means chucking $10 billion in investments. Since there is no ratified unified open standard in existence, their only choice would be to purchase proprietary systems. If a standard does get ratified, then those who don't have the proprietary standard on hand will have to chuck their gear (or retrofit it). The lucky ones who have purchased the system which does get ratified won't have to do anything.



Firekite said:


> Yet more of your deliberately misleading if technically correct statements: every user in the city is NOT served by a single QAM.


I didn't say they were. I said every channel on that QAM becomes unusable to every subscriber served by that QAM.



Firekite said:


> Additionally, I'm fairly certain your TiVo boxes will still somehow magically not become unusuable.


The TiVo isn't useable for SDV services right now, or hadn't you noticed?



Firekite said:


> The latter point means your hyperbole is incorrect, and the former means that there's migration is not only possible but very likely preferable.


It means nothing of the sort. What it does mean is that some 60 or 70% of the channels would go dark, and IPPV, VOD, and Video Rewind would quit working altogether.



Firekite said:


> By the way, 200 times $85,000 equals $17,000,000, not $10,000,000,000.


Boy, I sure am stupid aren't I? I guess I just can't count. $17M is the amount TWC spent on QAMs. Add the cost of buildings, HVAC systems, generators, UPS systems, fire supression systems, fiber installation, fiber nodes, 10G transport systems, video server farms and close to 800,000 STBs / DVRs, and the number for TWC San Antonio was well over $50,000,000. The $10B number is what has been spent by the entire CATV industry.



Firekite said:


> And even then your argument is based on moving from one proprietary system to another rather than to an open system.


Since there is no open system to which to move, upon what else should I have based my argument? I live in the real world, not fantasyland.



Firekite said:


> And yet your pro-CATV arguments still can't manage to keep them from looking terrifically stupid.


Is that why their revenues of more than $3,000,000 a month have plummeted to nothing? Oh, wait...

Unethical they are. Dishonest they are. Unscrupulous they are. Overpriced they are. Stupid? 'Not so much.



Firekite said:


> I AM ONE OF THOSE THREE HUNDRED THOUSAND TWC CUSTOMERS.


If they are so stupid, and make you so angry, why are you a customer?



Firekite said:


> BECAUSE TWC MAKES IT IMPOSSIBLE TO BE BOTH WITHOUT GIVING UP A SIGNIFICANT AMOUNT OF THE SERVICE YOU PAY FOR.


So disconnect service. Then you won't be paying them a cent.



Firekite said:


> Your entirely random number of 5,000 based on pure and utter out-of-the-air speculation is not only very likely incorrect, but it's also meaningless in the context of your argument.


No, you see I do actually know how to count. Take the number of S3 class units sold to date. Multiply by the total number of CATV subscriobers in San Antonio. Divide by the total number of CATV subscribers in the nation. Add in a fudge factor just to make sure one isn't underestimating the number of TiVos in the city.

The remainder of your rant is so abusive and utterly ridiculous I won't even bother with it except for this:



Firekite said:


> You don't? Really? Not even with your TiVo? I wasn't even aware you could avoid it.


'Haven't bothered to look at one for anything other than testing purposes for nearly 8 years. That you are unaware of it somehow fails to surprise me.


----------



## bicker

lrhorer said:


> Of course both of our opinions on this matter are completely unsupported, so I don't suppose it really matters, but I think you're wrong on this.


I cannot believe that you're focusing on the trivial parts of my message and ignoring the main points, so I'll reply based on the assumption that you're objecting to the main points: Do you really want me to *prove *that America has become progressively pro-business since Ronald Reagan took office? Do you really need someone to contrast the commerce-related decisions regulatory authorities like the SEC and judicial authorities like the Supreme Court, pre-1980 versus post-1980? It seems to me that that's just a sleazy debating tactic, insisting on evidence of facts that all reasonable folks know and accept to be true, just to waste someone's time. With respect, if you really are unaware of this, do your own research.

And that's the only part of my statement that matters. Face it folks: The business of America is business. Get used to it. And get over it.


----------



## bicker

Firekite said:


> What are you talking about?


Which part didn't you understand? 



Firekite said:


> With CableCARDS, the only thing you get are channels.


Okay. Now please explain what this has to do with the comments you were replying to. Many CE manufacturers offered CableCard equipped televisions and were not adequately rewarded by consumers for doing so.


----------



## lrhorer

bicker said:


> I cannot believe that you're focusing on the trivial parts of my message and ignoring the main points


I can't believe that you consider trivial elements of your post to be the main points. The Devil is in the details, by the way. Anything is possible if one needn't bother with the details.


bicker said:


> Do you really want me to *prove *that America has become progressively pro-business since Ronald Reagan took office?


No, because it's irrelevant. I'll stipulate to it, if you like. (Although I submit it may have been as much the comments by the Japanese and widespread comparisons to them which had as much to do with it as who was falling asleep at meetings in the White House.)



bicker said:


> Do you really need someone to contrast the commerce-related decisions regulatory authorities like the SEC and judicial authorities like the Supreme Court, pre-1980 versus post-1980?


Statements about the state of the regulatory environment - no matter how accurate - don't prove that a document written by an industry which negatively impacts the industry including those who wrote the document was deliberately written in that fashion. It also doesn't prove the regulatory authority (the FCC and Congress) were smart enough to figure out exactly how their actions would impact business. Indeed, having stipulated the environment is pro business, and taking into account the situation is bad for the majority of the businesses and the huge majority of the revenue involved, exactly how do you reach the conclusion it was deliberate? With the exception of the CATV equipment manufacturers, the industry would have won big time if the FCC had ratified OpenCable 2.0 several years ago.

You are claiming the results of the current situation prove the intent of the participants at the outset, but in so doing you are insisting the actions of the participants produced exactly the intended results, and that is a very difficult thing to accomplish even in a simple situation. This is far from a simple situation, and I submit almost every business interest involved wishes it would just go away.



bicker said:


> It seems to me that that's just a sleazy debating tactic, insisting on evidence


Oh, horrors. Someone has actually asked you to back up an opinion with supporting evidence? Oh, yeah, that's sleazy, all right.

Actually, I would be happy with specific statements of premise connected by valid logical elements. "America is pro-business so the failure must have been intentional" doesn't even come close to qualifying.



bicker said:


> of facts that all reasonable folks know and accept to be true


Facts all reasonable folks know and accept to be true rarely are in fact true.
Ask any moderately sophisticated question concerning history, philosophy, religion, law, business, math, or science, and you'll get a wrong answer from upwards of 90% of the respondents.



bicker said:


> just to waste someone's time.


That has never been my intent. I may (perhaps foolishly) waste my own time if I so choose, but deliberately wasting anyone else's would be highly unethical.



bicker said:


> With respect, if you really are unaware of this, do your own research.


I've never felt you were failing to offer the proper respect, but kudos for being polite. Of course I have done my own research and will continue to do so. For some reason you seem to think doing so will cause me to agree with your conclusions. It's possible, but not likely. After all, I agree with your facts. It's your conclusions which are flawed.



bicker said:


> And that's the only part of my statement that matters.


No, it isn't. Logic and supporting statements - both lacking here - are the important part.



bicker said:


> Face it folks: The business of America is business. Get used to it. And get over it.


Now that's just silly. Clearly by your own statements things do change, and although you didn't specifically state this, the implication would seem to be we made the change to a pro-business environment ourselves. If we changed it once, we can change it again. No one should get used to it or get over it. It is not only our right but our obligate duty to try to change things we feel are wrong. That said, many of us feel some aspects of the situation don't need changing, so it is also our right to support the status quo.

All of that is beside the point, however. When two roughly equivalent business interests are at odds with each other, one cannot point to a generalized pro-business regulatory environment to explain why one is favored over the other by a regulatory situation, and one certainly cannot do so when both are damaged by the situation. In this case we have dozens of business interests and at least 4 major industries involved in the mix, and only the smallest one is benefiting at all. Certainly some aspects of the regulatory environment played a significant role, perhaps even a deciding role in producing the current situation, but leaping to the conclusion the results were deliberate rather than unintentional crosses an invalid logical gap.

To bring this back to my original point, it's entirely possible the intent behind this whole mess was to produce this very mess. I cannot definitively prove otherwise, but it is unlikely in my estimation. Entropy and chaos - not to mention stupidity - just play too big a role in history for any group to have that accurate an influence over a long period of time. In addition, the situation is just far too detrimental to the businesses for it to have been the expected result of a pro-business regulatory environment. For some reason you think it is likely, but you probably won't be able to prove it definitively, either.


----------



## lrhorer

Firekite said:


> You're also willing to go so far into hyperboleland that you're insisting that any solution for stranded CableCARD customers





Firekite said:


> It especially wilts when held up to the fact that there are only a (relative) handful of markets using SDV in the first place, and somehow the rest of the markets are delivering the content without SDV.


As I already mentioned, it's not the only solution. Comcast has a perfectly wonderful one. [/sarcasm]

See this link for details. I presume you think this would be a much better solution?


----------



## DaveDFW

lrhorer said:


> As I already mentioned, it's not the only solution. Comcast has a perfectly wonderful one. [/sarcasm]
> 
> See this link for details. I presume you think this would be a much better solution?


Time-Warner is already putting 3 HD channels per QAM, and they are the biggest deployers of SDV.

Low quality and Tivo incompatibility combined!

TTYL
David


----------



## cableguy763

DaveDFW said:


> Time-Warner is already putting 3 HD channels per QAM, and they are the biggest deployers of SDV.
> 
> Low quality and Tivo incompatibility combined!
> 
> TTYL
> David


I don't know where you heard this, but in my area that is an outright falsehood.


----------



## DaveDFW

cableguy763 said:


> I don't know where you heard this, but in my area that is an outright falsehood.


TWC North Texas is putting 3 HDs per qam, that's a fact.

And we're getting SDV channels this week. Nothing I said was incorrect.

I won't know what the SDV channels' bitrates will be until they show up on Thursday or so. I doubt they'll be as compressed as the HD channels I already receive.

Below are the qam-to-hd channel mapping we have currently:

Channel 106	687 Mhz 
106-1	cinemax hd
106-2	starz hd
106-3	discovery hd theater

Channel 107	693 Mhz 
107-1	ktvt hd
107-2	tnt hd
107-3	ktxa hd

Channel 110	711 Mhz 
110-1	kdfw hd
110-2	kxas hd
110-3	weather +
110-4	abc news now

Channel 111	717 Mhz 
Hbo hd
showtime hd
espn hd

Channel 112	723 Mhz 
mojo
uhd
hd net

Channel 115	741 Mhz 
115-2	kdfi hd
Hd net Movies
espn2 hd

TTYL
David


----------



## lrhorer

DaveDFW said:


> TWC North Texas is putting 3 HDs per qam, that's a fact.
> 
> And we're getting SDV channels this week. Nothing I said was incorrect.


Well, you said they were combined, which isn't strictly correct. It sounds to me like the reduction in bitrate on linear channels was a stop-gap measure to get more HD online until they get SDV up and running. Once SDV is fully implemented, there's no point in limiting the quality of HD material that severely.



DaveDFW said:


> I won't know what the SDV channels' bitrates will be until they show up on Thursday or so. I doubt they'll be as compressed as the HD channels I already receive.


I doubt it, as well. I suspect they'll drop to 2HD + 1SD, which is what many systems are deploying.

*Warning: The following is strictly speculation on my part. I have no factual data to back it up. It is absolutely nothing more than a guess.*

So no flames, please. Feel free to dissent.

I suspect what's going to happen in a large majority of CATV systems next year is the CATV provider will take the OTA digital conversion as an excuse to drop many, or in some cases perhaps even all analog channels from their offerings. Some CATV systems have 100 channels of analog video. Each of those is eating up space which could be occupied by 2 linear HD channels, 11 linear SD channels, or a dozen or more SDV HD channels. Of course, it's likely to tick off a large number of basic cable subscribers, but they can claim the FCC conversion mandate is forcing them into it. It isn't true, of course, but it isn't quite a bald-faced lie, either.

OTOH, keeping at least a significant number of analog channels might keep a large number of people who currently have no service of any sort from turning to satellite companies.

It's a fine line to walk, and I wonder which side of it, if either one, the majority of CATV providers will choose to walk.


----------



## Eccles

lrhorer said:


> I suspect what's going to happen in a large majority of CATV systems next year is the CATV provider will take the OTA digital conversion as an excuse to drop many, or in some cases perhaps even all analog channels from their offerings. Some CATV systems have 100 channels of analog video. Each of those is eating up space which could be occupied by 2 linear HD channels, 11 linear SD channels, or a dozen or more SDV HD channels. Of course, it's likely to tick off a large number of basic cable subscribers, but they can claim the FCC conversion mandate is forcing them into it. It isn't true, of course, but it isn't quite a bald-faced lie, either.


Well at least here in Austin, Time-Warner is using the demise of OTA analog as a carrot to lure new analog users onto cable. If they plan on dropping analog, they'll have to provide free digital STB's or face lawsuits for bait-and-switch marketing.


----------



## lrhorer

Eccles said:


> Well at least here in Austin, Time-Warner is using the demise of OTA analog as a carrot to lure new analog users onto cable. If they plan on dropping analog, they'll have to provide free digital STB's or face lawsuits for bait-and-switch marketing.


Oh, I would think so, yes. It's not at all unusual for a vendor to offer discounts - in this case a free STB - to new customers, and the cost of the STB is a small price to pay to land a new customer.

Oh, wait, did you mean free STBs to customers who switched prior to the conversion based upon the marketing campaign? I'm not at all familiar with that section of the law, so you may be perfectly correct, but I'm sure there is some sort of acceptable time limit. Even if not, however, the cost of an STB is also small compared with the value of keeping an existing customer.


----------



## bicker

lrhorer said:


> I can't believe that you consider trivial elements of your post to be the main points.


Luckily I get to dictate what parts of my posts are the main points and which ones are trivial. You don't get to dictate that to me.



lrhorer said:


> You are claiming the results of the current situation prove the intent of the participants at the outset


No, I'm claiming the results of the current situation prove the intent of the participants now. There is no significance, whatsoever, what intent was in the past. Only people who live in the past care about that.



lrhorer said:


> Oh, horrors. Someone has actually asked you to back up an opinion with supporting evidence?


Bull. Someone asked me to waste time, because they didn't *like *the perspective I'm projecting. There's a _difference_.



lrhorer said:


> Facts all reasonable folks know and accept to be true rarely are in fact true.


Bull, again. Truth is a reflection of consensus. If you actually believe there is such thing as absolute truth in matters of government regulation, then I cannot help you.



lrhorer said:


> Clearly by your own statements things do change, and although you didn't specifically state this, the implication would seem to be we made the change to a pro-business environment ourselves.


Absolutely. My point was that is the way things are, and the trends are still in that direction, so trying to assert that some past perspective should prevail over the will of the country at this time is ludicrous.



lrhorer said:


> To bring this back to my original point, it's entirely possible the intent behind this whole mess was to produce this very mess. I cannot definitively prove otherwise, but it is unlikely in my estimation.


You're entitled to your opinion.


----------



## sfhub

I'm sorry, results simply do not *prove* intent. They do not disprove either. Results are simply that, results.

If you want to prove intent you need to come up with something more than results.


----------



## m_jonis

lrhorer said:


> Well, you said they were combined, which isn't strictly correct. It sounds to me like the reduction in bitrate on linear channels was a stop-gap measure to get more HD online until they get SDV up and running. Once SDV is fully implemented, there's no point in limiting the quality of HD material that severely.
> 
> I doubt it, as well. I suspect they'll drop to 2HD + 1SD, which is what many systems are deploying.
> 
> *Warning: The following is strictly speculation on my part. I have no factual data to back it up. It is absolutely nothing more than a guess.*
> 
> So no flames, please. Feel free to dissent.
> 
> I suspect what's going to happen in a large majority of CATV systems next year is the CATV provider will take the OTA digital conversion as an excuse to drop many, or in some cases perhaps even all analog channels from their offerings. Some CATV systems have 100 channels of analog video. Each of those is eating up space which could be occupied by 2 linear HD channels, 11 linear SD channels, or a dozen or more SDV HD channels. Of course, it's likely to tick off a large number of basic cable subscribers, but they can claim the FCC conversion mandate is forcing them into it. It isn't true, of course, but it isn't quite a bald-faced lie, either.
> 
> OTOH, keeping at least a significant number of analog channels might keep a large number of people who currently have no service of any sort from turning to satellite companies.
> 
> It's a fine line to walk, and I wonder which side of it, if either one, the majority of CATV providers will choose to walk.


One of the problems with dropping the analog stations (at least with TW cable) is that they will implement the CCI byte 0x02 on ALL channels (including digital simulcast of local broadcast stations). Thus, effectively rendering TTG and MRV useless except for local broadcast HD channels. So in my case, I can TTG/MRV (well, if I had two TivoHD I could MRV anyway) 6 HD local stations and nothing else.


----------



## bicker

sfhub said:


> I'm sorry, results simply do not *prove* intent. They do not disprove either. Results are simply that, results.


Indeed... it was "the other guy" who brought up the whole issue of "proving" anything. In the end, for most things, it comes down to Occum's Razor: What is the most likely explanation. Expecting that they're doing things just for spite is not a likely explanation.


----------



## lrhorer

bicker said:


> Luckily I get to dictate what parts of my posts are the main points and which ones are trivial. You don't get to dictate that to me.


I agree entirely with the second statement and disagree categorically with the first. Neither of us gets to dictate what is trivial or important. That is entirely beyond the capability of any person or group. An item is important if it has a significant impact on the question at hand, opinions to the effect completely notwithstanding. You are perfectly free to have any opinion you want of what is important of your posts, my posts, or anyone else's, just as I am free to gauge the importance of any sections of your posts or the post itself. I also intend no offense, but if you don't want people to judge the relative merits of your posts for themselves, then don't post. Take note that I hope you and others do decide to post quite freely. Just don't expect that we will think the same things are important that you do, or that you are free to dictate to anyone else what they should consider important about them.

<sigh> Frankly I thought my rebuttal made that point clear. I guess it didn't.



bicker said:


> No, I'm claiming the results of the current situation prove the intent of the participants now.


That's not what you said in the context of the discussion. I pointed out the situation was caused by loopholes in the spec written back in 1998, compounded by a lack of a response from the FCC at that time. You responded (emphasis mine):



bicker said:


> And I believe that *was* deliberate.





bicker said:


> There is no significance, whatsoever, what intent was in the past.


Then why did you bring it up? My points had little or nothing to do with the intent at any time. In the context of your statement, it is current intent which has no relevance. In the context of my statement, intent at any point in time is outside the scope of the argument.



bicker said:


> Only people who live in the past care about that.


I'll definitely allow that your posts here generally embrace that notion. Others, however, seek to place blame for actions in the past, which requires examining past intent. Nonetheless, the fact remains you were the one who brought up the question of past intent, not me.



bicker said:


> Bull. Someone asked me to waste time, because they didn't *like *the perspective I'm projecting. There's a _difference_.


Bull right back at you. You made statements of questionable validity and I asked you to back them up with facts. Without facts to back it up, no statement can be considered anything more than an unsupported opinion. There is nothing necessarily wrong with holding forth an unsupported opinion, but you claim your perspective is other than that, which means the onus of proof lies upon your shoulders. Don't whine if we tear your argument to shreds when you refuse to offer any such proof.

For the record, I neither like nor dislike your perspective and it wouldn't matter in the least if I did. The entire issue is that your perspective in no way provides support for the statement you made, which is to say the failure on the part of the FCC was deliberate, ostensibly because of some ulterior motive relating to the pro-business regulatory environment.



bicker said:


> Bull, again. Truth is a reflection of consensus.


That's utter nonsense. When better than 90% of the population of the Earth thought the Earth was flat, it didn't make it so. Most of the Earth's population probably still thinks the universe is only a fraction of its actual size or age.



bicker said:


> If you actually believe there is such thing as absolute truth in matters of government regulation, then I cannot help you.


To paraphrase Indiana Jones, "I am not seeking truth, I am seeking fact". If you think there is anything such as truth at all - absolute or otherwise - in government regulation then I cannot help you. The thing is, what you or I or the entire population of the Earth think is irrelevant. Either there was direct intent involved or there was not, and no amount of consensus will change the fact. The relevant facts proximate to the event are irretrievable, so any statement to either effect is nothing but opinion. We can both base that opinion on the results as we perceive them, but that in no way makes it anything but an opinion. I have no problem with freely admitting it, and I specifically did so from the outset so that no one would think I was stating anything other than unsupported opinion. For some reason you seem horrified that someone might realize you are holding forth on an unsupported opinion.



bicker said:


> Absolutely. My point was that is the way things are, and the trends are still in that direction, so trying to assert that some past perspective should prevail over the will of the country at this time is ludicrous.


Your post never made that point at all. Perhaps it was what you were thinking, but it's not what you typed. More importantly, I never suggested anything at all concerning any perspective, past present or future. I merely pointed out that the FCC's refusal to sink it's teeth far enough into the problem is the main proximate cause for the mess we're in. Had they followed through with their mandate at any point right up to the present moment, the issue would have disappeared. If they follow through within the next 30 seconds, then the issue will dissipate, although much less slowly than if they had followed through a year ago. Two years ago and it would have been a minor footnote. Four years ago and the situation would never have ocurred at all. It's getting to be more of a problem by the day, though, and will continue to do so in the future, completely irrespective of how pro-business the government might be. At some point in the not too distant future the mess will become an essentially intractable one, regardless of anyone's intent.

Edit: Perhaps my memory fails me, but I don't recall specifically having asked you to provide proof of your statements. Maybe I did, but it seems to me you were the one who brought up the notion of proof, asking me if I wanted you to prove some things concerning the current regulatory envionment.


----------



## lrhorer

bicker said:


> Indeed... it was "the other guy" who brought up the whole issue of "proving" anything. In the end, for most things, it comes down to Occum's Razor: What is the most likely explanation. Expecting that they're doing things just for spite is not a likely explanation.


If you mean me, you've got the wrong guy. I'm the one who said, "Never attribute to malice that which may be adequately explained by stupidity". You're the one who claimed the situation is the result of some specific intent to the actual end, not me.

Oh, and just BTW, Occam's Razor is based upon the simplicity of the explanation, not some evaluation of its likelihood. The whole idea of Occam's razor is to try to eliminate attempts to evaluate the merits of an idea based upon some arbitrary notion of probability. The original statement was "do not multiply entities". The most common current formulation is, "The simplest solution supported by all the facts is the best."


----------



## lrhorer

m_jonis said:


> One of the problems with dropping the analog stations (at least with TW cable) is that they will implement the CCI byte 0x02 on ALL channels (including digital simulcast of local broadcast stations). Thus, effectively rendering TTG and MRV useless except for local broadcast HD channels. So in my case, I can TTG/MRV (well, if I had two TivoHD I could MRV anyway) 6 HD local stations and nothing else.


There are ways around that, of course, but in essence you are correct, except that the simulcast local channels are also exempt from copy protection. Nonetheles, hopefully this fact will irritate enough people that they demand copy protection be eliminated altogether and congress will force the elimination of copy protection, at least for MRV situations.

OK, OK, I know, but I can dream, can't I?


----------



## hsfjr

Eccles said:


> Try the _first _20 pages; the last 20 have devolved...


Heard a quote once (in a podcast) about arguing on the internet... sadly, its not at all P.C.

Someone start a new thread when the tuning resolver is released so I can ignore this one from now on...


----------



## pmiranda

hsfjr said:


> Heard a quote once (in a podcast) about arguing on the internet... sadly, its not at all P.C.
> 
> Someone start a new thread when the tuning resolver is released so I can ignore this one from now on...


I'm sure there'll be 10 new threads on the subject, so you can probably safely unsubscribe from this one...in fact, I think I will right now... click.


----------



## ehardman

pmiranda said:


> I'm sure there'll be 10 new threads on the subject, so you can probably safely unsubscribe from this one...in fact, I think I will right now... click.


I added several users from this thread to my ignore list, but it is still out of hand. A new thread would be a good idea.


----------



## vstone

Maybe we should just invite several participants to take their argument outside while the rest of us stay inside and have a beer on me!


----------



## bicker

I suspect if anyone launches any substantive discussion about SDV, unique and different from any issues brought up previously, that discussion will become the focus of the thread.


----------



## mikeyts

lrhorer said:


> There are ways around that, of course, but in essence you are correct, except that the simulcast local channels are also exempt from copy protection.


That's apparently not true--there is certainly no language in the regulations which even implies that and both Cox and Time Warner locally have encryption applied to their entire digital simulcast, including the locals. (What's even worst is that they mark the streams "Copy One Generation". Since they put the map the channels to the digital simulcast in CableCARDs, I can freely use TiVo Desktop to move a recording of a local broadcaster's HD channel to my PC but not the crappy digital SD version of the same program ). The digital simulcasts are not, after all, what's broadcast over-the-air, and thereby aren't explicitly covered by CFR Title 47 Section 76.630, particularly when what _is_ broadcast over-the-air _is_ present on the cable in its original form (and occupying 10 times the bandwidth). There's no one whose television cannot tune the still-present analog versions and relatively few whose televisions can.

If the cable providers ever go all digital there will be no analog over-the-air broadcasts, so if there's a special standard definition version it will again be something that they're creating in their plant, not subject to current FCC rules. The FCC should probably amend those rules .


----------



## Nugget

bicker said:


> I suspect if anyone launches any substantive discussion about SDV, unique and different from any issues brought up previously, that discussion will become the focus of the thread.


While that is strictly true, it would be courteous to keep in mind that this is a sticky thread at the top of the board and perhaps deserves a more measured approach than the general rabble threads below. Infrequent visitors to the community (such as myself) rely on sticky threads such as this one to stay up-to-date with any change to the SDV situation and this unrelated bickering is detrimental to that goal.


----------



## mikeyts

One of the other people who occasionally look at this thread hoping for some news on SDV sent me a PM to ask whether I had any notion of a release date for the Tuning Resolver. (Why do people come here looking for news on the Tuning Resolver when there are threads dedicated to it elsewhere in this forum )?

To my knowledge, the closest thing to a release date that we have on the Tuning Resolver is this joint press release by the National Cable Telecommunications Association and TiVo, Inc. which contains the statement:


> 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.


This says that they expect the first cable operators to start distributing the thing some time within the next 3 months. I would speculate that the next thing that we'll hear on the topic is that someone has been informed by their cable operator and/or TiVo that the tuning resolver is available. Until then, there's no use fretting about it: chill. If it gets significantly past June with no sign of the TR, then we can all cry bloody murder .

This information is referenced in the FAQ under the topic "Is this likely to change anytime soon?" (which maybe should be retitled something like "Will I ever be able to tune SDV channels with my TiVo?"--I've PM'd bdraw with the suggestion that he rename it).


----------



## mikeyts

Nugget said:


> While that is strictly true, it would be courteous to keep in mind that this is a sticky thread at the top of the board and perhaps deserves a more measured approach than the general rabble threads below. Infrequent visitors to the community (such as myself) rely on sticky threads such as this one to stay up-to-date with any change to the SDV situation and this unrelated bickering is detrimental to that goal.


[I accidentally deleted my original response to this post--you and I have discussed that offline, so you know how I feel].

The gist of it was that I don't particularly appreciate people who don't actually use this or any other forum that I'm active in coming in and asking that we consider that it's inconvenient for them to wade through any discussion that doesn't pertain to the information that their looking for. As non-participants in the forum, if there's something in these discussion that you find useful, that's wonderful, but don't expect us to make any effort at all to make it easy for you. Why should we? By your own admission, you hardly ever come here.

This is the SDV FAQ thread--in my opinion, any thread with FAQ in the title has one important post, being the first one. The first post, which tries to collect and present the information that we have on the topic of SDV, is the sole reason why this has a sticky, so we don't lose track of it. Any of the rest of the discussion is up for grabs, so long as it's centered on the topic of the FAQ, and the exchange between lrhorer and Firekite, though it'd broken down into sniping at each other without making any new points, began as a discussion of whether cable providers are justified in their decision to use SDV, which seem totally appropriate to me.


----------



## lrhorer

mikeyts said:


> If it gets significantly past June with no sign of the TR, then we can all cry bloody murder .


Any bets?


----------



## mikeyts

lrhorer said:


> Any bets?


I think that they'll come in on time. They're trying to head off being made to produced DCR Plus; if they don't get a fait-accompli solution to the ugliest part of the problem (tuning SDV channels on low-end products) in the field, the FCC is very likely to order them to do the CEA's proposed DCR Plus and you'll be able to count the number of <tru2way> products ever brought to market on the fingers of one foot.


----------



## toy4two

MichaelK said:


> please explain- I have never heard of this.
> 
> what standard is being used between the head end the the tv to enable that? Is it an open standard or just something that maybe Mitsu worked out with Moto in private?


What he is refering to is TV Guide On Screen data. Its a closed standard, the protocol was written by GEMSTAR and SONY, Mitsubishi, and others licensed it, while GEMSTAR gave tv stations the equipment to install at their stations, pretty much one station in each market, thats all you need for complete coverage. It is passed through to TVs and DVRs (non-TIVOs) through analog and digital tv stations, right along side closed caption data. All major markets have free guide data being transmitted via over the air analog or now digital on some CBS and PBS stations which includes all the data going out 14 days for all the tv stations, THIS IS SEPERATE FROM PSIP DATA AND NOT MANDATORY, but its so widespread it may as well be a standard, it takes about 1 week to get enough data to have a complete guide, unlike say TIVO or your cable company which take seconds, when you turn off your device at night it switches over to the channel in your market that contains that data and starts downloading, the protocol is very good though, even on a OTA station with lots of static, the data manages to get through. Gemstar owns the patent, all the major markets have it and non-TIVO DVRs rely on it for their program guides, *it has NOTHING to do with Cable Cards*, that guide data, different from PSIP is free and available in the clear and even over the air, here are all the details:

http://www.crutchfieldadvisor.com/S-jqyleDfUqOQ/learningcenter/home/tvgos2.html

If you ever wondered how SONY and LG DVRs get their guide data without have to be hooked up to the internet, or dial some phone number, now you know. Its actually pretty decent, its not Tivo good, but you also don't have to pay for it. Its not like PSIP data which FCC regulates, it just happens to be very widespread, if you don't have a TV Guide On Screen compatible device you prob never heard of it.

Its got some neat features, like if you record an analog tv station to VCR, then play it back you can still extract the TVGOS data, just like you can play back the Closed Caption (CC) data on a VCR, there are some advantages to this like capturing a firmware update on VCR tape and giving your buddy the tape, ok Im getting way too indepth, go check out the SONY HD DVR thread at AVS those guys are masters of TVGOS data hacks.


----------



## m_jonis

I bet we (especially for SA systems) won't see anything until the very end of 2008, and even that will be a slim chance.


----------



## mikeyts

m_jonis said:


> I bet we (especially for SA systems) won't see anything until the very end of 2008, and even that will be a slim chance.


If you're right, I'll bet that the FCC will order cable to work with the CE OEMs on DCR Plus and that we won't _ever_ see the tuning resolver. If they don't get it into the field before the FCC can make a ruling on the CEA's DCR Plus proposal, then it will not serve the purpose that it was created for, which is to minimize the need for DCR Plus and I'm betting that they'll drop any support for it.

Obviously, it'd be useful for a couple hundred thousand TiVo Series3 and TiVo HD owners (an optomistic guesstimate), but I really don't think that they care much about us. Businesswise, I don't blame 'em--we're small potatoes. If we all stopped using cable en masse (which ain't gonna happen), they'd hardly notice it on their bottom line.


----------



## mamosley

Add time warner in the dallas, tx area using the sdv as they added 11 new hd channels today, all on sdv.


----------



## DaveDFW

mamosley said:


> Add time warner in the dallas, tx area using the sdv as they added 11 new hd channels today, all on sdv.


The new channels in Dallas, Richardson, Plano and Mesquite are not SDV--I'm getting them right now.

Of course, they could take them away later, but for now they're plain old linear broadcasts.

TTYL
David


----------



## mamosley

DaveDFW said:


> The new channels in Dallas, Richardson, Plano and Mesquite are not SDV--I'm getting them right now.
> 
> Of course, they could take them away later, but for now they're plain old linear broadcasts.
> 
> TTYL
> David


All the news articles say they are. Hopefully they still wont be by the time they are turned on in Irving.


----------



## mikeyts

mamosley said:


> All the news articles say they are. Hopefully they still wont be by the time they are turned on in Irving.


Hmmm--this article talks about them expanding their capacity using SDV, but doesn't say that all the new channels are. DaveDFW says that he's getting them (on the CableCARDs in his TiVo, presumably), so keep the faith .


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## DaveDFW

mikeyts said:


> Hmmm--this article talks about them expanding their capacity using SDV, but doesn't say that all the new channels are. DaveDFW says that he's getting them (on the CableCARDs in his TiVo, presumably), so keep the faith .


Yes, the HD channels I received today are viewable on my S3's. It is a limited rollout--only four cities in the DFW Metroplex got anything new.

I hope TWC isn't going to pull a Brighthouse and move them to SDV later.

TTYL
David


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## lrhorer

mikeyts said:


> Obviously, it'd be useful for a couple hundred thousand TiVo Series3 and TiVo HD owners (an optomistic guesstimate)


Actually, that's an underestimate. I spoke with a TiVo employee a month after the Series III was released, and he told me the Series III had sold more than 250,000 units in less than a month. Of course, he could have been exaggerating, but according to TiVo's Q1 2008 financial report, they have a total of 1.75 million subs with 33,000 being added in the quarter. I suspect a significant fraction of that 1.75 million subs are Series III class systems, and I would be surprised if a large fraction of the new subs were not Series III class units. Still, while I believe 200K is an underestimate, I think a million would be an overestimate, especially after allowing for the fact some CATV subs have more than 1 TiVo sub (some of us have more than 1 TiVo). Even if it were 1 million, however, the number of S3 TiVo subs is tiny compared to the number of cable subs, which stands somewhere above 75 million.



mikeyts said:


> but I really don't think that they care much about us. Businesswise, I don't blame 'em--we're small potatoes. If we all stopped using cable en masse (which ain't gonna happen), they'd hardly notice it on their bottom line.


Oh, they would surely notice. Being what it is, the bottom line is very sensitive to even small fluctuations in revenue, and the difference between being cash flow positive and cash flow negative is often much less than 1%. Look at the financial statements of any large corporation, and you will find their earnings statements put their net profits - if any - well below 5% of gross revenue. The stock market is even more sensitive still, since a 1% change in gross revenue can easily result in a 50% or greater change in profit, and if a company predicts a 7% earnings, but only hits 6%, the stock price can plummet.

The big issue is not the relative size of the TiVo market share, but its impact on the business. In order to make any concessions to the TiVo subs, the costs of those concessions must be less than the potential loss in revenue. Said impact is a combination of any development and deployments costs added to any potential impact on other revenue streams. It doesn't do them any good to save a TiVo sub if it costs them a non-TiVo sub to do it.


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## mikeyts

The NCTA's claim is that, as of 6 December 2007, the 5 largest MSOs had deployed 271,000 CableCards for use in third-party UDCR equipment; those MSOs account for 80% of all cable subscribers nationwide, and if we extrapolate that out to 100% of subscribers, it becomes an estimated 338,750 CableCards deployed by the beginning of December. Of course, time marches on and in the nearly four months since then more TiVos and CableCards will have been deployed, but even if all of those 339,000 cards were installed in TiVos (and I feel that they aren't all, though probably most), that's only 170,000 TiVos hooked up to cable systems. If you're right and there are many more than 200K high-definition TiVos in the field right now, then a surprisingly high percentage of them are being used OTA-only. It's possible, I guess .

Even if there were a million CableCARD using TiVo subs around the country (and it can't possibly be more than 20-30% so many, they can lose them without blinking an eye if they're losing them to add more content in the name of reclaiming or stopping loss to satellite and the telcos. They probably lose a few times so many subs as all CableCARD TiVo users every quarter.

It's nice to imagine that you're important, but, so far as the cable companies are concerned, we really aren't.


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## lrhorer

mikeyts said:


> the 5 largest MSOs had deployed 271,000 CableCards for use in third-party UDCR equipment; those MSOs account for 80% of all cable subscribers nationwide, and if we extrapolate that out to 100% of subscribers, it becomes an estimated 338,750 CableCards deployed by the beginning of December... but even if all of those 339,000 cards were installed in TiVos (and I feel that they aren't all, though probably most), that's only 170,000 TiVos hooked up to cable systems. If you're right and there are many more than 200K high-definition TiVos in the field right now, then a surprisingly high percentage of them are being used OTA-only. It's possible, I guess .


Well, there also could be a fair number on Cable but not using CableCards, but I agree the stats don't match up.



mikeyts said:


> It's nice to imagine that you're important, but, so far as the cable companies are concerned, we really aren't.


Well, there's important and important. The company for which I work grosses over a billion dollars a year in revenue, and our largest customers pay us in excess of $100,000 a month, yet we often fight almost unbelievably hard to get and retain customers who only pay us $375 a month. Now there's no way we would ever let a $375 a month customer significantly impact a $100,000 a month customer in even the slightest fashion, but we don't ignore them, either. We also spend a huge amount of money on the $375 customers as a group, they being far, far more in number than the six figure clients. Of course, the dynamic is a little different for the Cable Company, because for them there is not such a large difference in revenue between their highest paying and lowest paying individual customer, and also because they must spend the same infrastructure dollars whether they catch the biggest fish or smallest fish in their pond, while we spend much more individually on infrastructure on the $100K customer than on the $375 customer.

You are correct in saying we S3 TiVo users are not their highest priority by a long shot, but it would be inaccurate to say they don't care about Tivo owners, at all. To a certain extent, any good businessman is concerned about each and every customer, including the very smallest, and to some measure the CATV company is concerned about each and every single loss to their competition, even if it's just a basic subscriber. What's more, on a one by one basis, S3 TiVo owners are probably right at the top of the revenue getters, not to mention being more likley to be rich and politically powerful than the average sub. Nonetheless, as a logical grouping, S3 owners represent a very small fraction of the overall revenue stream, so it would indeed be quite unwise - not to mention all too easy - to overestimate our importance to the CATV providers.

Indeed, the fact I know some uncomfortable facts about certain highly placed employees in the industry probably offers me more clout. 

The fact I am much bigger than they, can beat them up, and know where they live probably offers more still. 

Nonetheless, there is still a significant difference between "small" and "zero", and while a CATV provider isn't going to spend millions in cash or even jeopardize tens of thousands of dollars of their revenue stream, any responsible CATV company should certainly be willing to listen and to consider policies which don't otherwise impact their revenues or cost them anything out of proportion to the admittedly small revenues we represent.


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## Firekite

mikeyts said:


> If we all stopped using cable en masse (which ain't gonna happen), they'd hardly notice it on their bottom line.


Just for reference, a company's bottom line is the total of their costs (laying off employees decreases the bottom line). Their top line is their revenue (losing customers impacts their top line). Their actual profit or loss is the area between the two amounts of money on a graph. Not a big deal, but it seems to be misused so often I thought I'd chime in.


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## jefny

There may be another factor in the issue of providing a resolution to the sdv issue for TIVO owners who use cablecards. This is competition with Verizon FIOS TV. In my area (the north shore of Long Island) which is Cablevision territory(who recently mailed out cards indicating loss of HD channels for cablecard customers) a franchise has been approved for Verizon FIOS. This will push Cablevision customers such as myself to switch as Verizon, according to a sales rep that I spoke to, has no plans at present for SDV because they have sufficient bandwith to begin with, thanks to fiber optic cables that now run to my house (I have Verizon Internet).

I realize that cablecards are still problematic and seem to cost more to install than a box but the fear of competition might push some cable companies to provide an SDV solution that appears to be in the works.

Of course I hope that it is not just wishful thinking on my part.

John


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## bicker

Well, do keep in mind, though, that FiOS cherry-picks. So the impact of FiOS is a bit muted, affecting mostly the customers who are already the most mobile (most financially able to switch, since many don't currently rely on analog, as much as the customers whom FiOS bypasses).


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## mikeyts

Firekite said:


> Just for reference, a company's bottom line is the total of their costs (laying off employees decreases the bottom line). Their top line is their revenue (losing customers impacts their top line). Their actual profit or loss is the area between the two amounts of money on a graph. Not a big deal, but it seems to be misused so often I thought I'd chime in.


As I understand it, the phrase "bottom line" is synonymous with "net income", a number typically shown on the last (i.e., "bottom") line of a traditional financial sheet. After we collect all revenues and pay off everyone we owe for our operations this past year (or quarter, or whatever), this is how much we ended up earning or losing. All revenues and all expenses affect the bottom line. In a publicly held company any dividends paid to shareholders come out of this (if it's a positive number).

It's pretty much what people always mean when they say "the bottom line" and that financial derivation is where the idioms like "skip to the bottom line" come from--it means, "forget all hairy details and just tell me how we made out".

The first definition of "bottom line" in _The American Heritage Dictionary_ is "The line in a financial statement that shows net income or loss."


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## ah30k

Firekite said:


> Just for reference, a company's bottom line is the total of their costs (laying off employees decreases the bottom line). Their top line is their revenue (losing customers impacts their top line). Their actual profit or loss is the area between the two amounts of money on a graph. Not a big deal, but it seems to be misused so often I thought I'd chime in.


Yes, Mike is right. Your interpretation of bottom line is wrong which would indicate why you think so many others are misusing the term.

revenue (top-line)
- cost of goods sold
--------------------
margin
- SG&A, operating costs
--------------------
operating income
- non operating items
--------------------
Net Income (bottom-line)


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## lrhorer

jefny said:


> This will push Cablevision customers such as myself to switch as Verizon, according to a sales rep that I spoke to, has no plans at present for SDV because they have sufficient bandwith to begin with, thanks to fiber optic cables that now run to my house (I have Verizon Internet).


Well, first of all, "plans at present" and what actually unfolds are often two different things. Ignoring interactive services for the moment, it's true the 870MHz digital bandwidth of the FIOS signal offers more bandwidth than is currently available for linear broadcast, but that's going to change soon. While no CATV company presently has enough gas with or without SDV to exceed a linear offering of 145 QAMs, SDV offers the ability to eventually do just that, especially as more and more HD offerings come online. By "eventually", I don't mean many years, either. I mean perhaps within the next 18 - 24 months.

More importantly, the term "sufficient bandwidth to begin with" suggests a perspective which ignores the fundamental capabilities of SDV, especially in terms of interactive services such as VOD, IPPV, Video Rewind, video conferencing, online video based shopping, specialty video feeds, secure video feeds, online video banking, etc.

I'll give you a directly analogous example. The following glosses over the development timeline somewhat, and fudges on some of the availability issues and evolutionary detail, but otherwise is accurate . When Ethernet first began to be deployed, it's topology was analogous to linear video broadcasts. Everyone on a LAN segment shared the same 10Mbps bandwidth. It was great, because essentially everything usually came from a single server and 10Mbps was more than the server's hard drive could usually manage, anyway. As time went by, however, server speeds and hard drive speeds went up, but everyone was sharing the same 10M bandwidth. What's worse, there were more and more workstations as well as more servers being added to the same LAN segment, so congestion soon became the biggest nightmare of the LAN administrator. An obvious solution to the problem would be to increase the LAN speed to something more than 10Mbps, and of course that did in fact happen, but just increasing the LAN speed wouldn't have resolved the underlying problem of shared bandwidth. The answer was to abandon the Ethernet hub and replace it with an Ethernet switch. Doing so allowed each and every workstation to potentially use up to the full 10M (or 100M or now 1000M) bandwidth. Of course, in addition, it made the communications full duplex, so the upstream utilization no longer impacts the available downstream bandwidth, but the main point is that without changing the bandwidth capabilities of the underlying hardware, merely by changing to a switched protocol rather than a hubbed protocol, the overall LAN bandwidth was increased much more than an order of magnitude, or in some cases more than two orders of magnitude.

The same is true here. SDV offers an essentially unlimited increase in effective bandwidth to the CATV system. At some point in the not too distant future I would expect it to well exceed 10G, and perhaps even 100G. That will leave FIOS' 870M way, way in the dust. Viewed as an overall offering, we are talking about effectively tens of thousands of unique, independent video feeds around the city. Many, of course, will just be the very same video content time shifted by a minute or ten as subs take advantage of Video Rewind or VOD. Others will be completely unique as a user pulls up an HD video of a home for sale somewhere across the country and another shares a home video off an HD camcorder from his sister in Peoria. Your employer can put up a video presentation available only to employees, and your model car racing club can put up videos available 24 hours a day available to every member of the club.


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## lrhorer

toy4two said:


> What he is refering to is TV Guide On Screen data. .. *it has NOTHING to do with Cable Cards*, that guide data, different from PSIP is free and available in the clear and even over the air, here are all the details:


The point is the protocol does work with CableCards, CableCard equipped devices can make use of it, and it is interactive.


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## mikeyts

Verizon's big advantage in their offering is like the satellite services--nothing that they offer is analog, and therefore they don't have to waste more than half their capacity on 70-80 analog standard-definition basic and extended basic channels in bandwidth which could host twice as many 19 Mbps HD video streams.


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## ilh

Channels 1-50 are all analog on my FiOS line-up if you're not using CableCARDs. (I used my THD that way for 3 weeks waiting for CCs.) However, analog is apparently going away starting in May according to mail Verizon just sent out.


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## lrhorer

mikeyts said:


> Verizon's big advantage in their offering is like the satellite services--nothing that they offer is analog, and therefore they don't have to waste more than half their capacity on 70-80 analog standard-definition basic and extended basic channels in bandwidth which could host twice as many 19 Mbps HD video streams.


Yes, but a factor of two or three is virtually nothing compared to the resources made available by SDV. Even if their entire 870MHz is nothing but digital QAMs, that represents only 300 or so HD channels, each and every one of which must start and stop at one fixed moment. Using SDV, the "pool" of available programs can be literally unlimited. Hypothetically it could be millions, or tens of millions. In a practical sense, it means that more than 1/3 of the 1,000,000 or so receivers in a large urban market could be watching something different than what anyone else in the market is watching at that moment. If the node size were small enough, that could be bumped up to allow each and every subscriber in the entire system to be watching something different, but analyses of the traffic patterns of subscribers show diminishing returns when the average number of receivers on a node dips below a moderate multiple of the number of available SDV streams. As long as the average sub doesn't encounter the dreaded channel unavailable banner more than once or twice a year and not for more than a few minutes, they aren't going to complain.

Note again the largest utilization of bandwidth across an entire market is not any number of scheduled events, nor even of any highly specialized events, but rather interactive events which require what most often is the same content thousands of other subs may be watching stream out a few seconds or minutes earlier or later than all the other copies of the exact same program. Every time an SDV sub hits <Pause> or <Rewind> on his STB, the server has to split off that sub's stream from the rest of the system watching The Apprentice. Every time an SDV sub pulls up VOD and orders Real Time With Bill Maher at 11:07 instead of 11:00, it requires a unique data stream dedicated only to that customer. No matter how much bandwidth the provider has, in a linear broadcast model this just isn't possible.

Now, it's true these two particular (very popular) features of SDV are mostly made moot by having a DVR instead of an STB, but even those subs who have a leased DVR probably don't have two or more, and yet would like those capabilities on the sets which don't have a DVR attached. Most of the myriad of other services engendered by SDV cannot be duplicated on a non SDV DVR. They also cannot be duplicated by any other non-SDV equipment, which right now includes satellite services and FIOS. It would be singularly odd for either of those industries to overlook this fact. Unless they can come up with a very inexpensive 2-way satellite alternative, the satellite companies are ultimately SOL in this respect. FIOS is another matter, however. It won't cost FIOS any more to convert to SDV than it is costing the CATV providers.
I'll be totally shocked if FIOS doesn't have a significant SDV or similar offering within 2 years.


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## Firekite

ah30k said:


> Yes, Mike is right.


I stand corrected 



lrhorer said:


> analyses of the traffic patterns of subscribers show diminishing returns when the average number of receivers on a node dips below a moderate multiple of the number of available SDV streams.


Wait...the law of diminishing returns is true?? Ridiculous! 



> Now, it's true these two particular (very popular) features of SDV are mostly made moot by having a DVR instead of an STB, but even those subs who have a leased DVR probably don't have two or more, and yet would like those capabilities on the sets which don't have a DVR attached.


See, I really _do_ think that is ridiculous. I can't imagine why this would even be necessary. I've never understood the appeal of this kind of thing or why CATV providers (well, at least TWC in my area) push it as this amazing feature. That's what a DVR is for. I don't know the business math behind it, but until they rolled out such a feature, I can't imagine that people were clamoring for it. It was a completely new, heretofore unheard of feature. If they just never bothered rolling it out and instead suggested that the DVR would be the best option, would people really complain? I mean, satellite can't do that, can it?


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## ilh

lrhorer,

I thought VOD with FiOS uses IPTV for the on-demand delivery, so that would not seem to require SDV with FiOS. Apparently PPV is not over IP. Since it seems like the largest growth is likely in VOD, including all the pausing and asynchrony of video streams to homes, putting that over IPTV instead of the 870MHz "cable" stream should help a lot, no?

--Lee


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## lgerbarg

FIOS already delivers interactive content via IP, in the 1490nm spectrum. Their 870MHz cable spectrum is separate at 1550nm. Deploying SDV buys them no additional interactive or IP bandwidth.


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## HDTiVo

lrhorer said:


> I spoke with a TiVo employee a month after the Series III was released, and he told me the Series III had sold more than 250,000 units in less than a month.


That´s what you get when you talk to a TiVo employee. 

My question is whether there is any info on the availability of the dongle thingy since I last logged in here feb 1st. I took the comment on the earnings call that progress was continuing to be made without a reiteration of the "second QTR" time frame as an indication we are looking beyond June in the absence of any other info.


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## lrhorer

lgerbarg said:


> FIOS already delivers interactive content via IP, in the 1490nm spectrum. Their 870MHz cable spectrum is separate at 1550nm.


I am not all that familiar with FIOS, so you and ilh may well be correct. It is the switched nature of SDV which makes it efficient, and if FIOS' IPTV offering is switched at a point where a significantly small number of users are sharing the bandwidth, then it enjoys the same benefits as SDV. Note, however, this *still* requires a 2-way host, whether CableCard based or otherwise.



lgerbarg said:


> Deploying SDV buys them no additional interactive or IP bandwidth.


Employing SDV does free up bandwidth, no matter what, and since it is interactive it does by definition buy them additional interactive bandwidth. Depending upon the number and nature of their 1550nm carriers, however, and how many subs receive the same set of carriers, it may be unnecessary.

Note also that as time goes by and eventually the number of users taking any significant advantage whatsoever of the linear channels, there will eventually come a point when the entire 870MHz RF spectrum will beg to either convert to a switched protocol or shut down entirely. 'No reason to maintain something nobody watches.


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## lrhorer

HDTiVo said:


> That´s what you get when you talk to a TiVo employee.


Yeah, point taken. At least he was genuinely enthusiastic and very helpful. Those qualities are sometimes hard by which to come in support personnel.



HDTiVo said:


> My question is whether there is any info on the availability of the dongle thingy since I last logged in here feb 1st.


'Nary a peep that I have seen or heard.



HDTiVo said:


> I took the comment on the earnings call that progress was continuing to be made without a reiteration of the "second QTR" time frame as an indication we are looking beyond June in the absence of any other info.


Let's just say I'm not holding my breath.


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## lgerbarg

lrhorer said:


> I am not all that familiar with FIOS, so you and ilh may well be correct. It is the switched nature of SDV which makes it efficient, and if FIOS' IPTV offering is switched at a point where a significantly small number of users are sharing the bandwidth, then it enjoys the same benefits as SDV. Note, however, this *still* requires a 2-way host, whether CableCard based or otherwise.


Verizon boxes are all two way, though they use IP over MoCA for their return path. Since they have been using MoCA based boxes, I am not entirely certain their ONTs support any sort of QPSK/QAM/DOCSIS based return path (some ONTs can act as a host and then tunnel it over IP back to the headend). Not sure how that will effect their ability to support tru2way and such.



> Employing SDV does free up bandwidth, no matter what, and since it is interactive it does by definition buy them additional interactive bandwidth. Depending upon the number and nature of their 1550nm carriers, however, and how many subs receive the same set of carriers, it may be unnecessary.


Sorry, let me rephrase that. Given the inherent segregation of their various services, moving to SDV does not free up bandwidth that can be used for IP traffic, or for their existing interactive (IPTV based) services. SDV is a two way service, but I would not call it interactive in the sense that people generally use the term.

Anyway, suffice it to say, their network is built wrong for deploying SDV, and the bandwidth savings they would get from it could be not used to enhance their current services, beyond the ability to have more linear mapped channels. Given that they can already have more channels than anyone else due to their IP and IPTV being out of band, it seems unlikely they will ever need to deploy SDV as such. I could easily see them ending up totally IP based at some distant point in the future, but I suspect that 1550nm is going to remain an 870MHz non-SDV QAM based system until it is shut down.


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## MichaelK

bicker said:


> Well, do keep in mind, though, that FiOS cherry-picks. So the impact of FiOS is a bit muted, affecting mostly the customers who are already the most mobile (most financially able to switch, since many don't currently rely on analog, as much as the customers whom FiOS bypasses).


I'll take this as an opportunity to make some points about the relative importance of tivo subs.

first- all customers are NOT equal to cable. Directv as an example recently found that a large portion of their profit comes from a small portion of their customers at the top end.
check out http://dtv.client.shareholder.com/events.cfm look at the powerpoint presentation from the feb 22,2006 meeting and look at slide 64.
Basically directv figures the top 33% of their subs account for 63% of their profit. I'd venture to say a tivo cablecard sub is very likely to be in the top 33% of cable's customer structure. Directv also figures the bottom 35% only account for 13% of their profit. (with the bottom 15% acounnting for just 3%)

I'm not certain but my guess would be that DBS's incremental cost is a bunch less then cable's since there is no wireline infrastructure or nodes to maintain- one satellite serves 10million subs just as well as 11 million but cable needs to use a bit more infrastructure to add additional subs. Also- cable's top end revenue generators might even account for more profit since cable has the ability to sell broadband and telephone that DBS just doesn't have. So it stands to reason that cable cares even more about their top end subs then dbs would.

(Flip side to all this is DISH loves the bottom feeders so maybe directv's math is wrong- LOL)

Because of all that- verizon "cherry picking" is even bigger then someone just competing across the board. Verizon going after the affluent high-end subs that buy TRIPLE PLAY is just the damage that that cable doesn't want. An analog sub is somewhat less likely to have triple play then a digital sub. And cable seems to be making all their recent gains selling the other services besides cable.

Also- clearly people with HD tivo's have a bit of disposable income. So again they as a whole are likely to generate more revenue for cable.

So TiVo cablecard subs are probably more profitable and therefore more important then any random sub. But the question still remains does any one tivo cablecard sub produce enough additional profit to offset the loss of X amount of analog subs that need to be sacrificed to keep the tivo sub happy. That's the 64 thousand dollar question.

To kind of place a ballpark number on it and making a few assumptions (not to be taken as gospel but to put numbers on things to get an idea of scope)
Assuming cables profit bands fall in the same tiers as directv. Then basically you can piss off 9 or 10 subs in the bottom 15% in order to keep one sub in the top 33%. MY OPINION- one can assume a tivo cablecard sub is in that top 33%, but the problem is pulling analog channels probably offends many more then 10 people for each tivo sub. And to make it worse- likely plenty of the people that cable is likely to piss off are in the middle bands- not the bottom end. Many people seem to have digital cable yet still have analog outlets for their secondary sets.

Bottom line- Tivo subs probably have a more clout but the costs to keep them happy by not doing sdv and instead taking analog channels away is likely pretty high and therefore not worth the effort.

On the other hand- keeping the cable subs without cablecard that are in that top third is very important. They probably have HD in higher numbers then the bottom tiers and to keep them happy and away from fios and DBS you need to increase the HD. And the easiest way to do that seems to be SDV.


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## bicker

MichaelK said:


> first- all customers are NOT equal to cable. Directv as an example recently found that a large portion of their profit comes from a small portion of their customers at the top end.


Good point, but without a similar study of cable customers it is as likely as not to be the case that the proportions are the exact opposite for cable, i.e., that the high-end customers flock to satellite (or FiOS, since that's exactly the kind of customer that FiOS is evidently cherry-picking for), and therefore represent a much greater contribution to the whole. Since satellite doesn't provide analog service, and doesn't provide regulated lifeline service ($8.50 per month, here, imposed on cable, per regulation), it stands to reason that 100% of _those_ "low-end" customers choose cable over satellite.

Wal-Mart is poised to become the top seller of HDTVs this December -- Ask yourself, which "end" of the market will they be serving? And they'll make many times more money per store doing so, just this year, than the entire Cambridge Soundworks chain made selling HDTVs in the entirety of its existence. There is a place -- a very specific and significant place -- for both "ends" of the market, and neither end is "better" or "worse" to pursue: $1,000,000 of profit, made $1,000 at a time, is just as good as $1,000,000 of profit, made $10,000 at a time.



MichaelK said:


> I'd venture to say a tivo cablecard sub is very likely to be in the top 33% of cable's customer structure.


Note that DirecTV doesn't even support TiVo CableCard subscribers -- they don't consider such folks to be in their intended target market. There's no reason to think that that *specific *group will be considered worthwhile of pursuing in earnest by any supplier: That *specific* group has already pre-determined their supplier, in most cases, and so the desires of that specific group is thereby devalued by the reality of the situation.



MichaelK said:


> I'm not certain but my guess would be that DBS's incremental cost is a bunch less then cable's since there is no wireline infrastructure or nodes to maintain ... So it stands to reason that cable cares even more about their top end subs then dbs would.


Cable has already incurred the cost to wire most everyone, whether they're customers or not. Turning service on incurs a very small incremental cost.



MichaelK said:


> Because of all that- verizon "cherry picking" is even bigger then someone just competing across the board. Verizon going after the affluent high-end subs that buy TRIPLE PLAY is just the damage that that cable doesn't want.


I think that's true for a different reason, but only with a proviso: A high-margin customer is always better than a low-margin customer, but only as long as the costs to attract each is held constant. Otherwise, the math gets a lot more complicated.


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## Firekite

bicker said:


> Wal-Mart is poised to become the top seller of HDTVs this December -- Ask yourself, which "end" of the market will they be serving? And they'll make many times more money per store doing so, just this year, than the entire Cambridge Soundworks chain made selling HDTVs in the entirety of its existence.


I was really hoping those underlined bits were links to sources. Can you provide them? It's interesting stuff.



> $1,000,000 of profit, made $1,000 at a time, is just as good as $1,000,000 of profit, made $10,000 at a time.


I tell you what, having worked retail before I can tell you I'd much rather be making it at $10,000 at a time


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## bicker

Firekite said:


> I was really hoping those underlined bits were links to sources. Can you provide them? It's interesting stuff.


Uh read it again. Some of it _hasn't happened yet_. I don't have a time machine. 



Firekite said:


> I tell you what, having worked retail before I can tell you I'd much rather be making it at $10,000 at a time


That's the difference between a sales person and a business manager.


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## jbmdharris

I'm considering buying a TiVo and getting rid of my TWC SA8300HDC with awful Navigator software. The gotcha is SDV and I know very little about TiVo. (Never owned one... but have used cable-company provided DVRs for several years.) I've been scanning this and other TiVo forums and I know there's a dongle that someday may come out enabling TivoHD to get SDV channels... but given the history of troubles in this area, I'm not counting on it any time in my lifetime or that something else won't come up that gets in the way of it working.

So what I don't see in all of my searches is any discussion of any kind of component or technology that exists *now* that will allow a TiVo HD (or heck, any HD DVR product) to record an HD output from and drive a cable company-provided HD set-top box like the series 2 TiVos can do with standard definition set top boxes. Does anything like this exist? (But of course, recording an HD signal instead of just the SD signal.)

Is there any kind of third-party device that can convert HDMI or component output back to a coax input that TiVo HD can record in HD? What about a software update and device that enables TiVo HD to send out remote control sequences to the HD cable box to change the channel?

It seems to me that the ability for TiVo to record from and control cable and satellite provided set top boxes has been the single key technology that enabled TiVo to exist and be viable in the marketplace. Why on earth would this function be removed from the newer models even with the cable card capabilities.


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## bxojr

jbmdharris said:


> So what I don't see in all of my searches is any discussion of any kind of component or technology that exists *now* that will allow a TiVo HD (or heck, any HD DVR product) to record an HD output from and drive a cable company-provided HD set-top box like the series 2 TiVos can do with standard definition set top boxes. Does anything like this exist?


Others may be able to answer more authoritatively, but my understanding is that there are basically three reasons why the answer is "no":


A high-definition digital signal represents a MUCH larger volume of data than a standard-definition signal. Encoding that much data on the fly is simply not practical with current technology. I have seen news stories about other companies (not TiVo) developing a "component-in" HD DVR, but no such product exists yet; and it would likely be very expensive.

Recording the video output from a cable box would mean that the digital signal is sent through another generation of encoding and decoding, which would unavoidably entail some loss of quality. Which is probably not what you want, if you're going to the trouble to watch HD in the first place.

Such a scheme would also bypass all of the copy-protection schemes that exist in the digital data stream, which would tick off the content owners. That's something TiVo has been careful to avoid doing (same reason there's no thirty-second skip by default).

My guess is that such a DVR may be just possible technically, but it's very unlikely we'll ever see one from TiVo.


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## Firekite

bicker said:


> Uh read it again. Some of it _hasn't happened yet_. I don't have a time machine.


*eyebrow*

You make some rather authoritative forecasts that sound like you're very confident in them and then mention some other specifics about current and past stats. Where did you get any of that information?


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## ajwees41

jbmdharris said:


> I'm considering buying a TiVo and getting rid of my TWC SA8300HDC with awful Navigator software. The gotcha is SDV and I know very little about TiVo. (Never owned one... but have used cable-company provided DVRs for several years.) I've been scanning this and other TiVo forums and I know there's a dongle that someday may come out enabling TivoHD to get SDV channels... but given the history of troubles in this area, I'm not counting on it any time in my lifetime or that something else won't come up that gets in the way of it working.
> 
> So what I don't see in all of my searches is any discussion of any kind of component or technology that exists *now* that will allow a TiVo HD (or heck, any HD DVR product) to record an HD output from and drive a cable company-provided HD set-top box like the series 2 TiVos can do with standard definition set top boxes. Does anything like this exist? (But of course, recording an HD signal instead of just the SD signal.)
> 
> Is there any kind of third-party device that can convert HDMI or component output back to a coax input that TiVo HD can record in HD? What about a software update and device that enables TiVo HD to send out remote control sequences to the HD cable box to change the channel?
> 
> It seems to me that the ability for TiVo to record from and control cable and satellite provided set top boxes has been the single key technology that enabled TiVo to exist and be viable in the marketplace. Why on earth would this function be removed from the newer models even with the cable card capabilities.


why would you want to do that? The S3 or HD Tivo only need cable cards to decrypt the signal


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## jbmdharris

ajwees41 said:


> why would you want to do that? The S3 or HD Tivo only need cable cards to decrypt the signal


Cable cards can't pick up SDV broadcasts. I'm a Time Warner Cable customer in an area where SDV is being rolled out. We have some SDV channels on my system now that I would not be able to get. More and more digital channels will be converted to SDV this year to make room for new HDTV channels. Until the SDV dongle is complete, available, proven to work, and guaranteed to work into the future, any TiVo HD I buy would continue to be crippled more and more throughout the year until the dongle is available... assuming it works and Time Warner doesn't do something else to break TiVo in the meantime.

Depending upon your cable system and digital lineup, TiVo HD may not be any better than the TiVo unit able to record standard definition broadcasts on analog TV... and I'm trying to replace Time Warner's unreliable HD DVR which gives me access to all the digital channels... even the SDV ones.


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## jbmdharris

bxojr said:


> A high-definition digital signal represents a MUCH larger volume of data than a standard-definition signal. Encoding that much data on the fly is simply not practical with current technology.


Good point... I hadn't considered this. Given how long it takes to produce a digital home movie in DVD format should have clued me in to this. So TiVo (and I guess other DVRs) mpeg encode analog signals but just copy the raw digital signal to disk (since it's already mpeg encoded coming down the pipe)?



bxojr said:


> Recording the video output from a cable box would mean that the digital signal is sent through another generation of encoding and decoding, which would unavoidably entail some loss of quality.


I would prefer not to have quality loss... but I'll take quality loss over no ability to record at all.



bxojr said:


> Such a scheme would also bypass all of the copy-protection schemes that exist in the digital data stream, which would tick off the content owners.


This is probably the "nail in the coffin" so to speak. In order to make such a device and have the media industry not completely block it in litigation, it would have to honor the digital copyright data in the stream. And given other posts I've seen on this newsgroup where people complain that they can't copy recorded shows off of their TiVo units to their PC because of incorrect copy protection bits set by cable providers or networks... the device probably couldn't actually record much.

So, I'm guessing this means that TiVo is able to do what they are doing without any more legal problems than they have because their device records the data stream for a specific purpose (time shifting) and there is a way to prevent distribution of the recording (the copy protection information provided by the content provider, network, or cable system).

What this all seems to boil down to is there really is no alternative DVR solution for customers of cable systems using switched digital video technology right now... Well, except for completely switching to satellite. And since I choose not to use satellite (for reasons I won't go into here) and since Time Warner is replacing decent DVR software (Aptiv Passport) with awful, buggy software (OCAP Navigator) on all of their HD DVR boxes this year, I'm stuck until either Time Warner fixes the problems with their DVR software, or the dongle comes out so I can actually use a TiVo HD if I were to buy it.

I wish I had come to this realization two weeks ago before I bought my new TV and switched out my service. Now I've got a DVR system that doesn't have features I've come to rely on, I'm spoiled by the new HDTV and don't want to return it, and can't really switch to a TiVo HD DVR just yet. I guess the rest of you guys are now saying "join the club" huh?


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## ADent

An S2 TiVo would do analog quality.

Cable boxes are supposed to have a FireWire output, and there are some firewire recorders - but nothing (that I know of) with a TiVo like interface to control the cable box. See http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/forumdisplay.php?f=42 .


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## mikeyts

ADent said:


> An S2 TiVo would do analog quality.
> 
> Cable boxes are supposed to have a FireWire output, and there are some firewire recorders - but nothing (that I know of) with a TiVo like interface to control the cable box. See http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/forumdisplay.php?f=42 .


Digital cable STBs are supposed to have 1394/DTCP (Firewire) _connections_--it's a bidirectional communications link. They should not require a TiVo-like IR repeater for control, since they are further required to implement a subset of the defined AV/C commands for tuners: the device recording them should be able to send them messages over 1394 to get the tuner's status and configuration and to turn the tuner on and off and change the channel.

This interface and these specific capabilities are required by Code of Federal Regulations Title 47, §76.640(b)(4):


> (4) Cable operators shall:
> 
> (i) Effective April 1, 2004, upon request of a customer, replace any leased high definition set-top box, which does not include a functional IEEE 1394 interface, with one that includes a functional IEEE 1394 interface or upgrade the customer's set-top box by download or other means to ensure that the IEEE 1394 interface is functional.
> 
> (ii) Effective July 1, 2005, include both a DVI or HDMI interface and an IEEE 1394 interface on all high definition set-top boxes acquired by a cable operator for distribution to customers.
> 
> (iii) Ensure that these cable operator-provided high definition set-top boxes shall comply with ANSI/SCTE 26 2001 (formerly DVS 194): Home Digital Network Interface Specification with Copy Protection (incorporated by reference, see §76.602), with transmission of bit-mapped graphics optional, and shall support the CEA931A: Remote Control Command Pass-through Standard for Home Networking (incorporated by reference, see §76.602), pass through control commands: tune function, mute function, and restore volume function. In addition these boxes shall support the power control commands (power on, power off, and status inquiry) defined in A/VC Digital Interface Command Set General Specification Version 4.0 (as referenced in ANSI/SCTE 26 2001 (formerly DVS 194): Home Digital Network Interface Specification with Copy Protection (incorporated by reference, see §76.602)).


For some reason, the CE OEMs who make most of these boxes and their firmware have found it difficult to produce compliant products, so there are very few products which do comply and very few cable providers have them. But every box that they purchased for the past two years, eight months should have had working 1394/DTCP connections.


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## bxojr

jbmdharris said:


> I wish I had come to this realization two weeks ago before I bought my new TV and switched out my service. Now I've got a DVR system that doesn't have features I've come to rely on, I'm spoiled by the new HDTV and don't want to return it, and can't really switch to a TiVo HD DVR just yet. I guess the rest of you guys are now saying "join the club" huh?


It all depends on where you are and what your local cable system is doing with respect to SDV. For what it's worth, I switched to cable and bought a TiVo HD less than a month ago, even after reading about the SDV issues. For me the TiVo HD was perfectly viable, and I'm happy with my decision.

Why? I decided the risk was acceptable. My local provider (TWC in Raleigh/Durham) has not yet implemented SDV, although they could do so at any time. Even if they do, it's likely to be only for newly added channels (so I won't lose anything I have now), and it's likely to be only for less popular channels. Most of the HD programs we watch are on the major networks, which are not likely to go SDV.

My advice would be to find out whether and how your local cable company is using SDV, and whether any channels you care about are affected.

Eventually the tuning resolver will appear, so this is all a transient situation anyway. I've lived this long without Animal Planet in HD, so I figure I can last a few more months if necessary. (I don't subscribe to the pessimistic "don't hold your breath" view about the tuning resolver -- there's too much at stake for both TiVo and the cable companies.)


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## rockymountaind

jbmdharris said:


> Cable cards can't pick up SDV broadcasts...


If I understand the issue correctly, it's the TiVo boxes that can't do SDV (because they aren't 2-way); the cards themselves have nothing to do with SDV.


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## ajwees41

rockymountaind said:


> If I understand the issue correctly, it's the TiVo boxes that can't do SDV (because they aren't 2-way); the cards themselves have nothing to do with SDV.


rocky you are correct.


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## mikeyts

rockymountaind said:


> If I understand the issue correctly, it's the TiVo boxes that can't do SDV (because they aren't 2-way); the cards themselves have nothing to do with SDV.


Exactly. All the new boxes that the cable companies have acquired since last July (the SA Explorer boxes with "C" on the end their model, like SA8300HDC) have M-Cards in them which they use to decrypt everything. Anyplace where SDV is deployed, CableCARDs are being used to receive them.

The trick with SDV is not in tuning the channel, but in finding out where it is--what frequency band has its QAM carrier and what program number the channel is assigned within that stream. To find this stuff out, you have to be able to ask the system for the information; TiVos can't do it because they completely lack the ability to talk to the cable system over the coax. The Tuning Resolver will do that talking for them and TiVos will talk to the Tuning Resolver through a USB connection.


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## Firekite

rockymountaind said:


> If I understand the issue correctly, it's the TiVo boxes that can't do SDV (because they aren't 2-way); the cards themselves have nothing to do with SDV.


Ugh. This has been addressed to death. _Technically_ that is correct, yes. However, by "CableCARDS" most people are _actually_ referring to any 3rd party CableCARD device. This being the TiVo forum, _that generally means their TiVo_. It is true that it's not CableCARDS themselves that are the problem, but rather that no 3rd party device (which is necessarily a CableCARD device, while the proprietary CATV-provided devices may not be) can communicate back to the CATV provider.


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## ah30k

Firekite said:


> However, by "CableCARDS" most people are _actually_ referring to any 3rd party CableCARD device.


Yes, and some around here get very testy when someone corrects a poster who makes this error. Don't know why.

Anyway, I think the best way to say it is: while all CableCARDs are inherently two-way, the licensing terms associated with becoming an authorized CableCARD device require any CE device wishing to take advantage of two-way services also be OCAP compliant. Many CE companies find these terms onerous and choose not to sign the terms thus become forced into one-way usage.


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## bxojr

Firekite said:


> However, by "CableCARDS" most people are _actually_ referring to any 3rd party CableCARD device.


I have no intention of involving myself in this argument, but speaking for myself, I really do prefer more precise terminology. When I say "CableCARD," I mean the CableCARD. If I want to talk about the CableCARD host device, I say "CableCARD host device." This is the terminology used by the CableCARD spec, the NCTA, the CEA, the FCC, and anyone else who wants to have a clear technical discussion about the issues.

You're probably right that "most people" are not careful to make this distinction. But I think it's an important distinction, and being careful about it would really help to avoid some awfully pointless arguments on this forum.


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## HDTiVo

jbmdharris said:


> So what I don't see in all of my searches is any discussion of any kind of component or technology that exists *now* that will allow a TiVo HD (or heck, any HD DVR product) to record an HD output from and drive a cable company-provided HD set-top box like the series 2 TiVos can do with standard definition set top boxes. Does anything like this exist? (But of course, recording an HD signal instead of just the SD signal.)


You can look on my blog back in January and Megazone & Zatz for more info on this. One product is made by Gefen. Perhaps TiVo will someday incorporate such technology, but they have never commented on doing so as far as I know.


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## HDTiVo

mikeyts said:


> The trick with SDV is not in tuning the channel, but in finding out where it is--what frequency band has its QAM carrier and what program number the channel is assigned within that stream.


Don´t forget the other trick: requesting/maintaining the channel.


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## mikeyts

HDTiVo said:


> Don´t forget the other trick: requesting the channel.


That's what I meant when I said "To find this stuff out, you have to be able to ask the system for the information". You find out where the channel is by requesting it. Of course, it might not be anywhere until after you request it and there's a possibility that it won't be able to allocate bandwidth to it.


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## lrhorer

bicker said:


> There is a place -- a very specific and significant place -- for both "ends" of the market, and neither end is "better" or "worse" to pursue: $1,000,000 of profit, made $1,000 at a time, is just as good as $1,000,000 of profit, made $10,000 at a time.


'Too right. 'Excellent post. Of course, Cable hopes they can successfuly pursue both ends of the spectrum, and as such they have a very broad range of demographics to consider. Anything they can inexpensively and reasonably do to keep one segment happy is worthwhile, unless it impacts the spending of another, larger demographic, in which case it's a bad idea. Larger in this case means more dollars, not just more subs. The thing is, no matter how one slices it, third party CableCard users, although dfinitely visisble, respresent a rather small demographic. If they are business wise, then the CATV providers will exert some effort to make TiVo users happy, but not out of proportion to the TiVo user's spend and not in conflict with other user's desires.

That leaves us in a less than optimal situation.


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## lrhorer

bicker said:


> That's the difference between a sales person and a business manager.


'Or an investor. The sales manager might have some sympathy for the saleman. The investor couldn't care less how much effort the sales staff has to expend.


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## lrhorer

jbmdharris said:


> I'm considering buying a TiVo and getting rid of my TWC SA8300HDC with awful Navigator software.


"Awful" is a huge understatement. Listening to fingernails on a chalkboard is less irritating.



jbmdharris said:


> The gotcha is SDV and I know very little about TiVo.


It's pretty simple. SDV requires 2-way communications between the customer's system and the CATV headend. TiVos are not 2-way hosts, so no SDV without some means of help.



jbmdharris said:


> I've been scanning this and other TiVo forums and I know there's a dongle that someday may come out enabling TivoHD to get SDV channels... but given the history of troubles in this area, I'm not counting on it any time in my lifetime or that something else won't come up that gets in the way of it working.


I'm not worried that somehow it will get worked out. When is another matter. I wouldn't worry about SDV incompatibility after the fact. Anything that breaks the dongle woud be extremely likely to break the CATV company's STBs and DVRs, as well.



jbmdharris said:


> Is there any kind of third-party device that can convert HDMI or component output back to a coax input that TiVo HD can record in HD?


Don't hold your breath on the HDMI. Even if HDCP would allow such a thing (very unlikely), you're asking for a really beefy - read that expensive - piece of hardware. Converting a 3Gbps uncompressed digital stream to a 16 or 17 Mbps compressed stream on the fly is a very tall order. Even compressing the analog Composite signal is challenging.



jbmdharris said:


> What about a software update and device that enables TiVo HD to send out remote control sequences to the HD cable box to change the channel?


Well, it woud ahve to be a piece of aditional hardware, not just software, but network based IR controllers are readily available.



jbmdharris said:


> It seems to me that the ability for TiVo to record from and control cable and satellite provided set top boxes has been the single key technology that enabled TiVo to exist and be viable in the marketplace.


It was alsoa different technological world.



jbmdharris said:


> Why on earth would this function be removed from the newer models even with the cable card capabilities.


'so they could manufacture them for less than $10,000 each.


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## lrhorer

bxojr said:


> (I don't subscribe to the pessimistic "don't hold your breath" view about the tuning resolver -- there's too much at stake for both TiVo and the cable companies.)


I'm not pessimistic they or some devices with comperable functionality will be availble eventually. I'm just not betting on the June 30 deadline.


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## mikeyts

lrhorer said:


> I wouldn't worry about SDV incompatibility after the fact. Anything that breaks the dongle woud be extremely likely to break the CATV company's STBs and DVRs, as well.


Being something that the cable companies will distribute and maintain, I'd expect Tuning Resolvers to have field upgradable firmware just like their leased tuning STBs. The OpenCable Tuning Resolver Interface Specification anticipates this and specifies how the TR will signal the UDCP (i.e., TiVo) that it's temporarily offline and then available again.


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## slude

mikeyts said:


> The trick with SDV is not in tuning the channel, but in finding out where it is--what frequency band has its QAM carrier and what program number the channel is assigned within that stream. To find this stuff out, you have to be able to ask the system for the information


I've seen this explanation offered several times before, but I don't follow the transition from the problem statement to the conclusion regarding available implementations.

Accepting that first sentence as factual, I take note that my CableCARD device (perhaps oddly so for this forum, although I have a TivoHD my only CableCARD device is a Sony TV so my experience with CableCARD use may be different) has done quite well at finding out the frequency band/QAM carrier/program number information for any given channel in spite of several changes my cable provider has made to those relationships over the two years I've had a CableCARD installed. My Sony TV has no problem finding where Comcast has hidden a channel lately (almost always; it did lose track of the Cartoon Network for a couple days last week and need help) even though it has absolutely no way to ask the cable system for that information.

From what I've read, communicating this information from the cable provider to any CableCARD device is, in fact, one of the primary functions of the CableCARD. So whether the cable provider is changing the frequency band/QAM carrier/program number information for a channel once a quarter, once a month, once a day, once an hour or every 60 seconds, I don't see the logical basis for concluding "you have to be able to ask the system for the information" in order to be able to tune in a channel being managed via SDV.


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## MichaelK

slude said:


> I've seen this explanation offered several times before, but I don't follow the transition from the problem statement to the conclusion regarding available implementations.
> 
> Accepting that first sentence as factual, I take note that my CableCARD device (perhaps oddly so for this forum, although I have a TivoHD my only CableCARD device is a Sony TV so my experience with CableCARD use may be different) has done quite well at finding out the frequency band/QAM carrier/program number information for any given channel in spite of several changes my cable provider has made to those relationships over the two years I've had a CableCARD installed. My Sony TV has no problem finding where Comcast has hidden a channel lately (almost always; it did lose track of the Cartoon Network for a couple days last week and need help) even though it has absolutely no way to ask the cable system for that information.
> 
> From what I've read, communicating this information from the cable provider to any CableCARD device is, in fact, one of the primary functions of the CableCARD. So whether the cable provider is changing the frequency band/QAM carrier/program number information for a channel once a quarter, once a month, once a day, once an hour or every 60 seconds, I don't see the logical basis for concluding "you have to be able to ask the system for the information" in order to be able to tune in a channel being managed via SDV.


the point of SDV is the channel is only turned on when someone wants to watch it. So if no one else in your neighborhood is watching SDV channel X- your box needs to notify the cable company that you want it.

After that the SDV equipment would assign an unused channel and then tell your box where to find it.

THEN equally important. For the system to work properly when you dont want to watch the channel anymore the SDV system needs to shut the channel down so if someone else wants channel Y or Z there is a place for it.

So periodically your box and the headend need to speak to each other and see if you still need the channel.

with 2 way communication (OCAP, propiretary box, or the dongle):
-your box "hey headend I want to watch channel X"
-headend "OK I put it on qam slot 99.3 look there"
-your box would tune to channel 99.3 then some time later:
-headend "hey are you still watching that channel?"
-box "yep my owner hasn't changed channels, shut me off, or not touched a button on the remote for 90 minutes so he must be watching"
-and the headend leaves the channel on.

without 2 way communication- like any current cablecard receiver availible in retail as they are all currently one way:
-your box says TO ITSELF "my owner wants channel X let me look for it on the channel list" and no one is currently watching it so it isn't assigned a channel number so the box thinks to itself "gee I just dont see channel X anymore on the list so the channel must not be availible on this system"
-maybe you get lucky and the channel is still up and the box finds it's on channel 99.3 so it tunes to it. Some time later the cable company polls everyone IT KNOWS is watching the channel "HEY any of you still watching this channel" - Your box might scream it's head off "YES YES I AM" but no one hears it. SO if no one else is watching the channel then the SDV systems at the head end shuts the channel off right in the middle of you watching it.

So 2-way communication with SDV is absolutely necessary.


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## ilh

How does SDV know when you are no longer watching a channel? What if you never turn off the cable box?


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## MichaelK

ilh said:


> How does SDV know when you are no longer watching a channel? What if you never turn off the cable box?


I am not certain as I've never owned a cable company cable box. But I assume it's like a tivo with suggestions or a featuer on certain tv's.

I rarely watch live tv but I think that the tivo does a similar thing for suggestions- If your tivo detects no input via the remote (including volume up or down to the tv) for a set period it assumes you aren't around and asks with a confirmation if it can switch channels on you to record a suggestion- if you aren't there to say no it switches channels and does what it wants.

I assume cable boxes with SDV behave very similarly. If they you dont change channels for a set period and it doesn't see you change the volume on the tv then it will put a prompt on the screen asking if it's ok to shut down the channel. If you dont say NO it will shut off the SDV channel (probably dumping you to the guide or some barker or ad channel).

My sharp aquos TV does a similar thing - if it senses no activity for a certain period then it shuts itself down.


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## mikeyts

ilh said:


> How does SDV know when you are no longer watching a channel? What if you never turn off the cable box?


Apparently in the case of a device using a Tuning Resolver, you will get asked, much like TiVo's "I-want-to-change-channels-in-a-few-minutes-to-make-a-scheduled-recording. Okay?" query. See the OpenCable Tuning Resolver Interface Specification; page 42 shows some suggested User Inactivity Messages, which are to be displayed when a particular message from the tuning resolver is received by a UDCP (Unidirectional Digital Cable Product, like TiVo). There's also some vebiage in there about sending udcp_status_update() messages to the tuning resolver when remote control command or front panel button presses occur.


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## DCIFRTHS

mikeyts said:


> Apparently in the case of a device using a Tuning Resolver, you will get asked, much like TiVo's "I-want-to-change-channels-in-a-few-minutes-to-make-a-scheduled-recording. Okay?" query. See the OpenCable Tuning Resolver Interface Specification; page 42 shows some suggested User Inactivity Messages, which are to be displayed when a particular message from the tuning resolver is received by a UDCP (Unidirectional Digital Cable Product, like TiVo). There's also some vebiage in there about sending udcp_status_update() messages to the tuning resolver when remote control command or front panel button presses occur.


If there is a recording in progress, the dialog does not appear, and the channel does not change, correct?


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## bicker

As long as it is a user-initiated recording. It was quite a controversial issue before the spec came out, but I do remember the end-result being that it seems that TiVo suggestions can be interrupted if the channel is needed for another customer's deliberate purpose.


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## JohnnyO

mikeyts said:


> . See the OpenCable Tuning Resolver Interface Specification; page 42 shows some suggested User Inactivity Messages, which are to be displayed when a particular message from the tuning resolver is received by a UDCP (Unidirectional Digital Cable Product, like TiVo)


I'm glad to see they thought of some examples. FYI - in Adobe Reader it is the 42nd page, but it appears to be page 36 of the Document (Reader gives "page numbers" to the index, etc.).


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## mikeyts

bicker said:


> As long as it is a user-initiated recording. It was quite a controversial issue before the spec came out, but I do remember the end-result being that it seems that TiVo suggestions can be interrupted if the channel is needed for another customer's deliberate purpose.


Yes. There is a field in the resolve_tuner_req() APDU called "tuner_use_status" with the following set of values: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​So, when TiVo (or some other UDCP) requests a channel from the Tuning Resolver it has to say _why_ it wants that channel; one reason is "Speculative Recording", like TiVo's "record suggestions" feature. If the system knows that a channel is solely in use on a segment by one or more DVRs which are recording things that they just think that their owners might be interested in then the bandwidth used for that channel will be reclaimed first in a crunch, regardless of whether those recordings are complete or not.

Also note the "Inactive" status:


> The UDCP SHALL send a resolve_tuning_req() APDU with the tuner_use_status = 0x5 (tuner inactive) for a tuner when that tuner output is changed such that it is not being rendered, recorded, or transmitted outside of the UDCP.


In other words, if the UDCP requested a channel for purposes of recording, it's required to tell the Tuning Resolver when it has finished recording. I suppose that a UDCP might also send this if its user placed it in a "Standby" mode when the channel he or she was watching wasn't being recorded.

The "tuner_use_status" field is also present in the udcp_status_rsp() message, a response from the UDCP to the Tuning Resolver sending a udcp_status_req() packet, which is basically the TR asking for an update on what the UDCP is doing.


JohnnyO said:


> I'm glad to see they thought of some examples. FYI - in Adobe Reader it is the 42nd page, but it appears to be page 36 of the Document (Reader gives "page numbers" to the index, etc.).


Yeah, sorry--I usually say "PDF page 42" to distinguish from "page labelled 42".

Not only did they specify Tuning Resolver related message examples, they give an appendix of use cases (Appendix I, starting on PDF page 45). Listing all intended usage scenarios is part of modern formal software design technique and such a list is particularly useful for development of regression testing.


----------



## HDTiVo

Do future TiVo suggestions appear in the ToDo List? If so, then an interrupted Suggestion would be a change in behavior that might affect users negatively.


----------



## SCSIRAID

HDTiVo said:


> Do future TiVo suggestions appear in the ToDo List? If so, then an interrupted Suggestion would be a change in behavior that might affect users negatively.


No. Suggestions are not in the TODO list.


----------



## HDTiVo

SCSIRAID said:


> No. Suggestions are not in the TODO list.


That´s good, but also since Suggestions are a key differentiating TiVo feature (in TiVo´s opinion and business plan) the disruption of them would disadvantage TiVo.

A person who likes their TiVo to record Suggestions would not get all they hoped for out of TiVo.


----------



## mikeyts

You can ask TiVo specifically about what it would suggest (TiVo Central->Find Programs->TiVo Suggestions) and if you have automatic recording of suggestions turned on and check that list frequently you might be surprised when something doesn't show up, but there might be any number of reasons for that (if, for instance, there's no space it won't record it either). I doubt that many people bother to check that list; most probably enjoy the surprise of finding recorded Suggestions that they really want to watch.

Ultimately, unless TiVos become much more popular than they are (or cable providers should add speculative recording to their DVRs), if this ever happens, something is wrong; bandwidth in the SDV pool should never get that scarce. However, if it did happen it'd be a shame if a huge bunch of TiVo Suggestions being recorded on unpopular channels should stop someone from getting to watch or record something that they really, really wanted to see.


----------



## Eccles

HDTiVo said:


> That´s good, but also since Suggestions are a key differentiating TiVo feature (in TiVo´s opinion and business plan) the disruption of them would disadvantage TiVo.
> 
> A person who likes their TiVo to record Suggestions would not get all they hoped for out of TiVo.


The intent of this design is that speculative channel requests will be denied or preempted _if there are insufficient resources for non-speculative requests from other devices,_ i.e. if other subscribers' non-speculative requests would otherwise be denied.

This is in effect no different from the way that TiVo operates already - it will record suggestions if and only if there is no conflicting non-speculative request. This new standard simply expands that paradigm to take in the entire neighborhood, not just your one machine.


----------



## lrhorer

You missed one of the important steps in communication (added in bold):


MichaelK said:


> with 2 way communication (OCAP, propiretary box, or the dongle):
> -your box "hey headend I want to watch channel X"
> -headend "OK I put it on qam slot 99.3 look there, *and here is your decryption key*"
> -your box would tune to channel 99.3 then some time later:
> -headend "hey are you still watching that channel?"
> -box "yep my owner hasn't changed channels, shut me off, or not touched a button on the remote for 90 minutes so he must be watching"
> -and the headend leaves the channel on.


Unless, of course, the channel is presented in the clear, which sometimes may be the case, even with SDV.


----------



## lrhorer

mikeyts said:


> However, if it did happen it'd be a shame if a huge bunch of TiVo Suggestions being recorded on *unpopular channels* should stop someone from getting to watch or record something that they really, really wanted to see.


(Emphasis mine.) As time goes by, eventually almost every channel will become "unpopular". With thousands or even tens of thousands of channels from which to select, and VOD being the norm rather than the exception, eventually there may not be any channels with a lion's share of the market. When that day comes, for the most part the only marginally "popular" channels will be those which are being recorded by DVRs, including TiVo Suggestions. It will be incumbent upon the CATV provider to maintain their plant so that the number of receivers on each node is small enough that the available bandwidth can service the needs of every sub on the node. As you said:


mikeyts said:


> bandwidth in the SDV pool should never get that scarce.


Which means the CATV provider will need to keep ahead of viewing stats. As long as they are diligent about this, there won't be a massive problem with this issue.


----------



## sfhub

lrhorer said:


> You missed one of the important steps in communication (added in bold):


Depends what level of abstraction your are looking at. The host device (TiVo) that is handling the SDV interface calls is never handed the decryption key. TiVo tunes to the channel given by the SDV request, realizes it is encrypted, and hands off the stream to the CableCARD, which then does its black box conditional access and decryption, and eventually hands back the decrypted stream (re-encrypted if CCI=non-zero) to TiVo. In the process of decrypting the stream, the CableCARD does recover the decryption key, but that key is not exposed to the TiVo code that is handling the SDV. TiVo has no idea whether a decryption key was retrieved or not, just that it has been handed back a stream it can use.


----------



## lrhorer

sfhub said:


> Depends what level of abstraction your are looking at. The host device (TiVo) that is handling the SDV interface calls is never handed the decryption key.


True. The point is, another user won't be able to "piggyback" off the newly established stream unless his unit also handles SDV. Various schemes have been proposed via which a user would like to use a secondary STB to do the requesting and then let the TiVo gulp down the stream. I was treating the TiVo and CableCard as a single system.


----------



## mikeyts

lrhorer said:


> (Emphasis mine.) As time goes by, eventually almost every channel will become "unpopular". With thousands or even tens of thousands of channels from which to select, and VOD being the norm rather than the exception...


We've been sampling the cable providers' special spiked Kool-Aid, haven't we? I don't see this scenario ever happening without some kind of automated channel composition mechanism. You can't sell advertising in a pool of "thousands of channels" when you can't expect for more than a few people to ever be watching such a channel in any given market. I'd bet real money that we'll never see more than 500 linear programming channels.

If VOD becomes the norm (a possibility), then DVRs (and Tuning Resolvers) become useless. The cable providers will be allowed to treat all VOD programming with "Copy Never" protection because you lose the timeshifting excuse for allowing copying. In any case, the Tuning Resolver isn't going to give subs access to VOD.


----------



## MichaelK

lrhorer said:


> You missed one of the important steps in communication (added in bold):
> 
> Unless, of course, the channel is presented in the clear, which sometimes may be the case, even with SDV.


thanks for pointing that out- I didn't realize fresh keys got exchanged all the time like that.


----------



## mikeyts

MichaelK said:


> thanks for pointing that out- I didn't realize fresh keys got exchanged all the time like that.


Actually, I don't believe that they do. There's nothing in the Tuning Resolver specification to allow a key to be delivered. Messages sent to the CableCARD will establish decryption keys; the TR's resolve_tuning_response() will identify the tuning information with the source-ID given to the CableCARD for the channel--the CableCARD's maps will tell it whether its authorized to decrypt the channel or not. (So far as I can understand it).


----------



## MichaelK

yep

sfhub pretty much explained that earlier but i didn't htink it was worth adding another post to say so.

maybe I should have...


----------



## HDTiVo

Eccles said:


> This is in effect no different from the way that TiVo operates already - it will record suggestions if and only if there is no conflicting non-speculative request. This new standard simply expands that paradigm to take in the entire neighborhood, not just your one machine.


The difference is the former is of TiVo´s own design and the latter introduces the possibility of a third party intruding and disadvantaging the TiVo operation.

Also, now that it has been mentioned that a list of future suggestion recordings can be viewed by the user, there is even more possibility for disappointment.


----------



## MichaelK

HDTiVo said:


> ...
> 
> Also, now that it has been mentioned that a list of future suggestion recordings can be viewed by the user, there is even more possibility for disappointment.


The ability to look at suggestions has been there from VERY early on. Like in 2.x variants if I recall. And for all the years it's been there- just being on the list has NEVER been a guarantee that a suggestion would record. Way back with 2.x some of the boxes had 14 hrs of recording ability- for many people shows they explicitly wanted didn't get recorded or were deleted early- never mind suggestions.

If people use that feature they quickly learn that suggestions might show up and might not so if something looks interesting they should ask it to record. Ive looked at the list at times and for the life of me I cant figure out how it translates into what actually winds up on the box later.

so while there is certainly more possibility for disappoinment- I dont think it's huge numbers of people that will be bent.


----------



## HDTiVo

MichaelK said:


> so while there is certainly more possibility for disappoinment- I dont think it's huge numbers of people that will be bent.


That is probably right.


----------



## mikeyts

Personally, I think that it's extremely cool that there's some consideration of speculative recording was built into the Tuning Resolver design. Without it, I'd have been perfectly comfortable with TiVo being forbidden to record its suggestions from channels presented as SDV (of course, I don't use automatic recording of suggestions--I already watch far, far too much TV without TiVo's help--so it'd be no skin off mine ).

As TiVo and the NCTA have claimed, TiVo was intimately involved in the design of this thing, and if in nothing else, it shows in the inclusion of that feature.


----------



## MichaelK

mikeyts said:


> Personally, I think that it's extremely cool that there's some consideration of speculative recording was built into the Tuning Resolver design. Without it, I'd have been perfectly comfortable with TiVo being forbidden to record its suggestions from channels presented as SDV (of course, I don't use automatic recording of suggestions--I already watch far, far too much TV without TiVo's help--so it'd be no skin off mine ).
> 
> As TiVo and the NCTA have claimed, TiVo was intimately involved in the design of this thing, and if in nothing else, it shows in the inclusion of that feature.


what you said


----------



## HDTiVo

mikeyts said:


> TiVo was intimately involved in the design of this thing,


But what if "intimacy" with cable meant taking it up the === a couple of times?


----------



## mikeyts

jbmdharris said:


> I'm considering buying a TiVo and getting rid of my TWC SA8300HDC with awful Navigator software. The gotcha is SDV and I know very little about TiVo. (Never owned one... but have used cable-company provided DVRs for several years.) I've been scanning this and other TiVo forums and I know there's a dongle that someday may come out enabling TivoHD to get SDV channels... but given the history of troubles in this area, I'm not counting on it any time in my lifetime or that something else won't come up that gets in the way of it working.
> 
> So what I don't see in all of my searches is any discussion of any kind of component or technology that exists *now* that will allow a TiVo HD (or heck, any HD DVR product) to record an HD output from and drive a cable company-provided HD set-top box like the series 2 TiVos can do with standard definition set top boxes. Does anything like this exist? (But of course, recording an HD signal instead of just the SD signal.)
> 
> Is there any kind of third-party device that can convert HDMI or component output back to a coax input that TiVo HD can record in HD? What about a software update and device that enables TiVo HD to send out remote control sequences to the HD cable box to change the channel?
> 
> It seems to me that the ability for TiVo to record from and control cable and satellite provided set top boxes has been the single key technology that enabled TiVo to exist and be viable in the marketplace. Why on earth would this function be removed from the newer models even with the cable card capabilities.


Though it doesn't involve the use of TiVo, you might be interested in this new product from Hauppage--it makes MPEG4 high-definition recordings from high-definition component video. It will record audio from either optical S/PDIF or stereo RCA; I'm assuming that for the former you'll get full 5.1.

Hollywood's nightmare of losing stuff through the "analog hole" continues .

Again, it's not TiVo, but it's something .


----------



## lrhorer

mikeyts said:


> We've been sampling the cable providers' special spiked Kool-Aid, haven't we? I don't see this scenario ever happening without some kind of automated channel composition mechanism. You can't sell advertising in a pool of "thousands of channels"


You are assuming several things:

1. Revenues for the content will be derived from advertising.
2. The content will be expensive to produce
3. The content will all be based upon profits for the content providers
4. Producing content requires commercial backing.

To which I reply:
1. This is already a markedly downward trend. Most of the HD channels and a significant number of SD channels on the local CATV lineup bear no advertising. It wouldn't surprise me for the number of available premium channels to exceed 200 before long. Since the cost of delivering additional content is plummeting so fast, there's really no reason not to do so.

2. The prices of video gear are dropping like a stone. It wouldn't surprise me if within 10 years more than 90% of the available programming is produced by sources other than networks and movie studios, including amateur, organizational, and enterprise sources. Here in San Antonio there are already several large enterprise video producers, and in fact a couple are customers of mine. As of yet they are not ordinarily producing any content for CATV distribution, but that's very likely to change in a hurry.

3. A great deal of content right now is already produced for reasons other than directly obtaining profit from the content. A modest amount is even being already distributed on CATV systems. Here in San Antonio, there are public access, government access, educational access, and several religious access channels. I expect such venues to grow markedly as the cost of delivering the content drops to the point where even an individual of moderate means can afford to produce their own channel without recompense. I also expect the number of enterprise offerings to soar, delivering everything from sales channels ala QVC to employee and customer informational videos for small to large businesses.

4. While this is largely true right now, the cost of producing content has already fallen well within the reach of middle class individuals, and with SDV, providing a path for even personal content on the CATV system can eventually be within the reach certainly of small organizations and clubs, and perhaps some day within the budget of even an individual middle-class amateur videographer. One day there may be a Miketys channel on your local CATV system, just as many people (like me) now have websites. I expect the UI to access to them will be virtually indistinguishable from a web browser of the day, or in fact it's likely a single browser will do both.



mikeyts said:


> when you can't expect for more than a few people to ever be watching such a channel in any given market. I'd bet real money that we'll never see more than 500 linear programming channels.


I'd bet real money in ten years there won't even be 20 linear programming channels. There will likely be some number of regular schedules - after all there are some advantages for both the CATV provider and the subscriber for having some scheduling, especially with a DVR.



mikeyts said:


> If VOD becomes the norm (a possibility), then DVRs (and Tuning Resolvers) become useless.


No, not useless, just of less utility, particularly during "prime time". Being the norm doesn't mean it is universal. As I mentioned above, there are still efficiencies and advantages to be gained on both sides to maintaining schedules for some programming. If any content has a high likelihood of being received by more than 1 receiver per node, then that content willl be well served by having a regular schedule attached to it, even if it is also available via VOD.



mikeyts said:


> The cable providers will be allowed to treat all VOD programming with "Copy Never" protection because you lose the timeshifting excuse for allowing copying.


Yeah, that could happen. As consumers, we have to make sure it doesn't happen. On the other hand, with most of the program content not being commercially derived, what would be the point? Note that even now, my local CATV provider has essentially VOD services for every major broadcast channel.



mikeyts said:


> In any case, the Tuning Resolver isn't going to give subs access to VOD.


Yes, but the tuning resolver is at best a temporary stop-gap. I'm talking about ten years down the road, give or take.


----------



## mikeyts

Okay--if you're thinking 10 years down the road, then it's impossible to disagree. The speed of technological advancement is such at this point that it's difficult to rule out any possibility.


----------



## MichaelK

for years and years- maybe decades the pundits have been talking about thousands of cable channels becoming a reality for many of the same reasons. True cable channels have limits that dont exist int he world you describe. But we have't gotten anyplace near 1000 channels so I just dont see things changing that extremely that fast. But maybe I'll owe you a beer in 10 years and I'll be shown wrong yet again - LOL


----------



## dswallow

MichaelK said:


> for years and years- maybe decades the pundits have been talking about thousands of cable channels becoming a reality for many of the same reasons. True cable channels have limits that dont exist int he world you describe. But we have't gotten anyplace near 1000 channels so I just dont see things changing that extremely that fast. But maybe I'll owe you a beer in 10 years and I'll be shown wrong yet again - LOL


I think what you're seeing in the way of viral video -- the YouTube's and the videocasts and even the Bittorrents -- are exactly what have become the "thousands of channels." We simply had the technology to bypass the idea of a fixed, linear arrangement of those channels in favor of an on-demand model.


----------



## Firekite

lrhorer said:


> You are assuming several things:


Like that you don't have a horse in this race?


----------



## bicker

dswallow said:


> I think what you're seeing in the way of viral video -- the YouTube's and the videocasts and even the Bittorrents -- are exactly what have become the "thousands of channels." We simply had the technology to bypass the idea of a fixed, linear arrangement of those channels in favor of an on-demand model.


Yes, all the sucky stuff will follow _that_ model. All the good stuff will continue to follow the profit-driven model.


----------



## vstone

mikeyts said:


> ...
> If VOD becomes the norm (a possibility), then DVRs (and Tuning Resolvers) become useless. The cable providers will be allowed to treat all VOD programming with "Copy Never" protection because you lose the timeshifting excuse for allowing copying. In any case, the Tuning Resolver isn't going to give subs access to VOD.


This assumes that VOD is assumed to be "good enough." It may be, but I try to stay away from it, being used to the Tivo's instant response and the 8 second replay.

There will always be some live events: sports, some news events. OTOH, maybe the 215 major awards shows will disappear.


----------



## bicker

The goal typically would be to satisfy the 90&#37; of the folks, incurring 50% of the cost, instead of the 100% of the folks, incurring 100% of the cost.


----------



## hsfjr

Happpened to hit a earlier part of this thread while googling "tuning resolver" and refound the information that "tuning resolver" had been renamed to "tuning adapter" so googled again... found this...

http://www.opencable.com/downloads/oc_interop_0408.pdf

Haven't read it yet... and I'll probably leave it to the more knowledgable folks to debate... but I LOVED the title...

(Edit: Shoot!... scrolled thru it... nothing useful except it may exist and I want to know the results of the event...)
[And too bad the name may be "adapter" now, because there are too many unrelated results in google...]


----------



## mikeyts

Interesting. I remember that someone posted that in a conversation with a knowledgeable-seeming cable provider CSR, he'd been told that Tuning Resolver had been relabelled "Tuning Adapter". I wasn't going to start calling it that until I got more proof (knowledgeable-seeming cable provider CSRs are often full of it, but in rare instances they know whereof they speak ). Okay--Tuning Adapter it is.

If they're having an interoperability testing event this week, they've got to be pretty frickin' close to manufacturing and distributing these things. You don't schedule these things randomly--they know that people with both Tuning Adapter and compatible UDCP products have fully-fleshed prototypes that they believe are ready to go. I am encouraged .


----------



## jrm01

lrhorer said:


> I'm not pessimistic they or some devices with comperable functionality will be availble eventually. I'm just not betting on the June 30 deadline.


Looks like TiVo has changed the wording of that deadline from "second quarter" to "later this year".

http://tivosupport2.instancy.com/LaunchContent.aspx?CID=cbecf1b9-88de-4b74-82c1-754c3260112a


----------



## mikeyts

The only place that I've seen that "second quarter of 2008" estimate stated was in this press release, issued jointly by TiVo and the NCTA in November. I don't know how long that support article has been up.


----------



## JohnnyO

hsfjr said:


> (Edit: Shoot!... scrolled thru it... nothing useful except it may exist and I want to know the results of the event...)
> ]


Interesting... There are a few email addresses in the document. I wonder who's got the cajones to contact them at the end of the week and ask them "so ... how'd it go?"


----------



## hsfjr

mikeyts said:


> ...they've got to be pretty frickin' close...


And some other points I haven't mentioned along the way to various posts...

1. The 'original' news break (Nov07?) on the dongle mentions that someone already had a prototype at the time... I think some are forgetting that detail.
2. Somewhere along the way, in some thread or another, someone mentions not hearing anything from the ScientificAtlanta side of the world... but they were mentioned in the 'original' news, and it did seem all were committed to the project... but I do agree that not much from them since...
3. I also think that the picture that was associated with the Feb08 news has also been mis-interpreted. Digging back, I think the picture was only there because it mentioned the item in the article as "about the same size"... which has now lead to speculation of re-purposing the container, etc. - I don't actually care about the size. The comparison only leads me to belive it is more likely a horizontal item, rather than a vertical one, or a "dongly" item hanging behind something else[TiVo]. Given how it communicates out either of its "ends," it doesn't seem that it would need line-of-sight from any remote, so one could drywall it up inside the wall and just pass the wires out if one felt like doing so.



mikeyts said:


> I remember that someone posted that in a conversation...


That's probably the posts I found again today...


----------



## hsfjr

hsfjr said:


> nothing useful...


Well, maybe more informative than I initially thought... It pretty much says "hey everyone, bring your stuff here and let's get it working..."

They called for Mot and SA equipment...
Gotta assume there was at least two TiVo boxes there... [edit: changed assumption of 'at least one' to 'at least two' since I'd think they'd show up with at least one each of Series3 and TiVoHD...]



jrm01 said:


> Looks like TiVo has changed the wording of that deadline from "second quarter" to "later this year".


On this, I'd have to agree [with other posters in some threads somewhere] that TiVo can't/shouldn't supply 'exact' dates since they won't have any control of the hardware manufacturing.


----------



## classicsat

hsfjr said:


> 3. I also think that the picture that was associated with the Feb08 news has also been mis-interpreted. Digging back, I think the picture was only there because it mentioned the item in the article as "about the same size"... which has now lead to speculation of re-purposing the container, etc. - I don't actually care about the size. The comparison only leads me to belive it is more likely a horizontal item, rather than a vertical one, or a "dongly" item hanging behind something else[TiVo]. Given how it communicates out either of its "ends," it doesn't seem that it would need line-of-sight from any remote, so one could drywall it up inside the wall and just pass the wires out if one felt like doing so.


There is no reason to believe the unit would be no different in size to the DCT700, since it has to have a certain degree of smarts in it. If I were Motorola, I'd build it into the same case, unless there is reason not to.

Since it is an active cable provided device, you likely should not bury it into the wall. You can probably tuck it in back of your TiVo or other UDCP device.


----------



## ah30k

classicsat said:


> There is no reason to believe the unit would be no different in size to the DCT700, since it has to have a certain degree of smarts in it. If I were Motorola, I'd build it into the same case, unless there is reason not to.


If you ran a company and had the great opportunity to build a product that will sell in very low volumes and customers want for darn near free, you'd want to put as little energy into it as possible. A modified DCT-700 fits that bill to a T.


----------



## hsfjr

Sure. Could end up being in that case and I don't disagree with two posts above. I actually was trying to point out that folks have thought that it was actually a picture of the final [Motorola] device. Zatz had only bulleted:

"Motorola's form factor similar to small DCT700 cable box (shown... "

And "form factor similar" very well might be 'industry slang' for "that new stuff shoved into this old case"...

And I don't believe there would be any need for a message indicator light on the front display (as the picture has).

And No I would't actually put it in the wall. Was just saying there didn't seem to be a need for it NOT to be hidden away behind something (or on the floor under the cabinet).



jrm01 said:


> Looks like TiVo has changed the wording...


I see they are also using the "tuning adapter" term there...


----------



## MichaelK

dswallow said:


> I think what you're seeing in the way of viral video -- the YouTube's and the videocasts and even the Bittorrents -- are exactly what have become the "thousands of channels." We simply had the technology to bypass the idea of a fixed, linear arrangement of those channels in favor of an on-demand model.


my point would be that it's different. The fringe stuff that would have been channel 999 is better server being bit torrent or youtube or vod. But the content on the channel ranked #1 doesn't work well that way.

I think there's a place for the several hundred linear channels that exist and that VOD/youtube etc are a different beast. That different beast might kill off a chunk of the borderline channels but in the end I think there's a sweet spot for linear broadcast- someplace in the current order of magnitude. Anything live like news and sports for one screams for broadcast. Then the top tiers of TV like is shown on the big networks- it's probably just more effective to gain eyeballs to play a popular show every monday at 8pm rather make it availible for download every monday at 8pm to watch whenever. There's a certain amount of water cooler talk about certain shows that make them more popular- if everyone is watching at a different time that goes bye bye.

Other channels there's really not much point to being linear- kids channels might be one genre - they tend to play the same popular cartoons over and over and over again and kids dont mind repeats or care to wait around for a new one- so you could just put up 300 episodes of lilo and stitch cartoon for vod rather then showing 6 different episodes every day. But even disney channel has original programming in primetime - I THINK.

So I dont think we'll get to 1,000 linear channels ever and I dont happen to think at this moment that we'll have just 10 linear channels and the rest vod anytime soon either.


----------



## MichaelK

bicker said:


> The goal typically would be to satisfy the 90% of the folks, incurring 50% of the cost, instead of the 100% of the folks, incurring 100% of the cost.


I read an article once that ATT (the old ATT that actually was a research organization) studied things and time and again they found that when bandwidth is involved. 90% of the people are happy with 10% of the volume. They found that building their networks (local, long distance, dial up, and then broadband)- the last 10% of the users are a pain and need 90% more. They argued unsuccessfully that unlimited internet plans were a huge waste of resources and that they negatively effect the providers profits BUT ALSO- the 90% of the people that are forced to subsidize the last 10%.

Not sure if it's the same ratios with TV. But for phone and internet at least you can satisdy 90% with just 10% of the cost. Certainly when you get to the bottom of the pile of channels there are tiny percentages of people watching them.


----------



## Gregor

MichaelK said:


> I read an article once that ATT (the old ATT that actually was a research organization) studied things and time and again they found that when bandwidth is involved. 90% of the people are happy with 10% of the volume. They found that building their networks (local, long distance, dial up, and then broadband)- the last 10% of the users are a pain and need 90% more. They argued unsuccessfully that unlimited internet plans were a huge waste of resources and that they negatively effect the providers profits BUT ALSO- the 90% of the people that are forced to subsidize the last 10%.
> 
> Not sure if it's the same ratios with TV. But for phone and internet at least you can satisdy 90% with just 10% of the cost. Certainly when you get to the bottom of the pile of channels there are tiny percentages of people watching them.


It's quite possible. I can't find the articles, but ISTR that most households watch somewhere between 15 and 30 channels regularly, despite there being considerably more available.

I think with Tivo, the channel lines become blurred as I think more of watching Heroes than watching NBC, and when a non-Tivo person asks what channel something is on, it's sometimes hard to remember!


----------



## dswallow

MichaelK said:


> I read an article once that ATT (the old ATT that actually was a research organization) studied things and time and again they found that when bandwidth is involved. 90% of the people are happy with 10% of the volume. They found that building their networks (local, long distance, dial up, and then broadband)- the last 10% of the users are a pain and need 90% more. They argued unsuccessfully that unlimited internet plans were a huge waste of resources and that they negatively effect the providers profits BUT ALSO- the 90% of the people that are forced to subsidize the last 10%.


And if you get rid of those 10% of users you'll find the remaining ones still fit into the same pattern; 10% of the remaining ones are using 90% of the bandwidth in use among them all.

It's a nice statistic but really pretty pointless to try to use to justify cutting off customers; there'll always be 10% of customers you can cut off to reduce bandwidth usage. You'll always need to be looking at creating a bigger pipe for your customers.


----------



## mikeyts

hsfjr said:


> 1. The 'original' news break (Nov07?) on the dongle mentions that someone already had a prototype at the time... I think some are forgetting that detail


The original news break was back in August. Sometime around the beginning of November 2006, the CEA had complained to the FCC that, after years of waiting, what they got from the Cable industry for bidirectional interactive CableCARD was a scheme which integrally included OCAP, an expensive-to-implement and overly complex mechanism which could not possibly be included in television products on the lower end of the price range. Added to that was the fact that cable was rolling out SDV, presenting most new HD programming and some existing services in that fashion; the only avenue for creating retail devices capable of accessing SDV that the cable industry offered was a full implementation of OCAP. They proposed that the cable providers be made to implement a simpler, easier and cheaper to implement scheme in addition to OCAP, which they called Digital Cable Ready Plus (aka, "DCR+"). This would be a mechanism for accessing three interactive cable apps: Impulse Pay Per View, Video On Demand and SDV.

That following August, in response to the FCC's request for comments on the CEA's Digital Cable Ready Plus proposal, the NCTA filed a counter-protest, claiming that implementation of DCR+ would take a very long time and cost a very great amount of money, all coming out of their pockets. Moreover, it couldn't possibly be ready to roll in time for the analog shut-off (though why they thought that was important is beyond me ). Additionally, in partnership with several OEMs, they'd been working on a solution to the tuning-SDV-in-low-end-products problem, which they called the Tuning Resolver. It was this August 2007 FCC filing which first mentioned the Tuning Resolver (now, apparently, "Tuning Adapter").

Since then they've contrived to implement and begin distributing the tuning resolver without waiting for the FCC to make a decision on the DCR+ issue, in the apparent hope that an existing solution would stop them from ordering implementation of DCR+, since the worst part of the problem that DCR+ solved would have a real solution already deployed.


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## MichaelK

dswallow said:


> And if you get rid of those 10% of users you'll find the remaining ones still fit into the same pattern; 10% of the remaining ones are using 90% of the bandwidth in use among them all.
> 
> It's a nice statistic but really pretty pointless to try to use to justify cutting off customers; there'll always be 10% of customers you can cut off to reduce bandwidth usage. You'll always need to be looking at creating a bigger pipe for your customers.


that's interesting if true- I didn't see that bit of the study (it was like hundreds of pages so I just skimmed a summary). I took it to mean there is basically a hard line between the 10% and 90% but I could have just assumed that.

is that a given or an educated guess on your part?

I dont know if the study was really trying to analyze patterns- moreso it was making a point that unlimted offerings are wastefull becasue the 10% keep themselves in check when they have to pay. I guess the equivalint in the payt tv world would be stop with the all or nothing system and go a la carte.

also- I'm not sure it's not wise from a business point of view. There's plenty of businesses that make money by trying to do one thing well, or aiming at a particular market, instead of being all things to all people. So it's possible from a business point of view it is wise at some point to say enough is enough as the returns aren't there. I suppose that for cable they ARE AT that point in regards to increasing bandwidth- they went from ~500 to 750 or now 870mhz. Jumping to 1000 might just be a huge expensive undertaking that yeilds little for the fringe- and so along comes SDV to change the whole paradigm becasue you dont need to increase the infrastructure's bandwidth anymore you just use it more efficiently. And that's how we are where we are today.


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## MichaelK

mikeyts said:


> The original news break was back in August. Sometime around the beginning of November 2006, the CEA had complained to the FCC that, after years of waiting, what they got from the Cable industry for bidirectional interactive CableCARD was a scheme which integrally included OCAP, an expensive-to-implement and overly complex mechanism which could not possibly be included in television products on the lower end of the price range. Added to that was the fact that cable was rolling out SDV, presenting most new HD programming and some existing services in that fashion; the only avenue for creating retail devices capable of accessing SDV that the cable industry offered was a full implementation of OCAP. They proposed that the cable providers be made to implement a simpler, easier and cheaper to implement scheme in addition to OCAP, which they called Digital Cable Ready Plus (aka, "DCR+"). This would be a mechanism for accessing three interactive cable apps: Impulse Pay Per View, Video On Demand and SDV.
> 
> That following August, in response to the FCC's request for comments on the CEA's Digital Cable Ready Plus proposal, the NCTA filed a counter-protest, claiming that implementation of DCR+ would take a very long time and cost a very great amount of money, all coming out of their pockets. Moreover, it couldn't possibly be ready to roll in time for the analog shut-off (though why they thought that was important is beyond me ). Additionally, in partnership with several OEMs, they'd been working on a solution to the tuning-SDV-in-low-end-products problem, which they called the Tuning Resolver. It was this August 2007 FCC filing which first mentioned the Tuning Resolver (now, apparently, "Tuning Adapter").
> 
> Since then they've contrived to implement and begin distributing the tuning resolver without waiting for the FCC to make a decision on the DCR+ issue, in the apparent hope that an existing solution would stop them from ordering implementation of DCR+, since the worst part of the problem that DCR+ solved would have a real solution already deployed.


I wonder if the CEA doesn't argue that SDV is nice but what about VOD and PPV. PPV has been around since the law was passed in 1996 and the first regs came out in like 1998. So it's been 10+ years to get to a point that PPV will work on a 3rd party device- seems a little excessive to me. But I guess the cable response will be the old standby: "OCAP , er um true2way, is almost ready and can do all things for everyone"


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## mikeyts

MichaelK said:


> I wonder if the CEA doesn't argue that SDV is nice but what about VOD and PPV. PPV has been around since the law was passed in 1996 and the first regs came out in like 1998. So it's been 10+ years to get to a point that PPV will work on a 3rd party device- seems a little excessive to me. But I guess the cable response will be the old standby: "OCAP , er um true2way, is almost ready and can do all things for everyone"


Cable has already argued (in that 8/07 FCC filing) that <tru2way> is here already and already widely deployed by them (all the SA boxes bought by TWC whose product designation ends in "C"--Explorer 8300HDC, 8240HDC, 4250HDC, etc--are <tru2way> compliant, most all of them running the absolutely horrific OCAP Digital Navigator IPG). They will argue that services like IPPV and VOD are not compelling or necessary for low-end products. What they cannot argue is that <tru2way>--particularly a useful OCAP platform (if that's not an oxymoron )--is very expensive to implement. Requiring OCAP for SDV will cut all low-end products out of access to any service they present as SDV, which is something they can hardly desire themselves. The CE OEMs have a real point--at least as far as SDV is concerned--and its not one that the FCC can ignore.

Of course, <tru2way> won't always be so expensive--within a few years, we'll likely have a Cell processor, 1st and 2nd level cache and 128MB of RAM on a single carrier for $25/part, in lot quantities of 10K. But the cable industry has to live with the situation today .

If the scenarios that we've been discussing come to past, VOD will be much more important in the future, eliminating all but a relatively small range of linear video services. But you can't expect the OEMs, cable providers and FCC to be that far-sighted. Look at the "Unidirectional Digital Cable Ready" boondoggle they all so blythely bought into, obsolete nearly before it shipped.


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## MichaelK

mikeyts said:


> ... They will argue that services like IPPV and VOD are not compelling or necessary for low-end products. ....


neither the law not the regulations exempted access to ippv or vod.

The law is very broadbased basically saying anything they offer needs to be open.

not sure how far they would get with the ippv and vod not being compelling- when they use VOD as a selling point and their csr's use both as a reason not to use a tivo or other cablecard devices

But in the end I guess, it all depends on who has the better lobbyists. (as the fact that DBS is still completely exempt shows)


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## mikeyts

So far as I know, nowhere in FCC regulations are they required to provide an open method for access to any and all programming on the cable. If you know differently, please point out the specific regs.

In any case, cable will argue that they _have_ provided access to IPPV and VOD services to third party devices: make your products compliant to the <tru2way> specs and they'll download their IPGs into it, and your customers will be able to access IPPV and VOD services through it, as well as a whole world of currently-difficult-to-imagine-yet-virtually-indispensible services . Certainly nothing in FCC regs compells them to provide an inexpensive-to-implement mechanism through which retail devices can access their core interactive services--I'd like to see a draft of a regulation which tried to require that .

They wouldn't argue that access to IPPV and VOD weren't compelling in general--they'd just argue that low-end product by definition lack costly-to-implement features found in high-end products and that access to IPPV and VOD are features that can reasonably be omitted in the low-end. If someone who can only afford a $150 television wants access to IPPV and VOD, they can pay for that access incrementally at the ever-so-reasonable lease rate of a cable company provided STB .


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## MichaelK

mikeyts said:


> So far as I know, nowhere in FCC regulations are they required to provide an open method for access to any and all programming on the cable. If you know differently, please point out the specific regs.
> 
> In any case, cable will argue that they _have_ provided access to IPPV and VOD services to third party devices: make your products compliant to the <tru2way> specs and they'll download their IPGs into it, and your customers will be able to access IPPV and VOD services through it, as well as a whole world of currently-difficult-to-imagine-yet-virtually-indispensible services . Certainly nothing in FCC regs compells them to provide an inexpensive-to-implement mechanism through which retail devices can access their core interactive services--I'd like to see a draft of a regulation which tried to require that .


the LAW says not just programming but SERVICES also- check out the law. I dont recall it specifically saying every channel- but the law seems pretty clear to me it includes all channels- but I'll let you argue that they are allowed to give just some channels or services.

i didn't say anything about inexpensive- that's not written anyplace I know.

In fact NO ONE has ever said that cablecards are inexpensive to mandate. The only argument is how expensive it is. The FCC never seems to respond to the NCTA's complaints about cost.

you can start your reading here- here's the link to the fcc order that I think created all the enabling regulations

http://www.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Cable/Orders/1998/fcc98116.pdf

and here's the FCC press release about it.

http://www.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Cable/News_Releases/1998/nrcb8013.html

some quick snippets:



> This order will benefit consumers and further the Commission's goal of providing competition in the telecommunications marketplace by creating a major market for consumers to own equipment used to access video programming *and other services *in their homes.





> Section 629 covers not just equipment used to receive video programming, _but also equipment used to access "other services offered over multichannel video programming systems." _Such equipment includes televisions, VCRs, cable set-top boxes, personal computers, *program guide equipment,* and cable modems. The focus of Section 629, however, is on cable television set-top boxes and cable modems, devices that have historically been available only on a lease basis from the service provider.





> We expect that entities outside of the membership of CableLabs will be able to participate in the
> eventual standards setting process.





> There is further risk in moving to an environment where new devices are commercially available.
> With the technology and market developing, it is unclear how efficiently the market will respond if consumers
> purchase devices that may not perform all of the functions in the manner that the consumer envisioned. ...


like getting only some channels perhaps?



> We are realistic, however, in comprehending that the present environment where incumbent cable
> operators dominate the MVPD market, and where consumers may not have ready access to information
> regarding equipment alternatives, may not easily evolve to a competitive market. We think it important to
> convey those circumstances that we believe will indicate where competition is faltering, and cause us to
> reexamine our decisions. Additionally, we also address our concern that, having refrained from promulgating
> specific technical standards, market driven efforts may not bring tangible choice to consumers, thereby
> requiring additional need to reexamine the direction we have taken.


in the order they basically crowned cablelabs to make the standards- the FCC wanted nothing to do with it. And despite others requests for an independant third party the FCC said cablelabs was basically the only one ready to move at that moment in time. But I think this bit above says something to the effect if cablelabs doesn't bring tangible choice (eg the CEA doesn't agree like has happened so far with OCAP) then perhaps the FCC will jump into the fray. (as the CEA probably argues they should do to make DCR+)

just some snippets. Feel free to read the whole thing- I just skimmed so I may have taken things out of context.

there are specific provisions that the FCC wouldn't make rules that stifle new technology- and that's exactly the point of SDV- it's new. Forcing cable to come up with DCR+ or OCAP before deploying SDV wouldn't be helpfull to progress so it's allowed to exist. I get see the point- can't stop progress and all.

I'll even take that VOD is "new".

Put program guides and IPPV existed in 1996 when the law passed- it's crazy in my mind that there is no real world deployed standard for either yet. So maybe the CEA should get their way with DCR+. The tuning resolver/adapter might not be the magic bullet if DVR+ did PPV and VOD but it doesn't. Cable better get true2way on the ground AND IN RETAIL for that "tangible choice" if they want to really show the train has left the station.

That's the whole point of the law- the boxes have to be availible to purchase in retail- who cares if TW is using OCAP if the CEA refuses to built consumer devices- actually i think the actual law says "commerically availible"


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## mikeyts

MichaelK --

FCC 98-116, the FCC Report and Order that you quoted above, doesn't seem to be on your point. What it "ordered" was the inclusion of a new Subpart P of Code of Federal Regulation Title 47, Part 76--it ordered that in July of 1998 (with signficant amendments made to it since), just before ATSC broadcasting began in the United States and 5 years before FCC 03-225 was issued, which ordered the inclusion of modifications to the regulations codifying the plug-and-play-DTV-over-cable scheme. Note that only the stuff in Appendix A of FCC 98-116 are regulations--the rest of it is just discussion of the situation and their justification for making those new rules in Appendix A. The regulations can't be all fluffy and conceptual, like the report part--regulations have to state, as precisely as possible, exactly what they require companies to whom the regulations apply to do, with references to applicable standards documentation that go into excrutiating detail. (Often the regulations aren't nearly precise enough ).

CFR Title 47, Part 76, Subpart P mostly seems concerned with keeping the cable providers from interfering with the sale of navigation devices at retail, and insuring that they deliver details of their interface to people interested in developing such as requested. It also re-iterates that they must make "equipment that incorporates only the conditional access functions" (i.e., CableCARDs) available to subs and that, after 1 July 2007, they must not obtain new devices for sale or lease which integrate conditional access (one of the recent amendments). Except for that last bit, it has nothing much to do specifically with plug-and-play-DTV-over-cable.

Cable (in the form of the NCTA) and the CE OEMs (as represented by the CEA) are fighting for/against <tru2way> and/or DCR+ both on the basis of costs. As stated, the CE OEMs basically can't implement <tru2way> in their low-end products; cable doesn't want to implement DCR+ because it will cost them a very large amount of money (quite likely much more than it will cost the CE OEMs) without giving them any further opportunities to profit. They've already spent a major fortune on the development of the elements of <tru2way>; moreover they did it awfully publicly and while the CE OEMs watched and did not submit their complaint to the FCC begging for a cheaper alternative until recently. That complaint made only one inarguable point--it is unreasonable to require implementation of <tru2way> just to support access to SDV channels. Cable has solved that problem with the Tuning Adapter, however Rube-Goldberg-esque the solution may be .

I truly believe that, if the FCC were to order the cable industry to work on DCR+, they would drop the Tuning Adapter, since no OEM would then design low-end devices which would use it and the only beneficiaries of their buying and stocking them would be a couple hundred thousand CableCARD-using TiVo Series3 and TiVo HD users nationwide--far too little bang for the required effort and expense.

I hate coming down on the side of the cable providers--as hookbill suggests, I like to try to think of them as a groups of terrorists . However, in this particularly case I think that their side is also the side of TiVo S3/HD owners.


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## lrhorer

MichaelK said:


> So I dont think we'll get to 1,000 linear channels ever and I dont happen to think at this moment that we'll have just 10 linear channels and the rest vod anytime soon either.


There's a difference between a linear channel and a scheduled program. A linear channel is broadcast to every subscriber. Hypothetically, it could even be a VOD channel, but putting VOD content on linear channels would be hideously inefficient. A scheduled program, however, can still be broadcast on SDV QAMs, and in fact on an average CATV system any time a channel represents less than a 5% or so share of the total viewing public during any significant period of time, moving that channel from a liner QAM to an SDV QAM makes sense. Once that is done (or even without it), there's no reason not to offer the content as VOD for those who get stuck on the freeway and are 10 minutes late, or just want to step away from the TV for a few minutes.

My original statement was the norm would be VOD. That means something around half the streams going out to the nodes would be initiated by direct consumer requests rather than by scheduled broadcasting. 'Call it maybe 100 scheduled HD programs and 300 scheduled SD programs sent to the entire city and 100 HD programs and 300 SD programs not scheduled to each node. City wide, that would make perhaps 1000 or so HD programs and 3000 or so SD programs at any one time, from a pool of many thousands.

Right now, in San Antonio, at this very moment, the SDV sub has a pool of well over 1000 programs from which to choose, since every program currently being offfered on any of the 50 or so premium channels is available as VOD. The number of pay-per-view offerings ia also quite large.


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## lrhorer

MichaelK said:


> PPV has been around since the law was passed in 1996 and the first regs came out in like 1998. So it's been 10+ years to get to a point that PPV will work on a 3rd party device


Pay Per View has been around since the early 1980s. I was working for a CATV company back then, and we deployed our first PPV system in 1983. We were not the first CATV system in the nation to deploy PPV, either. It's been closer to 30 years than to 10 since PPV was developed.


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## Firekite

It's still fascinating to me that people--on a TiVo forum no less--seem to have such a hard-on for VOD. Personally it doesn't bother me that it exists, but it's irrelevant to me because _I have a DVR_. I can't imagine I'm part of some tiny minority, especially since everyone I know and work with seems to have one, too, and has had for quite a while. If I'm 10 minutes late getting to my favorite shows or am on a date or running errands or whatever, it doesn't affect me. Only selected programming is available on VOD anyway, and other than the novelty factor of being able to order up Showtime late-night soft-core on a whim when I first got the service, it's of little use.


----------



## lrhorer

Firekite said:


> It's still fascinating to me that people--on a TiVo forum no less--seem to have such a hard-on for VOD. Personally it doesn't bother me that it exists, but it's irrelevant to me because _I have a DVR_.


You are correct that any set with a DVR, particularly a TiVo, has generally speaking little to gain from a VOD offering unless that offering is only available via VOD or some similar mechanism. What you continually miss, however, is that the average user does not own a TiVo, and most sets out there do not have DVRs of any sort attached to them. I personally never use VOD or even PPV at all, *but I am not the average user*, and neither are you. Indeed, even in my house, only three out of the seven TVs have DVRs - all TiVos - on them, and while I don't make use of VOD or PPV, when my daughters were still in the house they did.



Firekite said:


> I can't imagine I'm part of some tiny minority, especially since everyone I know and work with seems to have one, too, and has had for quite a while.


Then your imagination falls far short of reality. There are only a few million DVRs out there, but over 100 million TV sets. Even so, if you will take a few minutes to browse through the posts on this forum, one of the more commonly asked questions is, "[When] will my TiVo be able to get VOD and PPV?" The fact you or I are of the opinion VOD and IPPV are useless on a DVR does not prevent many DVR owners wanting it, nor does it prevent a large number of them employing VOD and IPPV on leased DVRs. Whether you like it or not, we are indeed part of a fairly small minority at this point.



Firekite said:


> If I'm 10 minutes late getting to my favorite shows or am on a date or running errands or whatever, it doesn't affect me. Only selected programming is available on VOD anyway


In San Antonio, every single channel has video rewind available, which is a form of VOD. Every premium channel has VOD available. Once again, the fact you or I find these features of highly limited interest does not mean the average person does as well. Indeed, many people are drawn to a service with more features in opposition to one with less features for no other reason than it has more features, the fact they may never even use many of the features (or even fully apreciate what they are) completely notwithstanding.



Firekite said:


> and other than the novelty factor of being able to order up Showtime late-night soft-core on a whim when I first got the service, it's of little use.


You are also judging the merits of the platform based upon its current state, not its potential. In the late 1950s, a 5 Megabyte hard drive weighed nearly a ton, and the computer to which it was attached filled an entire room and took months to program even for simple functions. Boy, that was a technology that never went anywhere, wasn't it? Ten years later, a video recorder filled an entire 7' tall bay, and cost over $20,000. One could easily buy a very nice house for $20,000 at the time. Obviously, no consumer would ever want to buy a video recorder, right?


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## bicker

Good points. I think it is really important to remember that for most people the best DVR is the one that they don't have to buy, the one they don't have to hook up, the one they don't have to negotiate with their service provider to support, and the one that they don't have to pay for service on. Like it or not, service-oriented architectures are back, and will become the norm (again) for many different software-oriented services in our society.


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## vstone

MichaelK said:


> ...
> Put program guides and IPPV existed in 1996 when the law passed- it's crazy in my mind that there is no real world deployed standard for either yet. So maybe the CEA should get their way with DCR+.
> ...


You can thank Gemstar/TV Guide for the program guide mess. They have some patents which have to be dealt with one way or another. I remeber seeing a program guide that started with tomorrow's programming (you could backtrack) to avoid violating a patent.


----------



## MichaelK

lrhorer said:


> There's a difference between a linear channel and a scheduled program. A linear channel is broadcast to every subscriber. Hypothetically, it could even be a VOD channel, but putting VOD content on linear channels would be hideously inefficient. A scheduled program, however, can still be broadcast on SDV QAMs, and in fact on an average CATV system any time a channel represents less than a 5% or so share of the total viewing public during any significant period of time, moving that channel from a liner QAM to an SDV QAM makes sense. Once that is done (or even without it), there's no reason not to offer the content as VOD for those who get stuck on the freeway and are 10 minutes late, or just want to step away from the TV for a few minutes.
> 
> My original statement was the norm would be VOD. That means something around half the streams going out to the nodes would be initiated by direct consumer requests rather than by scheduled broadcasting. 'Call it maybe 100 scheduled HD programs and 300 scheduled SD programs sent to the entire city and 100 HD programs and 300 SD programs not scheduled to each node. City wide, that would make perhaps 1000 or so HD programs and 3000 or so SD programs at any one time, from a pool of many thousands.
> 
> Right now, in San Antonio, at this very moment, the SDV sub has a pool of well over 1000 programs from which to choose, since every program currently being offfered on any of the 50 or so premium channels is available as VOD. The number of pay-per-view offerings ia also quite large.


Oh- I see your point now- I thought by linear you meant scheduled.

Id agree in 10 years there may be a tiny handful of always on channels and the rest will be streamed on demand or vod or sdv- whatever they are calling it at that moment.

I am not intimately away- but isnt that what atts uverse already does even- streams only the channel you want at that moment?


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## HDTiVo

Firekite said:


> It's still fascinating to me that people--on a TiVo forum no less--seem to have such a hard-on for VOD. ... or am on a date


When your date mentions a show you´ve never heard of that she´d really like to watch with you back at your place ...


----------



## MichaelK

mikeyts said:


> MichaelK --
> 
> FCC 98-116, the FCC Report and Order that you quoted above, doesn't seem to be on your point. What it "ordered" was the inclusion of a new Subpart P of Code of Federal Regulation Title 47, Part 76--it ordered that in July of 1998 (with signficant amendments made to it since), just before ATSC broadcasting began in the United States and 5 years before FCC 03-225 was issued, which ordered the inclusion of modifications to the regulations codifying the plug-and-play-DTV-over-cable scheme. Note that only the stuff in Appendix A of FCC 98-116 are regulations--the rest of it is just discussion of the situation and their justification for making those new rules in Appendix A. The regulations can't be all fluffy and conceptual, like the report part--regulations have to state, as precisely as possible, exactly what they require companies to whom the regulations apply to do, with references to applicable standards documentation that go into excrutiating detail. (Often the regulations aren't nearly precise enough ).
> 
> CFR Title 47, Part 76, Subpart P mostly seems concerned with keeping the cable providers from interfering with the sale of navigation devices at retail, and insuring that they deliver details of their interface to people interested in developing such as requested. It also re-iterates that they must make "equipment that incorporates only the conditional access functions" (i.e., CableCARDs) available to subs and that, after 1 July 2007, they must not obtain new devices for sale or lease which integrate conditional access (one of the recent amendments). Except for that last bit, it has nothing much to do specifically with plug-and-play-DTV-over-cable.
> 
> Cable (in the form of the NCTA) and the CE OEMs (as represented by the CEA) are fighting for/against <tru2way> and/or DCR+ both on the basis of costs. As stated, the CE OEMs basically can't implement <tru2way> in their low-end products; cable doesn't want to implement DCR+ because it will cost them a very large amount of money (quite likely much more than it will cost the CE OEMs) without giving them any further opportunities to profit. They've already spent a major fortune on the development of the elements of <tru2way>; moreover they did it awfully publicly and while the CE OEMs watched and did not submit their complaint to the FCC begging for a cheaper alternative until recently. That complaint made only one inarguable point--it is unreasonable to require implementation of <tru2way> just to support access to SDV channels. Cable has solved that problem with the Tuning Adapter, however Rube-Goldberg-esque the solution may be .
> 
> I truly believe that, if the FCC were to order the cable industry to work on DCR+, they would drop the Tuning Adapter, since no OEM would then design low-end devices which would use it and the only beneficiaries of their buying and stocking them would be a couple hundred thousand CableCARD-using TiVo Series3 and TiVo HD users nationwide--far too little bang for the required effort and expense.
> 
> I hate coming down on the side of the cable providers--as hookbill suggests, I like to try to think of them as a groups of terrorists . However, in this particularly case I think that their side is also the side of TiVo S3/HD owners.


I thought after I posted-

You asked specifically what the regs./laws say aboiut the issue- and I didnt answer with any of those.

SO yep- you are right there are no current regs that govern the mess  its just a bunch of half way regs that dont really help get anything done. (and thats the problem in my head).

But my point about the report and order is it shows the intent of the FCC (at least the fcc as it existed in 1996-98 timeframe- probably totally different people now) and also their understanding of the point of the law. It seems clear to me from reading that- that the point of the law and the fcc (at least those in power in 1996-98) has completely not come to pass. Seems they wanted 3rd party devices readily available, they wanted them fast (I think someplace they even mention expecting them in retail for Christmas 2000 or 2001), they wanted 2-way devices that could do ppv, get guide data, etc some time after that- and seems to me they didnt expect it 10 years later. That they didnt expect the 3rd party devices to be missing things that cable company boxes get.

So true none of the regs reflect any of that intent, but it seems from that report and its references to the conference report in congress that what we have today wasnt what they expected.. Iy looks to me like the regs went terribly awry

Anyway- all that said- I totally agree- if dcr+ got mandated it will make a mess. Cable just might as a whole abandon the dongle for the couple hundred thousand tivos out there that would benefit (maybe if some big companys already had it ready before DCR+ got mandated they would make them available for political reasons but probably you couldnt get everyone to agree anymore.). I assume they are too far down the OCAP/True2way road to bail ont hat- so in the end they would wind up with both systems I guess and tivo could build a tivo series 4 or 5 for either one.

But theres a cbunch of issues rolled up here: What do I want to get my tivo S3s to work, whats right, what is isnt damaging to any of the players, etc. Taking my personal motivation to keep my S3s working aside- Im not sure that DCR+ is so bad as a whole for an end game. My own opinion is there needs to be some standard that everyone can live with- that such a thing would be best in the end for cable, CE, and consumers. Obvioulsy others feel differently. Maybe DCR+ is that end point.


----------



## mike_camden

Firekite said:


> It's still fascinating to me that people--on a TiVo forum no less--seem to have such a hard-on for VOD. Personally it doesn't bother me that it exists, but it's irrelevant to me because _I have a DVR_.


We have a Tivo (actually we have three... two Tivo HDs and a Tivo DT); however, we also keep a cable box solely for VOD. Why? Because we also have a five year old whose tv viewing habits are much more varied than either my wife's or mine. My wife and I both have a very limited amount of viewing time available. There are probably five or six shows that each of us want to watch regulalry (for me PTI, the Office, Ghost Hunters, UFO Hunters, and John Adams) as well as the occasional special (most of which come from the History Channel, Discover, or Nat Geo for me) and some live programming (football, some bball, news). That's it; I have a hard time squeezing those in at a couple of hours per day max. My wife is the same way (although her selections lean more towards reality programming), as are most of our friends. However to my daughter, the TV offers endless possibilities. Today she wants Sesame Street, tomorrow Calliou, the next day Berenstein Bears. After that who knows maybe Pinky Dinky Do, maybe Dragon Tales. We limit her tv watching time pretty significantly, so when she does get to watch, she likes variety. VOD is the most efficient way to offer that kind of viewing. I would venture that many other parents feel the same.


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## mikeyts

MichaelK --

On the one hand I do agree with the CEA that DCR+ would be nice to have. On the other hand, <tru2way>/OCAP holds quite a bit of promise as well (in principal, though I still have problems apps much beyond IPG, IPPV, VOD and some trivial games). If the CEA gets DCR+ in the near term, I'd guess half the major manufacturers will never bother to make <tru2way> compliant products. (There's a small group of CEA members--including Samsung and TiVo--who are supporters of <tru2way>, so it wouldn't die completely, but the cable providers would like for it to be as ubiquitous as possible). The fact is that the Tuning Adapter addresses the most pressing need--providing a mechanism for low-end TV products to access SDV. The Tuning Adapter could evolve into essentially DCR+ in the future in a straight-forward fashion. Until it does, people can use leased cable boxes with their inexpensive televisions, if they want to view IPPV and VOD content on them.


MichaelK said:


> I assume they are too far down the OCAP/True2way road to bail ont hat-


A small and unimportant nit--"<tru2way>" is a registered trademark of CableLabs. There is no "e" in the spelling and they'd prefer that you use all lowercase and that it be encased in "angle-brackets" where possible (I guess that it graphically suggests the bidirectional nature of the set of the technology); they insist on the angle-brackets when used as a logo on compliant products. You can see the guidelines for its use at www.tru2way.com.


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## bxojr

mikeyts said:


> On the one hand I do agree with the CEA that DCR+ would be nice to have. On the other hand, <tru2way>/OCAP holds quite a bit of promise as well (in principal, though I still have problems apps much beyond IPG, IPPV, VOD and some trivial games). If the CEA gets DCR+ in the near term, I'd guess half the major manufacturers will never bother to make <tru2way> compliant products.


But that's not a prospect worth considering. Maybe I'm too easily persuaded, but I found the NCTA's critique of DCR+ to be pretty convincing. It comes across as an unrealistic and half-baked proposal that would take a _long_ time to design and implement. So even if the FCC were to order DCR+ in the near term, it would likely be years before it's actually rolled out.

In the meantime, OCAP is coming, regardless of what the FCC decides, and I think you're right that it holds a lot of promise. It's far from perfect, but the opportunity for an ideal solution was lost a decade ago. The fact that TiVo feels that OCAP is viable reassures me -- mainly, it reassures me that the NCTA is willing to work with CE manufacturers to address their concerns. I think OCAP will evolve over time, and it can be made to work.

All of this makes me think the FCC should just stay out of it. They've done precious little in a decade, and yet a solution (imperfect, but a solution) is coming anyway, voluntarily developed by the NCTA and some CE manufacturers. It's hard to imagine anything the FCC could do that would not make matters worse rather than better.


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## mikeyts

bxojr said:


> All of this makes me think the FCC should just stay out of it. They've done precious little in a decade, and yet a solution (imperfect, but a solution) is coming anyway, voluntarily developed by the NCTA and some CE manufacturers. It's hard to imagine anything the FCC could do that would not make matters worse rather than better.


The fact that that solution was only revealed some 9 months after the CEA filed their DCR+ proposal makes me suspect that it was only created in response to the threat of DCR+. I am grateful for it, though .


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## Firekite

lrhorer said:


> the average user does not own a TiVo, and most sets out there do not have DVRs of any sort attached to them.


Source? I want to know *what percentage of digital cable subscribers* with VOD access have (or don't have) a DVR. You seem confident in your numbers, so by all means, let's have them.



> Obviously, no consumer would ever want to buy a video recorder, right?


:eyebrow:

Yes, that's a _perfect_ set of analogies... Regardless, like I said, I have no problem that it exists, but several people here, lead primarily by you, seem to be arguing the CATV providers' stance with VOD pretty much the only card to play and acting like it's a trump card. I've said it before, but VOD is nice and all but is not justification for breaking functionality with any 3rd party CableCARD host such as your TiVOs.



HDTiVo said:


> When your date mentions a show you´ve never heard of that she´d really like to watch with you back at your place ...


Heh, nice. That's never come up, but it would be handy if it did. Like I said, I have no problem that it exists, but rather that it's being put on some sort of holy pedestal by the likes of horer.


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## HDTiVo

Firekite said:


> Heh, nice. That's never come up, but it would be handy if it did. Like I said, I have no problem that it exists, but rather that it's being put on some sort of holy pedestal by the likes of horer.


Its going to be quite a phenomenal time in the next short number of years making all this available along with DVR use.


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## HDTiVo

I didn&#180;t think that the OCAP issues were really hardware in the long run, but interface issues. TiVo broke with CE to broker a compromise deal they seem satisfied with.

My guess is that put the nail in the coffin of the CE proposal.


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## bxojr

HDTiVo said:


> I didn´t think that the OCAP issues were really hardware in the long run, but interface issues. TiVo broke with CE to broker a compromise deal they seem satisfied with.


Yes, and since the UI is arguably TiVo's most important selling point, I think it's _very_ significant that TiVo came around to a pro-OCAP position. In August of last year, TiVo was still strongly pro-DCR+, criticizing OCAP because (they claimed) it would remove the ability to differentiate with a user interface. Four months later, after getting their "clarifications and adjustments" to OCAP, they'd reversed position and believed that OCAP was preferable to DCR+.

I think this actually makes a lot of sense. The value of TiVo's user interface is primarily in how it handles linear programming. On the other hand, I think it's pretty reasonable to say that interactive services need to be tightly coupled with their user interfaces; that's all part of the service the cable company is selling.

If I had a tru2way TiVo, I might switch to "cable mode" for a VOD program once in a while, but I don't see any particular reason for that kind of functionality to be part of the TiVo UI. (On the other hand, I would like to see the ability to record a VOD show after ordering it, and have it available through the TiVo "Now Playing" list; I have no idea whether that level of integration is a possibility.)

I do find it interesting that TiVo's objections to OCAP in August turned out to be non-issues in December. That tells me that one of two things must be true: either TiVo (along with CEA) misunderstood the OpenCable spec, or the NCTA was willing to modify it. I wonder, were there more "clarifications" or "adjustments" in those talks?


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## HDTiVo

bxojr said:


> I do find it interesting that TiVo's objections to OCAP in August turned out to be non-issues in December. That tells me that one of two things must be true: either TiVo (along with CEA) misunderstood the OpenCable spec, or the NCTA was willing to modify it. I wonder, were there more "clarifications" or "adjustments" in those talks?


Its always "interesting" how some "objections" disappear when settlements are reached. 

I think there is alot of value to being able to use local storage & processing power (DMR) to handle VOD type programing, and furthermore value to a TiVo (or other good) interface for doing so.


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## BobCamp1

bxojr said:


> I do find it interesting that TiVo's objections to OCAP in August turned out to be non-issues in December. That tells me that one of two things must be true: either TiVo (along with CEA) misunderstood the OpenCable spec, or the NCTA was willing to modify it. I wonder, were there more "clarifications" or "adjustments" in those talks?


The OCAP/tru2way spec. doesn't say anything about these issues. CE companies put 2 and 2 together and got 20. And then they got nervous. They just needed reassurance that the cable companies would not take over the entire GUI, and that 2+2 really does equal 4, even for potentially large values of 2. Plus, the NCTA threw in a free gift called the tuning adapter which the main opposition CE company desperately needed. Sometimes there are things about interoperability you just can't spec. You have to work together with the other companies (here I go again) to fill in the missing or gray areas. And bribing the opposition to keep them quiet doesn't hurt either. 

The other reason for nervousness, as some have pointed out, is some CE companies aren't designing for boxes but TVs instead. Putting an "expensive" processor inside a TV reduces profit margin. But as more people want DVR functionality and then next gotta-have-it feature, they'll need a box because you can't put a hard drive inside a TV. And I don't see anyone strongly opposed to the presence of cable boxes in their entertainment center. I think customers have come to expect that they will always need a separate box. That means TVs might turn into monitors. And there is not as much profit margin making monitors, either. So either way TV manufacturers are screwed with tru2way.

But I think DCR+ is too complex for TVs and too simple for DVRs. And it's not at all future-proof. In the same way SDV indirectly defeated the purpose of CableCards, some new gotta-have-it feature will trump DCR+ because it isn't adaptable.

Finally, you will be amazed at how great support and development is for specs. that are approved by the service providers vs. specs. that are not. (Oh wait, you all have CableCards, and this thread exists and is the first sticky thread, so you do know this). So even if both DCR+ and tru2way were approved, tru2way would become the default standard. Which is what the NCTA is hinting to the FCC.


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## slude

BobCamp1 said:


> But as more people want DVR functionality and then next gotta-have-it feature, they'll need a box because you can't put a hard drive inside a TV.


(limiting my response to flat-panel TVs that could be wall-mounted on the assumption that's what you were thinking about)

LG disagrees. 3 years ago they started selling TVs with internal DVRs http://www.engadget.com/2005/05/03/lgs-new-50py2dr-and-60py2dr-plasma-tvs-with-built-in-dvr/.

Samsung disagrees. 2 years ago they started selling TVs with internal DVRs http://www.wiredathomeblog.com/blog/2006/05/samsung_intros_.html.

Toshiba disagrees. Earlier this week they announced they will be selling TVs with internal DVRs http://www.engadget.com/2008/04/09/toshibas-10-new-regza-lcds-3x-ethernet-built-in-dvr-and-much/.

Even Humax is doing it http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/home-entertainment/humax-40-lcd-tv-with-builtin-40gb-hd-162267.php so putting a hard-drive-based DVR inside a flat panel TV can't be rocket science.



BobCamp1 said:


> And I don't see anyone strongly opposed to the presence of cable boxes in their entertainment center.


Yo (sort of). You've side-stepped the very important point that most homes have only a single entertainment center but have more than a single TV. The migration to flat-panel TVs has made people less willing to accept a box with the bedroom TV, living room TV, etc.


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## mikeyts

Mitsubishi has also put DVRs inside of panels. My panel, which doesn't have a built-in DVR, does support a 1394 AV/C AVHDD, which is basically just a drive in an enclosure which will repond to a set of 1394 AV/C commands, which have to do with opening files and streaming data into and out of them--it has no tuner or timers. With one of these hooked up, the television will add an interface for managing and playing back saved recordings and you can use the TV Guide On Screen grid to schedule them.


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## bxojr

BobCamp1 said:


> I think customers have come to expect that they will always need a separate box. That means TVs might turn into monitors.


This is an excellent point. I think the idea of putting more and more function into TV sets is exactly the wrong way to go. Cable TV is just another kind of digital video content, just like all of the streaming and downloadable content we can get over the Internet. The logical model is for the home-entertainment center to become a specialized computer system, with a BIG monitor and a high-end sound system, and a network-connected special-purpose computer (like a TiVo) to provide the signal.

I don't expect my computer monitor to have the computer built in, and I wouldn't buy one that did come that way -- too much to fail in a single unit, and too hard to upgrade.

I haven't used a television set's built-in tuner since sometime in the early 1990s. So the idea of a TV with OCAP built in doesn't appeal to me in the slightest.

I think you're right: most people don't have any objection to having an external box to deliver the programming. What we don't need is _multiple boxes_. Give me a TiVo with built-in OCAP, and the ability to stream video from NetFlix and Hulu, and I'll be pretty happy.


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## Firekite

bxojr said:


> I don't expect my computer monitor to have the computer built in, and I wouldn't buy one that did come that way -- too much to fail in a single unit, and too hard to upgrade.


:eyebrow:

This is a TV we're talking about. How many times have you "upgraded" your TV in the past? Or your TiVo for that matter? Few people ever turn a screw on either of these devices.



> I haven't used a television set's built-in tuner since sometime in the early 1990s. So the idea of a TV with OCAP built in doesn't appeal to me in the slightest.


Perhaps not, but if there's no tuner it can't be sold as a TV. It's just a monitor at that point. Regardless, many people still use the built-in tuner for both cable and OTA (including HD).


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## bxojr

Firekite said:


> How many times have you "upgraded" your TV in the past? Or your TiVo for that matter? Few people ever turn a screw on either of these devices.


I don't _want_ to upgrade my TV.

I'm now on my third TiVo since 2000, and I fully expect to upgrade again within the next two years. I've also gone through multiple DVD players and STBs. And I was able to do all of this upgrading without having to upgrade my TV -- which is the most expensive part of the whole setup -- because these devices are all separate boxes.

I grant that many people, maybe even most, are still using the tuners built into their TVs. What I'm suggesting is that will change as our mechanism for receiving video programming changes.


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## MichaelK

mikeyts said:


> MichaelK --
> 
> On the one hand I do agree with the CEA that DCR+ would be nice to have. On the other hand, <tru2way>/OCAP holds quite a bit of promise as well (in principal, though I still have problems apps much beyond IPG, IPPV, VOD and some trivial games). If the CEA gets DCR+ in the near term, I'd guess half the major manufacturers will never bother to make <tru2way> compliant products. (There's a small group of CEA members--including Samsung and TiVo--who are supporters of <tru2way>, so it wouldn't die completely, but the cable providers would like for it to be as ubiquitous as possible). The fact is that the Tuning Adapter addresses the most pressing need--providing a mechanism for low-end TV products to access SDV. The Tuning Adapter could evolve into essentially DCR+ in the future in a straight-forward fashion. Until it does, people can use leased cable boxes with their inexpensive televisions, if they want to view IPPV and VOD content on them.
> A small and unimportant nit--"<tru2way>" is a registered trademark of CableLabs. There is no "e" in the spelling and they'd prefer that you use all lowercase and that it be encased in "angle-brackets" where possible (I guess that it graphically suggests the bidirectional nature of the set of the technology); they insist on the angle-brackets when used as a logo on compliant products. You can see the guidelines for its use at www.tru2way.com.


Panasonic is also a BIG support of TRUE2WAY. I believe they intend to have several devices in retail second half of this year and also Comcast has a deal to buy 500 OCAP boxes from them. So Id say panny is deep in that camp.

(now that you told me it annoys them- Ill be sure to include the e and caps- laughing!)


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## mikeyts

I think that most people don't mind having a separate box for delivering their programming in their main family room home entertainment set-up, but many people have lots of smaller televisions placed around their home that they watch while doing chores and otherwise going about their business. Hanging from beneath the kitchen cabinets, on the workbench in the garage, on shelves in home offices and sewing rooms and small kids' rooms and nurseries: these are places where space is at a premium and external boxes for television reception are definitely not welcome. The fact that you can just plug a television into a simple cable coming out of the wall and use it to receive all non-premium programming is a strong selling point over satellite, etc, and cable has spent a lot of money to set up being able to offer as much programming as possible that way.

It's particularly objectionable if each of those boxes comes with some kind of lease fee, laying on more cable fees for each television in your home and if you have to wait for someone to come out and install them, paying a fee for that service. People currently don't have to pay anything to hook up convenience televisions on which to watch core and extended basic and they don't have to make arrangements to do so with the cable company.


MichaelK said:


> (now that you told me it annoys them- I'll be sure to include the e and caps- laughing!)


I'm sure that they'll ignore you and say, "I wonder what this TRUE2WAY crap is that he's going on about. Do we have a trademark infringement case over whoever's selling something called 'TRUE2WAY'??? It's awfully close to our trademark--we should sue!"


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## nickhaas33

I think you're right: most people don't have any objection to having an external box to deliver the programming. What we don't need is _multiple boxes_. Give me a TiVo with built-in OCAP, and the ability to stream video from NetFlix and Hulu, and I'll be pretty happy.[/QUOTE]

This hits the nail on the head!
Give me one that supports fancast, netflix, hulu, etc.
If the PS3 would do that, they could sell even more of them (no Flash 8/9 support).


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## bicker

And make sure this magical box, through all these services, support Closed Captions.


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## lrhorer

Firekite said:


> Source? I want to know *what percentage of digital cable subscribers* with VOD access have (or don't have) a DVR. You seem confident in your numbers, so by all means, let's have them.


According to this financial report from TiVo, as of Jan 31 of this year, TiVo has 3.95 million subs. Now some large fraction of those subs are using DirecTiVos, and some fraction are using their TiVo strictly OTA, but let's be generous and say all 3.95M are on CATV systems. According to this survey by MRG, the top 8 MSOs, representing 60% of CATV providers, have 2.4 million DVRs deployed. Extrapolating to 100% of subscribers, that would amount to 4 million DVRs deployed. Note the CATV subs on SDV systems also have access to SDV via their DVR, but we'll also assume it's not the case, just to prevent from underestimating. That's a total of just under 8 millions DVRs, spread out among 75 million subscribers with an average of something over 2.5 TV sets per sub. This means even being extremely generous with the DVR estimate there are more than 27 TV sets attached to CATV system through some means other than a DVR for each and every set attached to a CATV system through a DVR. The actual number may be less than 1 in 50, and the number of TiVos attached to CATV plants is less than 1 in 57, perhaps less than 1 in 100. Within a small margin of error, the percentage users with DVRs in any SDV system is going to be the same as the percentage of DVRs on CATV systems in general.

Since according to this post there have been only at the very most 339,000 TiVos attached to CATV systems with CableCards, that makes only 1 CATV subscriber in 221 owns an S3 class TiVo, and only 1 TV set in over 550 attached to a CATV plant is getting its service through a TiVo. The actual number is probably less than 1 in 1000.



Firekite said:


> several people here, lead primarily by you, seem to be arguing the CATV providers' stance with VOD pretty much the only card to play and acting like it's a trump card.


I have never said or suggested anything of the sort. VOD is just one of a huge number of applications for SDV. It also happens to be at this point in time the most widely deployed, as well as the one whose basic technology may have the broadest implications for the development of future applications. The entire vast television industry is a direct result of the development of the Flemming Valve vacuum tube. The implications for development of applications dependant upon SDV may be even broader.



Firekite said:


> I've said it before, but VOD is nice and all but is not justification for breaking functionality with any 3rd party CableCARD host such as your TiVOs.


I'm not going to do this dance again. The simple fact is the existence of SDV long predates the existence or even the development of the 3rd part UDCPs, so you can't claim SDV breaks them, any more than the fact Unix-only applications won't run on a Windows PC means Unix breaks Windows PCs.


----------



## lrhorer

bxojr said:


> I don't expect my computer monitor to have the computer built in, and I wouldn't buy one that did come that way -- too much to fail in a single unit, and too hard to upgrade.


Really? You've never bought a laptop / notebook computer, PDA, Blackberry (or a clone), or I-Phone (or a clone)? Most people have bought at least one of these over the last 20 years or so.



bxojr said:


> I haven't used a television set's built-in tuner since sometime in the early 1990s.


With the exception of the 9 month period of time between my buying my Mitsubishi HDTV and the release of the Series III TiVo, I haven't used one since 1984. Indeed, the only TV I had in my house between 1984 and 2000 didn't even have a built-in tuner. I still use that TV, and the projector in my Theater doesn't have a built-in tuner, either.



bxojr said:


> So the idea of a TV with OCAP built in doesn't appeal to me in the slightest.


Well, it doesn't appeal to me in particular, either, with one minor exception, but then I'm not the average consumer. The fact you are on a TiVo chat forum means there's a good chance you are a techie-type, at least to a certain extent. Most people are not, so you probably aren't an average consumer, either.

On the other hand, a set with built in separable security isn't particularly off-putting to me. Also, the one minor exception to my indifference is that very rare occasion when I want to watch a 3rd show on a particular TV in the house. Then it would be nice to be able to watch live TV while the other two tuners are busy. Especially with 3 TiVos sporting 6 tuners in the house, this is an extremely rare occurrence, and I can easily live without the capability.



bxojr said:


> I think you're right: most people don't have any objection to having an external box to deliver the programming.


I think that's probably true, or at least most men don't have any strong objections. Women generally speaking have more issues with multiple gadgets in the living space, but even most women probably don't have a strong objection to an STB or DVR. Other than price, however, more people express concerns of varying degrees over having to have an STB - or especially multiple STBs - than any other single complaint. They tend to be more vehement about service issues, at least while they are experiencing them, but by far the greatest number of complaints other than issues with their bills is the fact they have to have an STB.

Let me put it this way: suppose you stop 1000 different people on the street who have not recently had severe technical difficulties with their CATV service and ask them what their chief non-financial complaint with their CATV service is. You will get at least 100 or so different answers, but while maybe 50 or more people would complain about having to have the STB, not more than 10 or 15 would bring up any other single issue. (Note, these numbers do not represent the actual metric. They are simply offered as a means of demonstrating my point.)


----------



## lrhorer

HDTiVo said:


> I didn´t think that the OCAP issues were really hardware in the long run, but interface issues.


Since OCAP has nothing to do with hardware and is in fact nothing but a software interface between two other pieces of software, that's a given.



bxojr said:


> Yes, and since the UI is arguably TiVo's most important selling point, I think it's _very_ significant that TiVo came around to a pro-OCAP position. In August of last year, TiVo was still strongly pro-DCR+, criticizing OCAP because (they claimed) it would remove the ability to differentiate with a user interface. Four months later, after getting their "clarifications and adjustments" to OCAP, they'd reversed position and believed that OCAP was preferable to DCR+.


That was either empty saber rattling, a misinterpreted quotation, or someone who hadn't a clue about what they were speaking. OCAP is middleware. It has nothing directly to do with any UI, except that the UI must be able to communicate reliably with OCAP. It needs to be able to send messages to OCAP which then forwards them on to the CATV headend, and it needs to be able to respond to requests and answers from OCAP, splashing something on the screen if applicable or doing something internally if not. Take a look at Galleon or TiVo Desktop if you want an example of something similar.



bxojr said:


> I think this actually makes a lot of sense. The value of TiVo's user interface is primarily in how it handles linear programming. On the other hand, I think it's pretty reasonable to say that interactive services need to be tightly coupled with their user interfaces; that's all part of the service the cable company is selling.


Well, yes and no. The UI doesn't need to be tightly coupled with the middleware, per se, but it does need to provide a reasonable and reliable means to display information handed over by the middleware to the UI when appropriate and to forward any input by the user to the middleware in an unambiguous manner. Basically, in many ways OCAP is somewhat like X11. One can run an X-server under Windows, Mac OS Desktop, KDE, CDE, Gnome, XFce, XPde, or whatever other flavor of desktop the administrator happens to choose. The User interfaces for all those desktops vary a great deal from one to the other, or in some cases even from one release to the next of the same desktop, but an X server can run on any of them and provide an interface to a remote client anywhere.

In this case, the DVR / receiver UI is the server, the headend is running the client, and OCAP is acting as an agent. It needn't provide any user interface at all.


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## bxojr

lrhorer said:


> Really? You've never bought a laptop / notebook computer, PDA, Blackberry (or a clone), or I-Phone (or a clone)? Most people have bought at least one of these over the last 20 years or so.


Sure. But I don't think that's an apt comparison; those are portable devices where I'm willing to pay a premium, and make many other compromises, in order to minimize size and bulk. One of the big disadvantages of a laptop is that it's not very upgradeable, and it's hard to repair. You accept those disadvantages because you want the portability.

The same calculation does not apply to a home-entertainment center. For that application, modularity makes the most sense.

My vision of the future is a LAN-wired house with a central server that handles all of the tuning, security, and DVR-type functionality, and sends video signals to monitors installed throughout the house. I grant that I am not a typical user, so maybe that's a science-fiction vision; certainly CE manufacturers would not be building OCAP-equipped TV sets if their research didn't indicate that there was a market for them.

Still, I think a modular system would have a lot of advantages. And I don't think it will seem so outlandishly futuristic in a generation or so, when those of us raised on linear TV broadcasting aren't making the big purchase decisions anymore. Most college students today don't even own traditional TV sets; they watch all of their TV on computers, so for them it will be quite natural to see a home-entertainment center as a specialized computer setup with a big monitor.


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## lrhorer

bxojr said:


> Sure. But I don't think that's an apt comparison; those are portable devices where I'm willing to pay a premium, and make many other compromises, in order to minimize size and bulk.


Point well made and well taken.



bxojr said:


> The same calculation does not apply to a home-entertainment center. For that application, modularity makes the most sense.


For you and me, and probably most of the members of this forum, that's essentially true, although I wouldn't have put it quite that way. Rather, it's our *preference*, for very valid reasons. Indeed, it was no less true in the 1970s and 1980s when audiophiles like myself insisted on purchasing component audio systems. The number of console stereos and for that matter console TV / Stereos sold far exceeded the number of component systems sold, however. While component systems are much more ubiquitous today, the average consumer - and if it is a man then often his wife, is likely to prefer a more highly integrated solution over a more modular system, even if the modular system offers better quality and less maintenance expense.



bxojr said:


> My vision of the future is a LAN-wired house with a central server that handles all of the tuning, security, and DVR-type functionality, and sends video signals to monitors installed throughout the house. I grant that I am not a typical user


'My point exactly.



bxojr said:


> so maybe that's a science-fiction vision; certainly CE manufacturers would not be building OCAP-equipped TV sets if their research didn't indicate that there was a market for them.


Again, exactly so. If we were talking about my personal preferences or how I think the world should run then it's one thing, but my pragmatic side insists I take reality into account. I myself don't usually care for mustard, and I never order it, or put it on my sandwiches, but I do buy it because many of my guests do like mustard. If I were the owner of a grocery store, mustard would be very high on my list of things to keep stocked on the shelves, my personal taste notwithstanding.



bxojr said:


> Still, I think a modular system would have a lot of advantages.


Of course it does. I also don't mind the extra electronic box or ten on my shelves.









See? (You should see my server room. I'd send a picture of it, but it's too small and cramped to get back far enough to take a picture of all the printers, servers, RAID system, monitor, cable gateway, VOIP ATA, Ethernet switch, etc.)



bxojr said:


> Most college students today don't even own traditional TV sets; they watch all of their TV on computers, so for them it will be quite natural to see a home-entertainment center as a specialized computer setup with a big monitor.


Yes, precisely, and SDV services will be another highly integrated piece of the whole delivery system. How limited the number of boxes will be I think will continue to depend on the individual consumer. Many will applaud having only a single box handle all their phone, video, data, internet, and environmental systems. The microwave, fridge, dishwasher, and blender might even all be in the same box with everything else. Others will prefer a minimal amount of physical integration, with a box here, a box there, and a box around every corner.


----------



## Firekite

lrhorer said:


> That's a total of just under 8 millions DVRs, spread out among 75 million subscribers with an average of something over 2.5 TV sets per sub.


Perhaps you didn't hear me when I specified *DIGITAL CABLE* subscribers. If the numbers you're mentioning with no source attributed are referring strictly to digital cable, then this is interesting information. If not, it's useless.



> The simple fact is the existence of SDV long predates the existence or even the development of the 3rd part UDCPs, so you can't claim SDV breaks them


There really needs to be an :eyebrow: emoticon to use. This is so silly it hurts. None of the VOD or IPPV features existed before the TiVo or CableCARDs for that matter. Just because someone thought up the idea a long time ago doesn't mean that moving from a linear system to an SDV system doesn't break TiVo's ability to receive channels that are supplied exclusively via SDV.


----------



## mikeyts

Firekite said:


> There really needs to be an :eyebrow: emoticon to use. This is so silly it hurts.


Could you possibly tone down your snide and condescending attitude? See if you can state your case without calling what others have to say "so silly it hurts". I don't think that any of us can survive another long vitriolic exchange between you and lrhorer.


> None of the VOD or IPPV features existed before the TiVo or CableCARDs for that matter.


According to Wikipedia, VOD was first deployed in the US by Oceanic Cable in Hawaii in January 2000, 9 months after TiVo first shipped in March 1999, but 4.5 years prior to the FCC requirement that cable service providers support CableCARDs. VOD had been available for years in the TWC system that I was using in July 2004, when FCC regs mandate CableCARD compliance--certainly it'd been available for all 3 of the years I'd lived there at that point. However, I recall IPPV being around for a very long time in the various cable systems I've lived in (13 cities in 11 states and multiple neighborhoods with different cable systems in some of them). The first reference to a US deployment of it that I can find online in a cursory search is this, an abstract of an archived L.A. Times article from May 1989, nearly 10 years prior to the introduction of TiVo.

So, someone hadn't just "thought of" IPPV and VOD--both had been widely deployed by MSOs long, long before the first Undirectional Digital Cable Ready product was sold. Not that any of that either endorses or condemns the cable industry's deployment of SDV.


----------



## HDTiVo

lrhorer said:


> According to this financial report from TiVo, as of Jan 31 of this year, TiVo has 3.95 million subs. Now some large fraction of those subs are using DirecTiVos, and some fraction are using their TiVo strictly OTA, but let's be generous and say all 3.95M are on CATV systems. According to this survey by MRG, the top 8 MSOs, representing 60% of CATV providers, have 2.4 million DVRs deployed. Extrapolating to 100% of subscribers, that would amount to 4 million DVRs deployed. Note the CATV subs on SDV systems also have access to SDV via their DVR, but we'll also assume it's not the case, just to prevent from underestimating. That's a total of just under 8 millions DVRs, spread out among 75 million subscribers with an average of something over 2.5 TV sets per sub. This means even being extremely generous with the DVR estimate there are more than 27 TV sets attached to CATV system through some means other than a DVR for each and every set attached to a CATV system through a DVR. The actual number may be less than 1 in 50, and the number of TiVos attached to CATV plants is less than 1 in 57, perhaps less than 1 in 100. Within a small margin of error, the percentage users with DVRs in any SDV system is going to be the same as the percentage of DVRs on CATV systems in general.
> 
> Since according to this post there have been only at the very most 339,000 TiVos attached to CATV systems with CableCards, that makes only 1 CATV subscriber in 221 owns an S3 class TiVo, and only 1 TV set in over 550 attached to a CATV plant is getting its service through a TiVo. The actual number is probably less than 1 in 1000.


Those DVR numbers are very wrong. It is not important to this whole discussion, I just don´t want them to enter into the folklore.


----------



## mikeyts

HDTiVo said:


> Those DVR numbers are very wrong. It is not important to this whole discussion, I just don´t want them to enter into the folklore.


What my post said was that the NCTA claimed that, through the beginning of December, the 5 largest MSO's had deployed 271,000 single CableCARDs, and that, extrapolating the number to include all cable providers, it might have been something like 339,000 CableCARDs deployed. If they were all in use in TiVos (which they certainly weren't), it represented a maximum of about 170,000 TiVo Series3 and TiVo HDs in use with CableCARDs nationwide through that point, since each uses two CableCARDs.

Obviously this was a bunch of guestimation. I'm guessing that there were far fewer than 170,000 TiVos using CableCARDs at the end of last year. Of course, that number will have increased some over the past few months.


----------



## lrhorer

Firekite said:


> Perhaps you didn't hear me when I specified *DIGITAL CABLE* subscribers.


I did read it, but I took it to mean subscribers on digital cable systems. It's the bulk of subscribers which is most important to any service industry, not a particular faction of a particular fraction of subs. Nonetheless, even limiting it to CableCard subscribers, at most only a bit more than 1 in 10 digital cable drops has an S3 TiVo hanging off it, based upon this very same article provided by mikeyts. Likely it's fewer than 1 in 20.



Firekite said:


> If the numbers you're mentioning with no source attributed are referring strictly to digital cable, then this is interesting information.


I attributed sources to every one. The remainder of your post is not worthy of a response.


----------



## lrhorer

mikeyts said:


> What my post said was that the NCTA claimed that, through the beginning of December, the 5 largest MSO's had deployed 271,000 single CableCARDs, and that, extrapolating the number to include all cable providers, it might have been something like 339,000 CableCARDs deployed.


Within a reasonable margin, that guestimation is quite accurate. It's a far, far larger sample than is used by Nielsen to rate TV shows. It's also a far larger sample than is usually available for scientific researchers in most fields.



Firekite said:


> If they were all in use in TiVos (which they certainly weren't), it represented a maximum of about 170,000 TiVo Series3 and TiVo HDs in use with CableCARDs nationwide through that point, since each uses two CableCARDs.


Even if we assume every TiVo has only 1 CableCard, and only TiVos were included in the count, it still limits the number of CATV based S3 TiVos to less than 400,000. Even if it were 4,000,000, however, it would still be a drop in the bucket. 'A much bigger drop, to be sure, but still a drop nonetheless.


----------



## lrhorer

MichaelK said:


> Id agree in 10 years there may be a tiny handful of always on channels and the rest will be streamed on demand or vod or sdv- whatever they are calling it at that moment.


Video On Demand means you request a service stream and it is sent out to you when you request it.

Impulse Pay Per View means you request a program and at some point in time receive it. Traditional IPPV programs are broadcast at specific times. If the sub were 5 minutes late requesting the program, they would miss the first 5 minutes. Most CATV providers cut off ordering of PPV events 10 minutes into the event in order to prevent complaints from consumers about not receiving the entire program.

Switched Digital Video means a stream is only sent to a node if someone on that node has requested the content, whether that content happens to be scheduoed or not.

Linear Channels are sent to every node in the system, no matter whether anyone on the node has requested it or not.



MichaelK said:


> I am not intimately away- but isnt that what atts uverse already does even- streams only the channel you want at that moment?


That's right. Their node coverage is 1 household, as opposed to between 500 and 1000 homes for most CATV systems. On the other hand, their bandwidth is even more severely limited. A CATV system with no analog channels has an ultimate maximum bandwidth of about 40 Gigabits per second downstream. Most current CATV systems have somewhere around 5 Gigabits or so actually allocated to digital QAMs. San Antonio is somewhat unique in having nearly 10G available for digital QAMs, but I suspect other systems will begin cutting back on analog services before very long.

Note AT&T's offering currently can only deliver a single HD stream to the house. One can have several SD programs on or being recorded around the house, but only 1 HD.


----------



## mel.simmons

Is there any definitive way to tell if a channel is SDV or not? It seems that many of the reports of SDV channels turn out instead to be failures of the cable provider to provide access to that channel by cable card. 
It seems a reliable way to make this test would compare channels on a series 3 TiVo and a bidirectional device with a cable card (i.e., a cable company provided set top box). 
Is there any easier way to find out which channels, if any, are SDV?


----------



## mikeyts

mel.simmons said:


> Is there any definitive way to tell if a channel is SDV or not? It seems that many of the reports of SDV channels turn out instead to be failures of the cable provider to provide access to that channel by cable card.
> It seems a reliable way to make this test would compare channels on a series 3 TiVo and a bidirectional device with a cable card (i.e., a cable company provided set top box).
> Is there any easier way to find out which channels, if any, are SDV?


In some places the cable companies are blatently stating that some new channels are "Not available to CableCARD subscribers". Go to your cable provider's site and search for announcement of the new channel and read the fine print.

Otherwise, even if it's on the wire as non-switched linear service, if they don't advertise the channel in a PSIP loop in stream which contains it, there's no way to know that its there. Even with that, TiVo couldn't detect it.


----------



## mike_camden

lrhorer said:


> Note AT&T's offering currently can only deliver a single HD stream to the house. One can have several SD programs on or being recorded around the house, but only 1 HD.


That's interesting. We're not in an AT&T market, so I haven't researched the specifics of Uverse, but that's good to know (my in-laws are moving to an area that is serviced by AT&T and supposed to get Uverse in the near future according to AT&T). Any idea if that's a surmountable issue that they tend to rectify in the foreseeable future?


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## moyekj

Sorry if I missed it in this thread (I skipped over a lot of the bickering going on here lately), but this was posted by ASW in a recent thread that shows some progress on the tuning adapter development:
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=6183997#post6183997


ASW said:


> http://www.opencable.com/downloads/oc_interop_0408.pdf
> 
> I have 2 S3s and a LCD panel with a cablecard that will be losing 15 VOOM stations today. Thanks for moving to SDV (just?) before having a cablecard solution Cablevision.


----------



## mikeyts

moyekj said:


> Sorry if I missed it in this thread (I skipped over a lot of the bickering going on here lately), but this was posted by ASW in a recent thread that shows some progress on the tuning adapter development:
> http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=6183997#post6183997


That was mentioned in this thread one week ago (some 65 posts back) here, in post #1353 by hsfjr. We subsequently discussed the implications some. I found it to be "encouraging", given that CableLabs must have thought that most of the players had basically finished products to bring if they were holding an interoperability testing event.

Thanks anyway.


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## MichaelK

mike_camden said:


> That's interesting. We're not in an AT&T market, so I haven't researched the specifics of Uverse, but that's good to know (my in-laws are moving to an area that is serviced by AT&T and supposed to get Uverse in the near future according to AT&T). Any idea if that's a surmountable issue that they tend to rectify in the foreseeable future?


i AM NOT an expert- but my understanding is the problem is ATT in most areas does not run fiber to the house like verizon does with fios. ATT runs fiber nearby and then still uses the twisted pair to send something akin to DSL from the fiber to the house. So I assume the limiting facotr is what you can put on a single copper twisted pair and I know that's a bunch more limited compared to fios's fiber or cable's coax.


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## doraemon

Yeah, I think AT&T uses FTTN (fiber to the node) rather than FTTP (fiber to the premises). I wouldn't expect them to significantly improve available bandwidth to each house unless they rewire (or come up with a better compression scheme, I suppose).


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## mfogarty5

I created a new thread, but decided to cross post it here since some of you probably get notifications on this thread.

The hdguru's most recent post is about how SDV breaks CableCards. It's a pretty good read, but the part I found most interesting is quoted below.

"The HD Guru has surveyed several makers of CableCARD ready sets, and all said their sets were never designed to add such a device and even if their respective sets have USB ports, they will not be able to accept such an adapter.

So this leaves only the owners of high definition TiVo DVRs. *The adapter device should work with HD TiVos, however, according to a Cisco spokesperson, its version is now undergoing testing at Cablelabs and is not expected to be released until sometime this summer. *A Motorola source would not provide any status or a release date, likely missing the promised availability in the second quarter 2008."

This is the first confirmation of a Scientific Atlanta / Cisco Tuning Adapter.

http://hdguru.com/how-the-cable-industry-plans-to-cheat-10-million-hdtv-owners/233/


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## Surrealone

Ok this is my thinking I'm calling COX today and asking for a refund for the HD channels I'm paying for and not getting and if they tell me no way. We all should file a class action law suit..... anybody with me???????


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## Surrealone

email me or PM me if you are in the same boat.


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## HiDefGator

Surrealone said:


> Ok this is my thinking I'm calling COX today and asking for a refund for the HD channels I'm paying for and not getting and if they tell me no way. We all should file a class action law suit..... anybody with me???????


You bought a box that had known technology limitations at the time you bought it. So why do you want to sue Cox? I can't see where they had anything to do with your problems.


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## ajwees41

Surrealone said:


> Ok this is my thinking I'm calling COX today and asking for a refund for the HD channels I'm paying for and not getting and if they tell me no way. We all should file a class action law suit..... anybody with me???????


you should sue tivo not cox since they sold you the dvr.


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## Surrealone

Tivo works great and it always did till cable company change technology and did not make it work work other receivers. And we had no limitations till the switch


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## Surrealone

I'm not looking for a fight just for the cable company to support the customer. And my right to choose receiver. So one month (many months ago) I get a tivoS3 I call cox and have them add HD package and cable cards with no problems and everything works GREAT and slowly they take away HD channels but keep billing the same hummm. Is this a tivo thing? I think not


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## ajwees41

all I was saying was tivo didn't add two way hardware, but cox and other cable companies use it for PPV,eod,and SDV. so it is Tivo you should sue.


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## HDTiVo

Surrealone said:


> Ok this is my thinking I'm calling COX today and asking for a refund for the HD channels I'm paying for and not getting and if they tell me no way. We all should file a class action law suit..... anybody with me???????


I think it is exactly the right approach to ask for a programming discount for the units which can't get the channels...thanks, but non thanks for the temporarily free STB offer, however, I would like a reduction of $.XX/mo per channel for each CC (or UDCP)

That´s what I will do if I ever bother.

You might consider your initial asking price to be something related to the $$/channel the cable cos use in arguing against ala carte pricing.


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## mikeyts

ajwees41 said:


> all I was saying was tivo didn't add two way hardware, but cox and other cable companies use it for PPV,eod,and SDV. so it is Tivo you should sue.


There's no basis for suit there unless there was some kind of explicit guarantee from TiVo that the product would work with all current and future cable technologies, which is something he couldn't possibly do. Both TiVo and the cable companies have made it clear from the beginning that you can't access IPPV, VOD and the cable providers' interactive guides with CableCARDs.

If you're unhappy with your cable company making it impossible for you to access HD services that you started out with with your equipment, with no offered decrease in price, then you have a greivance that you can file with your local franchising authority (a city or county office--you can find out who they are from your cable provider).


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## bicker

And no basis for any discount. If you don't like the service as they offer it, unsubscribe. If you don't like your TiVo, sell it.


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## Surrealone

good point {{{{{NOT}}}}} if you pay for a service you should get it. I have no problem with COX or Tivo. But if you pay for a PPV fight or movie your should get it right? But if you don't it then you have no basis for a refund. hummmmmmmmmm. It's really simple you pay for service then you get it.

And I love my Tivo and sleep with my Tivo and would never sell it.


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## mikeyts

There are dozens of discussions in this forum about suing TiVo and/or cable providers for people not being able to access channels with TiVo that are now offered as SDV services. I'm sure that several such discussions have been held in the first 1400 posts in this thread. I don't think that we need another.


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## Surrealone

You are right about suing anybody that was more of a point then a threat.


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## bicker

Your perspective will lead you to a never-ending series of disappointment and frustration, of your own making.


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## Surrealone

Cool thanks for the input dude.


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## moyekj

Surrealone said:


> Ok this is my thinking I'm calling COX today and asking for a refund for the HD channels I'm paying for and not getting and if they tell me no way. We all should file a class action law suit..... anybody with me???????


 Just recently Cox OC did enable all the new HD channels for CableCard users (after a pretty long period where that wasn't the case) so I don't know what your beef is currently. If/when SDV actually deploys (which could be any day now) that may change but for now you can tune almost every channel there is.


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## classicsat

HiDefGator said:


> You bought a box that had known technology limitations at the time you bought it. So why do you want to sue Cox? I can't see where they had anything to do with your problems.


Cox made it unable to view channels you are paying for, so it is their responsibility to provide those channels on the hardware you purchased, or provide you a package option that excludes channels your hardware is incapable of receiving.


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## Surrealone

Thanks Moyekj, But last time I looked many channels were not working but I will check tonight.


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## mikeyts

Surrealone said:


> Thanks Moyekj, But last time I looked many channels were not working but I will check tonight.


Make sure that you try rebooting your TiVo to get the cards to update their channel map. If a warm restart doesn't work, unplug it and plug it back in.

Both Cox and Comcast were kind of hanging back on the SDV thing (whilst TWC tears into it with a vengeance), with two or three test markets each. Cox has been upgrading from 750MHz to 1GHz bandwidth, so if they use it all for new HD services, they can add about 40 new ones before resorting to SDV (they can't use the new bandwidth above 870MHz for television programming to be received by either their deployed leased boxes or retail QAM tuners). They've just about finished their 1GHz conversion here in San Diego; I'd be surprised if they weren't doing the same up there in OC.


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## Surrealone

Very good info. Thanks Mikey. I will do a reboot or power down.


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## lrhorer

mike_camden said:


> That's interesting. We're not in an AT&T market, so I haven't researched the specifics of Uverse, but that's good to know (my in-laws are moving to an area that is serviced by AT&T and supposed to get Uverse in the near future according to AT&T). Any idea if that's a surmountable issue that they tend to rectify in the foreseeable future?


As to their plans, I couldn't tell you, but yes there are a number of ways the situation could be alleviated. Which one they might eventually choose...???


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## bballcards

Looks like the SDV Tuning Resolver is getting closer to release....

Link


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## m_jonis

Still nothing concrete about Scientific Atlanta, though. Of course, even then, I doubt our local TW office would have the rest of the equipment installed that would be necessary for the device to work.


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## mikeyts

m_jonis said:


> Still nothing concrete about Scientific Atlanta, though. Of course, even then, I doubt our local TW office would have the rest of the equipment installed that would be necessary for the device to work.


What "rest of the equipment"? If your system is using one of the version of SDV that TWC is deploying on its S-A networks, then one assumes that the only equipment necessary for TiVo to tune those services is a Tuning Adapter by S-A (or anyone else for that matter) which knows how to speak the protocols TWC is using to implement SDV. No other equipment is necessary to make the network work with the Tuning Adapter.


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## mikeyts

I'd recommend that people visit the HD Guru article on SDV (where Gary Merson recently revealed the "SDV crisis" to his readers at this amazingly late date ). Search the page for "Mike Schwartz" and read his reply. Schwartz is apparently with CableLabs and responds to and "corrects" Merson's blog post from that point of view.

I'd make several corrections to _his_ corrections. For instance, he says:


> The cable industry defined and delivered the required removable security CableCARDs (at the time called POD modules) by the July 2000 deadline after investing millions in the project. However since there was no mandate by the FCC on consumer products, there were no retail products produced to make use of CableCARDs.


First off, the deadline was July 2004--the regulation requiring it was added by FCC 03-225, issued on 10 September 2003. Second, it was a chicken-and-egg situation--there was certainly no rush for any CE manufacturer to produce CableCARD compliant products _before_ consumers could get CableCARDs from their cable provider.

Later, Schwartz says:


> Unfortunately many CE companies chose to implement receivers that lack the necessary circuitry to provide a full two-way cable experience with the CableCARD. Since those unidirectional receivers are not able to support many of the advanced features and services available on digital cable systems today, the FCC had enough foresight to mandate that the manufacturer properly label the product accordingly so that consumers of these products are not disappointed. If the consumer is dissatisfied with he limited functionality of those sets, they should complain to the manufacturer.


Though there was a bidirectional communications standard specified in ANSI/SCTE 26 2004 which the manufacturers could have implemented, it went hand in hand with a set of interactive services which the cable providers declined to implement, so if the OEMs had gone to the expense of implementing two way comm in products back in the 2004-2005 model year when they introduced CableCARD compliant products, no cable system in the country would have been offering any service which could listen or respond to anything that a bidirectional CableCARD host might have to say. I guess that they could have implemented a useless backchannel anyway, but it seems questionable whether CableLabs would have certified a device with a pointless ability to talk back to the network.



> Notwithstanding the lack of precedent in the 1996 Telecom Act, the FCC moved to ban the use of "integrated" security in Cable operator set-top boxed in the name of "common reliance" (which phrase does not appear anywhere in the law or regulations); Cable Operators would have to use separable CableCARDs instead. This requirement was enforced as of July 2007, forcing the cable industry to pay over $600 million to redesign their set-top-box products in a way that offers no benefit to subscribers. The cable industry met this requirement and in the 9 months since has successfully deployed over 4,184,000 operator-supplied set-top boxes with CableCARDs (recall the CE industry has only produced about 347,000 units to date)


Please--that last sentence is just libel. The CE industry has produced over 10 million undirectional CableCARD products. Apparently, only 347,000 CableCARDs have been leased to use in them (remember that some of them, like our beloved TiVos, use two CableCARDs each); we have only the cable providers' word on that number.

It should also be noted that the cable industry dragged their feet on complying with the integrated security ban as hard as they possibly could. The original deadline was July 2005; they were given a 2 year extension over the loud objection of the CE industry. As they approached the end of that extension, they begged for more time, which they were denied.

Everyone has their point of view .


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## HDTiVo

mikeyts said:


> I guess that they could have implemented a useless backchannel anyway, but it seems questionable whether CableLabs would have certified a device with a pointless ability to talk back to the network.


Well, TiVo included M-card support in the S3 before there was a way of testing that...and look where that got. 

In truth the whole one-way thing was a very bad idea forced to come into being for this abortive short term period because of all the damn fighting and foot dragging without FCC kicking any butt over 2 way.

I had some rather thin correspondance with Schwartz which indicated to me there was not exactly much activity on the dongle front by various companies. I can only guess TiVo attended the interop a couple weeks ago, and of course we know from original souce (Mari) Motorola had "success." (whatever that means and whether that was the production model is not stated.)

As for TiVo, will they not have to write drivers for each TR like they do with USB-ethernet adapters?

"availability" is a complex word with many factors and possible definitions...


----------



## CharlesH

mikeyts said:


> No other equipment is necessary to make the network work with the Tuning Adapter.


The whole idea is that the adapter behaves like any other cable company's set-top box on a given system. The head end doesn't have to have any special knowledge about the adapter; it's just another set-top box making SDV requests. In fact, the Motorola adapter seems to *BE *a modified low-end set-top box.


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## CharlesH

HDTiVo said:


> As for TiVo, will they not have to write drivers for each TR like they do with USB-ethernet adapters?


 I thought that the USB protocol was defined in the spec for the adapter, so TiVo only needs to write one driver?


----------



## moyekj

CharlesH said:


> The whole idea is that the adapter behaves like any other cable company's set-top box on a given system. The head end doesn't have to have any special knowledge about the adapter; it's just another set-top box making SDV requests. In fact, the Motorola adapter seems to *BE *a modified low-end set-top box.


 You still have to likely register the Box ID in your account. Hopefully they won't consider it yet another digital outlet for which they will charge you a monthly fee for in addition to whatever they are going to do for the hardware rental.


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## ah30k

moyekj said:


> You still have to likely register the Box ID in your account.


I don't believe the TR will be viewed as another device but take on the personality of the host device to which it speaks for.


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## mikeyts

HDTiVo said:


> As for TiVo, will they not have to write drivers for each TR like they do with USB-ethernet adapters?


No--one of the purposes of the Tuning Adapter is to normalize the interface (the other purpose being to give access to the backchannel to hosts with unidirectional CC interfaces). TiVo only talks and listens to the Tuning Adapter through its USB interface, and every Tuning Adapter talks exactly the same language through that interface. The Tuning Adapters also exchange messages with the cable network through backchannel communications over the coax; when TiVo makes a request of the network, the TA's job is to convert that into terms of the specific network's SDV system and send the appropriate message out over the backchannel; when the reply is received from the network, it's converted into a message in the TA USB connection protocol and passed on to TiVo.

It's a bit like being in the United Nations--a participant there just talks into his or her microphone and listens to responses as rendered into English (or whatever his or her language is) by translators, without having to consider what languages the people who give those responses are actually speaking.

CableCARD itself is similar; CableCARDs manufactured by Motorola and SA deal with different proprietary encryption schemes used on the wire (Motorola's DigiCipher and SA's PowerKey), decrypting content received in those proprietary formats and re-encrypting it using the open standard DFAST system to be passed back over the CableCARD host interface. CableCARDs in bidirectional host devices can send messages on behalf of the host, passed to the CableCARD by the host device using an ANSI/SCTE standard API; the CableCARD repackages such messages for transmission as appropriate for whatever vendor's host network they're operating on.


----------



## mikeyts

ah30k said:


> I don't believe the TR will be viewed as another device but take on the personality of the host device to which it speaks for.


The network will probably have some awareness of the Tuning Adapters as a separate entities, since it will probably be able to download firmware upgrades into them. Beyond that, I'd think that the interaction between the network and the TR would be indistinguishable from the network performing SDV negotiations with a leased cable STB. Those interactions are vendor-proprietary and explicitly not in within the scope of the OpenCable Tuning Resolver Interface Specification, so they could be as aware or unaware of the existence of the Tuning Adapter as the vendor cares to make them.


----------



## HDTiVo

mikeyts said:


> No--one of the purposes of the Tuning Adapter is to normalize the interface (the other purpose being to give access to the backchannel to hosts with unidirectional CC interfaces). TiVo only talks and listens to the Tuning Adapter through its USB interface, and *every Tuning Adapter talks exactly the same language through that interface.*


Thanks, that is an important piece of info.


----------



## morac

mikeyts said:


> The network will probably have some awareness of the Tuning Adapters as a separate entities, since it will probably be able to download firmware upgrades into them. Beyond that, I'd think that the interaction between the network and the TR would be indistinguishable from the network performing SDV negotiations with a leased cable STB.


Hmm, that makes me wonder if the cableCARDS and the TA will talk to each other somehow. Currently if you bring up the cableCARD menus on the TiVo, the cards report that the device they are connected to does not have two way capabilities and that there is no associated IP address. After the TA is installed would this update to indicate that there is a two way interface or is it still considered one way from the card's perspective?


----------



## moyekj

Cisco announces their version of the SDV tuning adapter - *STA-1520*:
http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=152093
Looks like Tivo has already done some limited testing with the prototype:


> Cisco has already conducted some interface testing with TiVo and expects to provide some samples to MSOs soon for their internal testing. "So we're pretty far along," Kasten says.


----------



## SCSIRAID

moyekj said:


> Cisco announces their version of the SDV tuning adapter - *STA-1520*:
> http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=152093
> Looks like Tivo has already done some limited testing with the prototype:


WOOHOO!!!! Thats great news!


----------



## mikeyts

moyekj said:


> Cisco announces their version of the SDV tuning adapter - *STA-1520*:
> http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=152093
> Looks like Tivo has already done some limited testing with the prototype:





> Although it will operate with different SDV platforms, the STA-1520 will work only on systems that use the Cisco digital cable platform.


That's interesting. Must be programmable on the network side. I guess if a cable provider plans to buy some tens of thousands of these things, customizing it to his particular brand of SDV isn't that much to ask.

It's great news, though, inasmuch as TWC, the prime purveyor of SDV, is on Cisco networks. So many people in these forums have been freaking out because there'd been no press release on development of an SA compatible product.


----------



## Scopeman

Firekite said:


> It's still fascinating to me that people--on a TiVo forum no less--seem to have such a hard-on for VOD. Personally it doesn't bother me that it exists, but it's irrelevant to me because _I have a DVR_. I can't imagine I'm part of some tiny minority, especially since everyone I know and work with seems to have one, too, and has had for quite a while. If I'm 10 minutes late getting to my favorite shows or am on a date or running errands or whatever, it doesn't affect me. Only selected programming is available on VOD anyway, and other than the novelty factor of being able to order up Showtime late-night soft-core on a whim when I first got the service, it's of little use.


That could be because the content available over VOD is also available over normal channels. VOD is currently primarily a way to re-access content that has already been transmitted. If, however, VOD is used to provide first-access to content that is no being transmitted on another channel, which is how many envision VOD to untimately develop, then your DVR becomes a hindrance to the access of VOD content.

This shift to SDV (which exists to save bandwidth on less veiwed channels) is driven (my opinion) by the current idustry structure of "channels" being owned by people who aggregate themed content (example -Food Network). This is an old paradigm - the content aggregators ("channels") were required to bundled themed content and sell targeted advertising into the gaps between the shows.

The apparent new model (content owners themselves providing content in single bites for a fee) removes the aggregator (TV channel) and is more appropriate to the VOD delivery model. The internet & IP transmission technology, the low cost of video blogging, the eruption of youtube, etc - all point to a more self-serve model that individualizes content aggregation. Note that the biggest adopters of VOD so far have been those companies not reliant on the aggragator-that-enbeds-commericals business model - HBO, Movie releases, etc.

Tis shift is already being seen in a small way on the Tivo platform - GeekbriefTV, CNET for Tivo, NYTimes movie reviews, etc - all these are essentially the first wave of post-TV-channel VOD.

As DVRs kill off the commercial they necessarily pave the way for their own destruction *unless* they are also equipped to survive in a post-commerical world. And post-commerical means a lage number of marginal chaneels will die, and their content will have to be VOD to survive that event.

So yes, VOD support matters, in the long run. (in my opinion)


----------



## morac

Scopeman said:


> If, however, VOD is used to provide first-access to content that is no being transmitted on another channel, which is how many envision VOD to untimately develop, then your DVR becomes a hindrance to the access of VOD content.


That's actually already being done. There are a number of programs on Comcast's VOD that are only available through VOD.


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## MichaelK

morac said:


> That's actually already being done. There are a number of programs on Comcast's VOD that are only available through VOD.


without getting into politics- 2 words

Howard Stern.

Isn't his "howard TV channel" all vod?

I think VOD is a way for people to create new niche "channels". Maybe they wind up SDV when SDV is widely deployued- but for now VOD lets such a thing exist.


----------



## lrhorer

Virtually no one offers VOD unless it's SDV. It would be network suicide to do so, even on a small scale. I don't know for certain - sometimes businessmen do stupid things, but I strongly suspect there are no CATV systems anywhere which offer anything as VOD which is not SDV. Some systems may offer Howard as linear pay-per-view, in which case it would not have the network impact of a linear VOD channel, but there's a big difference between linear IPPV and non-SDV VOD.


----------



## vstone

So you're saying that since almost everywhere has VOD, almost everyone has SDV and a complete SDV infrastructure is in place almost everywhere. Pardon my skepticism.


----------



## jrm01

lrhorer said:


> Virtually no one offers VOD unless it's SDV. It would be network suicide to do so, even on a small scale. I don't know for certain - sometimes businessmen do stupid things, but I strongly suspect there are no CATV systems anywhere which offer anything as VOD which is not SDV.


Far, far from the truth.


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## ah30k

lrhorer said:


> Virtually no one offers VOD unless it's SDV. It would be network suicide to do so, even on a small scale. I don't know for certain - sometimes businessmen do stupid things, but I strongly suspect there are no CATV systems anywhere which offer anything as VOD which is not SDV. Some systems may offer Howard as linear pay-per-view, in which case it would not have the network impact of a linear VOD channel, but there's a big difference between linear IPPV and non-SDV VOD.


Wow, how far wrong could this statement be?

Since SDV is just getting launched, are you saying no one had any VOD prior to now?

Maybe there was just a mis-use of terms or something but you couldn't have meant what it seems.


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## cableguy763

Irhorer is correct. Most VOD systems use 4 qams for VOD delivery. The VOD system and cable box determine which qam is available and starts the stream. You can start 4 different movies in a row and have it stream on 4 different frequencies. This system has been around for a long time.


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## ah30k

cableguy763 said:


> Irhorer is correct. Most VOD systems use 4 qams for VOD delivery. The VOD system and cable box determine which qam is available and starts the stream. You can start 4 different movies in a row and have it stream on 4 different frequencies. This system has been around for a long time.


When we refer to SDV we are talking about the system just being launched that switches broadcast video. While it is true that VOD dynamically gets assigned to QAMs, we really don't call that SDV.

Hence my claim that this may just be a miscommunication of terms.


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## cableguy763

ah30k said:


> Hence my claim that this may just be a miscommunication of terms.


True. Not SDV, but very similar in their most basic functions.


----------



## mikeyts

What lrhorer is saying is that VOD is a form of switched video which has been in use far longer than this fairly new "sharing-a-pool-of-bandwidth-on-a-network-edge-segment-between-many-linear-video-services" trick. No doubt modern systems use switching to implement scheduled pay-per-view as well--if no one in an edge segment has ordered a pay-per-view program, no bandwidth is used for that program on that segment. However, referring to VOD and IPPV as SDV, while it may be essentially true, is cheap semantic BS. The terms "switched video" and "switched digital video" are now exclusively used to refer to the "sharing-a-pool-of-bandwidth-on-a-network-edge-segment-between-many-linear-video-services" trick. When you find SDV in the tech literature today, that's what they're talking about, even though VOD and IPPV are provided using video switching. Maybe they should have come up with a brief three-or-four word phrase to describe "sharing-a-pool-of-bandwidth-on-a-network-edge-segment-between-many-linear-video-services" (maybe "shared bandwidth linear video", though that would describe IPPV as well ), but the fact is that they didn't--they co-opted the term "switched digital video" to mean specifically that.

It's similar to the way that, when people refer to "Americans" in common speech, they're talking about citizens of the United States of America, and not Canadians or Mexicans or Brazillians, even though those people also live on the continents of North and South America.

The discussion in this thread is about "non-PPV shared bandwidth linear video", the increasing use of which is a large problem for TiVo Series3 and TiVo HD users, who never expected to be able to access VOD or IPPV content with TiVo. Using the term "SDV" as an umbrella term for all services which involve video switching doesn't make any useful point and only serves to confuse the conversation and annoy people.


----------



## ajwees41

lrhorer said:


> Virtually no one offers VOD unless it's SDV. It would be network suicide to do so, even on a small scale. I don't know for certain - sometimes businessmen do stupid things, but I strongly suspect there are no CATV systems anywhere which offer anything as VOD which is not SDV. Some systems may offer Howard as linear pay-per-view, in which case it would not have the network impact of a linear VOD channel, but there's a big difference between linear IPPV and non-SDV VOD.


Cox Omaha offers vod and doesn't have sdv yet.


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## Firekite

Doesn't have or hasn't yet implemented for network channels? There _is_ a difference...


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## ajwees41

Firekite said:


> Doesn't have or hasn't yet implemented for network channels? There _is_ a difference...


what is the differnce? Omaha has had ondemand since last year and doesn't use sdv.


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## mikeyts

ajwees41 said:


> what is the differnce? Omaha has had ondemand since last year and doesn't use sdv.


Read my last post above. VOD is a form of switched video, but no one today is referring to VOD when they say "switched digital video" (except lrhorer ).


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## dswallow

The main difference is that SDV is coordinated between multiple viewers so each can simultaneously view the stream and there's no interactive control possible. VOD is exclusively viewed, only the customer who started the stream can view the stream and usually has the ability to interactively control the stream.


----------



## morac

dswallow said:


> VOD is exclusively viewed, only the customer who started the stream can view the stream and usually has the ability to interactively control the stream.


While functionally that's they way it's supposed to work, there are exceptions. At times I've stumbled across VOD streams (which for whatever reason weren't encrypted) using the QAM tuner on my TV. Granted I couldn't control the playback, but I could still view it.

It did throw me the first time I saw a movie "rewind itself" while watching TV.


----------



## dswallow

morac said:


> While functionally that's they way it's supposed to work, there are exceptions. At times I've stumbled across VOD streams (which for whatever reason weren't encrypted) using the QAM tuner on my TV. Granted I couldn't control the playback, but I could still view it.
> 
> It did throw me the first time I saw a movie "rewind itself" while watching TV.


That's just lack of encryption by the cable company, though.


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## morac

dswallow said:


> That's just lack of encryption by the cable company, though.


What's weird is that my cable company is extremely anal about encryption. Everything except broadcast channels (and VOD streams) are encrypted. So the only things I can get via clear QAM is CBS, NBC, ABC, PBS, CW and VOD.


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## MichaelK

morac said:


> What's weird is that my cable company is extremely anal about encryption. Everything except broadcast channels (and VOD streams) are encrypted. So the only things I can get via clear QAM is CBS, NBC, ABC, PBS, CW and VOD.


different encryption -

the CCI bits that the idiots are setting for you to block everything are not the same sort offlags that they use in their non-cablecard systems. Since VOD isn't cablecard I'd guess there's no way to set the CCI bits at all. There's probably some other setting which they are forgetting.


----------



## morac

MichaelK said:


> different encryption -
> 
> the CCI bits that the idiots are setting for you to block everything are not the same sort offlags that they use in their non-cablecard systems. Since VOD isn't cablecard I'd guess there's no way to set the CCI bits at all. There's probably some other setting which they are forgetting.


The CCI bits for all but the premium channels are 0x00 on my cable system such that I can transfer most shows off my TiVo, but the channels are still encrypted so that a cableCARD (or cable box equivalent) is needed to receive the channel.

I'm not sure if this is technically called encryption or subscription. Either way they won't show up in clear QAM.

I'm pretty sure VOD also uses CCI bits since VOD is supposed to be tagged with CCI=0x03.

You are right though, they probably forgot to set something up.


----------



## mikeyts

morac said:


> The CCI bits for all but the premium channels are 0x00 on my cable system such that I can transfer most shows off my TiVo, but the channels are still encrypted so that a cableCARD (or cable box equivalent) is needed to receive the channel.


That's interesting, but the content protection systems on the cable are proprietary and follow their own rules. There's a protection mode in DTCP--the copy protection system for Firewire A/V connections--called "Encryption Plus Non-assertion" (EPN). It required that content so marked be transferred in encrypted form though there was no restriction on copying it. If the receiving device made a copy of the stream, it had to be saved in an approved encrypted form and marked such that upon playback it would be also be marked "EPN". The intent was for the content to be protected without restraining the number of copies made. It was for support of the now-defunct "Broadcast Flag".


morac said:


> I'm pretty sure VOD also uses CCI bits since VOD is supposed to be tagged with CCI=0x03.
> 
> You are right though, they probably forgot to set something up.


IPPV and VOD (the pay-per-viewing-period kind) are the only two business models that the FCC's encoding rules allow to be marked "Copy Never". Code of Federal Regulations Title 47, §76.1904:


> *§ 76.1904 Encoding rules for defined business models.*
> (a) Commercial audiovisual content delivered as unencrypted broadcast television shall not be encoded so as to prevent or limit copying thereof by covered products or, to constrain the resolution of the image when output from a covered product.
> 
> (b) Except for a specific determination made by the Commission pursuant to a petition with respect to a defined business model other than unencrypted broadcast television, or an undefined business model subject to the procedures set forth in §76.1906:
> 
> (1) Commercial audiovisual content shall not be encoded so as to prevent or limit copying thereof except as follows:
> 
> (i) To prevent or limit copying of video-on-demand or pay-per-view transmissions, subject to the requirements of paragraph (b)(2) of this section; and
> 
> (ii) To prevent or limit copying, other than first generation of copies, of pay television transmissions, non-premium subscription television, and free conditional access delivery transmissions; and
> 
> (2) With respect to any commercial audiovisual content delivered or transmitted in form of a video-on-demand or pay-per-view transmission, a covered entity shall not encode such content so as to prevent a covered product, without further authorization, from pausing such content up to 90 minutes from initial transmission by the covered entity (e.g., frame-by-frame, minute-by-minute, megabyte by megabyte).


I'm fairly sure that copy-protection flags can be embedded in MPEG-2 Transport Streams.


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## moyekj

On my cable system currently there are 8 dedicated QAMs (10 streams per QAM) for VOD and while none are encrypted they do have CCI=0x03 and hence the 90 min restriction for staying on the Tivo. For a long while the CableCard lineup even had channels 1001-1080 and I could scan through them and pick up what my neighbors were watching. Also I can pick them up on my PC QAM tuner.
Just as an experiment once I hooked up 1 of my ReplayTVs to the S3 S-video output and was able to record from it these CCI=0x03 recordings so there is no analog copyright protection applied to them (i.e. the CCI byte really is 0x03 with analog macrovision bits 3 & 4 not set).


----------



## mikeyts

moyekj said:


> Just as an experiment once I hooked up 1 of my ReplayTVs to the S3 S-video output and was able to record from it these CCI=0x03 recordings so there is no analog copyright protection applied to them (i.e. the CCI byte really is 0x03 with analog macrovision bits 3 & 4 not set).


I have to think that that's a bug in TiVo. I'm sure that the CableCARD and DFAST licensing requires analog copy protection be applied to Copy Never marked content.


----------



## lrhorer

dswallow said:


> The main difference is that SDV is coordinated between multiple viewers so each can simultaneously view the stream and there's no interactive control possible. VOD is exclusively viewed, only the customer who started the stream can view the stream and usually has the ability to interactively control the stream.


No, not quite. SDV is as the names suggests switched. This means the stream only is sent to the viewers which are supposed to receive the stream (on a node by node basis). It could be one or one thousand. VOD means the stream is specifically started by someone, but that does not necessarily mean only 1 person can view the stream. Indeed, the CATV company can if it chooses queue up VOD requests, so that anyone requesting the same content within a short period of time from the original requestor can also view the content. If one of the viewers pauses the stream, then the stream is split into two, with everyone else viewing the main stream and the single customer receiving the delayed content. That is how providers such as TWC can deliver services such as video rewind. That way, instead of several thousand nearly identical streams playing at once, the system is only required to handle perhaps a hundred or less. In a system with almost 1,000,000 receivers in more than 300,000 homes (like San Antonio) the odds of a significant number of people all requesting the same video within a few seconds of each other is fairly high. The odds of several people pressing and releasing <Pause> within the limits of the buffer of the STB is also significant. If the stream differential exceeds the limits of the buffer, then a new stream must be split off. Otherwise it is possible to continue to serve both customers with the same stream.

Either way, however, the presence of even a single VOD channel requires the ability to deliver dozens of time shifted copies of that stream. Putting even a single VOD offering on a linear system could easily eat up 30 or 40 channels. It would be insane.


----------



## MichaelK

mikeyts said:


> I have to think that that's a bug in TiVo. I'm sure that the CableCARD and DFAST licensing requires analog copy protection be applied to Copy Never marked content.


nope-

there are other values that would turn on analog protection

0x01,2,3 only stipulate digital restrictions not analog


----------



## mikeyts

MichaelK said:


> nope-
> 
> there are other values that would turn on analog protection
> 
> 0x01,2,3 only stipulate digital restrictions not analog


True. DFAST actually uses 5 bits of an 8-bit byte, collectively called CCI, with the low-order two being EMI, the 0, 1, 2 and 3 values that we generally talk about. If the cable providers want standard definition analog outputs to be protected, they can set two of the other bits, called APS (Analog Protection System). So TiVo can properly output copy-protected digital content over S-video without analog copy protection, if the cable provider doesn't explicitly request analog copy protection.


----------



## moyekj

mikeyts said:


> True. DFAST actually uses 5 bits of an 8-bit byte, collectively called CCI, with the low-order two being EMI, the 0, 1, 2 and 3 values that we generally talk about. If the cable providers want standard definition analog outputs to be protected, they can set two of the other bits, called APS (Analog Protection System). So TiVo can properly output copy-protected digital content over S-video without analog copy protection, if the cable provider doesn't explicitly request analog copy protection.


 Which is why I specifically stated in my post that analog bits 3 & 4 were not set so the 8 bit CCI value does actually correspond to hex 0x03.


----------



## mikeyts

moyekj said:


> Which is why I specifically stated in my post that analog bits 3 & 4 were not set so the 8 bit CCI value does actually correspond to hex 0x03.


Yes you did--I'd forgotten about the APS bits and didn't pay attention to what you wrote. Sorry--I was wrong .


----------



## snowbunny

Well.... it's over a year since I got my S3 and I finally have an HDTV.

Since I'm in TW Austin's market, I am wondering if subscribing to the HD plan is worth it (TW Austin uses SDV heavily on both standard and HD channels).

Anyone know?


----------



## mikeyts

snowbunny said:


> Well.... it's over a year since I got my S3 and I finally have an HDTV.
> 
> Since I'm in TW Austin's market, I am wondering if subscribing to the HD plan is worth it (TW Austin uses SDV heavily on both standard and HD channels).
> 
> Anyone know?


TWC Austin's Channel Lineup page has a "CableCARD Viewable" filter. Just go there, click the "All" filter item to clear all the rest and then click the "CableCard Viewable" filter.

Looks like you can get all of your local DTV broadcasts (KTBC, KVUE, KXAN, KEYE, KLRU and the KLRU Create TV subchannel). You should be able to get all of the locals without paying anything extra, though you'll have to lease CableCARDs to get TiVo to map the channels. You can also get:1617 Discovery HD Theater 
1635 ESPN-HD 
1654 TNT HD 
1656 Universal HD 
1670 HBO East High Definition 
1675 Cinemax HD 
1678 Showtime High Definition 
1687 MOJO 
1692 HD Net 
1693 HD Net Movies​No doubt, you have to subscribe to the related premium tiers to get HBO HD, Cinemax HD or Showtime HD and Universal HD, MOJO, HDNet and HDNet Movies are in something called the HDTV Tier which no doubt costs extra (TWC San Diego calls them the "HD VIP Pak" for $7/month). With just extended basic, you only get the locals, HD Theater, TNT HD and ESPN HD.

The stuff that you can't get with a CableCARD (until the Tuning Adapter shows up) is:1611 HGTV HD
1612 Food Network HD
1615 TLC HD
1618 Discovery Channel HD
1620 National Geographic HD
1622 Animal Planet HD
1624 Science Channel HD
1626 The History Channel HD
1630 CNN HD
1633 The Weather Channel HD
1634 Fox Business News HD
1636 ESPN2 High Definition
1639 Fox Sports - HD
1646 Versus/Golf Channel HD
1648 Game HD
1649 Team HD
1650 HD PPV Sports Events
1653 TBS in HD
1658 Lifetime Move Network HD
1660 A&E HD
1664 MHD
1680 The Movie Channel HD
1684 Starz HD
1698 HD Showcase
1699 HD VOD
1701 HD 1
1702 HD 2
1703 HD 3
1704 HD 4
1705 HD 5
1706 HD 6
1707 HD 7
1708 HD 8
1709 HD 9
1710 HD 10​You won't get HD VOD with TiVo even after the Tuning Adapter is available and I assume that the HD 1 through HD 10 channels are schedule PPV, which you may or may not be able to order for CableCARD devices on a web page or over the phone.


----------



## danschn

While the points of deliberation about the technical aspects of SDV and the dongle solution continue to get debated, the real contentious issue is the business side:

Will the implementation of the dongle be at all at the mercy of the cable provider? (Will it require resets? Zaps after a call to the cable company to re-synch? Be painfully slow to change channels? Distort picture and audio quality?)

Will they charge an exorbitant fee to "install"? Monthly charge?

Will it set back our TiVo GUI advantage over cable companies DVR's?

Mostly, will cable companies get away with using it as a wedge to continue to exercise their monopoly powers and overcharge for the hardware they provide, and inhibit the use of superior hardware?


----------



## cableguy763

You can get ESPN2 HD with a cablecard here in Austin. Guess that list has one discrepancy.


----------



## mikeyts

danschn said:


> While the points of deliberation about the technical aspects of SDV and the dongle solution continue to get debated, the real contentious issue is the business side:
> 
> Will the implementation of the dongle be at all at the mercy of the cable provider? (Will it require resets? Zaps after a call to the cable company to re-synch? Be painfully slow to change channels? Distort picture and audio quality?)
> 
> Will they charge an exorbitant fee to "install"? Monthly charge?
> 
> Will it set back our TiVo GUI advantage over cable companies DVR's?
> 
> Mostly, will cable companies get away with using it as a wedge to continue to exercise their monopoly powers and overcharge for the hardware they provide, and inhibit the use of superior hardware?


The cable industry didn't introduce this Tuning Adapter solution until some 8 or 9 months after the Consumer Electronics Association went to the FCC with a complaint that the cable companies were increasingly deploying SDV, giving no solution for making products which could tune SDV other than full implementation of CableCARD Host 2.0 (bidirectional with M-Card support) and OCAP, which collectively is labelled "<tru2way>". Since you can't do this without adding computing power and memory to a product equal to that contained in a high-end handheld computer, it's not something the CE manufacturers can do with low-end products. They asked the FCC to force the cable companies to implement a straightforward, cheap-to-implement protocol for basic interactive services (IPPV, VOD and SDV), which they were calling "Digital Cable Ready Plus" (or "DCR+"). Several months later, the cable companies make a filing with the FCC saying that implentation of DCR+ would take years and hundreds of millions of dollars, mostly out of their pockets. They argued that built-in support for IPPV and VOD was not compelling in low-end products, but they couldn't sensibly argue that low-end products didn't need to tune channels presented as SDV. They countered with the proposed Tuning Adapter (then called "Tuning Resolver"). Without waiting for any FCC decision on whether the Tuning Adapter is a sufficient answer to the CEA's complaint, they've marched forward with developing a standard protocol for the device which the primary cable equipment manufacturers and TiVo are implementing, with planned introduction sometime in the next few months.

While I believe that they may charge _something_ for use of the Tuning Adapter (and they'll certainly charge for truck-rolls to install it) it shouldn't be much. For one thing, it's a simple device, no more expensive to produce than a DOCSIS cable modem (probably less), and those can be purchased new at retail and e-tail for as little as $30. If they were to charge something outrageous, the CEA would be all over it, claiming that they were just using it as an opportunity to profiteer and that it was all the more evidence for the need for DCR+, in the interest of protecting consumers from cable provider greed.

We have no idea how well it will work, but there's no reason why SDV tuning using it should be any slower than SDV tuning through a leased cable box. Both Motorola and SA are bringing their Tuning Adapters to a product show at a cable industry conference this month (I think) and we should hear reports on how they're working from there. TiVo's GUI will remain unchanged, save for the addition of a few prompts necessary for SDV. It won't affect video or audio quality. All the Tuning Adapter does is tell where to find a digital channel; it doesn't touch the contents of that channel. A lease cable box using SDV would be given exactly the same information.


----------



## danschn

Mike Scott makes a compelling case that the technical chops of the Tuning Resolver shouldn't impair my TiVo usability. And for that I am glad. But it is the business marketing side that has me most worried.

My provider, Cablevision, has been fairly "kind" to me. I only pay $1.25 per cablecard, and for some reason, they haven't SDV'ed the 15 Voom HD channels yet, as they have to other regions. But the first signal out of the gate was when they attempted to scare cablecard customers over to their STB/DVR with a message that basically said your service will stop working, but have we got a deal for you.

Yes their costs should be low to obtain the Tuning Resolvers in bulk, but will they pass that on? I said cablecards are cheap to me, because I know FIOS customers are paying $3.99/month. But what do those cost in bulk to Cablevision, that I'm giving them $15/year for? I'd guess $30 to $50, and they're getting 30&#37; to 50% ROI's after getting reimbursed by their customers for the truck roll. $6.95/month for a set top box that has to go for around $150 in bulk. (anyone know this?) These are huge ROI's! Will the tuning resolver buck this trend? Is there any doubt?

We may have the right to roll our own hardware, but Cable figures out how to get us to pay for it pretty exorbitantly. And that's before I think about how the service bill has inflated over 300% in the 10 years I've been a customer. And almost all of that period was during very low inflation economic times.

This is why I remain alert to the business decisions around SDV moreso than the technical ones.


----------



## mikeyts

danschn said:


> Yes their costs should be low to obtain the Tuning Resolvers in bulk, but will they pass that on? I said cablecards are cheap to me, because I know FIOS customers are paying $3.99/month. But what do those cost in bulk to Cablevision, that I'm giving them $15/year for? I'd guess $30 to $50, and they're getting 30% to 50% ROI's after getting reimbursed by their customers for the truck roll. $6.95/month for a set top box that has to go for around $150 in bulk. (anyone know this?) These are huge ROI's! Will the tuning resolver buck this trend? Is there any doubt?


Yes, there is doubt. The Tuning Adapter isn't something that they dreamed up to make money--it's something that they dreamed up as a political maneuver to avoid spending money. By their own calculations, if the FCC accepts the Tuning Adapter as a sufficient solution to the CEA's complaint, they save "hundreds of millions of dollars". Even if they gave them away and installed them for free, they'd pay for themselves by avoiding the expense of implementing DCR+. If they charge something outrageous for them, the FCC is that much more likely to side with the CEA's DCR+ scheme.

Moreover, if the FCC makes them implement DCR+, far, far fewer <tru2way> devices will ever be brought to market, even at the high end, which screws up the cable industry's future plans completely. I honestly don't see any incentive for CE manufacturers to bring any <tru2way> products to market (other than the OEMs who've already invested in development of the technogy, like Samsung). Given a cheap way to make cable-ready products which can tune SDV channels and be used to order IPPV and VOD content without a cable box, there's really little reason to offer <tru2way>.

This argument over what the cable industry will charge is useless. They'll charge what charge and we can only wait and see what that'll be. I strongly doubt that any TiVo lover in a market where they're heavily using SDV is going to balk at paying it, whatever it is. The one thing that you can depend on is that they will not stop using SDV .


----------



## SCSIRAID

mikeyts said:


> Yes, there is doubt. The Tuning Adapter isn't something that they dreamed up to make money--it's something that they dreamed up as a political maneuver to avoid spending money. By their own calculations, if the FCC accepts the Tuning Adapter as a sufficient solution to the CEA's complaint, they save "hundreds of millions of dollars". Even if they gave them away and installed them for free, they'd pay for themselves by avoiding the expense of implementing DCR+. If they charge something outrageous for them, the FCC is that much more likely to side with the CEA's DCR+ scheme.
> 
> Moreover, if the FCC makes them implement DCR+, far, far fewer <tru2way> devices will ever be brought to market, even at the high end, which screws up the cable industry's future plans completely. I honestly don't see any incentive for CE manufacturers to bring any <tru2way> products to market (other than the OEMs who've already invested in development of the technogy, like Samsung). Given a cheap way to make cable-ready products which can tune SDV channels and be used to order IPPV and VOD content without a cable box, there's really little reason to offer <tru2way>.
> 
> This argument over what the cable industry will charge is useless. They'll charge what charge and we can only wait and see what that'll be. I strongly doubt that any TiVo lover in a market where they're heavily using SDV is going to balk at paying it, whatever it is. The one thing that you can depend on is that they will not stop using SDV .


Exactly.


----------



## classicsat

danschn said:


> Will the implementation of the dongle be at all at the mercy of the cable provider? (Will it require resets? Zaps after a call to the cable company to re-synch? Be painfully slow to change channels? Distort picture and audio quality?)


At the mercy of the authorization system , very likely.
Slow to change channels, likely not much more than a provider's box on SDV.
Distort picture and audio, not likely because of the resolver itself, since it doesn't process the video, just passes the RF through. It is more likely an effect of a channel being SDV that may cause issues though.


> Will they charge an exorbitant fee to "install"? Monthly charge?


Probably a nominal truck roll fee, same as CCs.


> Will it set back our TiVo GUI advantage over cable companies DVR's?


Not at all.
We'll see how the GUI additions necessary for SDV fare though.


----------



## mikeyts

classicsat said:


> Distort picture and audio, not likely because of the resolver itself, since it doesn't process the video, just passes the RF through. It is more likely an effect of a channel being SDV that may cause issues though.


How do you figure? I haven't heard anyone claim that being presented as SDV has lowered the PQ or AQ of a channel and there is no technical reason why it should. In fact, SDV presentation removes the pressure to play tricks like heavy rate shaping, creating "HD Lite" channels on cable, as recently observed from Comcast in some markets. SDV actually makes it easier to transmit services at the greatest possible bandwidth.


----------



## lrhorer

mikeyts said:


> This argument over what the cable industry will charge is useless. They'll charge what charge and we can only wait and see what that'll be.


'Not only that, but "they" will no doubt have a spectrum of pricing. Providers in some cities may offer them very cheaply while providers in other cities may charge an arm and a leg. Some may allow the customer to pick it up and self-install, while others may insist on a truck roll and charge for it.



mikeyts said:


> I strongly doubt that any TiVo lover in a market where they're heavily using SDV is going to balk at paying it, whatever it is.


Oh, I certainly would balk. If they want to charge more than $4 a month, they can forget it. Because of the kludged design, I'm going to have to get 3, and I'll be damned if I'm going to pay more than $12 a month.


----------



## vstone

Well, you know, by law they're only allowed to get a "reasonable rate of return" on equipment. If charges are all over the map,maybe we can ask the FCC to define "reasonable." 

Of course some of us tend to believe that "reasonable" is not in the Bush Administration's dictionary.


----------



## bicker

I'd check the regulation again vstone. Those tenets are specific.


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## mikeyts

lrhorer said:


> 'Not only that, but "they" will no doubt have a spectrum of pricing. Providers in some cities may offer them very cheaply while providers in other cities may charge an arm and a leg. Some may allow the customer to pick it up and self-install, while others may insist on a truck roll and charge for it.


Some few might not charge anything for them at all. Some providers don't charge for the use CableCARDs.


lrhorer said:


> Oh, I certainly would balk. If they want to charge more than $4 a month, they can forget it. Because of the kludged design, I'm going to have to get 3, and I'll be damned if I'm going to pay more than $12 a month.


I forget about you true TiVo freaks who own 3 or 4 or more HD TiVos . I wouldn't be happy with paying more than $4/month for one, even for my single TiVo, given that I'd expect all of that to become pure gravy for the cable providers in significantly short of a year. They shouldn't lease for anything more than 1/12th of the per-unit quantity pricing. Hopefully it costs no more than a CableCARD and they allow self-install with mail-delivery .


----------



## danschn

... and SDV is just another opportunity.



> Originally posted by *mikeyts *:
> While I believe that they may charge something for use of the Tuning Adapter (and they'll certainly charge for truck-rolls to install it) it shouldn't be much. For one thing, it's a simple device, no more expensive to produce than a DOCSIS cable modem (probably less), and those can be purchased new at retail and e-tail for as little as $30.


I think the history of monopolies in general, cable companies specifically, and in particular my cable provider, Cablevision, is that what they charge for a service or device bears little in relation to their marginal cost and much closer to exercising monopoly profit. I can agree with you completely that the Tuning Adapter might represent to cable a low cost alternative to some high cost product standardization and development, and yet their history has made me worry that this reasonable internal strategic decision to develop the Adaptor is not indicative of a change of heart of how they view profiting on forced hardware leasing and what they think of their existing customers.

Does anyone really know what the digital STBs cost in bulk? CableCARDS? Guess at these new Tuning Adaptors ($30)? I think they pull in an annual 30 to 50% ROA (Return on Assets), before you consider the effects of the leverage they can use (which increases their internal ROI (Return on Investment). That is they are heavily Debt financed, and they can probably take advantage of some sort of lease financing arrangements from the Cisco's of the world (and their other providers) for their hardware needs. We can be sure they aren't going to let me buy any of these items seperately and lose their collective revenue streams.

While the content I subscribe to has increased in both volume (more stations) and quality (digital, 5.1 audio, HiDef), the cost of it has risen far faster. I've gone from about $17/month to $73/month in about 11 years as a customer. Yes, their content costs more to them, but I'm pretty sure they've more than passed those increases to me.

And I'm already paying about $12-$13/month just so my 2 TiVo's can access then content that I already pay for by leasing Cable's hardware! And if you saw how their STB (SciAtl 4250) slows down my Series 2 TiVo, you'd understand that they can and do interfere with the quality of the TiVo user experience.

So, I remain concerned about anywhere from 1 to 3 Tuning Adapter's costs to me just so I can continue to access the content I already pay for.

All this is before we consider the marketing opportunity of persuading customers to shift to the more expensive digital service tier at the same time, or persuading others to lease more hardware for the same service.


----------



## mikeyts

danschn --

Again, I don't think that they'll charge much for the Tuning Adapter for reasons that I've already stated, being not that they wouldn't want to reap great profits on a small investment--every business would like to--but because their entire reason for introducing the TA is political and introducing it and charging a lot for it will defeat that purpose completely. Since nothing in your post addresses that point, which is most of my case for believing that the TA will be inexpensive, I don't have anything further to argue, but I'll recap my position anyway.

They don't have to introduce the Tuning Adapter, but if they weren't doing something like this the FCC would almost certainly order them to implement the consumer electronic industry's proposed DCR+ solution, which they don't want to do for a multitude of reasons (one of those being that it will cost them far more than giving away Tuning Adapters to their subs who need them). They could have made their Tuning Adapter counter-proposal to DCR+ and waited for the FCC to choose, but they didn't--they went ahead and developed it and are going to make it available to their subscribers (with at least TiVo adapting a product to use it) before the FCC renders their decision on the matter. To this point, it seems like a generous and surprisingly cooperative gesture, which would be ruined by any attempt to charge some unreasonably large amount for TAs. If they overcharge, both consumers and the electronics industry will cry bloody murder and the FCC will listen. Offering this thing and trying to charge any significant part of the cost of leasing a box for it fails to address the problem caused by SDV.

You're obviously free to disregard my thinking and believe what you want. There's nothing you and I or anyone else can do about it, in any case, at least until after they start offering the device (when we could possibly organize to protest the cost, if indeed it's unreasonable). If you want to sit around and spend your time impotently worrying about being charged a large amount for Tuning Adapters, don't let me stand in your way. Enjoy.


----------



## bicker

mikeyts said:


> If you want to sit around and spend your time impotently worrying about being charged a large amount for Tuning Adapters, don't let me stand in your way. Enjoy.


Well said. Really, if things are so horrible with the cable provider, switch to DirecTV or Dish Network, or switch to renting DVDs from Netflix or Blockbuster. Not to mention RCN, FiOS, U-verse, etc. where available. There are so many options available that competition alone, effective in every municipality in the United States, precludes an inappropriately high charge for anything cable television offers.


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## Firekite

bicker said:


> There are so many options available that competition alone, effective in every *major metropolitan area* in the United States


Fixed your statement to be more accurate. See bolded area. Often there is no non-cable option other than satellite, and unless I'm missing something TiVo S3/HD cannot be used with DirecTV, nor with Dish, though for some reason they're specifically now advertising their own DVR as "Better than TiVo!" No joke.


----------



## bicker

Firekite said:


> Fixed your statement to be more accurate. See bolded area.


No, you distorted my statement into an erroneous one, and STILL attributed it to me. Please go back and fix the quote, either making it say what I wrote, or changing the attribution so it shows that you said it.

*There is competition for video service providers in every municipality in the United States, without exception.*



Firekite said:


> unless I'm missing something TiVo S3/HD cannot be used with DirecTV, nor with Dish


Which has nothing to do with the competitive marketplace. If you choose to limit yourself to using a TiVo that is your personal choice.


----------



## m_jonis

bicker said:


> No, you distorted my statement into an erroneous one, and STILL attributed it to me. Please go back and fix the quote, either making it say what I wrote, or changing the attribution so it shows that you said it.
> 
> *There is competition for video service providers in every municipality in the United States, without exception.*
> 
> Which has nothing to do with the competitive marketplace. If you choose to limit yourself to using a TiVo that is your personal choice.


Given that this is an SDV FAQ, and the cable STB/DVR can get SDV signals, I believe that it is a valid point to consider Tivo DVRs for this purpose.

Your original quote said that " . .competition alone, effective in every municipality in the United States, precludes an inappropriately high charge for anything cable television offers."

Really, EVERY municipality?

I think that's a bit of a stretch.

I remember my parents living in a certain area of Colorado could only get cable (due to the geographic location satellite was out unless you happened to live in a very specific area that was up high enough to clear the mountains). Their BASIC "lifeline" cable was $50/month!


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## bicker

m_jonis said:


> Given that this is an SDV FAQ, and the cable STB/DVR can get SDV signals, I believe that it is a valid point to consider Tivo DVRs for this purpose.


Only with regard to the TiVo interoperability, not with regard to competition that affects service pricing.



m_jonis said:


> Your original quote said that " . .competition alone, effective in every municipality in the United States, precludes an inappropriately high charge for anything cable television offers." Really, EVERY municipality?


Yes. Otherwise, the government would treat cable companies differently, with regard to services *other *than lifeline cable.


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## mikeyts

Firekite said:


> though for some reason they're specifically now advertising their own DVR as "Better than TiVo!" No joke.


There's an asterisk on those advertisements--it's a reference to CNET's Dish Network ViP622 HD DVR review which states:


> *Editors' Note:* Since this review was originally published, we've lived with the Dish ViP622 for 21 months. During that time, it has operated very smoothly, and after comparing it to the DirecTV HR20 and the TiVo HD, we've awarded the Dish ViP622 our Editors' Choice among HD DVRs.


They do go on further to say:


> Note that we're reviewing the hardware only; our choice is not affected by programming differences between Dish, DirecTV, and/or cable, although prospective buyers should certainly consider programming as well.


----------



## mike_camden

bicker said:


> Only with regard to the TiVo interoperability, not with regard to competition that affects service pricing.
> 
> Yes. Otherwise, the government would treat cable companies differently, with regard to services *other *than lifeline cable.


Your original quote was: There are so many options available that competition alone, effective in every municipality in the United States, precludes an inappropriately high charge for anything cable television offers.

This is inaccurate. I live in a market that essentially has one option for local programming -- Comcast. I can move to Dish or DirecTv, which I had for a couple of years, but I will still need to subscribe to Comcast for all locals except CBS (which is the only local we receive reliably OTA). Since we're number 159 on the DMA chart, neither Dish nor DirecTv will be offering locals via satellite. FIOS isn't available, nor will it be in the foreseeable future according to Verizon. I doubt that Wheeling, WV is the only market like this; much like an earlier poster, I find your assertion to be misinformed and just plain wrong. While the situation may meet whatever trumped up political definition of de jure competition is being used, de facto cable tv monopolies do in fact exist to the detriment of the consumer.


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## Firekite

bicker said:


> If you choose to limit yourself to using a TiVo that is your personal choice.


You're totally right. I need to find a TiVo forum instead of polluting this forum for...what is it again?


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## bicker

mike_camden said:


> Your original quote was: There are so many options available that competition alone, effective in every municipality in the United States, precludes an inappropriately high charge for anything cable television offers. This is inaccurate.


No, it is completely accurate.



mike_camden said:


> I live in a market that essentially has one option for local programming -- Comcast.


Give me your zip code before you continue. I want to know exactly how much it would cost you to get lifeline cable, there, before we argue about the particulars.

Here, incidentally, it is $8.50 per month, total.



mike_camden said:


> While the situation may meet whatever trumped up political definition of de jure competition is being used


We live in a society of laws, and the fact that we don't like the ramifications of our legal and judicial systems doesn't mean they're anything less than *the reality*.


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## bicker

Firekite said:


> You're totally right. I need to find a TiVo forum instead of polluting this forum for...what is it again?


This is a TiVo forum. However, the issue was cost of service, and the cost of service is not just affected by people who have TiVo. Indeed, TiVo has very little impact on the cost of service, because there are so few people with TiVo. The US Constitution does not grant a right to TiVo. TiVo must always be considered in the context of the total environment. Blinders don't help you see the reality any more clearly.


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## Firekite

bicker said:


> The US Constitution does not grant a right to TiVo.


Now that right there is an _argument_, I tell ya what!

The silliness of some of the participants in this thread is hilarious to behold.


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## Mordred

cableguy763 said:


> You can get ESPN2 HD with a cablecard here in Austin. Guess that list has one discrepancy.


Not at my house you can't. It's the HD channel I miss most.


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## cableguy763

Mordred said:


> Not at my house you can't. It's the HD channel I miss most.


You should send me your contact # and I can get that fixed. It is definitely available to cablecards.


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## ah30k

cableguy763 said:


> You should send me your contact # and I can get that fixed. It is definitely available to cablecards.


That that is the beauty of a community!


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## mike_camden

bicker said:


> No, it is completely accurate.
> 
> Give me your zip code before you continue. I want to know exactly how much it would cost you to get lifeline cable, there, before we argue about the particulars.


The zip is 26003. As of a couple of years ago, it was $14.00/mo for lifeline; according to Comcast's website, it's now $15 /month for basic cable. To receive locals in HD with guide data, which needs to be factored in to make this apples to apples, it is an additional $5 per box.



> We live in a society of laws, and the fact that we don't like the ramifications of our legal and judicial systems doesn't mean they're anything less than *the reality*.


Please don't attempt to address me as if I were an elementary school student. I have an MBA and a very firm understanding of the political, legal, and judicial systems.

Reality is what we make it. Right now for this particular matter, reality is being defined by the influence that a very strong lobby has on politicians (including judges) who don't have the technical acumen or desire (both in many cases) to fully understand the issues involved. The *reality* is that the more power we allow the monopolistic cable companies (yes, they do have de facto monopolies in several areas of the country; if you don't understand what that means, look it up), the less leverage with regard to what we can buy for our entertainment dollars.

Continue to trump how this is just the reality that we need to accept, and stand by to see more of your options go away. Think I am being too much of an alarmist? Look into some of the recent trends of Comcast and TWC experimenting with charging Internet fees based on usage tiers. These companies look for those affected to remain as lemmings; without the people speaking out, these companies will remain the only ones with leverage.


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## ah30k

Oh, this is going to get good. Buckle up and enjoy the interaction...


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## SCSIRAID

ah30k said:


> Oh, this is going to get good. Buckle up and enjoy the interaction...


Ill start the popcorn....


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## jrm01

I'll bring the beer. Sit back and enjoy.


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## danschn

It may be fruitless to worry about the cost of the Tuning Adapter as my complaints will fall on deaf ears at CableVision. But for those who think it will be just a nominal charge, I point out that if it were $1/month - which would make it the cheapest thing they lease this side of the remote, and if the speculation is correct that it's about a $30 item retail, that's a huge 40&#37; return on CV's investment, before you account for their bulk purchasing discounts and potential lease financing.

As for my "choices" in switching to other sources of programming, it's not like there's a freely operating market here. There are still huge barriers to entry, and that's being exploited. It's moved from an under-regulated monopoly to a thinly regulated oligopoly. It's why the cost of programming has shot through the roof, and remains there, and it's why we're forced to lease hardware.

I would love to be a happy premium subscriber. Instead, I'm a premium subscriber who's sick of paying through the nose. I pay $105 for cable service per month now, and I'm gradually losing the ability to see what I want where I want without leasing more hardware. I should be enjoying CV and FIOS fighting for my business in the $50/month range, without hardware restrictions. But their oligopoly status combined with an accepted price level that's jacked up beyond reason has prevented that.


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## mikeyts

danschn, no matter what the cable providers profit margin is, it would be difficult to argue that $1/month would be unreasonable lease fee. They _will_ have to pay something to stock, distribute and maintain the damn things and they deserve some compensation should they ask for it. I'm not sure what the highest reasonable price would be, but I'm definitely not going to complain about anything under $2/month. They could have not developed the device at all--the solution that the CE OEMs are asking for, DCR+, is only applicable to future products. It leaves all us current-model CableCARD TiVo owners out in the cold.

Cable has to combat the incursions that satellite is making on their market share with their "up to 150 HD channels" advertising campaigns. SDV was by far the quickest-to-implement, least-expensive way for them to be able to field enough additional HD content to remain competitive, and it screws over only their unidirectional CableCARD using subs, who to date number only a few hundred thousand, nationwide. Of that tiny fraction of all cable subscribers, I'd bet that CableCARD TiVo users comprise greater than 50%, and the TA should immediately solve our problem with SDV.

Sounds as though your only recourse is to drop cable and be satisfied with the programming that you can pick up over-the-air (which TiVo S3 and TiVo HD are also useful for); many people go that route. The oligopoly status quo is an improvement on the de facto monopoly situation of the past and will only continue to improve. Unfortunately, because of the incredibly high cost of building a content distribution network (municipal hybrid fiber/cable network build-out, launching comm satellites, etc), there won't soon be anything like the open market that exists in other areas for multichannel subscription television. What may well happen is that IPTV blossoms, which will allow individual content providers to sell you access to individual channels over a broadband internet connection, basically piggy-backing someone else's distribution network, your choice (CATV, telco, whatever) as long as it's fast enough. (See this page for a cool video about deployment of an IPTV client for the Xbox 360 set to be rolled out in the UK soon; Sony will also be rolling out their "PlayTV" client and DVB tuner for the PS3 in Europe soon). This is something that current model CableCARD TiVos should be capable of handling as well. Only time will tell how that's going to go, or whether it will sell for a price that you won't feel obliged to complain about .


----------



## mikeyts

ah30k said:


> Oh, this is going to get good. Buckle up and enjoy the interaction...


Or maybe bicker and mike_camden can agree to disagree, skipping a long, protracted, off-topic and useless argument in this thread and just _tell_ people that they had one . (Or, if they must have it, move it to PM and spare the rest of us).


----------



## bicker

Firekite said:


> The silliness of some of the participants in this thread is hilarious to behold.


Yes, some of the silliness I've read in this thread is incredible.


----------



## bicker

mike_camden said:


> Reality is what we make it.


Reality is what is.



mike_camden said:


> Right now for this particular matter, reality is being defined by the influence that a very strong lobby has on politicians (including judges) who don't have the technical acumen or desire (both in many cases) to fully understand the issues involved.


Or they simply have different priorities than you, and theirs simply prevail over yours. In essence, they're *pro-business*.



mike_camden said:


> Continue to trump how this is just the reality that we need to accept, and stand by to see more of your options go away.


You give me way too much credit. I'm just explaining to you what you claim is so obvious that you cannot help but know it. It is real. Denying it by claiming that you don't like the way it came about doesn't serve any constructive purpose. What are you doing to change the nature of the politics in this country that this reality is a reflection of? Evidently not enough, since both of the major political parties are *pro-business* now.



mike_camden said:


> Think I am being too much of an alarmist? Look into some of the recent trends of Comcast and TWC experimenting with charging Internet fees based on usage tiers. These companies look for those affected to remain as lemmings; without the people speaking out, these companies will remain the only ones with leverage.


You're tilting at windmills. What I care about is that my investments are such that I can hope to enjoy a comfortable retirement. I support the things that I believe foster that. What are you doing to to get the powers-that-be to radically reverse the last 35 years of progressively more and more support for the pro-business perspective in this country? Again, evidently not enough.

And I'm not saying that that's bad (though I'm happy that it fosters my 401k's), and I'm not saying it is a personal failure on your part: I'm just stating the way things are.


----------



## bicker

mikeyts said:


> Or maybe bicker and mike_camden can agree to disagree, skipping a long, protracted, off-topic and useless argument in this thread and just _tell_ people that they had one . (Or, if they must have it, move it to PM and spare the rest of us).


I'm game. I've said all there needs to be said to support my position, as long as there isn't another _personal _attack on me posted in this regard, like another accusation that I was talking to someone like an elementary school student.


----------



## lrhorer

bicker said:


> This is a TiVo forum. However, the issue was cost of service, and the cost of service is not just affected by people who have TiVo.


True. In fact I suspect general pricing of CATV services is not impacted at all by TiVo ownership in most municipalities.



bicker said:


> The US Constitution does not grant a right to TiVo.


Oh, please spare me. The US constitution doesn't grant a right to television service of any sort, nor to competitive pricing of any goods or services.



bicker said:


> TiVo must always be considered in the context of the total environment. Blinders don't help you see the reality any more clearly.


Yes, but the U.S. Constitution is not a relevant aspect of that environment. I submit your arguments will wield more weight if you keep them cogent and free of detritus.


----------



## lrhorer

mike_camden said:


> These companies look for those affected to remain as lemmings; without the people speaking out, these companies will remain the only ones with leverage.


I agree with most of what you have said, up to this point. The fact is, every person on Eath - all six billion plus - could scream at the top of their lungs about this issue, and the CATV companies couldn't care less. All six billion of them writing letters would only garner a little more notice. No, the only things of which the MSOs are going to take much notice is either a major loss of revenue or potentially massive fines from the FCC. The loss of one customer is definitely not a major loss of revenue. The loss of every single Series 3 customer is perhaps a bit on their radar, but even that is comparatively small potatoes. As others have pointed out, we (TiVo owners) just don't have much clout. We have a bit more than some have estimated, but it would not be at all difficult to overestimate the magnitude of our potential influence. All of us put together probably couldn't match in a year the amount of bribes paid by the MSOs in a single day, so I wouldn't hold much stock in convincing the government of anything, either.


----------



## bicker

lrhorer said:


> Oh, please spare me. The US constitution doesn't grant a right to television service of any sort, nor to competitive pricing of any goods or services.


I believe you'll find that this is not the case, at least not in the context of the discussion. The point was that TiVo, itself, is not protected, while access to competitive marketplaces is.



lrhorer said:


> Yes, but the U.S. Constitution is not a relevant aspect of that environment. I submit your arguments will wield more weight if you keep them cogent and free of detritus.


Your welcome to your opinion, even though it doesn't actually add anything constructive to the discussion, and instead just fosters a hostile environment where attacking what individual posters say and how they say it is the norm, instead of keeping to the topic yourself.

And I won't get on you about how irrelevant the other 5 billion 700 thousand people in the world, who you were discussing in your last message, are to what we're discussing in this thread.


----------



## mike_camden

lrhorer said:


> I agree with most of what you have said, up to this point. The fact is, every person on Eath - all six billion plus - could scream at the top of their lungs about this issue, and the CATV companies couldn't care less.


Yeah, that was a little over the top. I just kind of became carried away in the moment


----------



## lrhorer

bicker said:


> I believe you'll find that this is not the case, at least not in the context of the discussion. The point was that TiVo, itself, is not protected, while access to competitive marketplaces is.


No, it isn't, which is why your point is not taken at all. The U.S. Constitution says nothing about commercial interests or marketplaces. The closest it comes is giving Congress control over patents and copyrights (Article I, section 8, part 8) and forbidding any interstate taxation or restrictions on interstate trading (Article I, section 9, parts 4 and 5). Unless one counts the phrase "...promote the general welfare," in the preamble, not one word in the Constitution mentions internal commerce, trading, marketplaces, competition, or economics, and nothing in the Constitution seeks to protect access to marketplaces of any sort: free, competitive, or otherwise. Its relevance to the discussion at hand is zero, no matter how wide you make it, unless you start talking about taxation and trade or treaty restrictions with foreign powers.



bicker said:


> Your welcome to your opinion


Yes, it was an opinion.



bicker said:


> even though it doesn't actually add anything constructive to the discussion


I submit it does, although of course I admit it did not address the elements under debate, but rather the form of the debate. No matter what some people believe (and I am not saying you are necessarily one of them) obfuscation and hand-waving add nothing to a debate. Indeed, in my opinion they severely impair the argument of whoever employs them, deliberately or not. I am not an official debate scorekeeper, but if I were I would severely dock points from those whose arguments deviate from being cogent.



bicker said:


> and instead just fosters a hostile environment


If you believe constructive criticism fosters a hostile environment, then I submit it is you who are entitled to your opinion.



bicker said:


> And I won't get on you about how irrelevant the other 5 billion 700 thousand people in the world, who you were discussing in your last message, are to what we're discussing in this thread.


They (or rather their complaints) are pretty much completely irrelevant, but only slightly more so than TiVo owners, which was my point, exaggerated for effect as I admit it was.


----------



## bicker

I don't see your comments as constructive at all. I think they are way off-base. I won't pander to your need to belabor this point by providing a significant response to your diatribe.

Back to the topic.


----------



## Firekite

Well at least you're living up to your chosen name.

Look, I disagree with lhorer vehemently and often, but he's right this time around. Your silly crap about the Constitution and its status regarding cable service guarantees is ridiculous, useless, and smacks of a baseless assumption of superiority. I don't know if you ride a garbage truck for a living or sit on SCOTUS itself, but either way you're pushing silly s**t into the discussion for no discernible reason. Please stop pretending it's helpful or relevant or adds anything worthwhile to the discussion. It isn't, it doesn't, and you only make yourself look all the more silly every time you dig yourself further into your bunker on it.


----------



## ZeoTiVo

Oh sorry, I was looking for the SDV FAQ, must have typed SDV FIGHT by accident. Again, sorry for the interruption.


----------



## BobCamp1

lrhorer said:


> I agree with most of what you have said, up to this point. The fact is, every person on Eath - all six billion plus - could scream at the top of their lungs about this issue, and the CATV companies couldn't care less. All six billion of them writing letters would only garner a little more notice. No, the only things of which the MSOs are going to take much notice is either a major loss of revenue or potentially massive fines from the FCC. The loss of one customer is definitely not a major loss of revenue. The loss of every single Series 3 customer is perhaps a bit on their radar, but even that is comparatively small potatoes. As others have pointed out, we (TiVo owners) just don't have much clout. We have a bit more than some have estimated, but it would not be at all difficult to overestimate the magnitude of our potential influence. All of us put together probably couldn't match in a year the amount of bribes paid by the MSOs in a single day, so I wouldn't hold much stock in convincing the government of anything, either.


I think if every person on Earth screamed, someone would notice. Some places are, for example, experiencing high prices for rice and corn right now. They cannot afford to eat anymore. That actually made world news. (Well, BBC News anyway. The news shown at the networks at 6:30 isn't really world news.) But you are right -- the screams of 0.2% of CableCard users (actual number in my DMA) will be drowned out by the screams of the other 99.8% of cable subscribers who want to know why more channels aren't in HD yet.

Many people are also complaining about high gas prices. You know, the same people who bought trucks and SUVs when they never carry anything else except themselves. Or those people who chose to live in a house that was an hour drive from work (or vice versa). And yet they do nothing else about it except complain.

The point is, if someone doesn't like what his cable company is doing, he should cancel their service! Who cares if the cable company notices or not? And don't buy a product that is exclusively designed to work with them. Save the money for gas, or use the money to buy food for someone else.

And if someone thinks non-network TV is really a necessity, and that a DVR is really a necessity, and he can't put up a satellite dish or wants to use one specific specialized DVR, then he should move to a different place where he can. It's a buyer's market in housing right now. But beware -- people are complaining they can only get a loan if they have good credit and only for houses they can actually afford.

Now, can we please cool down and get back to topic?


----------



## ZeoTiVo

BobCamp1 said:


> (Well, BBC News anyway. The news shown at the networks at 6:30 isn't really world news.)


oops leetist backfire there, which was so snobbish as to make me comment,

ABC world news has very much been following the World Food crisis with in depth reports on what and why around rice and corn that have been aired 2 or 3 times a week for the past few weeks. In a word you are wrong.


----------



## Firekite

ZeoTiVo said:


> Oh sorry, I was looking for the SDV FAQ, must have typed SDV FIGHT by accident. Again, sorry for the interruption.


...


----------



## m_jonis

bicker said:


> I don't see your comments as constructive at all. I think they are way off-base. I won't pander to your need to belabor this point by providing a significant response to your diatribe.
> 
> Back to the topic.


And many of us (me included) feel the same way about you.

But then again, that's why you've appropriately named yourself "bicker".


----------



## bicker

BobCamp1 said:


> Now, can we please cool down and get back to topic?


No. Everyone wants to get the last word, as if that makes their point true and the points made earlier not.



m_jonis said:


> But then again, that's why you've appropriately named yourself "bicker".


No it isn't. Were you there at the time?


----------



## Firekite

bicker said:


> No. Everyone wants to get the last word, as if that makes their point true and the points made earlier not.


Good job breaking the cycle.


----------



## lrhorer

BobCamp1 said:


> I think if every person on Earth screamed, someone would notice.


Notice? Surely. Care? Not so much, or at least not enough to spend money to fix it, or for that matter to even risk impacting other avenues of profit.



BobCamp1 said:


> Some places are, for example, experiencing high prices for rice and corn right now. They cannot afford to eat anymore.


That's right, and I doubt you will find more than a comparative handful of people in America who do not find the fact deplorable. Simply by not purchasing useless cosmetics, but buying and shipping durable food products, American women all by themselves could easily feed the entire world several times over. How many women do you think will stop using cosmetics to see to it the starving are fed, however?

With business, it's even more black-and-white. If it isn't required by law, doesn't promote sales / marketing, and impacts or potentially impacts the bottom line, then the odds of it happening are slim to none, no matter what "it" might be.



BobCamp1 said:


> But you are right -- the screams of 0.2% of CableCard users (actual number in my DMA) will be drowned out by the screams of the other 99.8% of cable subscribers who want to know why more channels aren't in HD yet.


This is true, but wasn't quite my point. The CATV company doesn't really much care whether their customers fork over the cash happily or unhappily, as long as they continue to fork over the cash. Your point, however, underlines the fact that if the customers are inordinately unhappy about shelling out the bucks, they might very well stop. This is especially true in any market where the consumer has other options for obtaining the commodity or a replacement for it. It is doubly true if the item in question is not essential. In short, it's true the CATV company would in actuality be worried if all their customers started screaming "Bloody murder!", not directly because the customers are screaming but because they might stop screaming and actually do something about it. And yes, the most salient fact is that the CATV company cannot responsibly ignore the 98% of customers' demands in favor of the 2%.


----------



## kochsr

By the way, Brighthouse networks in Farmington Hills, MI also is using SDV now.... they keep adding HD channels... and I can't get them unfortunately.


----------



## lrhorer

A friend of mine works for a company who provides certain hardware to CATV providers, and he is setting up a booth in New Orleans this weekend. I've asked him to keep his eyes open on the SA and Moto exhibits, and I'm hoping he may have some news concerning how real the tuning resolvers / adapters / thingamabobbies are (or aren't) at this time. Maybe they'll even have working prototypes. 'Good news, if so. 'Unsurprising, if not.


----------



## mikeyts

lrhorer said:


> A friend of mine works for a company who provides certain hardware to CATV providers, and he is setting up a booth in New Orleans this weekend. I've asked him to keep his eyes open on the SA and Moto exhibits, and I'm hoping he may have some news concerning how real the tuning resolvers / adapters / thingamabobbies are (or aren't) at this time. Maybe they'll even have working prototypes. 'Good news, if so. 'Unsurprising, if not.


Shocking, if not. For one thing, both companies brought products to test to CableLabs' Tuning Adapter interop event at the beginning of April and both claim to have passed muster there; both companies announced plans to submit their products for CableLab's Certfication Wave 60. Now, unless both companies were lying, I'd really be surprised if they didn't bring working prototypes to New Orleans (again, they both announced plans to do that). If they don't show up with protos, they got some 'splaining to do.


----------



## Firekite

I spoke with a guy in Time Warner's Business Class support today regarding a couple of SDV issues we were having with the SA STB's in my company's office. He wasn't especially knowledgeable, but he swears there are a couple of two-way 3rd party CC boxes up and running under testing in their offices in San Antonio.


----------



## bicker

lrhorer said:


> And yes, the most salient fact is that the CATV company cannot responsibly ignore the 98% of customers' demands in favor of the 2%.


:up: :up: That is indeed the most salient fact, and indeed is typically the bottom-line of just about every prolonged (ahem) discussion about the commercial realm, on these forums or any others for that matter.


----------



## ZeoTiVo

bicker said:


> :up: :up: That is indeed the most salient fact, and indeed is typically the bottom-line of just about every prolonged (ahem) discussion about the commercial realm, on these forums or any others for that matter.


yes, but I do not hear the 98% demanding more channels. Better content maybe, but not speciifcally more channels.

The 2% are demanding to see the channels they are paying for already, and as noted before some of them are using Cable Company supplied equipment and not able to see the SDV channels. SDV is not having an easy deployment


----------



## Jimbo713

*I* want to test the two-way cable card for TWC here in San Antonio. How can I get involved?


----------



## ah30k

ZeoTiVo said:


> ... but I do not hear the 98% demanding more channels. Better content maybe, but not speciifcally more channels.


Consumers demand with their wallets not necessarily by voicing or writing. The fact is that there is an advertising battle going on now with every carrier touting the number of HD channels they carry. Those on the short end of that metric will surely pay the price with lost subscribers.


----------



## bicker

ZeoTiVo said:


> yes, but I do not hear the 98% demanding more channels. Better content maybe, but not speciifcally more channels.


Perhaps you're imposing your own personal interpretation on what their clamoring means? As ah30k alluded to, when talking about what the majority is "demanding" that unequivocally means what drives them to *make the purchasing decision* one way or another. It means nothing else. Again, perhaps you're projecting, based on your own personal preferences, what you think the majority would end up _enjoying _more. However, what is *important *is only what will make that majority end up *spending more money on*. BIG difference.

And thanks to DirecTV, too many people are "demanding" more HD channels, blindly, without regard to what that means. They are switching from cable to DirecTV to gain FX HD while losing PBS HD and CW HD (this would be my own personal situation) and thinking that they are getting a better deal because there are these 25 other HD channels which they'll (I'll) never actually watch. Perhaps some of them will realize their mistake when watching History Detectives this summer in SD; maybe not.



ZeoTiVo said:


> The 2% are demanding ...


Blah blah blah. We've already established that what the 2% want doesn't matter. They're not entitled to anything that is not explicitly covered by the tariff, and if it is, then take the cable company to court. Don't expect them to change for the 2% unless they are found to be in violation of an actual law or legal agreement, as long as they're doing what is best to attract the 98%.


----------



## m_jonis

Jimbo713 said:


> *I* want to test the two-way cable card for TWC here in San Antonio. How can I get involved?


I'm pretty sure that 2-way cable card isn't deployed yet, although if it is, I'm 99.9% sure it is incompatible (2-way mode anyway) with any Tivo currently made.


----------



## bxojr

m_jonis said:


> I'm pretty sure that 2-way cable card isn't deployed yet, although if it is, I'm 99.9% sure it is incompatible (2-way mode anyway) with any Tivo currently made.


All CableCARDs are two-way, and always have been. What's yet to be deployed widely is _host devices_ that can make use of their two-way functions. So existing TiVos are _compatible_ with "two-way CableCARDs," but they cannot make use of the bidirectional services.

That will change in the future, first with the Tuning Adapter (which will add to existing TiVos the ability to use bidirectional services), and later with the expected tru2way TiVo (which will have such capability built in). But neither advance represents a change in the CableCARDs, only a change in how the host devices make use of them.


----------



## mikeyts

More properly stated, CableCARDs themselves are not and never will be bidirectional (except in that they implement some APIs for communication back to the network when installed in the proper device). CableCARDs have no RF communication built in and get everything from the wire passed to them by the host device that they're installed in. Some CableCARD Host Devices (televisions, set top boxes) implement bidirectional cable network communication, though none have shipped for retail sale that I'm aware of. Technically, all of the new CableCARD-using leased set top boxes that the cable providers have deployed since July 2007, like the SA Explorer xxxxC models, are bidirectional CableCARD hosts. They've deployed millions of them and if you have an Explorer 8300HDC, 8240HDC or 4250HDC, you're already "testing" them (particularly if they're running TWC's horrible Digital Navigator IPG).

Bidirectional host devices that are M-Card capable and have OCAP (collectively referred to as <tru2way>) are supposed to be launching this year--some products might hit the market in the Spring.


----------



## mikeyts

lrhorer said:


> And yes, the most salient fact is that the CATV company cannot responsibly ignore the 98% of customers' demands in favor of the 2%.


Let's remember that that's 99.8% versus .2%, much closer to the actual usage of CableCARDs in most markets.


----------



## lrhorer

m_jonis said:


> I'm pretty sure that 2-way cable card isn't deployed yet, although if it is, I'm 99.9% sure it is incompatible (2-way mode anyway) with any Tivo currently made.


<sigh> Every CableCard ever made, including the very first one to roll out of the fabrication planet has been 2-way. Those very same cards are 100% compatible with every 2-way CableCard host ever deployed, and until the law changes that ever will be. The only caveat as far as TiVo is concerned is that the S3 requires 2 M-cards to receive dual streams, while the M-card is capable of receiving multiple streams. The TiVo HD can receive two simultaneous streams with only 1 M-card. Every CableCard must work in 2-way mode or it won't work at all. I don't know where you came up with that 99.9% number, but it is 100% wrong.

TiVos are not 2-way hosts, and so cannot participate in 2-way services with the CATV headend, but that has nothing to do with the CableCards.

As far as deployment is concerned, all SDV is 2-way, and the vast majority of SDV boxes out there are CableCard based. Prior to July 2007, a significant number of STBs and DVRs with integrated security were deployed, but with only a few exceptions having been granted, every MSO since July 2007 has been required to deploy nothing but devices employing separable security, which at this point means exclusively CableCards.


----------



## lrhorer

mikeyts said:


> More properly stated, CableCARDs themselves are not and never will be bidirectional (except in that they implement some APIs for communication back to the network when installed in the proper device).


You say potaeto, I say potahto. If we're going to nit, I would say the "all CableCards are 2-way" statement is more representative of the situation. It's true the CableCard doesn't transmit RF to the headend, but then it doesn't receive RF from the headend, either, as you yourself mentioned. All communications in and out of the CableCard are with the host, of course, but regardless of the type of host, those communications are bidirectional. Even more importantly, no matter what type of CableCard or when it was manufactured, it is capable of being deployed in any bidirectional host and participating in 2-way CATV services, including SDV.

The bottom line is, there is no CableCard in the works that sports any special features as far as 2-way communications are concerned.


----------



## lrhorer

ah30k said:


> Consumers demand with their wallets not necessarily by voicing or writing. The fact is that there is an advertising battle going on now with every carrier touting the number of HD channels they carry. Those on the short end of that metric will surely pay the price with lost subscribers.


I think there is an important point in there. Many people (including me, sometimes) talk about companies paying attention to consumer's spending habits and intent, yet to a significant extent I have seen many businessmen all but ignore their customers in preference for listening to the PR and sales hype of their competition. It's an arrogance thing, endemic to corporate sales and PR types. There is sometimes a tendency to think of customers as being almost 100% malleable at the corporate whim, and that all that must be considered is the actions of the competitors.

Case in point: (And I swear this is 100% true) I was at a meeting of TWC employees, affiliates, and certain industry representatives about 15 - 20 years ago. There were about 3000 people present. T. J. Connally, the V.P. of PR for TWC in San Antonio at the time, was speaking at the podium. He had just announced the company would be doing yet another channel line-up change. Every time one of those was undertaken, the company received tons of complaints, and the field techs got a persistent earful from annoyed customers for several weeks after every major lineup change. One of the technicians - who couldn't believe they were doing yet another one - got up and asked point blank why they were doing this yet again since there was no technical reason they should and it just served to tick the customers off. Believe it or not, Connally actually became gleeful and said (quoted to the best of my recollection), "No, no. We want to annoy the customers! When we do a line-up change like this, it stirs them up and keeps us on their minds. Otherwise they just tend to forget about us."

Another case in point: Classic Coca-cola. When the Coca-cola bottling company was told that for the first time in history Pepsi was out-selling Coke, they panicked and rushed to change Coke's formula so it was closer in taste to Pepsi. Sales plummeted. Finally they were forced to re-introduce the old formula, calling it "Classic Coke". It out-sold the new Coke by more than 7 to 1.

There are many other examples I could site, including Mrs. Field's cookies, Federal Express, Sam Walton, and a host of others where businessmen ignored the public's opinions and desires in favor of business analysts' conclusions and the competition's antics.


----------



## lrhorer

mikeyts said:


> Shocking, if not. For one thing, both companies brought products to test to CableLabs' Tuning Adapter interop event at the beginning of April and both claim to have passed muster there;


Is that confirmed? I have seen rumors to the effect, but I hadn't seen any official reports. OTOH, I have been quite busy with other considerations, adn since I'm no longer in the industry, I no longer get the trade rags.



mikeyts said:


> both companies announced plans to submit their products for CableLab's Certfication Wave 60.


I had heard that about Motorila, but not SA. Again, maybe I'm out of the loop.


mikeyts said:


> Now, unless both companies were lying, I'd really be surprised if they didn't bring working prototypes to New Orleans (again, they both announced plans to do that).


Ditto. Welcome news, however, if true.



mikeyts said:


> If they don't show up with protos, they got some 'splaining to do.


What are we going to do if they don't? Arrest them? Nevertheless, I'm hopeful, if definitely still reserved of judgment. I'll call my friend later today and see if he's got anything to report.


----------



## bicker

lrhorer said:


> Another case in point: Classic Coca-cola. When the Coca-cola bottling company was told that for the first time in history Pepsi was out-selling Coke, they panicked and rushed to change Coke's formula so it was closer in taste to Pepsi. Sales plummeted. Finally they were forced to re-introduce the old formula, calling it "Classic Coke". It out-sold the new Coke by more than 7 to 1.


There is no convincing evidence of arrogance having the impact you mentioned (a claim, incidentally, which seems to be launched most commonly as an outgrowth of consumer frustration than based on any objective evidence). Indeed, the most nefarious claim I've read, and see merit in, regarding the Coke situation, is that they planned this from the start (which is why they were able to relaunch the old formulation so quickly, and had already thought through the heartstring-tugging name "Coke Classic"). The hubbub perhaps was responsible for a massive surge in demand for Coke in the year or two afterwards. Amazingly strategic if true, and it is as believable as any other explanation I've read.

If there is any arrogance, per se, it is clearly justified by cases like that, rather than condemnable.


----------



## mikeyts

lrhorer said:


> Is that confirmed? I have seen rumors to the effect, but I hadn't seen any official reports. OTOH, I have been quite busy with other considerations, adn since I'm no longer in the industry, I no longer get the trade rags.
> 
> I had heard that about Motorila, but not SA. Again, maybe I'm out of the loop.
> 
> Ditto. Welcome news, however, if true.
> 
> What are we going to do if they don't? Arrest them? Nevertheless, I'm hopeful, if definitely still reserved of judgment. I'll call my friend later today and see if he's got anything to report.


You're killin' me, lrhorer ! Pay attention! All of this was revealed in articles linked to by posts in this thread. First, from a bit in Engadget ("the company" is Motorola):


> According to the company's Mari Silbey, its own tuning resolver -- which is meant to allow any third-party CableCARD device to access channels delivered via SDV -- will officially be christened MTR700. Additionally, we're told that it'll likely look just like the DCT700 set-top-box (pictured), and that *the unit has just passed through a CableLabs interop "with flying colors."* Next, we're *expecting the device to be submitted for CableLabs' Cert Wave 60*, and best of all, Moto assures us that *the STB will be on display (and "functional" enough for demos) at next month's Cable Show in New Orleans*.


From a piece in LightReading:


> Cisco is calling its entry the STA-1520, and the first-generation version will look much like the RNG 100, a new standard-definition cable box that will support MPEG-4 and the removable CableCARD. The STA-1520, however, will be a dedicated SDV "tuning adapter," which is apparently the new industry name assigned to what was previously known as the tuning resolver.
> ...​Jeff Kasten, the senior product manager for product strategy and management at Cisco's newly formed Service Provider Video Technology Group, said *the company plans to show off the device at next month's Cable Show in New Orleans, and expects to submit it to CableLabs for certification testing for Wave 60*, which is just getting underway.
> 
> *Cisco has already conducted some interface testing with TiVo and expects to provide some samples to MSOs soon for their internal testing.* "So we're pretty far along," Kasten says.


That bit doesn't say that Cisco's unit did well at CableLab's interop, but I've read that somewhere.

And as I said, having said all of this to the press, they'd just have some explaining to do if they failed to bring working units to "Noleans" as promised. I didn't say that there'd be anything _we_ could do about it .


----------



## mikeyts

lrhorer said:


> You say potaeto, I say potahto. If we're going to nit, I would say the "all CableCards are 2-way" statement is more representative of the situation. It's true the CableCard doesn't transmit RF to the headend, but then it doesn't receive RF from the headend, either, as you yourself mentioned. All communications in and out of the CableCard are with the host, of course, but regardless of the type of host, those communications are bidirectional. Even more importantly, no matter what type of CableCard or when it was manufactured, it is capable of being deployed in any bidirectional host and participating in 2-way CATV services, including SDV.
> 
> The bottom line is, there is no CableCard in the works that sports any special features as far as 2-way communications are concerned.


In context, the term "bidirectional" was in regards to communication with the cable system, not communication between the card and the host device. My point was that when talking about unidirectional versus bidirectional, we should not be thinking about the actual cards, since they don't speak to the cable system at all or even directly listen to it. They're just tools used by the host device for decoding what they receive from the system (and, when in bidirectional hosts, for composing some messages to be sent to it).

This reminds me of your insistence that "SDV" also refers to "VOD". While technically true, people using the term "SDV" in the press and in this thread are never referring anything other than the relatively new bandwidth optimizing technique of using digital switching to transmit essentially linear video services. I and everyone else say "potato" while only _you_ say "potahtoe". You enjoy semantic games too much, but it's part of why we love you .


----------



## m_jonis

lrhorer said:


> <sigh> Every CableCard ever made, including the very first one to roll out of the fabrication planet has been 2-way. Those very same cards are 100% compatible with every 2-way CableCard host ever deployed, and until the law changes that ever will be. The only caveat as far as TiVo is concerned is that the S3 requires 2 M-cards to receive dual streams, while the M-card is capable of receiving multiple streams. The TiVo HD can receive two simultaneous streams with only 1 M-card. Every CableCard must work in 2-way mode or it won't work at all. I don't know where you came up with that 99.9% number, but it is 100% wrong.
> 
> TiVos are not 2-way hosts, and so cannot participate in 2-way services with the CATV headend, but that has nothing to do with the CableCards.
> 
> As far as deployment is concerned, all SDV is 2-way, and the vast majority of SDV boxes out there are CableCard based. Prior to July 2007, a significant number of STBs and DVRs with integrated security were deployed, but with only a few exceptions having been granted, every MSO since July 2007 has been required to deploy nothing but devices employing separable security, which at this point means exclusively CableCards.


Really?

http://www.timewarnercable.com/Albany/Products/Cable/CableCard.html

Further, I stated that the Tivo would not be compatible in "2-way mode". You conveniently ignored that and twisted my statement to claim something I did not. Name me a currently produced and available Tivo unit that can use a cable card in 2-way mode.

oh that's right, it's not out yet (because if there was one, we wouldn't need a tuning resolver and we'd also be able to VOD and PPV).

SDV may be two way, but the currently available cable cards do not send out the information. (at least according to the TW link above for retail devices). It may be with actually doing "2-way mode" with the cable companies STB, but I'm not sure about that. (TW website seems to indicate that they are, but I don't know that for sure).

Also, please backup your statement that the majority of all SDV boxes are cable card based. I would respectfully state that is untrue. In our area, TW own numbers state that they have approx. 500 cable card customers. The rest of their customers are analog only or TW non-cable card digital STB. Only NEWLY deployed devices are required to use cable cards, I believe. But I don't think that means that TW or other cable companies cannot "recycle" their existing supply of non-cable card STB.


----------



## SCSIRAID

m_jonis said:


> Really?
> 
> http://www.timewarnercable.com/Albany/Products/Cable/CableCard.html
> 
> Further, I stated that the Tivo would not be compatible in "2-way mode". You conveniently ignored that and twisted my statement to claim something I did not. Name me a currently produced and available Tivo unit that can use a cable card in 2-way mode.
> 
> oh that's right, it's not out yet (because if there was one, we wouldn't need a tuning resolver and we'd also be able to VOD and PPV).
> 
> SDV may be two way, but the currently available cable cards do not send out the information. (at least according to the TW link above for retail devices). It may be with actually doing "2-way mode" with the cable companies STB, but I'm not sure about that. (TW website seems to indicate that they are, but I don't know that for sure).
> 
> Also, please backup your statement that the majority of all SDV boxes are cable card based. I would respectfully state that is untrue. In our area, TW own numbers state that they have approx. 500 cable card customers. The rest of their customers are analog only or TW non-cable card digital STB. Only NEWLY deployed devices are required to use cable cards, I believe. But I don't think that means that TW or other cable companies cannot "recycle" their existing supply of non-cable card STB.


Gee... you believe the pure crap that cableco say??? Why not go to the source... cablelabs...

http://www.opencable.com/primer/cablecard_primer.html

Snip...
The media has frequently reported that first-generation CableCARD 1.0 modules are one-way devices1. This is simply not true. CableLabs had always intended to develop the CableCARD module and host receiver standards with two-way capability. However the manufacturers of digital TVs requested that a host standard be developed that only had one-way capability. This one-way cable-ready receiver was defined by the FCC's Plug & Play order and by the Joint Test Suite (JTS). It is the definition of this one-way receiver that lacks the ability for two-way functionality, not the CableCARD module. While the FCC defined the elements of the one-way cable-ready receiver, CableLabs continued to define specifications for two-way receivers.

When a CableCARD 1.0 module is used with a two-way receiver (e.g., Samsung HLR5067C) that card supports all the necessary two-way functionality for VOD, SDV, and other interactive services.


----------



## wizzy

mikeyts said:


> You're killin' me, lrhorer ! Pay attention! All of this was revealed in articles linked to by posts in this thread. First, from a bit in Engadget ("the company" is Motorola)


Engadget was able to see the resolver in action at the Cable Show.


----------



## mikeyts

wizzy said:


> Engadget was able to see the resolver in action at the Cable Show.


Cool. Now where's the report on the SA box that subs of the the most aggressive purveyor of SDV, Time Warner, are mostly going to need ? Nice to see some of the modifications to the TiVo GUI, though.

Thanks for the link.

EDIT: In comments on that article, author Ben Drawbaugh--aka bdraw, poster of this FAQ--indicates that Cisco's STA-1520 was there, but they didn't have a working demo up as for the MTR700. He'll try to get pictures up on Engadget of their display today.

I note that the primary cable provider in New Orleans is a division of Cox using a Motorola network, which might have made it easier for Moto to set up a demo there.


----------



## TiVo Steve

Jeez... cable card(s), now a "Tuning Adapter"... pretty soon there will be more cable company parts than TiVo parts. 
That will be the time to move to OTA recording!


----------



## lrhorer

m_jonis said:


> Further, I stated that the Tivo would not be compatible in "2-way mode".


Yes, you did. There is no such thing as "2-way mode" for a CableCard, nor is anything under development which would make use of such a mode.



m_jonis said:


> You conveniently ignored that and twisted my statement to claim something I did not. Name me a currently produced and available Tivo unit that can use a cable card in 2-way mode.


Depending on how one defines "2-way mode", one may either say that no CableCard host does or ever will or one may say every CableCard host does and always shall.



m_jonis said:


> oh that's right, it's not out yet (because if there was one, we wouldn't need a tuning resolver and we'd also be able to VOD and PPV).


That has nothing to do with the CableCards. Your original statement was:



m_jonis said:


> I'm pretty sure that 2-way cable card isn't deployed yet, although if it is, I'm 99.9% sure it is incompatible (2-way mode anyway) with any Tivo currently made.


There is no such thing as "2-way mode" for any CableCard which may be distinguished in any way from the operations of the very first CableCard ever manufactured. Your post very clearly suggests there is some sort of revision to CableCards which looms on the horizon which will employ some sort of 2-way capability not found in the current batch of CableCards and this imminent card will have some sort of incompatibility with the Series 3 class TiVos.



m_jonis said:


> SDV may be two way, but the currently available cable cards do not send out the information.


...and they never will. They can't. A CableCard is nothing but a standard PCMCIA card. It would fit in your average laptop. There are no RF connections to the outside world, and no real way to create one - there being no reason to create one, either. Every CableCard communicates bidirectionally over a 2-way bus to its host. No CableCard communicates directly to the Headend, although some of it's messages are passed along by the host if the host is 2-way.



m_jonis said:


> It may be with actually doing "2-way mode" with the cable companies STB, but I'm not sure about that. (TW website seems to indicate that they are, but I don't know that for sure).


Take a look at the CableCard setup screen on your S3 or THD. You will see all sorts of information transferred from the CableCard to the TiVo, including the 
CableCard ID. Then take a look at the diagnostics screens. You will see all sorts of information transferred from the CableCard to the TiVo at the TiVo's behest. Finally, take a look at your TV screen while watching a digital program. That digital stream is coming from the CableCard to the TiVo, after first being transferred from the TiVo to the CableCard.



m_jonis said:


> Also, please backup your statement that the majority of all SDV boxes are cable card based. I would respectfully state that is untrue. In our area, TW own numbers state that they have approx. 500 cable card customers.


When they say "CableCard customers, they are usually referring to customers with 3rd party equipment containing CableCards.



m_jonis said:


> The rest of their customers are analog only


In which case they don't get SDV channels and are not part of the metric.



m_jonis said:


> or TW non-cable card digital STB. Only NEWLY deployed devices are required to use cable cards, I believe.


Yes, "newly" being defined as after July 7, 2007, or nearly a year ago.



m_jonis said:


> But I don't think that means that TW or other cable companies cannot "recycle" their existing supply of non-cable card STB.


True, and it's possible there are more such boxes out there than new ones, in which case your comment would be correct. Given the fact a siginificant number of systems have only deployed SDV within the last 12 months, however, and given the huge number of CableCard based STBs and DVRS deployed in the last year, I suspect the number of CableCard based devices greatly exceeds the number of integrated devices. I could well be in error on this point.


----------



## mikeyts

Engadget has a blurb up now here, about Cisco's STA1520 Tuning Adapter, a prototype of which is on display at The Cable Show in New Orleans. It's considerably bigger than Moto's model (bdraw estimates that it's about 10x7x2), but it'll fit on the floor behind my equipment cabinet just fine.


----------



## imreolajos

TiVo Steve said:


> Jeez... cable card(s), now a "Tuning Adapter"... pretty soon there will be more cable company parts than TiVo parts.
> That will be the time to move to OTA recording!


Yeah, this is getting ridiculous! I have had a ton of problems with CableCard vs. TiVo HD ever since I bought my unit (5+ months), a day ago my M-Card stopped functioning altogether, so my local cable tech will be coming out to replace it. If they can't even get that one right, I can't imagine the kind of problems we'll be having when yet another box is thrown at us - from YET another company.


----------



## mikeyts

imreolajos said:


> Yeah, this is getting ridiculous! I have had a ton of problems with CableCard vs. TiVo HD ever since I bought my unit (5+ months), a day ago my M-Card stopped functioning altogether, so my local cable tech will be coming out to replace it. If they can't even get that one right, I can't imagine the kind of problems we'll be having when yet another box is thrown at us - from YET another company.


What YET another company??? If you're using a Cisco/SA M-Card you will be using a Cisco/SA Tuning Adapter. The Cisco/SA TA will not work on Moto networks and the Moto TA will not work on Cisco/SA nets.

If you feel like making a complaint in this thread, do us all a favor and just quietly sell your TiVo and get DirecTV installed. First, everyone's up and arms about SDV rendering their TiVos useless and now the Tuning Adapter starts to become a reality and the cry-babies whine about that .


----------



## lrhorer

imreolajos said:


> Yeah, this is getting ridiculous! I have had a ton of problems with CableCard vs. TiVo HD ever since I bought my unit (5+ months), a day ago my M-Card stopped functioning altogether, so my local cable tech will be coming out to replace it. If they can't even get that one right, I can't imagine the kind of problems we'll be having when yet another box is thrown at us - from YET another company.


Well, first of all, it's not from another company. The TA which you receive will be manufactured by the same company which manufactures the CableCard. If you have a Motorola CC, then you'll get a Motorola TA. Secondly, the presence of the TA should make troubleshooting much easier. One of the shortcomings of the unidirectional CableCard host is that there is no interaction with the headend, so the CSR at the CATV company can't see what is happening at the receiver. With a 2-way device (which includes the TA / TiVo combo), the host controller at the headend can query the device to see if it's talking and in good order. To the CSR, it will look pretty much like the CATV company's own box, and the hassles associated with CableCard problems should be reduced.

Note I said, "Should be". As always, YMMV.


----------



## lrhorer

mikeyts said:


> This reminds me of your insistence that "SDV" also refers to "VOD".


I really am not sure what you mean by that, although you've said something like it before. I don't believe I've ever said anything of the sort, or if I did it was a typo on my part. All Video on Demand is implemented via SDV or some other switched protocol such as IPTV. While not technically impossible to deliver VOD service over a linear channel lineup, even an extremely limited VOD deployment in a geographically very small delivery system would eat up hundreds of MHz of bandwidth for a single VOD offering on a purely linear system. It would be like laying train tracks to every house and trying to move everyone around the country by selling each person their own locomotive. Thus, in the vast majority of aluminum coax based MSOs, VOD strictly implies SDV. SDV, however, in no way necessarily implies VOD. There are a ton of services engendered by SDV, and VOD is only one of them. Indeed, VOD is only prudent in a system where there are enough SDV QAMs over and above the number necessary to handle the load of scheduled programs available to make it practical. Even in an SDV system, VOD eats up bandwidth in a hurry. A really diverse CATV lineup might have 300 scheduled streams. A VOD system with more than 100,000 subs could easily run to thousands in a hurry. More than 2/3 the SDV QAMs in a large metropolitan market must be allocatable to VOD if VOD is to be deployed at all.



mikeyts said:


> While technically true, people using the term "SDV" in the press and in this thread are never referring anything other than the relatively new bandwidth optimizing technique of using digital switching to transmit essentially linear video services.


I think you mean scheduled services. A linear channel is one which is specifically *not* SDV. Nonethless, I shan't attempt to speak for the other members of this forum and certainly not for the press, but the simple fact is eliminating SDV means eliminating VOD, period. It also means eliminating most of the HD content which could be delivered in the future. For some systems, like TWC here in San Antonio, it would mean eliminating a large number of existing SD and HD channels that are available at this very moment.

Regardless of how the term might be used or misused in the vernacular, SDV is a protocol which switches the digital content on a node by node basis. It has nothing specifically to do with what that content might be, whether it be scheduled programming, interactive services, games, internet access, VOD, or features like "video rewind" and IPPV. By far the greatest number of SDV QAMs will be eaten up by VOD services. (Note: "Video rewind" is a VOD service, but doesn't look to the consumer like it is VOD.)


----------



## lrhorer

mikeyts said:


> And as I said, having said all of this to the press, they'd just have some explaining to do if they failed to bring working units to "Noleans" as promised. I didn't say that there'd be anything _we_ could do about it .


Well, then it looks like SA / Cisco has some 'splaining to do. While true (as you mention above) the easiest way to get a CATV feed to the box at the cable show is to use the local CATV company's feed, the excuse of not having a compatible CATV feed for the box on hand falls rather flat. They are, after all, the people who make the equipment which produces the signals in question. I'm not saying they did, but anyone could take an existing STB and silkscreen the letters "STA1520" on it.

Although despite the fact I am rather disgusted by the approach they decided to take for the TA, few people, if any, are looking forward to the delivery of the SA / Cisco TA more than I. I'm not holding my breath, however. I would be willing to bet a Klondike Bar there won't be one (let alone 3) in my house before Thanksgiving. I wouldn't be shocked if I can't get one before next summer, and then perhaps not at a reasonable rate. I'd love to be surprised, though.


----------



## ah30k

lrhorer said:


> Regardless of how the term might be used or misused in the vernacular, SDV is a protocol which switches the digital content on a node by node basis. It has nothing specifically to do with what that content might be, whether it be scheduled programming, interactive services, games, internet access, VOD, or features like "video rewind" and IPPV. By far the greatest number of SDV QAMs will be eaten up by VOD services. (Note: "Video rewind" is a VOD service, but doesn't look to the consumer like it is VOD.)


Here we have a fundamental difference of opinion. I (and I believe many others) use the term *"SDV"* to refer only to the switching of scheduled broadcast non-trick-play services as demonstrated by the recent releases from SA, Mot and Bigband. Dynamic services like VOD are unique to the home ordering it and involve so many other technologies such as trick-play controls that they are refered to in other terms such as *"VOD"*. VOD has been around much longer than the SDV as I've described and the use of the term SDV when you mean VOD is just plain confusing.

I'd bet a case of your favorite beverage that you are the only person on this forum using the term SDV to refer to VOD services.


----------



## Firekite

ah30k said:


> Here we have a fundamental difference of opinion.


No, you have a fundamental lack of understanding. SDV is the technology that makes VOD and other such services possible. If you had VOD services available to you, they've been delivered via SDV. Just because VOD may predate your awareness of SDV doesn't mean SDV came after VOD. At first, no channels were themselves switched; they were just always on. But in an effort to accommodate more and more HD channels including for niche markets, more and more channels are being switched.



> the use of the term SDV when you mean VOD is just plain confusing.


If so, then it's a) primarily because you're confused in general and b) it hasn't happened. Perhaps you didn't read the first couple of sentences of his post: "I don't believe I've ever said anything of the sort, or if I did it was a typo on my part."



> I'd bet a case of your favorite beverage that you are the only person on this forum using the term SDV to refer to VOD services.


You owe him a case. See that you deliver it promptly.


----------



## cableguy763

I had to look out the window to see if pigs were flying. Firekite is agreeing and actually defending Irhorer . Next thing that will happen is the tuning resolver being delivered to customers tomorrow.


----------



## ah30k

Please show me one reference to the term SDV to refer to any VOD service please (other than this thread). I guess two fools and I lose a case. 

p.s. I don't have a fundamental misunderstanding of the technology. I know how VOD, PPV and SDV work. Many around here know I work for a company that is intimately involved in the development and deployment of SDV systems.


----------



## smelchionda

Ok, how about back to a relevant topic...

Anyone have an update on when we will have that USB "dongle" that will allow me to finally use my Series 3 Tivo with out the need to use a cable box?


----------



## ah30k

smelchionda said:


> Ok, how about back to a relevant topic...
> 
> Anyone have an update on when we will have that USB "dongle" that will allow me to finally use my Series 3 Tivo with out the need to use a cable box?


Dude, have you been paying any attention at all to the postings from The Cable Show? If you are going to be cocky on your first post then I'd think you should at least pay attention!


----------



## cableguy763

smelchionda said:


> Ok, how about back to a relevant topic...
> 
> Anyone have an update on when we will have that USB "dongle" that will allow me to finally use my Series 3 Tivo with out the need to use a cable box?


Funny that you don't want to use a cable box, but the "dongle" is essentially a cable box.


----------



## Firekite

ah30k said:


> p.s. I don't have a fundamental misunderstanding of the technology.


That's your claim, yet you offer nothing to back it up, much less a _mea culpa_ rescinding your assertion that SDV is _not_ the technology that delivers switched content like VOD and HD channels that aren't always on.


----------



## smelchionda

One more time...

anyone have an update. I'd rather not read though 52 pages of folks arguing about cable TV technology acronyms.


----------



## smelchionda

cableguy763 said:


> Funny that you don't want to use a cable box, but the "dongle" is essentially a cable box.


Yes, that is why "dongle" was in quotes.


----------



## ah30k

smelchionda said:


> One more time...
> 
> anyone have an update. I'd rather not read though 52 pages of folks arguing about cable TV technology acronyms.


Your are lazy and I prefer not to tutor you on this topic. Look it up yourself.


----------



## Firekite

Plus, this shows that she was already up to date on the updates:


smelchionda said:


> Yes, that is why "dongle" was in quotes.


----------



## ah30k

I have no dispute that VOD dynamically turns streams on and off (ie switching them) but the term SDV has never been and will never be used to refer to VOD. How can I prove a the non-existance of something.


----------



## Firekite

ah30k said:


> I have no dispute that VOD dynamically turns streams on and off (ie switching them)


No, it doesn't. *SDV* dynamically turns streams on and of (i.e. switching them). VOD refers to the ability to utilize SDV to request a new stream. SDV does more than VOD, though, as it also provides for regular broadcast channels to be streamed as needed rather than constantly. SDV is bigger than just VOD, but VOD requires SDV. VOD _is_ one of the offerings made available by SDV.

Switched Digital Video makes Video On Demand possible.



> the term SDV has never been and will never be used to refer to VOD.


See above for clarification.


----------



## smelchionda

You guys have essentially hijacked this thread for your own little sword fight. Why don't you take this argument offline and hash it out amongst yourselves so that we don't have to read though 52 pages of opinion, speculation and anecdotes to find something marginally relevant to the average Tivo user impacted by SDV?


----------



## cableguy763

smelchionda said:


> You guys have essentially hijacked this thread for your own little sword fight. Why don't you take this argument offline and hash it out amongst yourselves so that we don't have to read though 52 pages of opinion, speculation and anecdotes to find something marginally relevant to the average Tivo user impacted by SDV?


Why don't you use the little scroll wheel on your mouse and read the following threads with SDV adaptor progress in their title??:

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=390736

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=375723

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=394039

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=394069


----------



## ah30k

I don't know what else to say but SA recently launched SDV and Mot is only still in trials with SDV yet they both had VOD for many years. I guess you just have a different definition of what SDV is and both Mot and SA must have launched your version of SDV years ago.


----------



## mikeyts

My original point is that the term SDV has been coopted to mean specifically using digital video switching to provide access to entire scheduled video services (like, "The Food Network HD" and "The History Channel HD")--it does not refer to the use of switching to provide VOD or IPPV. The fact that UDCR devices can't access those interactive services is well known and no one who bought one had the expectation of being able to use them without a leased STB (well, maybe a few slow-on-the-uptake people did ). No one cares about that--they care that their cable providers are using a new application of digital video switching to add new video services to tiers that they already subscribe to which they can't access using their UDCR equipment.

The title of this thread is "SDV FAQ". The FAQ in the top post does not refer to VOD or IPPV when it uses the term SDV. I defy you to find a single article posted in the online technical press in the past two years which uses any of the terms "Switched Digital Video", "Switched Digital", "Switched Video" or "Switched Video Broadcast" while referring to VOD or IPPV. Are we to read the headline, "NCTA and TiVo Announce Switched Digital Solution for HD DVRs", in the NCTA's press-releases to mean that they've developed a solution which gives HD DVRs access to VOD or IPPV? No. When we read that, there was no confusion--we all knew exactly what they were talking about.

Please--if there's a specific term for this recent bandwidth-conserving use of digital video switching on cable systems, please name it. Otherwise, we're left with having to say "non-VOD, non-IPPV SDV"; kind of awkward. Words and phrases which meant one general thing get coopted to mean something more specific all the time--language evolves, technical and otherwise, and like it or not, that's what's happened. We already had precise terms for VOD and IPPV; if we cut them out of the meaning of SDV, there's no loss to the jargon. Only the staunchly pedantic will mourn.

The problem has been that a few people insist on using SDV interchangeably with VOD in this thread. It always causes confusion and one has to believe that the people who use it that way are purposely trying to cause confusion, for whatever personal reason.


----------



## Firekite

mikeyts said:


> The problem has been that a few people insist on using SDV interchangeably with VOD in this thread.


Like who? Can you show an example?


----------



## mikeyts

Firekite said:


> Like who? Can you show an example?


Well, there was this whole ridiculous discussion, as a case in point. MichaelK states that "Howard Stern TV" is a VOD channel now, but might become an SDV channel in the future. lrhorer quips in with "Virtually no one offers VOD unless it's SDV." He knew exactly what MichaelK meant, but the pedant in him just couldn't resist making the _useless_ point that all VOD is Switched Video. Yes, cable systems have been doing digital video switching for years, but they have not had the ability to do this switching-used-to-share-bandwidth-between-broadcast-services trick until recently, and it required the deployment of both new equipment and new software to acheive it.

BigBand Networks is probably the most popular supplier of systems for adding Switched Digital Video to cable networks. They have a product page at their site for "Switched Video" (here) which splits out into two sections, one labelled "Switched Digital Video" and one labelled "Video On Demand". Yes, VOD is "Switched Video" and yes, it's "Digital", but even the people who manufacture hardware and software systems for implementing it draw a distinction between "Video On Demand" and "Switched Digital Video".

I've examined some product literature at Cisco and Motorola as well--it's riddled with phrases like "enable QAM sharing between SDV and VOD services" (from this Cisco/SA page on SDV products). Here's a choice segment from Motorola's "Using Bandwidth More Efficiently with Switched Digital Video" whitepaper (last paragraph of PDF page 3):


> The term "switched digital video" describes the types of services in cable networks that are a hybrid between VOD and traditional one-way broadcast services. VOD switches a singlecast interactive program to a user. SDV switches broadcast video streams, making each stream available to one or more subscribers who simply join the broadcast stream just as they would with normal broadcast services.
> 
> To the subscriber, SDV services are indistinguishable from traditional broadcast services.


(Forgive any typos--it's a "locked" PDF file that doesn't allow the cut operation so I had to transcribe that).

The cable technology industry has a clear definition of "Switched Digital Video" as used in their published literature and does not use it as an umbrella term which encompasses "Video On Demand". (That Moto whitepaper would suggest, rather than VOD being a type of SDV, that SDV is a type of VOD). SDV refers specifically to the use of video switching to share a pool of bandwidth on network edge segments between a group of broadcast video services. This is not a "misuse"--it's the firmly established meaning of the term. Arguing that "VOD" is a type of "SDV" is tedious, _wrong_ (according to the cable equipment industry) and utterly unproductive.


----------



## Firekite

mikeyts said:


> MichaelK states that "Howard Stern TV" is a VOD channel now, but might become an SDV channel in the future. lrhorer quips in with "Virtually no one offers VOD unless it's SDV." He knew exactly what MichaelK meant, but the pedant in him just couldn't resist making the _useless_ point that all VOD is Switched Video.


That wasn't the thing that you and ah30k were complaining about. The complaint was that VOD was being used interchangeably with SDV, etc. WTF is the problem? Someone's being educated against their will?



> Yes, VOD is "Switched Video" and yes, it's "Digital", but even the people who manufacture hardware and software systems for implementing it draw a distinction between "Video On Demand" and "Switched Digital Video".


Of course they do. Good lord, why wouldn't they? They're two separate things. One is a mechanism, a protocol, while the other is one of the services made possible and available _by_ that mechanism. _In fact_, the problem _actually_ seems to stem from using the mechanism acronym (SDV) to _also_ refer to another "service" (that is, something probably better called "Channel On Demand") made available by the _mechanism_.



> Arguing that "VOD" is a type of "SDV" is tedious, _wrong_ (according to the cable equipment industry) and utterly unproductive.


Well it certainly is wrong, as VOD is certainly not a type of SDV, nor is SDV a type of VOD, and I don't think anyone has claimed that.


----------



## mikeyts

Firekite said:


> That wasn't the thing that you and ah30k were complaining about. The complaint was that VOD was being used interchangeably with SDV, etc. WTF is the problem? Someone's being educated against their will?


How is...


lrhorer said:


> Virtually no one offers VOD unless it's SDV.


...not something which equates the two acronyms? Perhaps it's not using the two things "interchangeably"--I withdraw that claim. Happy now ? The statement _does_ imply that VOD is a subclass of SDV, which, as the industry which invented both technologies defines the term SDV, is incorrect.


Firekite said:


> Of course they do. Good lord, why wouldn't they? They're two separate things. One is a mechanism, a protocol, while the other is one of the services made possible and available _by_ that mechanism. _In fact_, the problem _actually_ seems to stem from using the mechanism acronym (SDV) to _also_ refer to another "service" (that is, something probably better called "Channel On Demand") made available by the _mechanism_.


The industry does not "also" use the term SDV to refer to what you call "a service", the industry _only_ uses the term to refer to that. In fact, I consider your claim that anyone (other than you and lrhorer) uses the term "SDV" to refer to a generic video switching mechanism used to implement "VOD" and other things to be _nonsense_ until you show me some evidence otherwise, anywhere on a cable equipment OEM's website or in the technical press. I showed you some evidence supporting my claim that it only refers to "a service", including a succinct definition comparing the two given in a Motorola whitepaper; I could show you _much_ more of the same.


Firekite said:


> Well it certainly is wrong, as VOD is certainly not a type of SDV, nor is SDV a type of VOD, and I don't think anyone has claimed that.


Your statement...


Firekite said:


> Switched Digital Video makes Video On Demand possible.


...sounds a whole lot like that, to me. What the people who created both VOD and SDV mean when they say "Switched Digital Video" (and again, the _only_ thing that they mean when they say that) doesn't have anything to do with Video On Demand. To implement what they call "Switched Digital Video", you have to purchase a bunch of additional software and hardware. If you installed all of that stuff and later decided to remove it all, your network wouldn't be capable of what the cable industry calls "Switched Digital Video" anymore, but it would still be able to do VOD (if it were able to do it to begin with).

As I've shown, when Motorola, Cisco/SA and BigBand Networks say "SDV" they mean "video switching used to share a pool of bandwidth on edge segments between a group of broadcast video services"--if you examine the entirety of all of those companies' websites you will not find "SDV" used to mean anything else. It's a hot buzzword for a watershed technology which is being sold as a means for cable to continue to compete with the plethora of high definition broadcast services being offered by their DBS and telecomm rivals, without expending the momumental amounts of cash and time that would be required to actually expand the real bandwidth capacity of their networks. Arguing that it's a generic term for the basic video switching mechanism used to implement it and VOD is specious.


----------



## Firekite

Holy buttnuggets. It's like trying to convince relatives that I'm sending them an email, not an internet, that the email is transmitted over the internet, and they're insisting that because Sen. Ted Stevens said so, the facts themselves are irrelevant.


----------



## bicker

ah30k said:


> Wow, now firekite and I agree?


How _embarrassing_ for you!


----------



## mikeyts

Firekite said:


> Holy buttnuggets. It's like trying to convince relatives that I'm sending them an email, not an internet, that the email is transmitted over the internet, and they're insisting that because Sen. Ted Stevens said so, the facts themselves are irrelevant.


Yeah, it's a whole lot like that, isn't it ? (And thanks for that colorful interjection, BTW). The difference is that Sen. Stevens is pretty far removed from the details of Internet technology (though he may serve on some related advisory boards); the examples I offer are from companies who are at the heart of cable network tech. I give you examples of the industry's use of the term "Switched Digital Video" as drawn from three major OEMs providing equipment and software for implementing "Switched Digital Video" in HFC cable television networks. You offer as conflicting "fact" merely your sayso. Forgive me if your "argument" fails to impress.

Again, two sentences from Motorola's "Using Bandwidth More Efficiently with Switched Digital Video" whitepaper (end of PDF page 3):


> VOD switches a singlecast interactive program to a user. SDV switches broadcast video streams, making each stream available to one or more subscribers who simply join the broadcast stream just as they would with normal broadcast services.


(I think that Motorola is a somewhat stronger authority on cable network technologies than Sen. Stevens is an expert on the nuts and bolts of the Internet--YMMV ). Whose definition of SDV should we use? One from Firekite (and lrhorer) or one from Motorola? I think that I've made it clear which way _I_ lean on that.

All we're really asking is to be able to continue this discussion with people being able to refer to "SDV channels" and "VOD channels" in the same post without someone replying "but VOD channels _are_ SDV channels", which is, according to Motorola's definition of SDV--and BigBand's and Cisco/SA's--wrong, your personal definition of SDV notwithstanding, whereever it is that you derive it from.


----------



## hsfjr

cableguy763 said:


> ...pigs were flying.... Next thing that will happen is the tuning resolver being delivered to customers tomorrow.


Dang, and just yesterday I stopped into the RR office and got... "We don't have any information on that."

Can the truck stop by the house first thing in the a.m.?


----------



## Firekite

mikeyts said:


> the examples I offer are from companies who are at the heart of cable network tech.


No, the examples you offer are from _the marketing departments_ of companies who are involved in cable network tech. And honestly, I don't have a problem using that naming convention if that's where we're going with it. I do have a problem with insisting that one has nothing to do with each other and refusing to acknowledge the technical reality.



> All we're really asking is to be able to continue this discussion with people being able to refer to "SDV channels" and "VOD channels" in the same post without someone replying "but VOD channels _are_ SDV channels"


I'm fine with that, but that's the first time in recent memory that such an objection's been made. That wasn't your point before, remember?


----------



## classicsat

Firekite said:


> SDV does more than VOD


SDV does less, actually, it just chooses/releases an existing linear stream, VOD, in addition to that, can choose a dynamic stream from a menu, and manipulate (trick-play) it, the latter which cannot (at least yet, or the cable providers don't want) over the TA interface.


----------



## Firekite

Sigh.


----------



## mikeyts

Firekite said:


> No, the examples you offer are from _the marketing departments_ of companies who are involved in cable network tech. And honestly, I don't have a problem using that naming convention if that's where we're going with it. I do have a problem with insisting that one has nothing to do with each other and refusing to acknowledge the technical reality.


The marketing departments get most of what they say from the engineers (many of the marketers at such companies have undergrad engineering degrees). I'm a retired software engineer who worked for over 30 years on firmware in the computer storage, large-scale networking equipment and consumer electronics industries, and I've been engineering laison to marketing a few time (I actually worked for Moto for a while, but not on broadband). I assure you that engineers and lawyers went over every word of that whitepaper . The choice of "Switched Digital Video" as the label for the "sharing a pool of bandwidth on a edge segment between many broadcast streams" technology was probably mostly on marketing, though. It doesn't matter--the term was coopted to mean specifically that and the industry is consistently sticking to it. When you see "Switched Digital Video" or "SDV" in the related technical press or on sites like Answer.com and Wikipedia, everybody's talking about the same thing. The FAQ at the top of this thread is specifically about that technology and we as CableCARD TiVo owners (except that you aren't one, are you?) are specifically concerned with that technology and how it's shutting us out of new cable content that we had every expectation of being able to get. Posting objections of "VOD channels _are_ SDV channels" does nothing to aid the discussion and merely creates massive ratholes like the one that we're in now.

Sure VOD and SDV are related--they're both based on video switching, but both are much more than that. SDV, as the term is defined by the industry, is not a component of VOD.


> I'm fine with that, but that's the first time in recent memory that such an objection's been made. That wasn't your point before, remember?


I'm sorry, but I don't recall stating any other objection than to people sayng things that implied that SDV is part of VOD (confusing other people into thinking that they were saying that VOD is a kind of SDV, leading to 20-post arguments). If I stated it poorly somewhere, I apologize.


----------



## lrhorer

mikeyts said:


> Well, there was this whole ridiculous discussion, as a case in point. MichaelK states that "Howard Stern TV" is a VOD channel now, but might become an SDV channel in the future. lrhorer quips in with "Virtually no one offers VOD unless it's SDV." He knew exactly what MichaelK meant


As anyone who reads the link you posted can see, MichaelK did not say what you claim he did, and I did not say what you claim I did. As to my knowing what MichaelK meant, in a forum such as this, I cannot assume anyone means anything other than precisely what they say, because to do so is to assume others reading the very same post have the proper background to read the same things between the lines that I might have. In this particular case, however, it seemed likely the poster was making a distinction between the equipment which carries broadcast SDV and VOD. There is none such. If you are claiming he meant Howard Stern TV might be changing from purely on-demand programming to purely or partially scheduled programming, then the fact is I didn't follow at all what you claim the OP had in mind. Either way, your assertion that I "knew exactly what MichaelK meant" and it's negative connotations were inappropriate to my post.

Many people on this forum seem to think there is some fundamental difference between SDV and VOD as it relates to the transmission standards. There is not. Many people are advocating eliminating SDV because they think SDV and VOD are independant technologies, and eliminating SDV would not eliminate VOD. In the context of a CATV system, they are not, and it would. Specifically, there are three and only three widely deployed digital video systems: linear, SDV, and IPTV. VOD uses precisely the same transmission equipment, reception equipment, and interactive protocols as that used by switched scheduled broadcasting, whatever the underlying protocol. It does require an additional set of protocols to allow the user to initiate the stream, as well as a vastly greater bandwidth from the servers. Scheduled programs allow no such control by the user, but the modulators, receivers, and streams are all identical. Indeed, while a linear QAM can distribute nothing but linear video, an SDV QAM can readily be transmitting a mixture of scheduled programs and VOD or similar programming, and that mixture can change at any moment. Looking at a particular timeslot within an SDV QAM, one moment it can be carrying a scheduled program, and the very next moment it may suddenly rewind by 30 seconds. A minute or two later it might start transmitting one of HBO's VOD offerings.

The video protocols are somewhat similar to data networking. Many networks switch at Layer 2, that being most often Ethernet these days, but some systems still employ Token Ring or SONET based transport streams (SONET or TDM transports still being the main choce for WAN connections). Some, however, switch at Layer 3. The Layer 2 networking is roughly analogous to CATV or FIOS, and SDV switching is more or less analogous to Layer 3 switching, while IPTV is IP based and can switch at Layer 2, Layer 3, or both.

The most common Layer 3 protocol these days is IP, although again there are others such as IPX, ISIS, etc. Similarly, the CATV provider can choose to implement SDV or IPTV or whatever other switched transport technology they may choose. There is nothing in the transport systems which prevent CATV systems from employing something other than SDV, but no matter what system they choose, no UDCP (by itself) can effectively receive program content delivered over the system of choice. By a very wide margin, SDV is the choice for most CATV providers, so in practical terms if we are talking about a switched service on a CATV system, we're talking SDV.

The two most common layer 4 protocols are UDP and TCP. Neither one requires IP to be the networking layer: they both can quite happily transverse an IPX or ISIS network, but speaking a bit loosely they both require there to be a Layer 3 protocol to carry them. Again, similarly, VOD doesn't necessarily require SDV for its transport. It's quite easy to implement it over IPTV. It's even hypothetically possible to implement it entirely over linear QAMs, provided the CATV company doesn't mind eating up its entire 750-1000MHz network with only 3 or 4 channels. No one, however, is that phenomenally stupid, so speaking in real world terms, VOD on a CATV system requires SDV.



mikeyts said:


> but the pedant in him just couldn't resist making the _useless_ point that all VOD is Switched Video.


It is not a useless point. No UDCP (by itself) can receive VOD. There are two reasons this is the case. One is regulatory and not absolute. To wit, the CATV providers are not bound by law to provide VOD and other 2-way services to UDCPs, no matter how they are modified. Thus, even with the TA, most users won't get VOD, video rewind, internet browsing, online banking, interactive gaming, etc.

The second is physical. If the unit cannot receive SDV programs, it can't receive VOD. If TiVo, the CATV companies, and the CATV equipment manufacturers chose to (agreed to), the TA could readily provide VOD and the other non-scheduled 2-way services. Why? Because it is all 100% SDV, especially as far as the STB / DVR is concerned. It only requires extra software to handle VOD, not any different hardware.



mikeyts said:


> BigBand Networks is probably the most popular supplier of systems for adding Switched Digital Video to cable networks.


No doubt, although I haven't seen the actual numbers. It is TWC's choice.



mikeyts said:


> They have a product page at their site for "Switched Video" (here) which splits out into two sections, one labelled "Switched Digital Video" and one labelled "Video On Demand".


Which is no big surprise. VOD requires a huge amount of processing and switching power and an unbelievable amount of server bandwidth, while plain vanilla scheduled SDV requires comparatively little. Using a different analogy, SD video requires much less horsepower than HD video, and a system capable of handling SD video won't necessarily be able to handle HD video. The fact it requires more capable transmitters and receivers doesn't mean HD isn't video. Similarly, the fact VOD can easily eat up hundreds of times the server horsepower and requires additional protocols doesn't mean it isn't SDV in the CATV environment. More to the point, if the video provider in question uses some other switching protocol (can you say FIOS or IPTV?), then for that system the VOD is not SDV. The number of fiber / aluminum based CATV providers who aren't using SDV for switching is tiny, however. To put it more simply, if a CATV system deploys VOD, then they have SDV capability in place. Deploying only basic SDV capability doesn't allow them to deploy VOD, however.



mikeyts said:


> I've examined some product literature at Cisco and Motorola as well--it's riddled with phrases like "enable QAM sharing between SDV and VOD services"


Which wouldn't be possible if they didn't use the same switching protocol. It's called SDV. I never said the two terms were anything like synonyms. I also never said they were fundamentally inseparable. What I did say is that if it's VOD on a CATV system, it's SDV (with an insignificantly small number of exceptions for those using some switched protocol other than SDV).



mikeyts said:


> SDV refers specifically to the use of video switching to share a pool of bandwidth on network edge segments between a group of broadcast video services.


Which is *PRECISELY* what VOD is... and video rewind... and video internet browsing... and On Demand PPV... and interactive gaming... and video conferencing... and of course scheduled SDV broadcasts.



mikeyts said:


> This is not a "misuse"--it's the firmly established meaning of the term.


... and it applies perfectly to VOD. Nothing in that definition limits the bandwidth of the service, requires any of the services to be authorized for multiple viewers, requires any of the services to be limited to a particular schedule, or requires any of the services to be restricted from initiation by one of the edge segments. Logically, the only difference between VOD and "ordinary" SDV is the video stream at the server is initiated by a user if it is VOD and by an automated system (often a network feed) if it is scheduled programming. Physicaly the difference is that a single scheduled feed only requires one continuous data stream coming from the server, while a VOD service can require hundreds or perhaps even thousands of intermitytent streams.



mikeyts said:


> Arguing that "VOD" is a type of "SDV" is tedious, _wrong_ (according to the cable equipment industry) and utterly unproductive.


I'll let all my friends and former colleagues who are still video engineers in the CATV industry know they are wrong according to themselves. As far as "unproductive" is concerned, the number of posts above which suggest some of the readers think VOD could be deployed in a CATV system without deploying SDV (or some other switched system which would be just as incompatible with the TiVo) is quite significant, and I do not consider any post which seeks to correct such misaprehensions to be unproductive. If you find them so, the skip them. No one is forcing you to read my posts. Indeed, I consider any attempt to fundamentally differentiate the issues with VOD and SDV in the context of the TiVo or understanding how either works to be counterproductive.


----------



## lrhorer

classicsat said:


> SDV does less, actually, it just chooses/releases an existing linear stream, VOD, in addition to that, can choose a dynamic stream from a menu, and manipulate (trick-play) it, the latter which cannot (at least yet, or the cable providers don't want) over the TA interface.


Well, not just VOD, but all on-demand and interactive services other than regularly scheduled SDV programming. In terms of the number of streams and amount of bandwidth used, many CATV systems employ a great deal more in services other than VOD and scheduled programming (both linear and switched) put together.


----------



## lrhorer

mikeyts said:


> How is...
> ...not something which equates the two acronyms?


You are claiming I cannot say I have a dog because she is an Irish Wolfhound. Well, almost. Where this analogy breaks down is that not all VOD is SDV, but in all but a very tiny number of CATV systems, it is. I can't think of any Irish Wolfhounds anywhere who aren't dogs, my dog's belief she is human notwithstanding.

Let's put it this way. If some of the people in this forum and elsewhere had their way and the FCC forced every CATV system to rip out their SDV equipment, what would happen to VOD on those systems?

Answer: it would stop dead cold, because the equipment and protocols which deliver SDV are the same ones which deliver VOD. VOD requires additional equipment at the TOC, to be sure, and the switches must have *much* greater throughput. You can insist that "VOD isn't SDV" all you want, but it uses the same streams as SDV, the same modulators as SDV, the same receivers SDV, has precisely the same engineering problems with UDCPs that SDV does, requires the same upgrades SDV does (yes, plus some additional ones), and produces an output which is completely indistinguishable from SDV. Oh, and by the way, what does a CATV company have to purchase, install, and maintain after implementing a VOD system - including STBs and DVRs - in order to deliver SDV? Nothing whatsoever. But VOD and SDV are completely separate and must be considered to be unrelated? OoohhhKaaaayyyy.....



mikeyts said:


> The statement _does_ imply that VOD is a subclass of SDV


No, it doesn't. It does imply any CATV system which offers VOD has SDV, which is accurate although not quite 100% true. There are a small handful of exceptions.



mikeyts said:


> In fact, I consider your claim that anyone (other than you and lrhorer) uses the term "SDV" to refer to a generic video switching mechanism used to implement "VOD" and other things to be


I never said that was the case. SDV is what is used by virtually all CATV systems to deliver VOD. FIOS uses IPTV. In the early days when we were working on the Pegasus project (and I was working for Time Warner Cable) we tried a number of switching systems to deploy VOD in the lab. I have no doubt there are still some small CATV systems out there using proprietary switching protocols to deliver VOD. I know for a fact some have tried IPTV, but I don't know if any fiber and aluminum providers are still toying with IPTV or not.



mikeyts said:


> To implement what they call "Switched Digital Video", you have to purchase a bunch of additional software and hardware.


No, you don't, which is the point you seem to be missing completely. Scheduled video only requires an input stream to the server, which can be almost pathetically puny. VOD requires the server to originate the streams and requires them to originate potentially thousands of streams. All the scheduled video sever really needs to do is encrypt the incoming stream and pass it on, assuming it's encrypted. If it's a local broadcast stream, it doesn't even do that.



mikeyts said:


> If you installed all of that stuff and later decided to remove it all, your network wouldn't be capable of what the cable industry calls "Switched Digital Video" anymore, but it would still be able to do VOD (if it were able to do it to begin with).


No, it wouldn't, because all one would be left with is a bunch of hyper-powerful servers and switches with no way to get the signal to the user. I don't know where you got the notion VOD uses a separate set of video equioment from SDV, but it doesn't. Remove SDV from the CATV system and VOD is gone... kaput... blasted... *it no worky*. Now do you understand?



mikeyts said:


> It's a hot buzzword for a watershed technology which is being sold as a means for cable to continue to compete with the plethora of high definition broadcast services being offered by their DBS and telecomm rivals, without expending the momumental amounts of cash and time that would be required to actually expand the real bandwidth capacity of their networks.


Which includes VOD and other on-demand services. Scheduled video services (linear and switched) may utilize in aggregate a few Gbps at the TOC. On demand sevices (including VOD) can easily require 100Gbps or more. There is more than one switching protocol which can be used to deliver on-demand services, but almost universally the one chosen by CATV providers is SDV. Now if you want to differentiate the service provided by scheduled SDV from the underlying protocol, then OK, but it is the exact same protocol used by SDV and requires all the same equipment and software used by SDV. We also need a name for it. What do you suggest? The only way to remove SDV capabilities from the system is to remove those protocols, in which case pffft! goes VOD, your assertion notwithstanding.



mikeyts said:


> Arguing that it's a generic term for the basic video switching mechanism used to implement it and VOD is specious.


It's not a generic term. It refers specifically to the switching protocols used by almost every CATV system which deploys switching, so it's almost universal in CATV circles. There isn't a separate one for VOD and other interactive and on-demand services.

Capiche?


----------



## lrhorer

ah30k said:


> Here we have a fundamental difference of opinion. I (and I believe many others) use the term *"SDV"* to refer only to the switching of scheduled broadcast non-trick-play services as demonstrated by the recent releases from SA, Mot and Bigband.


Obviously. From an engineering standpoint it is a mostly superfluous distinction, especially from the standpoint of the customer's receiver (in this forum, a TiVo). It can be a significant distinction, however, in light of the FCC regulations on what must and must not be supported on UDCPs. If the distinction is made, however, then it also must be made between the services implied by the term "SDV" and the underlying protocols, since those same protocols are used by on-demand services, including VOD. This is not being done (or apparently understood) in this thread. Certainly, it's not unheard of for a single term to refer to both a service and it's underlying protocols.



ah30k said:


> Dynamic services like VOD are unique to the home ordering it and involve so many other technologies such as trick-play controls that they are refered to in other terms such as *"VOD"*.


True. It also, however, relies on an underlying switching protocol set, or rather it must in all practicality do so. It generates far too much bandwidth to be practical on a linear system. For almost all CATV systems that underlying protocol is SDV, or if you insist the same protocol set used by SDV.



ah30k said:


> VOD has been around much longer than the SDV as


Indeed it has. I never suggested it hadn't. Since my personal familiarity with VOD extends back into the early 1990s, it would be singularly odd should I do so.



ah30k said:


> I've described and the use of the term SDV when you mean VOD is just plain confusing.


I have never done so, or at least not intentionally. The fact I expounded the deduction that (virtually) any CATV system which offers VOD is employing SDV in no way confuses the two. When I say "VOD" I mean the service which allows consumers to select a program from a menu and start playing it on their TV from the headend. When I say "VOD and similar services" I mean anything which employs the VOD protocols to deliver a user controlled video from the headend. When I say "SDV" I mean the protocols used by the vast majority of CATV systems who deploy switching at all which allow a different set of digital streams to be delivered to each independent edge network. Unless I specifically limit the use of those protocols to scheduled programs, the term is intended to include on-demand services.



ah30k said:


> I'd bet a case of your favorite beverage that you are the only person on this forum using the term SDV to refer to VOD services.


I don't, but I do use it to include VOD and other on-demand and interactive services. What term would you prefer I use to include all services which employ the digital video switching protocol set also used by scheduled SDV? I suggest you make it a good one, because I rarely have any reason to limit the discussion to scheduled programs, especially since they are a tiny minority.


----------



## lrhorer

cableguy763 said:


> I had to look out the window to see if pigs were flying. Firekite is agreeing and actually defending Irhorer . Next thing that will happen is the tuning resolver being delivered to customers tomorrow.


Oink. <flap flap>


----------



## dig_duggler

Not that it really matters, but when does Q2 actually end? Just curious as to when the reported timeframe is officially missed....


----------



## classicsat

End of June, in my mind, of the calender year.


----------



## bicker

Indeed: Q2 ends June 30.

That doesn't mean anything will happen by then. That metric was just put forward as a goal, not a promise.


----------



## mikeyts

Under the best of circumstances, engineering estimates made as far ahead as that one was are of limited accuracy. Being an estimate of a cooperative effort by CableLabs, Motorola, Scientific Atlanta, TiVo and all of the major cable providers, this one had almost no chance of being precise. Still, I don't think that it will be more than 2 or 3 months late, which is pretty good, considering.


----------



## MichaelK

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=6336627#post6336627



jebbbz said:


> *Switched Digital Video arrives July 1 in Phoenix, AZ*
> 
> I just got a letter from Cox announcing SDV starting July 1. ...
> 
> The letter mentions the Tuning Adapter will be available "later this year" (boo!!!) and will be provided "by Cox at no charge" (hooray!!!)


----------



## moyekj

MichaelK said:


> http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=6336627#post6336627


Interesting... Now if non-CableCard Tivo users are also able to get hold of one for free this may just be the perfect solution to the Tivo no guide for unencrypted QAM channels issue (since the tuning adapter should provide the channel mapping function).


----------



## mikeyts

I feel fairly certain that TiVo's going to have to work that out themselves. Not being able to get a potential boatload of new conditional access channels is one thing (and in some places, like Hawaii, a bunch of old ones); not being able to figure out where the non-conditional access ones are is another and most definitely not the cable industry's problem. I have to think that only people attaching them to certain certified pieces of equipment in which one or more leased CableCARDs is installed will ever get one of these things.


----------



## jkovach

For Cox subscribers in the Phoenix market, here's a list of the channels that are being moved to SDV on 7/1/08, per the letter I received in the mail yesterday:

109 Cox Real Estate 2
110 Daystar
112 INSP
113 EWTN
114 BYU-TV
125 C-SPAN 2
126 C-SPAN 3
133 DIY
144 Fox Reality Channel
155 BET Jazz
156 Great American Country
157 Fuse
158 G4
159 Logo
163 Fit TV
170 Fox College Sports Atlantic
172 Fox College Sports Pacific
173 Fuel
405 TV Chile
410 De Pelicula
411 De Pelicula Clasico
412 CineLatino
413 VeneMovies
417 History en Espanol
418 Discovery en Espanol
422 Discovery Familia
423 TOON Disney en Espanol
424 Boomerang en Espanol
425 Sorpresa
430 MTV Tres
432 Bandamax
433 VideoRola
434 mun2
438 ESPN Deportes
439 Fox Sports en Espanol
440 GoITV
444 CNN en Espanol
445 Canal Sur
449 EWTN Espanol
500 iNDEMAND Previews
601-606 ESPN Game Plan / ESPN Full Court
650 NBA League Pass Preview
651-659 NBA League Pass / MLS Direct Kick
671-684 MLB Extra Innings / NHL Center Ice
840 Public Safety
850 Public Safety
851 Public Safety
853 Public Safety
854 Public Safety
856 Public Safety
857 Public Safety

So far, I have to applaud Cox for selecting channels with limited appeal, and none that are HD. Of course, I know that's the whole idea behind SDV (moving limited appeal channels to it, and leaving the rest alone), but there were rumours that in the Phoenix market the plan was to put everything digital on SDV.

In my case so far, I see no need to get a tuning adapter, even if it is free. I either don't subscribe to most of these channels, or in the exceptionally rare case I need to record something from one I can use my S2 that is still hooked up to a cable box.

Jeff


----------



## bicker

Yes, Jeff, I'm encouraged by that selection of channels. It shows a very good sense of perspective. Hopefully Comcast will follow the same general model.


----------



## Enforcer

You guys in phoenix are lucky. In San Antonio all the good stuff is SDV. Give them time, they'll screw you eventually. I can't wait for the adapter. Tired of having to go into my office to see all the channels.


----------



## bhoch99

I've been reading about the Tuning Adapter coming out, looking at the pictures from the cable show in New Orleans. Here's some questions to research or add to the FAQ once answered:

1. How much will the tuning adapter cost? My cable provider (TWC) already charges me $1.75 per month per cable card. I read that Cox will be providing the box for free to customers, does anyone think this will be true for other cable providers?

2. Will a truck roll be required in order to deploy the tuning adapter? I had to pay TWC around $22 for them to install the cable cards, don't want to have to pay another $22

3. How much power will SDV tuning adapters draw? From the pictures, it looks like they will be powered by a AC/DC converter brick. Nice. One of the things that made a Series 3 Tivo appealing was not having decoder boxes all over the place. I live in a rural area where power is not cheap. Maybe the fabled Series 4 box will have the SDV tuning adapter built in (of course, then there's a charge to upgrade, swap lifetime, etc)


----------



## bicker

1. It isn't clear. Most folks expect that in many cases it will either be included in some other fee or cost no more than a few extra dollars per month. 

2. It isn't clear. Some places will; some places won't; and there likely won't be any pattern to it.

3. Good question. Unless someone has the tech specs available, I'd use the tech specs for the small STBs.

The Series 4 might be tru2way, so SDV will be accomplished another (the more cable box-standard) way, I suspect.


----------



## lrhorer

Enforcer said:


> You guys in phoenix are lucky. In San Antonio all the good stuff is SDV. Give them time, they'll screw you eventually. I can't wait for the adapter. Tired of having to go into my office to see all the channels.


That's an overstatement. Actually, there are only about 6 or 8 SDV HD scheduled channels here in San Antonio in which I am significantly interested. All the main premium HD channels (HBO, Starz, Showtime, Movie Channel, Cinemax, etc) are on linear QAMs. So are all the local HD channels, as well as Discovery HD Theater, UHD, HDNET, HDNET Movies, MOJO HD and TNT HD. Certainly I would like to get the Discovery, A&E, Animal Planet, TBS, etc. HD offerings which are currently SDV. I'm not really interested in very much inthe way of SD video, although there are perhaps one or two SD channels on SDV which I would like to get, and no doubt there are some HD channels coming in which I would be interested, but your statement is quite an exaggeration in my estimation. A great deal of the "good stuff" is on linear QAMs here in San Antonio.


----------



## lrhorer

bhoch99 said:


> 1. How much will the tuning adapter cost? My cable provider (TWC) already charges me $1.75 per month per cable card.


It will no doubt vary from municipality to municipality, just as CableCard charges do now.



rodalpho said:


> I read that Cox will be providing the box for free to customers, does anyone think this will be true for other cable providers?


I imagine some might. I suspect most won't.



rodalpho said:


> 2. Will a truck roll be required in order to deploy the tuning adapter? I had to pay TWC around $22 for them to install the cable cards, don't want to have to pay another $22


Policies of this sort do not fall under any mandate or federal regulation. Some municipalities may have some sort of regulation covering this sort of thing, but most don't. Some MSOs may implement nationwide policies for some of these situations, but most leave it up to the senior management team of the local franchise. If you raise enough of a stink with the CSR, they (or a supervisor) may be willing to waive any such fees, company policy notwithstanding. TWC locally not only waived fees in two cases at my insistence, they even refunded me several days' service in one case because of the installation troubles (including missed appointments and not having the correct equipment).



rodalpho said:


> 3. How much power will SDV tuning adapters draw?


It should be very small. I would be surprised if it's much more than 5 watts for either the SA or Motorola.



rodalpho said:


> From the pictures, it looks like they will be powered by a AC/DC converter brick.


I don't think the SA will. It's a bigger box, and I would expect it to have a transformer and primary supply inside.


----------



## RedBeard1701

I tried to read previous posts to find this out but all I got was a headache.

Will the SDV adapter make VOD work with the Tivo HD?

My CATV currently does not use SDV for broadcast channels.


----------



## dswallow

RedBeard1701 said:


> Will the SDV adapter make VOD work with the Tivo HD?


That's not its intent or its first purpose, though it would technically be possible if the cable companies were to come up with a standard protocol for interrogating available programs and TiVo would support it. But don't expect it to happen, at least not when they first become available.


----------



## moyekj

RedBeard1701 said:


> Will the SDV adapter make VOD work with the Tivo HD?


 No. While the adapter would provide the 2 way communications portion necessary for this to work there also has to be the VOD software interface - which is different for different headends. There have been some rumblings that Tivo is working on a new Tru2way box that would be capable of using the cable company VOD interface:
http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/06/tivo-still-working-on-a-dvr-with-two-way-features-like-vod/


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## blacknoi

Not a 100% Tivo related, but 100% SDV related:

I posted this originally over at the Cablevision Optimum Online forum at dsl reports:

My comments related to my CABLEVISION system... your results may vary


> Oh I found that SDV is basically "on demand" but in HD! And its sent UNENCRYPTED.... so based on that:
> 
> I did a rescan with my QAM equipped TV, and I can actually watch random VOOM channels on Analog channel frequency 75 (75-518, 75-522, 75-593), 76 (76-532, 76-586), and 84 (84-542).
> 
> Of course the analog base frequency and digital sub carrier might be different by you... but rescan your channels (and if you have a cablecard TV with a cablecard in there, eject the cablecard and then rescan to see these).
> 
> Its pretty cool and makse sense when you think about it. SDV is nothing more than advanced "on demand." So if someone in your head-end area requests the channel on SDV, its still broadcast to every home... Cable boxes that tune to that channel are just told what analog band and digital subcarrier to tune to. Cablecard TVs cant see it.
> 
> So your QAM enabled HDTV can pick it up just fine.
> 
> Of course if you are watching this stream, and your area runs out of SDV slots, and someone w/a cable box requests a different channel, what you are viewing might disappear or suddenly turn into another of the VOOM SDV channels.


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## jrm01

It's also a great way to find out what porn your neighbor is watching.


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## cableguy763

That won't work in Austin. All SDV channels are encrypted.


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## Mordred

cableguy763 said:


> That won't work in Austin. All SDV channels are encrypted.


Any chance you can take care of that for me?


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## cableguy763

Mordred said:


> Any chance you can take care of that for me?


About a snowball's chance in you know where...


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## blacknoi

jrm01 said:


> It's also a great way to find out what porn your neighbor is watching.


Seriously. I can intercept other people's porn in my head end.

The best is, you see them fast forwarding and rewinding over the "boring" parts. LOL

That stinks for you guys that the SDV broadcast is encrypted. I at least can watch LIVE, about 1/3 of the channels I lost at any given point.


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## cableguy763

blacknoi said:


> Seriously. I can intercept other people's porn in my head end.
> 
> The best is, you see them fast forwarding and rewinding over the "boring" parts. LOL
> 
> That stinks for you guys that the SDV broadcast is encrypted. I at least can watch LIVE, about 1/3 of the channels I lost at any given point.


You've got your OWN headend?


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## Mordred

cableguy763 said:


> About a snowball's chance in you know where...


On a slightly more serious note, were they not encrypted at some point when SDV first was introduced? Back in '04-'05 or so when SDV was first introduced in Austin we started being able to receive the West coast Cinemax and some of the other less popular premium tiers (IFC, Encore Western, etc.) and the installer told me it was because someone in our node was watching them because the lease was for 12 hours or something. He didn't seem to be correct though becuase they never seemed to expire; we watched them for a year or two. Occasionally channels would disappear and I assumed it was just because someone altered their cable package. Then 18 months ago or so they all went away. I wasn't sure if TW just made it so the SA wouldn't attempt to tune channels you didn't subscribe to or if they encrypted them all.


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## Firekite

I wasn't aware there were any unencrypted digital cable channels (beyond the locals as offered or required by regulation). Isn't that the purpose of the CableCARD in the first place, to decrypt digital cable signals?


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## blacknoi

cableguy763 said:


> You've got your OWN headend?


No, I just mean someone in my neighborhood (I don't OWN the neighborhood of course) who's watching on-demand porn, I can intercept with the QAM tuner in my HDTV. And I can see all the ff, rew, and pausing they do.

And in reply to the other poster: It appears that on demand and SDV in my neighborhood aren't encrypted. And typically its not worth it for others to "listen in" as it were with a QAM tuner, as the broadcast might stop, or the person doing the requesting might hit FF, etc.


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## mikeyts

Most of the stuff that's been presented as Switched Broadcast by cable providers are things that are encrypted when they're linear channels and remain encrypted when transitioned to SBV. I'm particularly shocked that VOD porn on your system is in the clear--that'll end when somebody catches their little kid watching it. Almost certainly the fact that all switched video on your system is unencrypted is a mistake on the part of the people running it, which could be corrected at any time.


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## lrhorer

blacknoi said:


> Oh I found that SDV is basically "on demand" but in HD! And its sent UNENCRYPTED.... so based on that:


That depends on the CATV system and perhaps the channel. The CATV provider can choose to encrypt any channels (excluding local channels) it wants. Some do not.



blacknoi said:


> Its pretty cool and makse sense when you think about it. SDV is nothing more than advanced "on demand."


Actually, that's backwards. On-demand is more sophisticated than SDV, because it employs what some people term a "trick play" mechanism which tells the server farm to start and stop (or fast forward or rewind...) playing a source rather than just enabling the stream for an additional destination. Depending on the channel, it also may employ a billing element. IF you will look back a few pages, you will see an extensive discussion on the nature of VOD and similar services. If a CATV company is deploying SDV, then their on-demand services will use the SDV platform as a carrier.



blacknoi said:


> So if someone in your head-end area requests the channel on SDV, its still broadcast to every home...


Uh-uh. Nyet. Nein. Not even. The entire point of SDV is that the stream is **NOT** sent to every home served by a headend. The stream will only be sent to the node of the user who requests the content. Most CATV providers engineer their plant to serve between 400 and 1000 subscribers per node, and perhaps 40,000 - 50,000 subs per headend. Here in San Antonio, for example, there are some 500 or more nodes in 8 or 10 (I lost count) headends, so only 1 household out of every 500 would have the content available here, and since most chanels are encrypted, so is most on-demand content.



blacknoi said:


> Of course if you are watching this stream, and your area runs out of SDV slots, and someone w/a cable box requests a different channel, what you are viewing might disappear or suddenly turn into another of the VOOM SDV channels.


No, it won't, as the existing stream has priority. If the sub who requested the content changes channels, however, then the content will evaporate.


----------



## lrhorer

cableguy763 said:


> That won't work in Austin. All SDV channels are encrypted.


I'm really rather surprised that any systems wouldn't encrypt their SDV channels, or at least most of them. Certainly I can't imagine any CATV operator deliberately not encrypting pay channels, or most definitely porn channels. The former is asking for theft and the latter for trouble.


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## lrhorer

Firekite said:


> I wasn't aware there were any unencrypted digital cable channels (beyond the locals as offered or required by regulation). Isn't that the purpose of the CableCARD in the first place, to decrypt digital cable signals?


Well, yes, but that doesn't mean the CATV proivider is required to. They can send anything they choose out in the clear. Indeed, while I haven't noticed them doing any such thing in the last couple of years - not that I've paid attention - some CATV companies will host subscriber campaigns designed to get subs to add pay channels by disabling encryption for a time so everyone gets certain channels for a short time for free.

Edit: Note San Antonio, like Austin, encrypts its SDV channels - although I haven't checked them all I would presume all of them. The only thing you might find is an occasional video rewind stream where someone watching one of the locals on an STB presses <Pause>. I don't know for a fact, but I wouldn't necessarily expect on-demand content spawned from an unencrypted source to be encrypted.


----------



## lrhorer

mikeyts said:


> Almost certainly the fact that all switched video on your system is unencrypted is a mistake on the part of the people running it, which could be corrected at any time.


Absolutely. Even if it isn't a mistake, it's a mistake, especially when it comes to porn. Deliberately sending out porn in the clear is a good way to invite a lawsuit.

OTOH, there was a local automated weather channel on a CATV system in a small town back in the 70s (basically it was just a video camera on a tripod pointed at a dial thermomenter, a dial barometer, a psychrometer, and an anemometer) who had a prank played on them. Some teenagers broke into the site and put a full frontal centerfold model up in front of the meters.

Apparently no one at the CATV company ever bothered to look at the channel, because the centerfold stayed there for 2 weeks. Even when it did come down, it was because someone called in. Whoever it was didn't complain about the centerfold, he just wanted to know if a storm was coming and couldn't see the barometer.


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## lrhorer

moyekj said:


> There have been some rumblings that Tivo is working on a new Tru2way box that would be capable of using the cable company VOD interface:


Or anything else the CATV company choses to deliver. The Tru2Way spec requires a middleware socket where the local provider's interactive agent would attach. This enables compatibility with every service delivered by the CATV company, at their discretion, at least at this point.


----------



## routerman

lrhorer said:


> If a CATV company is deploying SDV, then their on-demand services will use the SDV platform as a carrier.


Can you clarify the above statement?

Does this mean that if my cable company uses bigband for SDV, their VOD equipment is also bigband or do you mean the VOD services are transmitted over the SDV equipment?


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## ajwees41

If a CATV company is deploying SDV, then their on-demand services will use the SDV platform as a carrier.

So what are cable companies using to provide ondemand if they aren't using SDV yet?


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## cableguy763

ajwees41 said:


> If a CATV company is deploying SDV, then their on-demand services will use the SDV platform as a carrier.
> 
> So what are cable companies using to provide ondemand if they aren't using SDV yet?


Cable co's can use completely different VOD and SDV platforms. Seachange, SA, Moto, Arroyo all make VOD systems that can work with Bigband, SA, and Moto SDV systems.


----------



## bicker

Thanks for the info on SDV versus VOD platforms. I had suspected that the two services would be unrelated to each other, and that confirms it.


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## moyekj

cableguy763 said:


> Cable co's can use completely different VOD and SDV platforms. Seachange, SA, Moto, Arroyo all make VOD systems that can work with Bigband, SA, and Moto SDV systems.


 Once SDV is deployed is it possible to deliver VOD via SDV as well? Cox Orange County VOD system dedicates 8 whole RF channels (with 10 VOD streams per RF using QAM 256) to VOD which seems like a big waste of linear bandwidth that would make much more sense to put under a switched system.


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## ah30k

I wouldn't say 'put VOD on SDV' but the deployment of SDV will allow a much more dynamic allocation of bandwidth. It is like the boundary between SDV and VOD will ebb and flow based on demand. You could not do that before without doing channel map changes.


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## routerman

ah30k said:


> I wouldn't say 'put VOD on SDV' but the deployment of SDV will allow a much more dynamic allocation of bandwidth. It is like the boundary between SDV and VOD will ebb and flow based on demand. You could not do that before without doing channel map changes.


That would work as long as the peak times for each programming (VOD and SDV) did not occur at the same time. I am guessing that the cable company would give higher priority to the VOD streams since they probably generate more money per resource.

There should be a way to optimize usage by some kind of algorithm that weighs usage and allocates resources as needed. Kind of like load sharing on web servers and firewalls. Maybe they could allocate 10 channels for both VOD and SDV. 4 could be dedicated for VOD and 4 for SDV. The remaining 2 would be available for either service on an as needed basis.

just my 2 cents.....


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## lrhorer

routerman said:


> Does this mean that if my cable company uses bigband for SDV, their VOD equipment is also bigband or do you mean the VOD services are transmitted over the SDV equipment?


Probably both, although some systems do buy their equipment piecemeal from more than one vendor. Unless contracturally bound, there is nothing fundamentally preventing a company from buying the first set of QAM modulators from Big Band and then another set a year later from C-Cor. There is also nothing that requires them to keep all the content of one type on a particular QAM - as long as both are SDV capable. There is also nothing fundamentally preventing them from deciding to "dedicate" one QAM modulator to regularly scheduled SDV content and another to VOD and other on-demand services, but there also is generally speaking no particularly good reason to do so, either, and doing so will probably reduce the overall efficiency of the switched deployment by at least a small amount.

While the company is not locked into any one modulator manufacturer, they are in practical terms locked into a single switching protocol. Thus, while one might conceivably find modulators and demodulators from two or more manufacturers in a single headend, one will not find STBs from both Motorola and Cisco in the homes serviced by that headend. There are some 3rd party STB manufacturers - Pace for example - which have licensed both Cisco and Motorola protocols for their STBs, but that doesn't mean a Pace STB in a Cisco plant can be taken to a Motorola plant and still work. It's no doubt possible both could be integrated into a single box, but it would be more expensive, and a better way to handle the situation is to make a single frame and motherboard for both versions of the STB and employ a daughter card of the appropriate type to differentiate the two. STBs with SA compatible daughter cards get shipped to SA systems and ones with Moto compatible daughter cards go to Moto systems. If not daughtercards, then different chipsets would do,as well. They even might manufacture completely different boxes, but I doubt it.


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## lrhorer

ajwees41 said:


> If a CATV company is deploying SDV, then their on-demand services will use the SDV platform as a carrier.
> 
> So what are cable companies using to provide ondemand if they aren't using SDV yet?


Oh, there are a number. The major one is IPTV, used by FIOS. Any sufficiently intelligent switching protocol will work. It also does not absolutely have to switch on node boundaries (IPTV usually doesn't). It's just that the node boundary is the most efficient and economical switch point in most fiber and aluminum CATV systems. Some systems have toyed around with fiber only implementations (fiber all the way to the house), and in such cases there may be multiple switch boundaries in the system.


----------



## ah30k

ajwees41 said:


> So what are cable companies using to provide ondemand if they aren't using SDV yet?


The technologies are different between VOD and SDV, and VOD has been launched for quite some time. All VOD is is a dedicated QAM channel for you. Well, it isn't really just sent to you but your STB should be the only one on the plant with trick-play controls and the keys to decrypt the stream (in the early days it wasn't even encrypted). It is a regular QAM channel just like any other. Your STB can watch the stream and send trick-play commands back to the VOD server in the headend (any brand server will suffice) that is streaming your stream using whichever protocol the headend is based on. The VOD server would pause/rewind/play your stream based on your commands. It is not necessarily related to SDV at all. SDV can make the overall usage of the plant's bandwidth better though by not fixing a hard number of QAMs to VOD usage.


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## lrhorer

moyekj said:


> Once SDV is deployed is it possible to deliver VOD via SDV as well?


 It most likely is, depending on the system.



moyekj said:


> Cox Orange County VOD system dedicates 8 whole RF channels (with 10 VOD streams per RF using QAM 256) to VOD which seems like a big waste of linear bandwidth


It's not linear. That they have dedicated 80 streams to VOD ratehr than sharing the modulator arrray between scheduled and on-deman video doesn't mean it is linear. If it were linear, 80 wouldn't be nearly enough. Do you think in Orange county only 80 people at a time make any use of VOD channels? 80,000 might be more like it, especially if they have deployed anything like video rewind.



moyekj said:


> that would make much more sense to put under a switched system.


Trust me, if it is VOD, it is switched. Otherwise they would require a bandwidth of several thousand MHz.

The fact they can use mixed platforms doesn't mean they do. What's more, once again the posters are confusing the distinctions between the transport protocols, the content, and the marketing differentiation between products which are in no way physically different.

The following is lengthy. Consider it a primer on switched video and on-demand services. If you don't wish to read this primer, then by all means skip it. If you don't wish to respond, then don't or if you do then by all measns do. It's not intended as an ordinary debate post, so please squelch any flames about its length.

Consider the following. HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, etc are all "Premium" channels. In order to obtain them, on most systems the user must pay an extra monthly charge on a channel by channel (or group of channels) basis. Stations like TBS, TNT, Discovery, etc. are all "regular" cable channels, and are usually included in one or more tiers - possibly even the basic tier - as part of the subscriber's regular bill. Local channels are those broadcast over the air by local TV stations. Other than encryption or a lack thereof, there is no physical difference between the three channel types, or fundamentally between the way their respective content is received at the customer's TV. The transport media, however, vary a great deal, and the type of source equipment can vary a lot. The fact the CATV company chooses to bundle them, charge for them, and label them in different ways doesn't mean it takes some sort of special gear to carry premium channels versus basic channels or regular channels, however.

OK, now what about SDV? SDV is a set of switched protocols. A linear channel does not employ any switching at all in the transport system. Any switching done on a linear channel is done manually, at the Master Control or Technical Operations Center by CATV personnel or automated equipment under their control. For example, when watching a national video feed, if you pay attention you might notice a local commercial right in the middle of a nationally broadcast program. Your local commercial is probably not being broadcast across the entire nation. Rather, either the local network affiliate or the local CATV company switches away from the national feed for a few seconds to insert a local commercial for which the local station or CATV company is paid rather than the National Network. Once leaving the MC or TOC, however, it gets inserted into what can be envisaged as the trunk of a tree, to flow upwards and be split again and again into a series of smaller and smaller tributaries. At the very tip of this maze of tributaries is a large number of individual subscribers. The main point is, the signal reaching every single one of the tips is precisely the same as that entering into the trunk and as that reaching every other tip. This is a linear channel. Any video the company chooses can be placed on one of these channels, including even a VOD or other on-demand stream, if they were completely insane. While technically possible, putting on-demand streams on linear channels would limit the CATV company to only delivering three or four channels, total, because all 70 - 100 QAMs (in a 100% digital system) would have to be dedicated to those 3 or 4 channels. So why have linear channels at all? Eventually, there may not be, but for the time being at least - and ignoring the locals which are under legal restrictions - it makes good sense to have at least a moderate number of linear QAMs.

Why? In order to answer that question we must look a little closer at the alternatives. There is a different way to provide signals to subscribers than the tree-like linear delivery. Instead, imagine a hub-and spoke arrangement with a central core and a large number of spokes radiating from the hub. The hub can deliver completely independent streams into each spoke, so that what arrives at the end of each spoke is potentially either completely or partially different than what arrives at any other endpoint. (Note if we look closely each spoke is actually a smaller version of the linear "tree" we described above.) The hub can be said to contain a number of switching boundaries, where the decision of what to send down which spoke is implemented. Not made, mind you, but implemented. Logically speaking, where the switch boundary is placed is arbitrary, but in a typical CATV system, by far the best place for a switching boundary is the node. Thus, if part of a switching realm, the signal placed onto a particular node shows up at every single receiver in the node, but not on any receiver outside the node. In implementation, this means hypothetically that in a hub with 100 nodes, at 300.00MHz in the spectrum in a single channel's timeslot there could be 100 different programs being broadcast. In a pure switched digital system with 500MHz of useable bandwidth, such a hubsite could hypothetically broadcast nearly 17,000 HD programs or nearly 92,000 different SD programs to perhaps 50,000 subscribers with maybe 125,000 TVs. That's a heck of a lot better than the linear system which over the same field architecture could only deliver 167 HD programs or 916 SD programs. (Or 83 analog SD programs or 13 analog HD programs. Ugh.)

So far, so good, but again ignoring the local broadcast channels and angry TiVo-owning subs, why have any linear channels at all? The huge benefit in numbers detailed above presumes that every node will require one for one completely different programs than any other node. This is not the case. For any given number of nodes, if at least 1 subscriber on each node wants the same video, then every one of the nodes will carry it, and for that particular program there is no benefit for switched video at all at that moment. If the content is on a regular scheduled channel and at every point in time at least one sub on every node is watching the channel, then the channel will never be switched off any node, and there is no advantage at all to switching the channel. If a node hosts 400 -500 subscribers and 300 or so timeslots, then any scheduled channel with a minimum daily instantaneous market share in excess of 4% - 5% or so will not be shut down on that node for any significant period of time, and would not be shut down on enough nodes in total for enough time to make switching worthwhile. Such channels are more economically served on linear equipment.

At the transport level there is absolutely no difference between a regularly scheduled SDV program and a VOD or other on-demand service. The difference lies in two areas. One is the insertion source. For an external source such as satellite video feeds or local broadcast channels, the cATV company simply takes the incoming stream and sends it out to its video switches, tagging it with source and destination addresses. For locally hosted IPPV events, the company may simply have their own of what are basically automated DVRs which begin transmitting specific steams at regularly scheduled times. At the headend or hubsite, the switch receives all of its streams and decides which QAMs are to receive which streams. If a node is dark for a particular stream and a sub on the node changes to the channel in question, the STB / DVR sends a request to the headend to receive the channel. Coordinating between the switch, the video server, and the STB, the decision is made upon which QAM to host the feed on the node and the STB is told on which QAM to find the feed. If it is a "regular" video, then the STB will probably already contain the encryption keys. If it is IPPV -whether scheduled or otherwise, then the server also delivers the encryption keys and notifies the billing computer.

For an on-demand service, the exact same series of events takes place potentially over exactly the same transport equipment, except that the video server must be capable not of just passing on a video stream received from an external source, but must be capable of seeing to it the stream itself is created and possibly started and stopped. Once again, if the stream is on-demand IPPV, then it notifies the billing computer, selects the QAM to receive the stream, issues the keys if necessary, and starts the stream. In some topologies it can make some sense to segregate the on-demand streams from scheduled switch streams, because the video server for the scheduled streams can be much less capable than the one required for on-demand services. In a system like San Antonio, however, where every single channel can have its stream split off at any moment by a sub pressing <Pause> on his STB remote, it doesn't make all that much sense to segregate channels. Of course, if it happens to be a linear channel, then the linear server continues to happily pump away with the main stream while an on-demand server carries out the funny business around the formerly-linear-now-suddenly-on-demand stream.

The other area where there is a difference has nothing directly to do with the equipment, but rather with the patterns of the traffic and the bandwidth related thereto. An SDV transmission of a scheduled program may not hit every node in the system, saving bandwidth on those not receiving it, but it is still somewhat likely to hit more than one node in the system, and it usually consists of what are essentially multicast packets. While not sharp, there is nonetheless a vague limit to the number of scheduled programs which can be broadcast in a system because of this. This is perfectly Ok, however, because since the streams are inifinitely continuous, there is also an absolute limit to the number of nodes which can request the stream (all of them, however many there may be) and an exact limit to the number of streams which will be generated to fulfill the channel's broadcast footprint. That number is precisely 1.

While there is no requirement for any fundamental difference in the underlying transport equipment which delivers on-demand streams, there is a huge difference in the number of streams generated by an on-demand service. Generally speaking, most on-demand streams have one and only one target node. The packets are essentially unicast. The stream is sent out intending to be received by one and only one subscriber. This still doesn't require anything different from the transport system than regularly scheduled SDV content. After all, there is absolutely nothing which says there can't be a channel available which only gets requested by a single sub at some point in time. The only difference so far is the content is being generated by the video server, while the scheduled program might be coming from somewhere else. What happens, however, when 45 seconds later another subscriber somewhere requests the same video? The answer is a completely new stream must be initiated and even if the receiver is on the same node (or even in the same house), a new QAM channel must be assigned to the new stream. Thus, given a system of 100,000 subs, 250,000 receivers, 200 nodes, and 300 scheduled channels with a 500MHz SDV bandwidth, the maximum number of unique streams on the system at any one time is 300, but unless a significant number are SD, all 300 can't be received on every node. If the same system has 100 or so VOD channels, the maximum number of simultaneous streams which could hypothetically be handled is perhaps in excess of 50,000. The number which actually do get assigned is equal to the number of receivers which request on-demand content.

OK, so back to the original question. Is it necessary to segregate VOD and SDV as different services? Fundamentally, no. There can be a reason, however, to dedicate one group of QAMs to on-demand services and another to scheduled programming. I don't say it's a good reason, but it's a reason. If the CATV system is attempting to move to switched services on the cheap and doesn't have enough QAMs to properly handle all the switched service requests, they might choose to limit the number of on-demand QAMs rather than risk a lot of "channel not available" messages on HBO, Showtime, etc. They might figure a denied on-demand request is less aggravating than a denied request for a scheduled channel.


----------



## cableguy763

Good gosh I bet your fingers hurt from all that typing.


----------



## Combat Medic

So, what you are saying is that SDV is a band aid trying to let cable tv operators compete with FiOS who does this naturally?


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## ZeoTiVo

so the dongle can order VOD/PPV. so what? Without a UI interface that the cable company controls they have no real blip on their rader for the Series 3 TiVo DVRs that are out there, especially with the series 4 coming along that will have tru2way and the UI that the cable company controls


----------



## lrhorer

cableguy763 said:


> Good gosh I bet your fingers hurt from all that typing.


Oh that's nothing. You should see my engineering briefs. They aren't.


----------



## lrhorer

Combat Medic said:


> So, what you are saying is that SDV is a band aid trying to let cable tv operators compete with FiOS who does this naturally?


Not really, no. A "bandaid" suggests a temporary or ineffective solution. SDV is neither. It permanently bolsters the effective bandwidth of the CATV plant manyfold. The number of channels is limited only by the number of subs per node. If they start running shy of bandwidth, they can simply add more nodes. While adding a node isn't exactly cheap, it is far, far less expensive than attempting to increase the bandwidth of the transport equipment, and far more effective.

IPTV is another switched protocol. It's just that it's switch boundaries are different and more fluid. FIOS also has much higher infrastructure costs, so the subscription density has to be much higher. Many homes are going to be left high and dry as far as FIOS is concerned. More to the point, FIOS or not, the conventional CATV plant architecture wastes a tremendous amount of bandwidth for nothing, and SDV is a comparatively inexpensive solution to that problem. It is probably true that without competition from FIOS and much more prominantly D*, the CATV companies would probably not have laid out the capital, or at least not nearly as agressively as they are now. Some still are not, as their senior management apparently does not feel as threatened by D* and FIOS as others.


----------



## lrhorer

ZeoTiVo said:


> so the dongle can order VOD/PPV. so what? Without a UI interface that the cable company controls they have no real blip on their rader for the Series 3 TiVo DVRs that are out there


It suits my needs entirely. As long as the Series 3 continues to work with scheduled programming and as long as the CATV companies continue to offer all the currently scheduled offerings as scheduled offerings rather than VOD, I have no plans to replace my Series 3 boxes. For that matter, even if all the parties collaborate and enable VOD and IPPV on the Series 3, I won't be using them.

If some of the more advanced interactive services on the horizon are something I just must have, I may revise my stance, or perhaps just get a CATV leased STB.



ZeoTiVo said:


> , especially with the series 4 coming along that will have tru2way and the UI that the cable company controls


Tru2way won't allow the cable company to control the UI, although it will allow the CATV company to create folders and menus on the box. HME and HMO already do that. Galleon and pyTiVo both create a perfectly nice set of folders and menu items on my TiVos. It will allow the CATV company to unilaterally decide what interactive software is loaded on the TiVo and what 2-way features are enabled, including spyware.


----------



## moyekj

lrhorer said:


> It's not linear. That they have dedicated 80 streams to VOD ratehr than sharing the modulator arrray between scheduled and on-deman video doesn't mean it is linear. If it were linear, 80 wouldn't be nearly enough. Do you think in Orange county only 80 people at a time make any use of VOD channels? 80,000 might be more like it, especially if they have deployed anything like video rewind.


 My assumption was that they are able to switch at the node level, so the 80 dedicated channels are at the node level not the system level (i.e. serving ~400 homes or so which seems like plenty).


----------



## bicker

lrhorer said:


> FIOS also has much higher infrastructure costs, so the subscription density has to be much higher. Many homes are going to be left high and dry as far as FIOS is concerned.


I can attest to that.


----------



## mikeyts

lrhorer said:


> Tru2way won't allow the cable company to control the UI, although it will allow the CATV company to create folders and menus on the box.


As described to the FCC by TiVo, the proposed "Series4" box would only have access to VOD and IPPV when running the cable providers' full downloaded IPGs. The cable company's OCAP IPG would see the TiVo as a non-DVR platform, and would not have access to its HDDs or be able to implement any DVR functions. The only OCAP function that TiVo would have direct access to would be downloaded SDV APIs, for tuning switched broadcasts:


> 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.


Using "TiVo Series4" in "cable mode" would be largely indistinguishable from using a leased cable box and would provide access to IPPV, VOD and any future interactive services that they can concoct within the framework of OCAP.

This is highly reminiscent of mobile phone handsets that I've worked on. Most of those have closed environments for running portable applications--games and utilities and such. These are written for either a Java profile (like OCAP) called J2ME or for Qualcomm's BREW platform. These environments are quite different from the native phone GUI and when the phone is running those apps, the screen is given over completely to the foreign UI. There is an interface through which the outside apps can communicate with the phone and vice-versa. For instance, I wrote portions of the native phonebook app which a BREW media browser to select ID photos and ringtones. In turn, the BREW media browser could assign an image being browsed to a phonebook entry by making a call back into the native code.


----------



## lrhorer

moyekj said:


> My assumption was that they are able to switch at the node level


As opposed to where? There is no digital component beyond the modulator until the signal reaches the customer premise. Defining a switch boundary at any point prior to the modulator (which directly feeds the node through up to several kilometers of fiber) would be far less effective.



moyekj said:


> so the 80 dedicated channels are at the node level not the system level (i.e. serving ~400 homes or so which seems like plenty).


That makes no sense at all. If a path is dedicated, it is dedicated. If it is switched, it is switched. Dedicating 80 paths to one node and a diffeent set of 80 paths to another node gains one nothing whatsoever, and indeed any channels on one node and not the other lose that channel on the second node, with a corresponding channel being lost on the first node. You need to think through your logic some more. It's flawed. What you've described is as impossible to produce as a reasonable result as an Escher drawing.


----------



## lrhorer

mikeyts said:


> As described to the FCC by TiVo, the proposed "Series4" box would only have access to VOD and IPPV when running the cable providers' full downloaded IPGs.


That is correct. This doesn't mean it is able to control the native TiVo UI, beyond adding folders and menus, which any HMO or HME app can do right now.



mikeyts said:


> The cable company's OCAP IPG would see the TiVo as a non-DVR platform, and would not have access to its HDDs or be able to implement any DVR functions.


Correct again, except that I am not quite certain about its access to the drives. In order to be OCAP, the CATV system has to be ableto load its software onto the device. TiVo could hypotehtically limit such downloads to a section of non-volatile RAM, but I would think they would load it into the hard drive. I've only glanced at TiVo's proposition, but if I were TiVo's engineers, it is how I would manage it. It's true the CATV system couldn't load content to the program partitions.



mikeyts said:


> The only OCAP function that TiVo would have direct access to would be downloaded SDV APIs, for tuning switched broadcasts:Using "TiVo Series4" in "cable mode" would be largely indistinguishable from using a leased cable box and would provide access to IPPV, VOD and any future interactive services that they can concoct within the framework of OCAP.


'Correct again, at least in terms of what has been proposed. The TiVo UI, however, will remain essentially untouched. People seem to think that when they hook up the Tivo to the CATV plant, all the features they have come to expect in the TiVo will all evaporate or get turned topsy-turvy. They won't, at all.

The IPPV, VOD, and other 2-way functions will be controlled and will no doubt look and feel much different than the TiVo's familiar interface, but that should be no surprise at all, since the TiVo's UI isn't designed to handle 2-way services.


----------



## mklitt

lrhorer said:


> That's an overstatement. Actually, there are only about 6 or 8 SDV HD scheduled channels here in San Antonio in which I am significantly interested. <snip list> A great deal of the "good stuff" is on linear QAMs here in San Antonio.


Well it is all subjective, isn't it? I would counsel against any TW customer in San Antonio getting Tivo if they have HD. Almost ALL of the stations I watched in HD are "embargoed" and yes I will be writing the FCC.

No one is a bigger Tivo fan. I got it in Chicago when it came out and set it up in minutes.

Now I have an expensive Tivo paperweight (as far as my HD preference is concerned), a basket of remotes, the biggest HD plasma made and a set top box. Bottom line? I end up missing programs because Tivo tries to tape them on the HD channels I USED to get. (Been through the channel list more than once to fix that.) Basically I use the Tivo because it is too difficult to remember which ones I want to tape in HD on the set top box and which ones I want on Tivo. I do the Deadliest Catch, best show on TV but not available with Tivo HD as compromised by Time Warner, on the set top. All those Animal Planet programs that Tivo snags for me I watch as regular broadcasts.

I am disappointed in Tivo, Time Warner & the FCC.

This seems like bait and switch on the part of TW to me. They took away my channels without warning in San Antionio. I had no notice that I would be getting significantly diminished service for the same price. Even the three tech guys who were at my house were not told. They were trying to fix my cable cards. But they forgot to lower the bill! Sure I griped and what did they say? They won't charge me for six months for the set top box which I now need. BFD.

So if you don't watch the same HD I do and you are happy with TW SAT, I am glad for you. But believe me, I think I am in the majority here. There are a lot of people who bought HD to watch nature programs and sports (college basketball & WNBA). Just walk in any Best Buy and see what is on the HD TVs. And that is what I am not getting.


----------



## bicker

Bait and switch doesn't apply. An ongoing service can change the service monthly; it is only bait and switch if you were promised something explicit *and* you cannot cancel.


----------



## MichaelK

bicker said:


> Bait and switch doesn't apply. An ongoing service can change the service monthly; it is only bait and switch if you were promised something explicit *and* you cannot cancel.


while i dont think the OP got baited and switched (becasue I dont think it was intended on the cable company's part)-

how does the inability to cancel have anything to do with bait and switch?

from dictionary.com



> a deceptive way of selling that involves advertising a product at a very low price in order to attract customers who are then persuaded to switch to a more expensive product





> denoting a deceptive method of selling, by which customers, attracted to a store by sale items, are told either that the advertised bargain item is out of stock or is inferior to a higher-priced item that is available.


there's no mention of being unable to cancel. In fact I think the classic bait and switch (such that there are laws specifically against it in many places) is a really low priced car from a newspaper ad- the victem gets to the dealer and the dealer says that car is sold but i have this one over here that's "better" for X$ more. no one forces the victem to buy the more expensive item, no one keeps him from cancelling, it's a mind game. It's about a deception purposely played out to make more money off the victem.

I dont think cable is purposely using sdv to make more from individual cablecard subs. It's just something they have to do to compete. And cable, ce people, and the fcc never resolved the whole 2-way mess in the first place so now it's a problem for some early adopters.


----------



## ah30k

MichaelK said:


> while i dont think the OP got baited and switched (becasue I dont think it was intended on the cable company's part)-
> 
> how does the inability to cancel have anything to do with bait and switch?


The terms of service are almost always changeable by the provider. You can't claim bait and switch just because the terms and/or service change after you joined unless they changed the service during a contract period where you cannot bail-out on the service.


----------



## bicker

MichaelK said:


> how does the inability to cancel have anything to do with bait and switch?


Because the promise made is to provide one month's worth of service for a price, subject to a service spec. They provide that month. Then there is another month. And another. Then they change the spec. At that point, IF you can cancel, then it isn't bait and switch, because you haven't purchased the service for the month yet.

On the other hand, if you cannot cancel, and they promised something to you for that period of time, and then they don't provide it anymore, THAT would be bait and switch.



MichaelK said:


> In fact I think the classic bait and switch


You're welcome to remain incorrect.



ah30k said:


> You can't claim bait and switch just because the terms and/or service change after you joined unless they changed the service during a contract period where you cannot bail-out on the service.


Indeed (that is unless the contract included provisions that let them make such changes, in which case not even that would be bait and switch).


----------



## mikeyts

lrhorer said:


> That is correct. This doesn't mean it is able to control the native TiVo UI, beyond adding folders and menus, which any HMO or HME app can do right now.


I'm doubting that it will even be able to add folders and menus (other than some kind of OCAP diags, like the CableCARD ones).


> Correct again, except that I am not quite certain about its access to the drives. In order to be OCAP, the CATV system has to be ableto load its software onto the device. TiVo could hypotehtically limit such downloads to a section of non-volatile RAM, but I would think they would load it into the hard drive. I've only glanced at TiVo's proposition, but if I were TiVo's engineers, it is how I would manage it. It's true the CATV system couldn't load content to the program partitions.


Where and how an OCAP compliant device store downloaded apps is up to them--any persistent store will do, and if TiVo wants to put them on its HDD, I'm sure that it can. What I'm referring to is access to the drive by applications running in the OCAP environment. I'm sure that there's some kind of feature data block that can be read by OCAP applications (like VESA's E-EDID block for video device attributes) and that "TiVo Series4" will report that it doesn't have permanent disk storage, whereas the Explorer 8300HDC running an OCAP platform (like SA's Axiom product) would disclose that it does have a disk drive and that the applications can use some OCAP API for manipulating DVR functions. I'd imagine that any OCAP-compliant device is required to provide a certain amount of persistent storage for configuration recording and state checkpointing purposes, but that requirement is probably only for a few MB at most.

I know that many TiVo users, on hearing this idea, panic with the thought that TiVo is turning over control of the box to the cable company and forcing them to use the generally inferior GUIs, but that's not true. You'd only have to use the crappy cable-provider box GUI when accessing their interactive services, like IPPV and VOD. If you don't use that stuff, you never have to deal with the cable provider's interface.


----------



## lrhorer

mklitt said:


> Well it is all subjective, isn't it?


The fact the apellation contained the term "good" made it entirely so from the outset.



mklitt said:


> I would counsel against any TW customer in San Antonio getting Tivo if they have HD. Almost ALL of the stations I watched in HD are "embargoed" and yes I will be writing the FCC.


Almost none of the SDV channels are legacy channels. Virtually all of them have been added since SDV was put in place. You can't get them unless you have SDV capability, but then you couldn't get them before SDV was deployed, wither.



mklitt said:


> No one is a bigger Tivo fan. I got it in Chicago when it came out and set it up in minutes.


San Antonio is not required to provide the same channels you were able to get in Chicago.



mklitt said:


> I am disappointed in Tivo, Time Warner & the FCC.


What do you suggest TiVo should have done differently? Bear in mind they are in business to make a profit, not to enter into ruinous ventures just to please mklitt. Given that paradigm, what should they have done differently? Waited 3 - 4 more years before delivering the S3?

What do you suggest Time Warner shuold have done differently? Stayed with 120 or so channels so no one could receive the new channels and services they have added?

I can't say I'm disappointed with the FCC. They are performing exactly to my expectiations and how I would have predicted. Near useless waste of taxpayers money is what government bureacracies do.



mklitt said:


> This seems like bait and switch on the part of TW to me.
> 
> They took away my channels without warning in San Antionio.


Name 10 channels formerly available to a TiVo in HD that are not available to the TiVo in HD now. Name 10 channels formerly available in SD that are not available to the TiVo in any format now. Adding unavailable new channels or unavailable HD versions of old channels that were not available to you in the first place is not taking something away from you. It does constitue giving someone else somethng you can't get for the same price, but that is not the same thing.



mklitt said:


> So if you don't watch the same HD I do and you are happy with TW SAT, I am glad for you.


Happy? Surely not. I'm not happy I have to pay for CATV service at all. I'm even far more unhappy that I am forced to pay far, far more for things like sports programs, soap operas, sitcoms, and "reality" television on Network broadcasts. At least with cable I have a choice, and it's far less expensive. I am also unhappy I don't have access to all the HD programming I would like. Not being happy and being unreasonable in my expectations are two different thngs. Note that reasonability requires understanding and taking into account the limitations under which all the involved parties are placed.



mklitt said:


> But believe me, I think I am in the majority here. There are a lot of people who bought HD to watch nature programs and sports (college basketball & WNBA). Just walk in any Best Buy and see what is on the HD TVs. And that is what I am not getting.


The cable company is not responsible for your choice of purchases, and are in no way bound ethically, morally, or legally to acquiesce to any demands based solely on the amount of money you paid *to someone else*. If anyone thinks the amount of money they are spending on what they *DO* receive is exhorbitant, then that individual is a fool to continue to purchase the service, no matter what the volume of content might be. If, on the other hand, the cost of the services is acceptable, then how much content someone else gets for the same price is irrelevant to that decision. That such being the case may represent an unfair advantage to some customers does not diminish the value of the services provided. In case you hadn't noticed, life is not fair. There are plenty of people who work much harder than you (or I) who do not receive as much compensation in a year as was paid for your TV setup, so don't whine to me about being fair, either.


----------



## mikeyts

mklitt said:


> Well it is all subjective, isn't it? I would counsel against any TW customer in San Antonio getting Tivo if they have HD. Almost ALL of the stations I watched in HD are "embargoed" and yes I will be writing the FCC.


Check out the "TWC Hawaii moving all HD to SDV" thread--unlike San Antonio, those people actually did lose _all_ of the good stuff 9 or 10 months ago and the FCC isn't interested in hearing their woes. TWC Oceanic took every HD channel except the local OTA DTV rebroadcasts and presented them as SDV, acing TiVo Series3 owners and all other CableCARD users out of cable HDTV. (None of the local DTV channels was actually broadcasting any HD at the time, though that may have since changed).

The fact is that using SDV to provide a giant increase in broadcast channels (by and by) doesn't break any rules, and is the cheapest and quickest route that cable had to stepping up to compete with DirecTV's "up to 150 HD channels" challenge. The use of SDV affects a tiny minority of their users, and the industry's willing and speedy (for cable) deployment of the Tuning Adapter solution for TiVo is a miracle of cooperation which will protect them from FCC reprisal (if any were forthcoming). Anything that the FCC does to block the use of SDV would effectively constitute restraint of trade, despite the fact that SDV breaks unidirectional CableCARD.


----------



## lrhorer

mikeyts said:


> I'm doubting that it will even be able to add folders and menus (other than some kind of OCAP diags, like the CableCARD ones).


Which means they can, even if only in strictly limited fashion, but the main point is they won't be able to willy-nilly dump the TiVo UI for standard TiVo operation.



mikeyts said:


> Where and how an OCAP compliant device store downloaded apps is up to them--any persistent store will do, and if TiVo wants to put them on its HDD, I'm sure that it can.


Which is pretty much what I believed you were suggesting, but I thought it best to make the point clear. The software, even if it contains truly insidious code, will be uploaded to some part of the Tivo and could potentially do various harm at all sorts of levels - one might presume not deliberately on the part of the CATV company, and not necessarily one of which the user might ever be aware. Of course, this is the chance any user takes when software is loaded onto their device, but in this case the user has no choice. That's a big difference.



mikeyts said:


> I'd imagine that any OCAP-compliant device is required to provide a certain amount of persistent storage for configuration recording and state checkpointing purposes, but that requirement is probably only for a few MB at most.


A virus or trojan may only require a few bytes. Code which accidentally locks up the OS on a regular basis doesn't take any more room than pristine code, either. Pathetically crafted code... well, there's nothing that prevents garbage from being compact.



mikeyts said:


> I know that many TiVo users, on hearing this idea, panic with the thought that TiVo is turning over control of the box to the cable company and forcing them to use the generally inferior GUIs, but that's not true.


Exactly. It is not true, and for some reason it is difficult to get people to understand the fact. OCAP / tru2way has some serious drawbacks, but engendering requisite damage to the UI is not one of them.



mikeyts said:


> You'd only have to use the crappy cable-provider box GUI when accessing their interactive services, like IPPV and VOD. If you don't use that stuff, you never have to deal with the cable provider's interface.


Or other features. The problem I have, other than the fact the CATV company gets to unilaterally decide what software and "features" they load on my equipment, is that the CATV company can choose to prevent us from using 3rd party applications to provide interactive services. Those who displike TiVo Desktop, for example, can use Galleon or pyTivo, or write their own HME / HMO scripts. If OCAP / tru2way allowed me to refuse to load any specific apps I chose or to load my own apps, it would be OK. I have no problem with a requirtement the code pass a publicly published spec verification, either, as long as the user has control over what the CATV company does on our own equipment and the right to put whatever we want on that equipment ourselves, provided of course it does not damage the CATV company's resources.


----------



## lrhorer

mikeyts said:


> Check out the "TWC Hawaii moving all HD to SDV" thread--unlike San Antonio, those people actually did lose _all_ of the good stuff 9 or 10 months ago and the FCC isn't interested in hearing their woes.


Yes, while I am not overjoyed not to be able to receive a number of additional HD and SD offerrings, other poster's comments notwithstanding, and while there are many things about the TWC San Antonio operation I despise, I think their approach to this issue has been relatively even handed and deliberately crafted to provide somewhat of a minimum of impact to customers all around. They could have said, "If it's digital and not local, you're not getting it without some of our STBs / DVRs."


----------



## vstone

TWC could just as easily added those hundreds of cable channels that are rarely watched in significant numbers to SDV instead of adding a bunch of HD channels. They did not. No laws broken. That doesn't make it right.


----------



## morac

Here's an article about some growing pains with Tru2Way.


----------



## Dr_Zoidberg

Is Cablevision making the transition to SDV in NJ? I haven't seen any announcements about it, however, slowly but surely, I'm seeing the specialized interest HD channels disappearing from my TiVo, but are available on my S2 w/box.


----------



## mikeyts

Dr_Zoidberg said:


> Is Cablevision making the transition to SDV in NJ? I haven't seen any announcements about it, however, slowly but surely, I'm seeing the specialized interest HD channels disappearing from my TiVo, but are available on my S2 w/box.


That's probably what's happening. Apparently Cablevision in NYC has been using SDV for the past year. Eventually I expect every provider to use it, with Cox probably making the transition last, since they converted just about all of their systems to 1GHz capacity last year, giving them the most leeway.


----------



## moyekj

mikeyts said:


> Eventually I expect every provider to use it, with Cox probably making the transition last, since they converted just about all of their systems to 1GHz capacity last year, giving them the most leeway.


 I don't know about that. Cox has already deployed SDV in Virginia and Phoenix and here in Orange County they sent out letters to all cablecard subscribers back in March saying SDV would go live sometime in April (though I think they are late on deployment as I can still tune with my Tivos channels they listed as going SDV in the letter). The node upgrades to 1GHz are completed in many cities in Orange County and they are already using up to 850MHz for some of the newer HD channels deployed recently. It's likely most of their headend video equipment is only good to 850MHz and I'm pretty sure even the most recent set top boxes can only tune to 850MHz, so they can't use bandwidth above 850MHz for video services. Also they have announced intent to keep analog channels at least until 2012, so don't believe they will be cutting many of those any time soon to free up space. Finally, Cox corporate announced intent to provide up to 100 HD channels by end of 2009 which keeps the pressure on SDV deployment as one of the tools needed to accomplish that goal.


----------



## calaban9

I posted this in the cablevision thread but thought i'd repeat it here (if a mod wants to delete the dup please do so):

Ok doing a little research i found the following (some of this has been posted on this and other forums). I'm putting 2ish and 2ish together to get 4ish. If anyone sees some fault to my logic please let me know.

Cisco and Motorola have submitted their SDV boxes, and Tivo had submmitted their software changes (usb control of said boxes) to Cablelabs for certification http://gizmodo.com/391871/tivo-switched-video-tuning-adapters-appear-at-cablelabs.

This article is from May 18th.

Cablelabs runs their certification through "waves". Taking a look at their certification schedule we can infer:

The submission could have (unlikely) made the April 21 - 23 slot for submissions which would mean board certification on June 24 - 26.

Much more likely they made the CW61 Wave with submission due by June 12th...

Therefore we may expect to see the boxes sometime after the Aug 14th Board meeting. How long for cable carriers to distribute is anyone's guess.


----------



## mikeyts

The increase from 750 to 870 in and of itself represents bandwidth in which they can transmit another 40 HD broadcast services at a full 19+ Mbps, should they choose to use all of it that way. (Not nearly every available HD service comes from its provider at anything close to a full 19+ Mbps--I recently spot-checked Universal HD on TWC SD and was surprised to find it to be apparently variable-rate from about 7-10 Mbps and it looks incredibly good). There must be services that they provide now which they're free to move off the lower 870 and into that upper 130 (business high-speed internet and telephone, perhaps, where they can replace the equipment at a couple thousand subscriber sites fairly quickly and inexpensively).

I'm certainly not saying that they'll be able to hold off going to SDV forever, just longer than the other providers who haven't upgraded to 1GHz.


----------



## mikeyts

calaban9 said:


> I posted this in the cablevision thread but thought i'd repeat it here (if a mod wants to delete the dup please do so):
> 
> Ok doing a little research i found the following (some of this has been posted on this and other forums). I'm putting 2ish and 2ish together to get 4ish. If anyone sees some fault to my logic please let me know.
> 
> Cisco and Motorola have submitted their SDV boxes, and Tivo had submmitted their software changes (usb control of said boxes) to Cablelabs for certification http://gizmodo.com/391871/tivo-switched-video-tuning-adapters-appear-at-cablelabs.
> 
> This article is from May 18th.
> 
> Cablelabs runs their certification through "waves". Taking a look at their certification schedule we can infer:
> 
> The submission could have (unlikely) made the April 21 - 23 slot for submissions which would mean board certification on June 24 - 26.
> 
> Much more likely they made the CW61 Wave with submission due by June 12th...
> 
> Therefore we may expect to see the boxes sometime after the Aug 14th Board meeting. How long for cable carriers to distribute is anyone's guess.


CableLabs held an interop at the beginning of April to which both TA vendors and TiVo brought protos. Both Motorola and SA claimed to have come through that interop well and to be submitting units into Cert Wave 60 as well as to cable service providers for internal testing (links to articles about these things are in old posts from mid-April-to-mid-May). It doesn't much matter, since in any case everyone will be missing the original by-end-of-calendar-Q2 estimate, which was, in their defense, an extremely long range estimate, particularly given that it was an estimate of a cooperative effort between three equipment vendors, a bunch of cable service providers and CableLabs. I don't care, so long as my cable provider doesn't roll out SDV services much before they're ready to make a TA available.


----------



## calaban9

Thanks for the info.. i searched but couldn't find that post. Cablevision , Westchester N.Y. made the switch a week ago which i s why I have a vested interset in the details.


----------



## mikeyts

calaban9 said:


> Thanks for the info.. i searched but couldn't find that post. Cablevision , Westchester N.Y. made the switch a week ago which i s why I have a vested interset in the details.


What kind of equipment is Cablevision using in your area? Cisco/Scientific-Atlanta or Motorola?

I won't track down all of the info for you (and we discussed all these PRs ad nauseam earlier in this thread), but the first mention of Cisco/SA's Tuning Adapter was here at lightreading.com on April 25th:


> Jeff Kasten, the senior product manager for product strategy and management at Cisco's newly formed Service Provider Video Technology Group, said the company plans to show off the device at next month's Cable Show in New Orleans, and expects to submit it to CableLabs for certification testing for Wave 60, which is just getting underway.


Just google "tuning-adapter wave-60" or various other keyword combos.


----------



## lrhorer

vstone said:


> TWC could just as easily added those hundreds of cable channels that are rarely watched in significant numbers to SDV instead of adding a bunch of HD channels. They did not. No laws broken. That doesn't make it right.


It doesn't make it wrong, either.

First of all, they have added many SD as well as HD channels. With the exception of KMYST (Which is a local broadcast channel), all of them, whatever their bandwidth, are SDV. Most of the HD channels are much more rarely watched than the SD channels. Far less than 20% of the 300,000 plus subs in San Antonio have HDTVs, and even fewer have only HDTVs. (I myself have one plain old 25" NTSC monitor and two plain old 19" TVs in addition to the 2 HD sets I own.)

Stipulating for the moment that there is something "wrong" with excluding any subset of subscribers from content freely available to all other subscribers, how would it have been "better" to actually take away large numbers of channels from 240,000 subs so that 60,000 subs can get programming they never had before? Isn't it "better" to take nothing from any subscriber while only blocking 60,000 of their total 300,000 customers from being able to receive certain new channels? Even those 60,000 are still paying the same amount for the same number of channels they received previously, and no one has their bill increased or their channels decreased. Certainly it is not absolutely perfect, but given the technical and economic constraints and putting aside my personal desires, this seems to me about as fair as it can get for the time being.

Of course the fact is it isn't "wrong" to provide a lower level of service to certain subs if there are solid technical reasons for doing so. In particular, delivering a slightly lower class of service to customers (like S3 owners) who pay the company less for the service is perfectly ethical, provided the concomittant restriction in service is not out of proportion to the reduction in revenue. (Note: the statement is a bit over-simplistic when applied to the real situation, but the principle stands in general.) The only thing which would approach being unethical is to extract exhorbitant fees from customers who have no choice but to be customers. The power company, for examnple, to all intents and purposes is a monopoly in most municipalities and in practical terms the electricity user very nearly has no choice whatsoever but to be a subscriber. Most people do not have the luxury of not using utility power at all. A CATV subscriber can always forgo CATV altogether, and indeed something close to 40% of all households do just that.


----------



## vstone

mikeyts said:


> The increase from 750 to 870 in and of itself represents bandwidth in which they can transmit another 40 HD broadcast services at a full 19+ Mbps, should they choose to use all of it that way. (Not nearly every available HD service comes from its provider at anything close to a full 19+ Mbps--I recently spot-checked Universal HD on TWC SD and was surprised to find it to be apparently variable-rate from about 7-10 Mbps and it looks incredibly good). There must be services that they provide now which they're free to move off the lower 870 and into that upper 130 (business high-speed internet and telephone, perhaps, where they can replace the equipment at a couple thousand subscriber sites fairly quickly and inexpensively).
> 
> I'm certainly not saying that they'll be able to hold off going to SDV forever, just longer than the other providers who haven't upgraded to 1GHz.


Some of the cable HD nets run 720p. not 1080i.


----------



## moyekj

Switched Digital Video (SDV) apparently is already deployed in Cox Orange County and from what I can tell from my CableCard Tivos, at least the following are all under SDV:
(Unless otherwise indicated, tuner does not map to a frequency when channel is selected. Many of these correspond to channels Cox OC stated would go SDV some time in April which is why I believe SDV is the reason they don't tune)

30=CSPAN2 (Tunes Analog version with cablecards)
107=JWLTV
109=LEAC109
110=SHOPNBC
317=WTHRSCN
319=FUEL
320=FITV
322=CCTV9
335=TVG
336=HRTV
347=FUSE
360=CMTPURE
363=FOXREAL
366=G4P
393=GOLTV
394=GALA
395=DEPELUS
396=THITUS
397=BANDA
398=MUN2P
399=TVNI

400-418=FOREIGN (17)

500-596=PPV (16)

601-684=SPORTS PACKAGES (30)

732=SCIHD
753=TRAVHD
772=APLHD

I don't care about any of the above thus far, so I think Cox OC is doing a good job of determining "least watched" channels to throw under SDV.


----------



## mikeyts

vstone said:


> Some of the cable HD nets run 720p. not 1080i.


True, but the one I mentioned, Universal HD, runs at 1080i on my local system (I just checked with the TiVo S-P-S-Instant-Replay-S display). The programs that I sampled were very sharp and clean. Given the resolution and average bit rate, I'd have expected a mess of "macroblocking" in high-motion scenes, but I couldn't detect any.


----------



## MichaelK

moyekj said:


> Switched Digital Video (SDV) apparently is already deployed in Cox Orange County and from what I can tell from my CableCard Tivos, at least the following are all under SDV:
> (Unless otherwise indicated, tuner does not map to a frequency when channel is selected. Many of these correspond to channels Cox OC stated would go SDV some time in April which is why I believe SDV is the reason they don't tune)
> 
> 30=CSPAN2 (Tunes Analog version with cablecards)
> 107=JWLTV
> 109=LEAC109
> 110=SHOPNBC
> 317=WTHRSCN
> 319=FUEL
> 320=FITV
> 322=CCTV9
> 335=TVG
> 336=HRTV
> 347=FUSE
> 360=CMTPURE
> 363=FOXREAL
> 366=G4P
> 393=GOLTV
> 394=GALA
> 395=DEPELUS
> 396=THITUS
> 397=BANDA
> 398=MUN2P
> 399=TVNI
> 
> 400-418=FOREIGN (17)
> 
> 500-596=PPV (16)
> 
> 601-684=SPORTS PACKAGES (30)
> 
> 732=SCIHD
> 753=TRAVHD
> 772=APLHD
> 
> I don't care about any of the above thus far, so I think Cox OC is doing a good job of determining "least watched" channels to throw under SDV.


I'm actually pretty impressed that one of the shopping channels is switched.


----------



## moyekj

MichaelK said:


> I'm actually pretty impressed that one of the shopping channels is switched.


 They can throw all of the other shopping channels in there along with several other Spanish channels as far as I'm concerned. 
Assuming this SDV channel selection trend continues perhaps I won't need TAs at all.


----------



## lrhorer

moyekj said:


> Assuming this SDV channel selection trend continues perhaps I won't need TAs at all.


I wouldn't bet the farm on it. That said, some CATV systems are making a real effort to limit or at least delay the impact of their SDV deployment.


----------



## mikeyts

We got the following in the mail yesterday:


> Time Warner Cable thanks you for choosing us as your video provider. We are writing to our valued CableCARD customers to provide advance notice of important upcoming changes that will affect your ability to watch certain channels if you use a CableCARD-equipped retail device that only provides one way service. These one way devices are also called a "UDCP".
> 
> Time Warner Cable is rolling out a new two way interactive technology known as Switch Digital Video _[sic]_ (SDV). SDV is a particularly exciting bandwidth breakthrough that makes it possible for us to offer many additional services, including new HD channels and HD versions of popular existing channels, to our customers. SDV allows us to provide these additional services, while at the same time continuing to offer existing services, because channels delivered using SDV are only transmitted over the cable system on an as-needed basis. As a result, SDV uses system capacity more efficiently than the traditional, always-on method.
> 
> The current CableCARD compatible devices sold at retail can only access one way services. They were not designed to be compatible with SDV, which is a two way service. On July 28, 2008 Time Warner Cable will begin providing a number of our existing, less-viewed channels via SDV. Please see the reverse side of this letter for a list of these channels. This means that beginning July 28 you will not be able to view these channels on your one way CableCARD device.
> 
> We recognize the frustration this may cause you so Time Warner Cable has worked with the rest of the cable industry and TiVo Inc. to develop an external device called a Tuning Adapter that will allow certain UDCPs, including TiVo Series 3 and TiVo HD digital video recorders, to access channels delivered using SDV.
> 
> We expect to be able to offer Tuning Adapters to customers with compatible UDCP's later this year. At that time we will provide you with additional information on availability and device compatibility. *It is currently contemplated that the Tuning Adapter will be provided at no additional charge*. In the meantime until the Tuning Adapter becomes available, a Time Warner Cable digital cable set-top box will be required to view channels migrated to SDV. In addition, certain non-TiVo UDCP models may not work with the Tuning Adapter.
> 
> We have created a special offer to help you during the transition. Please contact us at (800) 782-6516 if you would like to learn about the offer or have other questions. Either way, we will contact you when the Tuning Adapter is available.
> 
> We thank you again for choosing Time Warner Cable San Diego.


The list from the back of the page reads:


Code:


[b]East Coast Premiums[/b] (West coast channels still available with CableCARD)
HBO East		Showtime East		Starz East

[b]International Premiums[/b]
The Filipino Channel	Saigon Broadcast TV

[b]Movie Package[/b]
Encore East		Encore Action East	Encore Mystery East
Encore True Stories E.	Encore Westerns East	Encore Love Stories East

[b]Spanish Language Package[/b]
Cine Latino		Sopresa			Fox Sports en Espanol
MUN2			MTV Tr3s		Video Rola
Canal Sur		CNN en Espanol		Discovery Espanol
Boomerang Espanol	Toon Disney Espanol	EWTN Espanol
ESPN Deportes		Gol TV

[b]Sports Package[/b]
ESPNU			ESPNEWS			ESPN Classic
SPEED			Fox Soccer Channel	FCS Pacific
FCS Central		FCS Atlantic		HorseRacing TV
Tennis Channels		GSN			NBA TV
Fuel			CBS College Sports Network

[b]High Definition Channels[/b]
Universal HD		MOJO HD			HD Net
HD Net Movies		NBA TV HD

Overall, we're not being hit too badly at first, with a set of 45 channels, 25 of which are foreign-language channels and east-coast feeds of things where we'll still get the west coast ones non-switched. Only 5 of the switched broadcast channels are HD, two of which I had little use for (MOJO and NBA HD, the latter very rarely having content). I will miss the ability to record those "HD VIP Pak" channels in the interrim. I don't know if it's worth dropping it to save $6/month for however long its likely to be--we can still watch and record those channels on the SA8300HD (running the hideous Navigator IPG) in the meantime. I'll also miss The Tennis Channel and may well dump the "Digital Sports Pak", since that's all I ever watch on it. I suspect that any new broadcast HD channels that they add after starting to use SDV will be switched, though I could be wrong. The only HD service available now that I'm anxious to get is Sci Fi Channel HD--I'll be pissed if they add that one as switched.

I suspect that the "special offer to help you during the transition" is a discount on leased digital STBs for a limited time.

TiVo said that they expected the Tuning Adapter to be provided at no charge. Everybody doubted it, but it looks as though it might happen (someone posted in another thread--here--that Cox Pheonix sent out a letter in which they flatly stated that they weren't going to charge for the TA, whereas TWC's wording gives them leeway to change their mind ).


----------



## SCSIRAID

mikeyts said:


> We got the following in the mail yesterday:
> The list from the back of the page reads:
> 
> 
> Code:
> 
> 
> [b]East Coast Premiums[/b] (West coast channels still available with CableCARD)
> HBO East		Showtime East		Starz East
> 
> [b]International Premiums[/b]
> The Filipino Channel	Saigon Broadcast TV
> 
> [b]Movie Package[/b]
> Encore East		Encore Action East	Encore Mystery East
> Encore True Stories E.	Encore Westerns East	Encore Love Stories East
> 
> [b]Spanish Language Package[/b]
> Cine Latino		Sopresa			Fox Sports en Espanol
> MUN2			MTV Tr3s		Video Rola
> Canal Sur		CNN en Espanol		Discovery Espanol
> Boomerang Espanol	Toon Disney Espanol	EWTN Espanol
> ESPN Deportes		Gol TV
> 
> [b]Sports Package[/b]
> ESPNU			ESPNEWS			ESPN Classic
> SPEED			Fox Soccer Channel	FCS Pacific
> FCS Central		FCS Atlantic		HorseRacing TV
> Tennis Channels		GSN			NBA TV
> Fuel			CBS College Sports Network
> 
> [b]High Definition Channels[/b]
> Universal HD		MOJO HD			HD Net
> HD Net Movies		NBA TV HD
> 
> Overall, we're not being hit too badly at first, with a set of 45 channels, 25 of which are foreign-language channels and east-coast feeds of things where we'll still get the west coast ones non-switched. I will miss the ability to record those "HD VIP Pak" channels in the interrim. I don't know if it's worth dropping it to save $6/month for however long its likely to be--we can still watch and record those channels on the SA8300HD (running the hideous Navigator IPG) in the meantime. I'll also miss The Tennis Channel and may well dump the "Digital Sports Pak", since that's all I ever watch on it. I suspect that any new broadcast HD channels that they add after starting to use SDV will be switched, though I could be wrong. The only HD service available now that I'm anxious to get is Sci Fi Channel HD--I'll be pissed if they add that one as switched.
> 
> I suspect that the "special offer to help you during the transition" is a discount on leased digital STBs for a limited time.
> 
> TiVo said that they expected the Tuning Adapter to be provided at no charge. Everybody doubted it, but it looks as though it might happen (someone posted in another thread--here--that Cox Pheonix sent out a letter in which they flatly stated that they weren't going to charge for the TA, whereas TWC's wording gives them leeway to change their mind ).


I would be absolutely elated if TWC Cary put a similar lineup on SDV and left the rest alone. HDNet is the only thing id miss and I too have an 8300HD with crapigator that I can record it on. Speaking of HDNet, wonder what happened to Star Trek: Enterprise? I have been following it for a long time and was into the last season with about 8 more episodes to go and it disappeared... bummer.


----------



## bicker

I would expect channels to be moved to SDV in two or three phases, just like they're being moved from digital to analog.


----------



## vstone

I wouldn't expect broadcast channels to be put on SDV. As analog transmissions cease, they will become part of the CFR's "basic service tier." Stations in the tier can not be "encrypted" or "scrambled" and must be carried "in-the-clear." While the FCC is busy twiddling their thumbs, all or almost all TV sets currently being sold in this country have a clear QAM tuner. Although cablecard equipped TV sets were advertized as Digital Cable Ready, the clear QAM tuner equipped TV sets are really technical equivalent of the old analog cable ready TV sets. Having said all of that, there is no telling what TWC or the FCC will do.


----------



## mikeyts

While poking around looking for something else, I ran across this spec sheet for the Cisco STA1520 Tuning Adapter. The freakin' thing is officially 11.75"x8"X1.75" and weighs 2 lbs. Though we already had an idea of its size from the display at The Cable Show a month ago, it's still disappointingly large. Of course, I wasn't expecting them to optimize the size of it. I'm certain that it's based on something else they were already making, using as many of the same parts as possible. I just wished they had based it on something a bit smaller .


----------



## Saturn

I got this letter today:



> June 27, 2008
> 
> (name/address)
> 
> Dear Valued Customer,
> 
> Time Warner Cable would like to thank you for choosing us to be your video provider. We are writing to you as a valued CableCARD customer in order to provide advanced notice of important upcoming changes that may affect your ability to access certain channels on your one-way CableCard-equipped retail device (also known as a "UDCP").
> 
> Time Warner Cable is rolling out a new interactive technology in your area known as Switched Digital Video ("SDV"). SDV is a particularly exciting bandwidth-management breakthrough that makes it possible for us to offer many additional services, including new HD channels and HD versions of popular existing channels, to our customers. SDV allows us to provide these additional services, while at the same time continuing to offer existing services, because channels delivered using SDV are only transmitted over the cable system on an as-needed basis. As a result, SDV uses system capacity more efficiently than the tranditional, always-on method. However, in order to launch all the new services our customers want, first we must migrate some existing services to SDV in order to make additional bandwidth available.
> 
> Starting on July 30, 2008, Time Warner Cable will begin providing a number of our existing, lesser-viewed channels via SDV. The list is as follows:
> 
> 318 HBO West
> 319 HBO2 West
> 320 HBO Signature West
> 321 HBO Family West
> 322 HBO Comedy West
> 323 HBO Zone West
> 324 HBO Latino West
> 359 Showtime West
> 360 Showtime Too West
> 361 Showtime Showcase West
> 362 Showtime Extreme West
> 431 Encore
> 432 Encore Love
> 433 Encore Mystery
> 434 Encore Action
> 435 Encore Drama
> 436 Encore Westerns
> 437 WAM!
> 438 Fox Movie Channel
> 439 IFC
> 440 Sundance
> 450 RAI
> 450 ESPN2 HD
> 531 Fox Sports HD
> 532 Universal HD
> 534 TBS HD
> 537 HGTV HD
> 539 National Geographic HD
> 541 Discovery HD Theatre
> 542 A&E HD
> 545 MOJO
> 547 HD Net
> 548 HD Net Movies
> 549 History HD
> 975 Cine Latino
> 978 Video Rola
> 980 MTV Espanol
> 981 TVE
> 983 Mun 2
> 984 Canal 24
> 985 Discovery en Espanol
> 986 Grandes Documentales
> 987 ETWN Espanol
> 988 Ultisima
> 989 Infinito
> 990 Canel SUR
> 991 Sopressa
> 992 Telemundo
> 994 ESPN Desportes
> 995 Fox Sports Espanol
> 996 Galavision
> 997 Telefutura
> 999 CNN Espanol
> 
> The current generation of CableCARD-compatible devices sold at retail are only capable of accessing our one-way services. They were not designed to be compatible with SDV, which is a two-way service. As a result, once the channels listed above are migrated to SDV, they no longer will be available to UDCPs. However, Time Warner Cable has worked with the rest of the cable industry and TiVo Inc. to develop an external devices called a Tuning Adapter that will allow certain UDCPs, including TiVo Series 3 and TiVo HD digital video recorders, to access channels delivered using SDV.
> 
> We expect to be able to offer Tuning Adapters to customers with compatible UDCPs later this year. At that time we will provide you with additional information on availability and device compatibility. It is currently contemplated that the Tuning Adapter will be provided at no additional charge. Until the Tuning Adapter becomes available, however, a Time Warner Cable digital set-top box will be required to view channels migrated to SDV -- even if you own a Tuning Adapter-compatible UDCP. In addition, certain non-TiVo UDCP models may not work with the Tuning Adapter.
> 
> Please contact us at (877) 892-4870 if you have any questions.
> 
> We thank you again for choosing Time Warner Cable.
> 
> Time Warner Cable Wisconsin Division.


----------



## moyekj

Wow, throwing ESPN2 HD in the SDV mix is not very nice for sports fans...


----------



## mikeyts

Saturn said:


> I got this letter today:
> 
> 
> 
> ...
> 450 ESPN2 HD
> 531 Fox Sports HD
> 532 Universal HD
> 534 TBS HD
> 537 HGTV HD
> 539 National Geographic HD
> 541 Discovery HD Theatre
> 542 A&E HD
> 545 MOJO
> 547 HD Net
> 548 HD Net Movies
> 549 History HD
Click to expand...

That's rough. They only took 5 of our HD channels (UHD, MOJO, the HDNets and NBA HD), 4 of which were in an added-cost package. I'll miss UHD and the HDNets in the interrim, but I'll survive. They took four of those plus another 8 channels from you guys. I'd really miss ESPN2 HD, since a lot of the summer hard-court tennis season (the "US Open Series") will be covered there. I'd also be miffed about losing TBS HD (the new season of _The Closer_ starts on 7/14), NatGeo HD and HD Theater.

They didn't even throw in "a special offer to help you during the transition" . Cheeky and unapologetic. You have my sympathies.


----------



## bicker

I'm surprised to see TBS on that list.

I think the reason why we're seeing fewer apologies is because they tend to foster expectations in too many customers that they're owed something tangible, beyond the apology.


----------



## mikeyts

Ah--that was TBS! I was thinking about TNT. I could definitely live without TBS, the network of endless syndicated sitcoms.


----------



## ASW

Does anyone know if the MTR-700 and/or STA-1520 tuning adapters received Cablelabs' certification in Cert Wave 60?


----------



## morac

Comcast is expanding their SDV tests to two more cities: Minneapolis and St. Paul. They also appear to have scaled back from their original plan to deploy of SDV in 15% of their service area by the end of the year.

source


----------



## ultrarunner

Anyone have an update for TWC in Rochester, NY?


----------



## joneSi

I was thinking that these 'dongles' or adapters are going to be offered at no cost, maybe because TiVo is footing the bill for them? Anybody know this for sure to be UNTRUE? Just a theory at now...less than a theory, more of a thought.

Steve


----------



## bicker

I agree: "Less than a theory." TiVo has a hard enough time making profit without footing the bill for stuff like that.


----------



## mikeyts

joneSi said:


> I was thinking that these 'dongles' or adapters are going to be offered at no cost, maybe because TiVo is footing the bill for them? Anybody know this for sure to be UNTRUE? Just a theory at now...less than a theory, more of a thought.


I believe that the no cost thing is just the cable industry being apologetic for deploying switched broadcast, when they'd commited to supporting unidirectional CableCARD. Creating and distributing the Tuning Adapter is an act of contrition which would seem much less sincere if they tried to profit from it.

Even though TiVo said that they expected cable to offer the device at no cost to their subs, I'm a bit surprised that it looks as though they might be right. Of course, at this time there are only a few hundred thousand cable subscribers nationwide who might have a use for the TA--big woo. If the FCC endorses the TA solution and the CE industry responds by creating a slew of low-end products with TA compatibility built in, demand for the thing could become a much more serious financial hit for the cable industry.


----------



## cdp1276

ultrarunner said:


> Anyone have an update for TWC in Rochester, NY?


I've written a few people and CC'd the head of the Rochester, NY office but no response yet. I know we were unfortunately one of the first areas to get SDV so I would think they should be testing the dongle early.


----------



## Meklos

Sorry if asked before, but once the dongle comes out, does this mean that Tivo can make Comcast "On Demand" work?


----------



## SCSIRAID

Meklos said:


> Sorry if asked before, but once the dongle comes out, does this mean that Tivo can make Comcast "On Demand" work?


Nope.


----------



## vstone

Meklos said:


> Sorry if asked before, but once the dongle comes out, does this mean that Tivo can make Comcast "On Demand" work?


No


----------



## mikeyts

Meklos said:


> Sorry if asked before, but once the dongle comes out, does this mean that Tivo can make Comcast "On Demand" work?


A thread search for '+VOD +dongle' turned up a discussion from October, starting with this post, while '+"on demand" +dongle' reveals another from December which starts here. Don't apologize--just search for an answer before asking and only ask if you don't find one.


----------



## supie

I have searched and searched but could not find an answer to my question.

If Tivo solves the SDV issue with a dongle or adapter on the USB Expansion Port will the external eSata Drive still work? If so how?

Thanks in advance.


----------



## classicsat

esata and USB are wholly separate. Adding an SDV adapter should not affect an esATA expansion drive.


----------



## supie

classicsat said:


> esata and USB are wholly separate. Adding an SDV adapter should not affect an esATA expansion drive.


Thanks for the answer, I was thinking the eSata was also USB depending on the cable you used (as with external drives on computers) I now see what you are saying.

Much Appreciated


----------



## Firekite

supie said:


> I was thinking the eSata was also USB depending on the cable you used (as with external drives on computers)


This is wildly incorrect, including when it comes to external drives on computers. eSATA and USB are completely different technologies, separate, just as Firewire and USB are not the same thing.


----------



## lrhorer

True, but many external drives have both USB and eSATA connections on them, which is perhaps why the OP was confused. Once cannot, however, upgrade a TiVo by plugging a drive with a USB port into one of the USB ports on the TiVo.


----------



## cdp1276

cdp1276 said:


> I've written a few people and CC'd the head of the Rochester, NY office but no response yet. I know we were unfortunately one of the first areas to get SDV so I would think they should be testing the dongle early.


I finally heard back today and got this:

My apologies, I thought I replied to your first email shortly after you sent it to me. It appears my response fell through the cracks. I did reach out to one of my corporate contacts and he provided me with the following information regarding the Tuning Adapter.

Time Warner Cable has worked with the cable industry and TiVo to develop the Tuning Adapter to be used with certain UDCPs, including TiVo Series 3 and TiVo HD digital video recorders, which will allow access to programming delivered via SDV channels. Time Warner Cable expects the adapter to be available later this year and will contact TiVO users when it is available.

Rochester currently is not part of the beta test program for this product.

This is all the information I have at this time. I will certainly keep you in mind when the adaptors are released for general deployment later this year.

Best regards,


----------



## Firekite

I wish I knew which areas _are_ in the beta test program. Allegedly San Antonio is on that list, though...


----------



## Hcour

Argh! I periodically come to this forum to check on the SDV dongle and everytime the info is vague. It was Q1 of this yr, then Q2, now "later this year". I'm so sick of my SA8300HD, the only thing keeping me from buying a Tivo is that dammed dongle.

I WANT MY DONGLE!

Harold


----------



## bicker

I don't recall it ever being Q1. It started out targeted for availability in the "first half of 2008", which is essentially Q2. Ostensibly, they've met that deadline by starting beta tests. ("Availability" may not necessarily mean what any of us consumers necessarily want it to mean.)

I sympathize with your SA8300HD plight: I had occasion last weekend to have my first extended experience with the SA8300HD... gosh it is *so much worse* than the Motorola DCT/H-series DVRs. I was shocked about its clunkiness and how many features provided by the Motorola DVRs (and by TiVos, of course) that were missing or broken in the SA DVR.


----------



## Flyinace2000

Here is the new tuning adapter page in devices for 9.4

__
https://flic.kr/p/2677487711


----------



## lrhorer

Hcour said:


> Argh! I periodically come to this forum to check on the SDV dongle and everytime the info is vague.


Yeah. The CATV companies are still playing it fairly close to the chest. Even their published intent to deliver the units has been very noncommital.



Hcour said:


> I'm so sick of my SA8300HD


I can relate. I had an 8300HD for six months prior to the release of the Series III, and I've had root canals which were more fun. I had originally intended to keep the CATV company DVR until the prices came down on the S3, but after 6 months of agony, I went ahead and pried open my wallet to shell out the full $1000 for the S3 with lifetime service.



Hcour said:


> the only thing keeping me from buying a Tivo is that dammed dongle.


Are you hesitating because you don't want to have to maintain two boxes, because you don't want to lose channels, or because you want to make sure the TiVo will work with the dongle? If it's the third reason, I wouldn't worry about it, if I were you. If it's the second, then you might want to think about taking the plunge and keeping the CATV DVR just to handle the stations the TiVo can't get. You also might take a very close look at what is SDV and what isn't on your CATV system. On mine, there are only about 6 or 8 channels (all HD) I can't get with my TiVos that I would really very much like to have, and I can live with the situation until the adapters come out.



Hcour said:


> I WANT MY DONGLE!


I swear I never touched your dongle.


----------



## mikeyts

bicker said:


> I sympathize with your SA8300HD plight: I had occasion last weekend to have my first extended experience with the SA8300HD... gosh it is *so much worse* than the Motorola DCT/H-series DVRs. I was shocked about its clunkiness and how many features provided by the Motorola DVRs (and by TiVos, of course) that were missing or broken in the SA DVR.


It's not the Cisco DVR per se, it's the software running on it. Both Cisco/SA's own SARA (Scientific Atlanta Resident Application) and TWC's new "Digital Navigator" suck so hard they threaten to implode. SARA's design is just crappy--I personally believe it to have been a "Reference Platform", not originally intended for deployment to subscribers. Digital Navigator's not that bad as designed, but it is soooo very buggy, particularly the version of it re-written in Java, intended to be downloadable to third-party <tru2way> devices when they hit the market, but now running in newer CableCARD-using Explorer 8300HDCs with twice the normal memory. 
(Note that Scientific Atlanta is now the Cisco Service Provider Video Technology Group--see this. The assimilation process is nearly complete ).

Before I moved from a TWC neighborhood to a Cox one, switching me from Passport Echo to SARA, I was very happy with the TWC box. If I still had Passport Echo on an SA8300HD, I never would have bought my TiVo Series3. Of course, TWC San Diego has switched to the buggy Digital Navigator, so chances are I would have bought the TiVo anyway .


----------



## moyekj

mikeyts said:


> Before I moved from a TWC neighborhood to a Cox one, switching me from Passport Echo to SARA, I was very happy with the TWC box. If I still had Passport Echo on an SA8300HD, I never would have bought my TiVo Series3. Of course, TWC San Diego has switched to the buggy Digital Navigator, so chances are I would have bought the TiVo anyway .


 Cox in nearby Orange County has Motorola headend and uses Passport Echo on Moto DCH3416 boxes. As you say it is fairly decent software as far as cable DVR software goes. The Moto DVR boxes (DCT6412 models initially) had their share of problems for the 1st couple of years but several firmware upgrades finally have made them fairly reliable and not too sluggish. However I switched to Tivo anyway initially just to get more hard drive space and for MRV, TTG capabilities with all the other Tivo advantages being icing on the cake. During NFL season 120/160GB drives just are not sufficient for me seeing as each game with padding is about 4.5 hours of HD mpeg2 easily consuming about 30-40GB per game.


----------



## Hcour

lrhorer said:


> Are you hesitating because you don't want to have to maintain two boxes, because you don't want to lose channels, or because you want to make sure the TiVo will work with the dongle?


I don't want to hassle w/2 boxes. A lot of the SDV channels are the channels I record the most, so I'll just wait it out.

H


----------



## mikeyts

CableLabs has certified both the Motorola and Cisco Tuning Adapters. You can see an article about it here.


----------



## moyekj

So the question now begs... what's next? My guess is that Tivo will now go through a beta testing cycle assuming they can get their hands on enough of these from both Moto and Cisco to distribute to beta testers.


----------



## SCSIRAID

moyekj said:


> So the question now begs... what's next? My guess is that Tivo will now go through a beta testing cycle assuming they can get their hands on enough of these from both Moto and Cisco to distribute to beta testers.


TiVo 9.4 FW is already in early release and appears to have Tuning Adapter support. The entries are in the menus.


----------



## moyekj

SCSIRAID said:


> TiVo 9.4 FW is already in early release and appears to have Tuning Adapter support. The entries are in the menus.


 True, but that doesn't necessarily indicate Tivo is ready to support these as a general release yet without first going through beta testing. For example, MRV/TTG capabilities were available in software long before the general release was made. It's possible beta testing already happened, but I would think Tivo would wait until after CableLabs certification to do that in case some issues cropped up during certification.


----------



## mikeyts

moyekj said:


> So the question now begs... what's next? My guess is that Tivo will now go through a beta testing cycle assuming they can get their hands on enough of these from both Moto and Cisco to distribute to beta testers.


(As I posted in another thread...) 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-cable-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.

TiVo has been working closely with the cable subscriber equipment OEMs (Cisco, Motorola) and will have tested their code against every version of their Tuning Adapter hardware, including the prototypes that CableLabs just certified; their code is probably good to go. (They showed up at The Cable Show a couple of months back with a demo working with Moto TAs). TiVo Series3 and TiVo HD probably need CableLabs certification as Tuning Adapter clients--I think that they were submitted for that in the same certification "wave". Presumably they passed as well.


----------



## vstone

Plus: apparently Comcast will not be doing widespread SDV before 2010.


----------



## mklitt

Firekite said:


> I wish I knew which areas _are_ in the beta test program. Allegedly San Antonio is on that list, though...


Who can I write to be part of the Beta testing group? I have had an HD Tivo for several years now and am a long time Tivo user. I am in San Antonio and I have the HD Tivo with two cable cards.

The last few times a tech came out, I asked to be part of any beta testing. I also asked a supervisor I talked with, but you know none of that means I will actually come to the attention of those doing the testing.

Before SDV almost everything I watched was in HD. SDV cut through that so completely that I _rarely_ record anything in HD. I think they would have a real problem doing what they did to San Antonio in a larger market.

There are so few cable card setups here that I had three cable trucks parked out front as they were troubleshooting my lack of HD. Finally they talked to someone who knew about SDV. Months after it was implemented we got a letter advising we would lose the ability to watch in HD if we used cable cards.


----------



## lrhorer

mklitt said:


> I have had an HD Tivo for several years now


An HD Tivo, a Series III, or a TiVo HD? Although the HD TiVo is several years old, the S3 and the THD are not. You mention CableCards, and only the S3 and the THD have CableCards. The THD is only a year old, and the S3 is less than 2 years old. You have definitely not had a CableCard based TiVo for several years.



mklitt said:


> Before SDV almost everything I watched was in HD.


Name 5 HD channels in San Antonio which are now SDV but were formerly non-switched HD.



mklitt said:


> SDV cut through that so completely that I _rarely_ record anything in HD. I think they would have a real problem doing what they did to San Antonio in a larger market.


Like what? San Antonio has one of the largest, if not the largest, CATV systems in the United States.

It's also the 9th largest city, so no matter how one dices it, there aren't many larger markets out there.

TWC San Antonio has also been much more conservative in its SDV rollout than many other operations. Only newer channels are SDV.



mklitt said:


> Months after it was implemented we got a letter advising we would lose the ability to watch in HD if we used cable cards.


I haven't seen that letter, but in any case at this stage of the game no one is losing any HD channels. The TiVo owner cannot receive any of the new HD channels, but all the pre-existing HD channels are still non-switched.


----------



## mikeyts

lrhorer said:


> Like what? San Antonio has one of the largest, if not the largest, CATV systems in the United States.
> 
> It's also the 9th largest city, so no matter how one dices it, there aren't many larger markets out there.


Just FYI--According to stats on the NCTA's site (here), TWC San Antonio is the 10th largest system in the nation, with 317,557 subs (which certainly qualifies it as one of the largest systems). The largest is Cox Tempe, with 892,306 subs, which comes as a shock to me--I wouldn't have guessed that the total population of Tempe was that big. Of course, I've never been there, or to any place in Arizona other than the Pheonix airport .

Interestingly enough, it looks as though San Antonio is actually the 7th largest city, according to 2007 Census Bureau estimates (see this); it's the 28th largest US metropolitan area (here).

One of these days I'm going to learn to resist my pedantic impulses . We now return you to your regularly scheduled discussion .


----------



## lrhorer

mikeyts said:


> Just FYI--According to stats on the NCTA's site (here), TWC San Antonio is the 10th largest system in the nation, with 317,557 subs (which certainly qualifies it as one of the largest systems).


'Sounds plausible. Historically, the larger CATV systems were often not in the largest cities, because the large cities were often divided up by several different CATV companies. In the last few years, however, the large MSOs have been buying up their competitors, so many cities which formerly had two or three CATV companies each serving its own part of town now are served by a single company.



mikeyts said:


> The largest is Cox Tempe, with 892,306 subs, which comes as a shock to me--I wouldn't have guessed that the total population of Tempe was that big.


It's also been true historically the smaller cities and towns had much better subscriber penetration than the larger cities. Small cities and towns generally have fewer broadcast stations, giving the people a greater incentive to subscribe, and it's also generally much easier and cheaper to build plant in smaller cities, giving the investors a greater incentive to build in those areas.



mikeyts said:


> Interestingly enough, it looks as though San Antonio is actually the 7th largest city, according to 2007 Census Bureau estimates


<sigh> Yeah, the city keeps growing. The last time I had checked, it was 9th.



mikeyts said:


> it's the 28th largest US metropolitan area


Yeah, unlike New York, Chicago, and others, San Antonio butts right up against several other fairly large cities, so people living in those areas are not considered to be part of the San Antonio metro area, despite some of them living within sight of the city line. People living in San Marcos, Austin or (I think) New Braunfels are not considered in the count, despite the fact they live closer to the center of San Antonio than those who are included n the counts of, say, metropolitan Los Angeles or New York.



mikeyts said:


> One of these days I'm going to learn to resist my pedantic impulses .


I see no reason why you should. These fora are intended to be fun, and if you enjoy engaging in an occasional pedantic explosion, what's the harm?


----------



## Firekite

lrhorer said:


> These fora are intended to be fun, and if you enjoy engaging in an occasional pedantic explosion, what's the harm?


Well while we're at it, "fora" is not a legitimate plural of forum. It's the internet-kids-and-wannabe-hackers-trying-to-sound-smart form, kind of like people who say things like "he gave the package to James and I," and since I know you're not that, perhaps the standard "forums" would be better.


----------



## moyekj

As I suspected may be the case, at least this provider (Brighthouse) plans on a testing phase of the tuning adapters before customer release:
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=6504300#post6504300
Good to see the word is out and there is awareness about these by cable companies. Hopefully Tivo is staying on top of this and pushing the providers to get these things tested and deployed.
I shall have to send an email to my provider (Cox Orange County) to see where they stand.


----------



## mikeyts

moyekj said:


> As I suspected may be the case, at least this provider (Brighthouse) plans on a testing phase of the tuning adapters before customer release.


You'd best believe that _all_ of the providers will test them on their systems before distributing them to customers. Service providers are extremely cautious with new equipment and software (though you wouldn't think so, given the troubles with TWC's new Digital Navigator IPG ). They'll probably still be kinda rushed out, though. With CableCARD TiVos being the only thing that they can do practical testing with, there's only so much they can do.


----------



## MichaelK

lrhorer said:


> ...
> 
> It's also been true historically the smaller cities and towns had much better subscriber penetration than the larger cities. Small cities and towns generally have fewer broadcast stations, giving the people a greater incentive to subscribe, and it's also generally much easier and cheaper to build plant in smaller cities, giving the investors a greater incentive to build in those areas.
> ..


I'm from the other side of thecountry- but from visiting I beleive that -

Tempe isn't exactly a smaller city or town- it's basically a section of the greater Phoenix blob.

Pheonix, Tempe, Scotsdale, Mesa, Glendale, Chandler, etc are sort of like Manhatten, the Bronx, Queesn, Brooklyn, and Staten Island make up New York.

(except that NYC is divided by water, whereas the Pheonix blob is just a running grid that aside from different styles of street signs you would have no idea you aren't always in Pheonix proper.)


----------



## MichaelK

also- couldnt say for certain- but i suspect the "tempe" system has subs outside tempe and in Pheonix itself. My folks house is served by Cox and they are in pheonix- not all that far from tempe if I understand the border correctly.

For example- Verona and Oakland NJ are also on that list but I'm certain that they cover many towns from those head ends.


----------



## lrhorer

Firekite said:


> Well while we're at it, "fora" is not a legitimate plural of forum.


It most certainly is. In the original Latin, the term "forum" was gender neuter and the Latin plural form for this type of declination replaced the "um" with "a". In short, the Latin plural of forum was fora. Most modern lexicologists consider either "fora" or "forums" to be acceptable. Which is more correct depends on which expert is being asked. I prefer "fora". It's easier on the ears, IMO. There are reasonable arguments on both sides to prefer one over the other, but none are in my estimation definitively compelling. Admittedly the argument for "fora" is not as unassailable as that for "aquaria" or "bacteria", the English norm being to add an "s" for words not ending in "ium", but there are many, many singular exceptions to the rule in any case, and the argument for taking this to be one is very much as strong as the argument for the plural of "fish" being "fish", if you ask me.



Firekite said:


> perhaps the standard "forums" would be better.


'Or not. Since either is acceptable, I'll use the one which pleases me, thanks. You may feel free to correct me the next time you see me use the pronoun "I" as the object of a preposition, however.


----------



## Firekite

lrhorer said:


> In short, the Latin plural of forum was fora.


Turns out that here it is a couple thousand years later, and the universal English plural of "forum" is "forums" around the world, regardless of whether you can try to perform rationalization gymnastics and contortions. Hell, look it up at Answers.com, and you'll find that the only one of its many reference materials that even contains a reference to it is "Hacker Slang".


----------



## mikeyts

Firekite said:


> Turns out that here it is a couple thousand years later, and the universal English plural of "forum" is "forums" around the world, regardless of whether you can try to perform rationalization gymnastics and contortions. Hell, look it up at Answers.com, and you'll find that the only one of its many reference materials that even contains a reference to it is "Hacker Slang".


I've checked a number of actual dictionaries (the Random House College Dictionary on my desk, dictionary.com, merriam-webster.com) and they _all_ list both "forums" and "fora", side by side, as plural forms of forum. It's proper English. (Both of the online dictionaries even have icons you can press to give an audio pronounciation of "fora").


----------



## cableguy763

I think that things have been so slow in this thread lately that firekite had to find SOMETHING to argue with irhorer about. The proper use of fora was what he chose to harp on.


----------



## lrhorer

cableguy763 said:


> I think that things have been so slow in this thread lately


For obvious reasons. I made a half-hearted effort to see about enticing TWC to allow me to be a beta tester, but before I could get in touch with any of my contacts, we had some major technical fires - explosions, really - break out, and I haven't had a moment to take a breath since. Tomorrow looks light, perhaps even dead unless some of the folks in Moscow get some problems with my main engineering app fixed, so I might make an effort to call a couple of old friends...



cableguy763 said:


> SOMETHING to argue with irhorer about.


Um, that's lrhorer, not irhorer, if you don't mind. The first initial of my given name is "L". 'Not that I'm offended, mind you. You clearly weren't trying to insult me, nor indeed would I take insult in any case, but my name is one of the few things I own outright. Everything else belongs to the bank.


----------



## cableguy763

No sleight intended with the name. I thought the lower case l was an i. My bad. I honestly do have respect for your knowledge of the cable industry .


----------



## Firekite

No, there's not a lot of sleight on the fora.


----------



## jrm01

Firekite said:


> No, there's not a lot of sleight on the fora.


Shouldn't that be "slights"?


----------



## cableguy763

jrm01 said:


> Shouldn't that be "slights"?


I think you are right...


----------



## Firekite

Yes, thank you, that was the joke


----------



## moyekj

At the risk of getting back on topic... I have been bugging my local cable co. (Cox, Orange County, CA) about the now certified tuning adapters. For a while I was getting nowhere with little to no feedback. Finally I think the message hit home and we are supposed to be getting an "official" letter sometime "soon" according to an email. If it's anything noteworthy I will post here.


----------



## jcaudle

This is the inquiry that I sent to Cox Cable Northern Virginia, (Fairfax) and their. They are clueless and not helpful

Customer Inquiry: I am the owner of one Tivo System 3 and also a Tivo HD unit using cable card. With the impositon of Switched Digital Video (SDV) in the Fairfax we don't get the newer HD channels that have been added to the line up. Cable Labs is working with Motorola and Cisco in testing a Tuning adapter to be attached to the Tivo USB port to allow the tivo to be able to communicate with the head end of your system to be able to call up the newer channels. My question is when Cox Farifax will have the Cisco version of this adapter and by what means it will notify tivo owners when its availible. Thank you. Joseph J. Caudle

Dear Mr. Caudle:

Thank you for contacting our Cox Northern Virginia Online Customer Care Team.

We are aware of the adapters for the Tivo units. Unfortunately, at this time we do not have any information available in regards to these adapters. Generally speaking any announcements we have to make are made on the bill each month in the What's New From Cox section of the bill. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

If you need additional information on other Cox products or services, please visit our web site at http://www.cox.com/fairfax We hope that we have been able to provide you with the information you requested. If we have not, or if we can be of any additional service to you, please do not hesitate to contact us again.

My name is Pamela

Thank you for choosing Cox Communications, Your Friend in the Digital Age!

Sincerely,

The Cox Northern Virginia Online Customer Care Team


----------



## lavajunk

Has anyone using any Cable provider seen one of the Tuning Adapters - that will allow Tivo Series 3 and Tivo HD owners to use SDV channels? 

Just wondering what Time Warners response has been? I plan to contact them soon myself.


----------



## mikeyts

lavajunk said:


> Has anyone using any Cable provider seen one of the Tuning Adapters - that will allow Tivo Series 3 and Tivo HD owners to use SDV channels?
> 
> Just wondering what Time Warners response has been? I plan to contact them soon myself.


At the end of June, I received a letter that TWC San Diego apparently sent to all CableCARD using subs, warning us of the incipient deployment of SDV (they throw the switch on Monday), listing the channels we'd be losing access to and telling us that the Tuning Adapter would be available "later this year", to CableCARD TiVo users and any other "customers with compatible UDCPs". I posted the entire thing back here.

I'd expect that TWC subs in other areas will receive something similar; a Cox Pheonix sub posted in another thread that he'd gotten such a letter from his provider (there's a link to that at the bottom of my post with the TWCSD letter).


----------



## SRanft

One of the many problems right now is TWC/Cox is not technically responsible for providing the SDV adapter. And right now, I have both my TiVo HD and TWC DVR hooked up so I can receive all the channels I subscribe to. But I am sick of having to switch from one to the other just because the TiVo can't get the channel and I ABSOLUTELY HATE the TWC DVR. It is the biggest POS of a tuner I have ever used with horribly inferior guide and recording software.

So, what I really want to know is, has anyone heard any info from TiVo or CableCARD about the release of the adapter? What will it cost? Are there going to be any extra fees involved to actually use it? Something besides the "Dangling Carrot" email TiVo sent way back in May?

I am sorry if someone has already asked these questions before, but there are so many non-related posts in this thread, I didn't have the patients to read them all. So I just skipped to the end.


----------



## bicker

In the end, all the information you're looking for necessarily must come from TWC/Cox. Neither TiVo nor Cable Labs can provide that information for you.


----------



## jrm01

SRanft said:


> One of the many problems right now is TWC/Cox is *not technically responsible *for providing the SDV adapter.


Not sure what you mean by this phrase.

If you mean "technically not responsible" I would suggest otherwise. If it is going to be provided (which it apparently is) then they will be responsible for providing it.

If you meant "technically not required" then maybe you have a point. However, the cable companies are being pressured to come up with a solution and this is the one that they have chosen.

BTW, based on several reports the costs for these may be very nominal.


----------



## lavajunk

OK - I read that these Tuner Adapters are out and were on display at the Cable show earlier this year ( http://www.zatznotfunny.com/2008-05/sdv-tuning-adapters-in-the-flesh/) - not sure how reliable that info is, but it seems to be mentioned at other sites also.

Per this web site ( http://www.cedmagazine.com/CableLabs-Motorola-Cisco-SDV-tuners.aspx ) Cablelabs have certified both the Motorola and Cisco Tuner Adapters.

I read elsewhere the COX planned to provide them free of charge, but TW (oh yeah the lovely TW) stated it was too early to comment.

So I was just wondering if anyone had seen these things out yet?

BTW - TW in Rochester was one of the test markets for SDV and they have been using SDV since at least last Nov and all the new channels they have added since then are SDV. I'm looking forward to being able to access all the channels available (well except the on demand - which really isn't such a big deal for me personally).


----------



## mikeyts

lavajunk, articles on the announcements that you cited have been posted and discussed in this thread either on or before the day that those sites posted them or soon thereafter.

When you visit a thread, don't assume that news on the topic from weeks back hasn't already been shared and discussed. Before posting stuff like that, you should try to use the thread search function (a link labelled "Search this Thread" near the top of a page of posts). For instance, searching the thread for "the cable show" (with quotes), reveals that there are nine posts which contain that phrase, the earliest being this one from May 18th, linking to an article at Engadget, discussing Motorola's Tuning Adapter display at the show (with a bunch of pictures of it). A search for "+certified +Tuning" (no quotes) gets you six hits, one of which is this from July 18th, which gives a link to a Multichannel News article announcing the certification. If you don't find anything on your first search, don't give up--search for a few different related terms.

As for whether anyone has seen one "in the wild" yet, watch this space . If someone participating or monitoring this thread either gets one or sees a report online from someone who got one, they're sure to post about it.


----------



## mikeyts

SRanft said:


> One of the many problems right now is TWC/Cox is not technically responsible for providing the SDV adapter. And right now, I have both my TiVo HD and TWC DVR hooked up so I can receive all the channels I subscribe to. But I am sick of having to switch from one to the other just because the TiVo can't get the channel and I ABSOLUTELY HATE the TWC DVR. It is the biggest POS of a tuner I have ever used with horribly inferior guide and recording software.
> 
> So, what I really want to know is, has anyone heard any info from TiVo or CableCARD about the release of the adapter? What will it cost? Are there going to be any extra fees involved to actually use it? Something besides the "Dangling Carrot" email TiVo sent way back in May?


TiVo will not be providing these adapters and they will not be for sale. They've modified their firmware to work with them but the devices will be distributed by individual cable providers.

One problem with selling them is that they are cable system hardware and software specific. I think that there are currently three different systems for switched broadcast in use by various providers around the country and there are two main cable network equipment providers who have created Tuning Adapters and neither of these will work on networks based on the other company's equipment.

As I stated in this post a few back, my cable provider, Time Warner Cable of San Diego, has sent out a letter informing CableCARD users that they'll be losing some channels due to the deployment of SDV (as an apology, they offered 6 months free use of a cable STB or up-to-2 CableCARDs). Others with different cable providers in other cities have posted that they've received similar letters.

Though I feel your pain, I doubt that anyone will roll these things out to their subscribers much before mid-Fall.


----------



## MichaelK

I suspect anyone that has one of the adapters in their living room currently is under an NDA. So you might not hear from them for a while until the beta testing is done.


----------



## mklitt

What about answering my question about who I can write to be on the Beta testing list?

I get this discussion delivered to me via e-mail regularly and I have to page through your quibbling and parsing other people's sentences and showing off and yet never managing to give any useful information or respond on point to questions. Can you spell T-R-O-L-L?

I have had my Tivo OVER ONE YEAR, not several years. It just feels like several years after the SDV problem. And yes I can name more than five channels, but happily I do not have to answer your questions and PLEASE do not answer mine.

Could someone with real info give me an address or a good number to call. Thank you very much.


----------



## jrm01

vstone said:


> Plus: apparently Comcast will not be doing widespread SDV before 2010.


Maybe not widespread, but they did announce that they will add Minneapolis and St. Paul this year.


----------



## Firekite

mklitt said:


> Can you spell T-R-O-L-L?


M-K-L-I-T-T


----------



## MichaelK

mklitt said:


> What about answering my question about who I can write to be on the Beta testing list?
> 
> ...
> 
> Could someone with real info give me an address or a good number to call. Thank you very much.


tivo's website has a place to sign up for their beta program.

But from a few comments in this thread with info that cable csr's have passed along, I get the impression that the cable company's will be running the beta tests. So I think you want to call your cable provider to check on that- if you can get the number for the local head end engineers that would probably be your best hope I would guess. Might want to try escalating your concerns with the national cable mothership but i dont think any normal frontline CSR at a cable 800# will have a clue or the ability to get your name to the right people.


----------



## MichaelK

jrm01 said:


> Maybe not widespread, but they did announce that they will add Minneapolis and St. Paul this year.


that's interesting.

I thought their current plan to increase bandwidth was to go all digital with their new cheapo converter boxes for the basic analog tier.

I guess they are trying a variety of things.


----------



## jrm01

mklitt said:


> What about answering my question about who I can write to be on the Beta testing list?
> 
> Could someone with real info give me an address or a good number to call. Thank you very much.


The Beta areas will probably be chosen by the cable companies head offices, but I would imagine the beta users would be selected by the local office. So I would begin there. Of course, I wouldn't start with a CSR.


----------



## jrm01

MichaelK said:


> that's interesting.
> 
> I thought their current plan to increase bandwidth was to go all digital with their new cheapo converter boxes for the basic analog tier.
> 
> I guess they are trying a variety of things.


Their big intitiative appears to be the DTA boxes, but they are still testing the SDV soluton also.


----------



## cableguy763

Firekite said:


> M-K-L-I-T-T


Freaking hilarious!!!


----------



## lavajunk

mikeyts said:


> Though I feel your pain, I doubt that anyone will roll these things out to their subscribers much before mid-Fall.


TW Rochester is already using SDV - has been since last fall. But my understanding is Rochester NY may have been a test market for TW SDV. Lets hope for all you folks about to get it that the Tuner Adapter shows up from you Cable provider before SDV hits your area.


----------



## mikeyts

lavajunk said:


> TW Rochester is already using SDV - has been since last fall. But my understanding is Rochester NY may have been a test market for TW SDV. Lets hope for all you folks about to get it that the Tuner Adapter shows up from you Cable provider before SDV hits your area.


At the bottom of the FAQ in the top post of this thread, bdraw lists some of the systems where SDV is known to be fully deployed. He hasn't updated that list in a few months and I think that there were more than he lists even then (for instance, it doesn't list TWC Oceanic in Hawaii, which was one of the more draconian SDV deployments, taking every HD channel away from CableCARD using subs).

Switched broadcast supposedly goes online on TWC San Diego today, so I'm going to lose access to 45 channels on my TiVo, 3 or 4 of which I was using. It doesn't seem to have gone online yet, and hopefully it won't before _Torchwood_ airs on HDNet at 4:00 .


----------



## mklitt

Thank you to everyone for being helpful!

The "tuning resolver" as it is now called may be ready for beta testing the end of the 3rd quarter. It will not necessarily be beta tested in San Antonio.

However I am now on the list for when it is field tested here. I have unsubbed from this thread now because while there is substance, there is too much chatter and I now have the contact info I need for TW San Antonio to stay on top of this on my own. 

Thanks again.


----------



## mikeyts

mklitt, it's actually called the "Tuning Adapter"; "Tuning Resolver" was its original name, which appears to have changed sometime around the end of February.


----------



## bicker

mklitt said:


> I have unsubbed from this thread now because while there is substance, there is too much chatter and I now have the contact info I need for TW San Antonio to stay on top of this on my own.


Gosh, I feel so *used*.


----------



## mikeyts

Full initial deployment of switched broadcast appears to have started, one day later than stated in the notice (fine by me, since it allowed me to record one last episode of _Torchwood_ on HDNet ). I've lost access to the HD VIP Pak and all of the Sports Pak _except_ for Tennis (the only one that I regularly watch). Very strange, and I'm not expecting that to last. Nice, for however long it lasts, since Tennis is currently covering early round matches at the Cincinnati AMS tournament.

Oh well. Bring on the Tuning Adapter!


----------



## SRanft

You are right jrm01. I did mean TECHNICALLY NOT *REQUIRED* since this isn't an issue with the original equipment they provided with the service. Its just here in the San Antonio, TX area, they have been adding more and more channels on SDV. As of right now, I am missing out on 30+ channels (roundabout guess), using the TiVo HD box. Before I switched to the HD TiVo, I had a Series 2 for more than 5 years. I loved it too much to just give up on it and start using the horrible equipment TWC supplies. So I will just sit here, continuing to pay for service and wait for a resolution to this problem. Suppose I just needed to complain a little. You know, the squeaky wheel gets the grease.

But thanks to those who responded with some bit of updated information on the matter. I just got tired of trying to keep up with all of it and hoped that someone had a little more determination to stay informed on all this stuff.


----------



## vstone

Comcast appears to be going the all digital route first, then may add SDV when needed later. Opinion: They probably ran the numbers and found this method cheaper and/or irritated less fanchise authorities when you look long term at Tru2way TV sets. They can probably recycle some old SD digital STB's to serve remaining analoh TV sets.


----------



## mikeyts

I got the 9.4 update last night. I notice an added "Tuning Adapter" item on the "Account & System Information" menu. Selecting it displays a dialog with the big heading "No Tuning Adapter" and an explanation of what a Tuning Adapter is. Promising. (No doubt this has been covered in the 9.4 update thread, but I thought it was worth a mention here ).


----------



## jcaudle

and I have seen on Gizmolovers where Cox Phoenix area has sent out Email to customers about the tuning resolver. Here in Northern Virginia they proclaim ignorance if you ask them, like their corporate offices haven't told them anything out here in the backwoods of fairfax county. We haven't gotten any of the new HD channels added since last spring since they deployed SDV here. FiOs is tantalizingly close to my neighborhood....but not here yet.


----------



## Timber

My street was dug up last week in preparation for FIOS. I've been a Cox NoVA customer for the past 10 years. We'll see what the coming weeks brings but competition is a wonderful thing.

-=Tim=-


----------



## jmfirestone

I am in Greensboro, NC and plagued by the SDV thing. I am missing a ton of channels and it stinks.

One thing I had a question about, is that sometimes some channels work and other times they don't. When someone else in my neighborhood is using the channel, does it become available to me as well, and likewise, if nobody is using the channel I can't watch it?


----------



## mikeyts

jmfirestone said:


> I am in Greensboro, NC and plagued by the SDV thing. I am missing a ton of channels and it stinks.
> 
> One thing I had a question about, is that sometimes some channels work and other times they don't. When someone else in my neighborhood is using the channel, does it become available to me as well, and likewise, if nobody is using the channel I can't watch it?


Well, it will be on the wire, but (in the absence of the Tuning Adapter) there's no way of telling on what frequency it might be placed or as what program in the MPEG Transport Stream on that frequency. I don't have an explanation for why you can get some channels sometimes and sometimes not.


----------



## MichaelK

perhaps they are still deciding what to do SDV and what to leave linear? So sometimes they switch what is sdv and what is not?


----------



## moyekj

mikeyts said:


> Well, it will be on the wire, but (in the absence of the Tuning Adapter) there's no way of telling on what frequency it might be placed or as what program in the MPEG Transport Stream on that frequency. I don't have an explanation for why you can get some channels sometimes and sometimes not.


 Could it be that the CableCard channel map has a fixed frequency still for some or all of the SDV channels (instead of being absent completely) and so once in a while the frequency matches up to one of the switched frequencies? For my headend when I tune an SDV channel and look at Tivo diagnostics it shows tuning failure and no frequency for that channel indicating there is no mapping for that channel at all.


----------



## moyekj

I just noticed that in the CableLabs certification list of devices, there is now an additional column entitled *Tuning Adapter Capable* and only the Tivo THD & S3 devices have *Yes* in that column. I guess that means the Tivo devices now are officially certified as Tuning Adapter Capable thus clearing another milestone for general release.
http://www.cablelabs.com/udcp/downloads/OC_PNP.pdf


----------



## TiVolunteer

jmfirestone said:


> I am in Greensboro, NC and plagued by the SDV thing. I am missing a ton of channels and it stinks.
> 
> One thing I had a question about, is that sometimes some channels work and other times they don't. When someone else in my neighborhood is using the channel, does it become available to me as well, and likewise, if nobody is using the channel I can't watch it?


The VP of Engineering for Time Warner Raleigh region explained to me a few months back that the SDV solution they are rolling out will allow them to dynamically adjust what is SDV and what is not. At that time, they hadn't decided what to map where but he pointed out that it could be decided on a node by node basis using viewing statistics. It would not be "real-time" but could be adjusted fairly regularly. One of the examples he mentioned was the Olympics could drive viewing patterns that varied by node.


----------



## jmfirestone

Ahhh.. so, I guess maybe it switches on and off from time to time. It seems to be very frequent, but then again I don't pay that close of attention to it.


----------



## lrhorer

mikeyts said:


> Well, it will be on the wire, but (in the absence of the Tuning Adapter) there's no way of telling on what frequency it might be placed or as what program in the MPEG Transport Stream on that frequency. I don't have an explanation for why you can get some channels sometimes and sometimes not.


If the stream is unencrypted, then the TiVo user can receive it if he happens to run across the stream. There have been other reports of some CATV systems sending out SDV content unencrypted.


----------



## JimWall

Time Warner Cable of Southwest Ohio just sent a letter saying it will switch a large number of "little used" channels to SDV on Aug 15th. The reason is to fee up bandwidth for more HD channels. Letter lists the channels and says the tuning resolver for TIVO will be available at an undetermined time after the switch. The current plan is to not charge for it TR.


----------



## jmfirestone

Really? They are suggesting that the dongle we need to deal with the SDV issue is going to be free? That's pretty exciting news, but I am not sure I believe it either.


----------



## MichaelK

jmfirestone said:


> Really? They are suggesting that the dongle we need to deal with the SDV issue is going to be free? That's pretty exciting news, but I am not sure I believe it either.


search a bit-

this is not the first mention from a major cable company that they plan to be free.

(of course who knows if that "PLAN" plays out- but for now it sounds like we might get lucky and they'll be free....)

Thinking about it- Do they even get authorized? Or are the adapters/resolvers just a translator? I'd assume all the authorization is still handled in the cablecard.

If so and they don't need to authorize them, it might just not be worth the effort of messing around with billing systems. Likely if they tried to charge anything significant- the fcc would get bent (as I am under the impression the FCC hinted that cablecards need to be kept 'affordable' so as not to be a barrier to 3rd party entry). There's not all that many tivo's in the world- so if there's only a handful in each head end then is it worth the effort to have to change and update the billing system to charge 1 dollar a month?

Maybe they will just hand them out like amplifiers and splitters. You need one- here take it. I think technically they can charge for those but I don't think they do regularly. Granted the tuning adapter might cost 100 and a splitter 2 bucks. But you hand out 50 splitters or 1 adapter and it's still 100.

So maybe free is logical too&#8230;..

(although I just thought some more and I guess it needs to be authorized some how so it send the signal back to turn on SDV channel X to node Y?)


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## mikeyts

I think that the Tuning Adapter is probably pretty damn inexpensive. The typical cable modem has all the necessary hardware and you can buy those retail for about $30.

Right now, the demand for them is going to be pretty low--if every CableCARD-using TiVo owner wanted one, they'd only need some 100,000-200,000 or so, nationwide--peanuts for the MSOs. However, the cable industry has offered them up as a solution for engineering low-end television products capable of tuning switched broadcast; if the FCC and CE OEMs take the bait, there could be a ton of out-of-the-box Tuning Adapter-compatible devices on the market soon.


----------



## MichaelK

Will be interesting if the low end tv's bother with the usb ports and required computing power for cablecards and tuning adapters.

I was under the impression they wouldnt, but i guess there's no other way to make a sort of cable ready tv really for cheap.

I think the adapters will cost like 60-70 bucks since i think in moto's case they seem to have taken much of a low end box (dct7000?) that they used to sell for around that price range. I'm sure they stripped out some of the unneeded stuff but then had to put in the usb controller and other chips. And they'll be selling them in 10's or 100's quantities instead of 1,000's like the digital box it's based on used to be done in. I believe in their waiver filings cable or moto told the fcc those dct7000 boxes cost 60 or 70.


but all just guesses on my part.


----------



## lrhorer

MichaelK said:


> Thinking about it- Do they even get authorized?


They will probabaly have to cooperate in obtaining a network address so switching can be implemented (essentialy an ARP), but otherwise, perhaps not. Depending on the implementation, the TA itself may not obtain and retain any info itself from the transaction. All that could be stored in the Tivo.



MichaelK said:


> Or are the adapters/resolvers just a translator?


It's more of an intelligent modulator.



MichaelK said:


> Id assume all the authorization is still handled in the cablecard.


If you mean the de-encryption, then yes, it is, but the tuning request is created by the TiVo and then passed to the TA.



MichaelK said:


> Maybe they will just hand them out like amplifiers and splitters. You need one- here take it. I think technically they can charge for those but I dont think they do regularly.


'Depends on the provider. Some do, some don't.


----------



## mikeyts

MichaelK said:


> Will be interesting if the low end tv's bother with the usb ports and required computing power for cablecards and tuning adapters.
> 
> I was under the impression they wouldnt, but i guess there's no other way to make a sort of cable ready tv really for cheap.


There is no "required computing power" for tuning adapters--it's a protocol involving the exchange of very small amounts of information and basically no computation. I could be wrong, but I don't believe that CableCARD interface is that big of a deal, particularly since they can use the Unidirectional CableCARD host interface, tens of millions of which have been put into Digital Cable Ready televisions and STBs over the past few years. The cost is negligible in comparison to the cost of implementing <tru2way> in a usable fashion, which requires bi-directional CableCARD Host Interface 2.0, a pretty fast processor, lots of memory and a license for an execution environment for a Java profile.


> I think the adapters will cost like 60-70 bucks since i think in moto's case they seem to have taken much of a low end box (dct7000?) that they used to sell for around that price range. I'm sure they stripped out some of the unneeded stuff but then had to put in the usb controller and other chips. And they'll be selling them in 10's or 100's quantities instead of 1,000's like the digital box it's based on used to be done in. I believe in their waiver filings cable or moto told the fcc those dct7000 boxes cost 60 or 70.
> 
> but all just guesses on my part.


I'm guessing too, but I think that what both Moto and Cisco did was take the closest thing that they were already making and reduce the internals, keeping the same enclosures, since they were buying a ton of them for another product. I doubt that the board inside bears a lot of resemblance to the DCT700 and half the electronics of a cable tuning STB has no use in the application whatsoever: the MPEG decoder, the sound processor, the graphics processor and any graphics memory, the IR receiver, display LEDs, etc, etc. I'm sure that they ripped all of that off of the boards for the Tuning Adapter, as well as all the headers for A/V output.

You can see a picture of the back of Motorola's DCT700 STB here and one of the back of the MTR700 Tuning Adapter here--though they're in the same little plastic box, it's pretty clear that the board inside is very much different. I'm sure that something very similar was done by Cisco for the STA1520, which is stuffed into the enclosure for the RNG 100 STB. The price of manufacture for the two will be fairly unrelated.

Designing a custom enclosure and board of the smallest possible size would have required a lot of time and cost a lot of money, and I feel certain that they were ordered to keep the development time and manufacturing cost of the product at a minimum, since the cable providers were planning to charge nothing (or very little) for the devices.


----------



## classicsat

The low end TV set manufacturers won't even have Cablecard at all, let alone bothering to support the SDV adapter.

For the sets that do have Cablecard and a USB connector, the manufacturers likely won't bother to support SDV. They would have to write and test code, and likely get it certified by CableLabs, as well as distribute it to sets, and the infrastructure isn't really there, except for a thumb drive upgrade.


----------



## MichaelK

classicsat said:


> The low end TV set manufacturers won't even have Cablecard at all, let alone bothering to support the SDV adapter.
> 
> For the sets that do have Cablecard and a USB connector, the manufacturers likely won't bother to support SDV. They would have to write and test code, and likely get it certified by CableLabs, as well as distribute it to sets, and the infrastructure isn't really there, except for a thumb drive upgrade.


thats what i was trying to say-
classicsat said it much better.

a couple years ago you could buy an analog tv in a supermarket. THey were all over and cheap. SOme for like 50 bucks. THere's no point in making a 50 dollar tv into a 100 dollar tv for cable's sake I'm guessing. The cheapo manufacturers will leave it on people to rent cable/sat boxes i think.


----------



## mikeyts

classicsat said:


> The low end TV set manufacturers won't even have Cablecard at all, let alone bothering to support the SDV adapter.
> 
> For the sets that do have Cablecard and a USB connector, the manufacturers likely won't bother to support SDV. They would have to write and test code, and likely get it certified by CableLabs, as well as distribute it to sets, and the infrastructure isn't really there, except for a thumb drive upgrade.


At the end of 2006, the CE OEMs (through the CEA) complained to the FCC that implementation of <tru2way> was too expensive specifically for inclusion in low-end products. They asked for the a cheap-to-implement, inflexible set of protocols for SDV, IPPV and VOD as an alternative, which they called "Digital Cable Ready Plus". That was actually going to have to include support for new bidirectional CableCARD interface.
For this article on the controversy:


> On the CEA side, Sony Electronics complained in a Nov. 29 filing that the cable industry's OpenCable Platform is a one-size-fits-all/take-it-or-leave-it solution that is designed to further entrench cable's market power by all but foreclosing competition and innovation.
> 
> OpenCable requires too much processing power and memory to feasibly use in *low-end and mid-range consumer electronics*, said CEA vice president of technology and standards Brian Markwalter. OpenCable is a Swiss Army knife, he said. There's a whole middle ground  80% of the customer base  that doesn't need what is essentially a computer in the device.


Apparently they don't even like the price of implementing <tru2way> in the mid-range. Since that was published the NCTA got Sony to agree to support <tru2way> and abandon DCR+.


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## vstone

The number of cablecard models probably peaked in 2006. If you do a search for cable card at the best buy site, you get zero results, Circuit city: 2 (1 is the THD), you get a few more at Crutchfield, mostly large Mitsubishis. A lot of TV sets offer clear QAM, which would be more useful if cable companies actually populated their PSIP tables correctly. Most manufacturers have given up on cablecard 1.


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## bicker

I know that when I bought my 2006 Samsung, it was the first model year after they had decided that CableCARD was an elite feature, and restricted it to only the top-level model (5088), not providing it on their other models (5086, 5087, 5066, 5067).


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## mikeyts

The CE OEMs gave up on CableCARD V1 because of very poor support for the technology by cable providers and cable's successful campaign to discourage their use by their subs. Of the millions of units which were sold with CableCARD slots, the cable industry industry claims that only a few hundred thousand have been used.

The cable industry itself is pushing support for interactive "CableCARD" (they're working feverishly to get rid of the cards), but the interactive stuff that they want iis expensive to support in a product, restricting its inclusion to high-end models. The CE OEMs have been lobbying for a simpler standard to support a fixed set of services (IPG, IPPV, VOD, SDV) which can be included in cheaper products; cable's response has been that cheap products don't need IPG, IPPV and VOD and for SDV, we'll give you the Tuning Adapter. Including a unidirectional CableCARD interface and a USB port in a product won't add much to its price today (TiVo includes two CableCARD slots and two USB ports in a $300 box, albeit one whose price is heavily subsidized by service contracts), and the FCC requires that nearly all television products have the ability to tune ATSC and therefore to handle decoding and imaging a reasonably high-rate MPEG-2 stream.


----------



## morac

vstone said:


> The number of cablecard models probably peaked in 2006. If you do a search for cable card at the best buy site, you get zero results, Circuit city: 2 (1 is the THD), you get a few more at Crutchfield, mostly large Mitsubishis. A lot of TV sets offer clear QAM, which would be more useful if cable companies actually populated their PSIP tables correctly. Most manufacturers have given up on cablecard 1.


Yep this is what my Sony Bravia XBR4 does (and something I wish the HD TiVo DVRs did). It works well with local broadcast channels sent via cable since the PSIP data is set correctly for them. For cable channels though it's worthless since a) cable companies don't set up PSIP for cable channels and b) 99% of the cable channels are encrypted so they can't be tuned anyway.


----------



## lrhorer

moyekj said:


> I just noticed that in the CableLabs certification list of devices, there is now an additional column entitled *Tuning Adapter Capable* and only the Tivo THD & S3 devices have *Yes* in that column. I guess that means the Tivo devices now are officially certified as Tuning Adapter Capable thus clearing another milestone for general release.
> http://www.cablelabs.com/udcp/downloads/OC_PNP.pdf


What really chops my nards is the fact the USB based adapter was the most inferior of the most likely ways to implement the adapter, but it was promoted in favor of an Ethernet based solution because, "an Ethernet based solution would only serve TiVos, and none of the other existing UDCPs". The fact is, however, even a USB based adapter is only going to be supported on the TiVo. The fact many other existing UDCP products have USB ports is irrelevant, because having the USB port in no way means they have the infrastructure to support a Tuning Adapter. For new designs, the port type is not really relevant, as it is no more difficult to add an Ethernet port to a TV than a USB port. For the average consumer, however, it means they will need one TA for every UDCP, whereas the Ethernet solution could easily have serviced the entire house with a single TA. It also means the TA is going to have to sit near the UDCP it services, rather than in a closet or computer room somewhere. Most people are not enamored of additional clutter in their living rooms from additional boxes and the cables attached to them.

It appears possible, or even likely now, the CATV companies may be offering the TA free, but I wonder if they will provide three of them free? I also wonder if they might change their mind a year from now and start charging a monthly fee for the TA? It certainly would not be the first time a CATV company flip-flopped on providing a service free and then later charging for it.


----------



## CharlesH

lrhorer said:


> It also means the TA is going to have to sit near the UDCP it services, rather than in a closet or computer room somewhere.


But at least it can be stuffed back out of sight somewhere, since it doesn't have an IR port or display that the user has to interact with.


----------



## lrhorer

CharlesH said:


> But at least it can be stuffed back out of sight somewhere, since it doesn't have an IR port or display that the user has to interact with.


You are assuming there is room behind the components to stuff it back out of sight. In the case of my living room, there isn't. Not only that, but for me it isn't the visibility that is an issue. I don't care if I can see the box, or not. The issue is getting to the box to service it.


----------



## DCIFRTHS

lrhorer said:


> You are assuming there is room behind the components to stuff it back out of sight. In the case of my living room, there isn't. Not only that, but for me it isn't the visibility that is an issue. I don't care if I can see the box, or not. The issue is getting to the box to service it.


In my case, I don't have a place to "stuff" the box, nor do I want to go crazy when/if I have to service it.


----------



## classicsat

An ethernet interface would be a bit more complex, especially to make it secure, plus ethernet is already used for TiVos networking (or at least could be). Plus the TA is probably intended as one unit per UDCP, not one per home. TiVo has at least one USB port clear anyway, so is just as easy, if not easier than ethernet.

A properly designed HT setup will allow for hiding the device someplave, and having it available for servicing.


----------



## mikeyts

classicsat said:


> An ethernet interface would be a bit more complex, especially to make it secure, plus ethernet is already used for TiVos networking (or at least could be). Plus the TA is probably intended as one unit per UDCP, not one per home. TiVo has at least one USB port clear anyway, so is just as easy, if not easier than ethernet.


Ethernet is a physical transport that can and constantly is used simultaneously for multiple different purposes with a myriad different protocols by multiple different devices hung on it. That TiVo's already using it for something else is not a valid objection--it can use it for this at the same time without strain.


----------



## classicsat

Its not so much the TiVo couldn't use it, it is that it would add complexity to the TA, and to the SDV protocol, for security and multi box detection. Remember, the TA is more like a cable box than a cable modem you apparently think it is.


----------



## mikeyts

classicsat said:


> Its not so much the TiVo couldn't use it, it is that it would add complexity to the TA, and to the SDV protocol, for security and multi box detection. Remember, the TA is more like a cable box than a cable modem you apparently think it is.


Since I've read the public spec from cover to cover (it's only 50 pages long, and mainly composed of API details that can be skimmed if you're not going to write code using them) and have over 10 year experience in implementing embedded network protocol stacks and applications in large scale networking equipment, I think that I may pretty well understand what it is. It's neither a cable box or a cable modem--my comment was that just about all of the hardware necessary for it is contained in a cable modem--not that it's related to a cable modem (though the spec allows it to communicate using DOCSIS protocols, if that's convenient).

It does not deal with the in-band cable signal at all--it just passes it through. An internal Y-connector would allow it to do that.

Dealing with the TA function as an IP protocol application is no more complicated than half a dozen network applications that TiVo has implemented and far less complicated than many of them.


----------



## JimWall

If the TA is implemented using IP to communicate with TIVO then would it be connected to a hub in a home network and only one would be needed per home network with many TIVOs or other compatible devices?
That would save money for the cable companies and less clutter for subscribers but would introduce a single point of failure for the sub.
Maybe the next version could have USB and IP. Then subscriber could choose. If cable companies don't change for TA then I suspect they would offer subs a cheap hub instead of more than one TA.


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## vstone

Why do you think there will be a next version TA. Currently the only application is for an S3 or HD, although there may be some wild card TV set out there with USB ports and a cablecard slot that could be reprogrammed, if the TV set manufacturer were so inclined for such a small audience.

The next version is called Tru2Way and will be built into TV sets and the probably the Tivo S4.


----------



## classicsat

I am not saying they couldn't use IP over ethernet or the home network, it is just that it would be too complex for them, or at least will add complexity they don't need. USB was just as simple and secure for them, and is the way they went.


----------



## mikeyts

classicsat said:


> I am not saying they couldn't use IP over ethernet or the home network, it is just that it would be too complex for them, or at least will add complexity they don't need. USB was just as simple and secure for them, and is the way they went.


I'm highly familiar with the IP protocols and have some knowledge of USB and I'm saying that it's my highly informed opinion that it wouldn't have been any more complex. Even over USB, the Tuning Adapter performs an authentication handshake with the UDCP (i.e., TiVo) and portions of the protocol are encrypted--they wouldn't have had to do any more work to acheive that level of security in a LAN protocol nor would it have been any more complex.

In any case, what's done is done. Whether it was justified or not, they went the way that they did and we're all going to have to live with it. Not a big problem for me in my single TiVo situation, but many people, like lrhorer, have 3 or more; one guy posting in the TiVo thread at AVS Forum apparently has 7. Because of this goofy design, they're all going to have to have a big stack of these gizmos.


----------



## moyekj

Since USB solution was chosen I was a little hopeful that they might be able to use USB power to the TA without need for a separate supply. Of course with ethernet solution POE could be an option, but complicates things a lot. As it turns out however the TAs still need their own power supply so I really see no advantage. I think the selection of USB was driven purely from perspective that there are many more existing A/V consumer devices out there with USB support than with ethernet support. I can't think off hand of any CableCard capable TVs with built in ethernet (there probably are some) but there are quite a few with USB. The reality is probably that very few devices (if any) other than CableCard Tivos will ever include support for these TAs so ethernet would have been a perfectly viable choice.


----------



## MichaelK

mikeyts said:


> ... Including a unidirectional CableCARD interface and a USB port in a product won't add much to its price today (TiVo includes two CableCARD slots and two USB ports in a $300 box, albeit one whose price is heavily subsidized by service contracts), and the FCC requires that nearly all television products have the ability to tune ATSC and therefore to handle decoding and imaging a reasonably high-rate MPEG-2 stream.


but that's a $300 dollar box which is subsidized. it is not a 79 dollar tv set sold at the A&P/walmart/target for a profit.

(i'm sure at some point the price of everything drops, but just saying FOR NOW and maybe the next couple years i dont expect to see low end stuff with cablecard/usb ports.)


----------



## mikeyts

MichaelK said:


> but that's a $300 dollar box which is subsidized. it is not a 79 dollar tv set sold at the A&P/walmart/target for a profit.
> 
> (i'm sure at some point the price of everything drops, but just saying FOR NOW and maybe the next couple years i dont expect to see low end stuff with cablecard/usb ports.)


We have a different concept of "the low-end". No one's going to try to add interactive capabilty to a television intended to sell for $79.

I'm not saying that anyone going to actually create other TA compliant devices, but that's what the issue is--the CE OEMs arguing that they need something from the cable providers to allow them to add interactive services at a lower price-point--this presupposes a brand-new _bidirectional_ CableCARD slot, or the coming DCAS processor, either of which I'd expect to be more expensive than the USB 2.0 port and unidirectional CC slot necessary for TA compliance, which is what the cable industry is offering as an alternative (though it will only provide SDV, when what the CE industry is asking for is cheap, fixed-function SDV+IPG+IPPV+VOD). What the CE industry is asking for, saying that they want it for low-end products, is more powerful but significantly more expensive than TA compliance, while being significantly less expensive than <tru2way> compliance.


----------



## lrhorer

mikeyts said:


> I'm highly familiar with the IP protocols and have some knowledge of USB and I'm saying that it's my highly informed opinion that it wouldn't have been any more complex.


I am also highly familiar with IP protocols and with USB, and your statement is correct. What's more, an Ethernet based TA would not even have had to participate in IP, at all. It could simply have been a layer 2 bridge, forwarding packets to the hardware address of the CATV host from the TiVo and to the TiVo's MAC address from the CATV host. a simple encryption layer could have been added, although I don't really see that it would have been necessary. Encryption is already in place at the application layer.



mikeyts said:


> In any case, what's done is done.


I know. I'm still chapped, though.



mikeyts said:


> many people, like lrhorer, have 3 or more; one guy posting in the TiVo thread at AVS Forum apparently has 7.


I saw that. Gulp. I had a major coronary prying my wallet open three times, but *SEVEN!*



mikeyts said:


> Because of this goofy design, they're all going to have to have a big stack of these gizmos.


Goofy is the word.


----------



## lrhorer

classicsat said:


> I am not saying they couldn't use IP over ethernet or the home network, it is just that it would be too complex for them


'Total nonsense.

1. Ethernet is no more complex than USB at any layer.

2. If Ethernet had been implemented, it is likely it would not have been impolemented at the IP layer. There would be no real need. More likley it would have been implemented at layer 2, and the TA would not have participated at the IP layer at all.



classicsat said:


> or at least will add complexity they don't need. USB was just as simple and secure for them, and is the way they went.


3. Security at layer 2 would not be required. There is little or no point.

4. USB is not fundamentally any more secure than Ethernet.

5. Implementing security in a USB device carries precisely the same requirements as in an Ethernet device.


----------



## lrhorer

moyekj said:


> I think the selection of USB was driven purely from perspective that there are many more existing A/V consumer devices out there with USB support than with ethernet support.


That was the reason given, but it is completely specious.



moyekj said:


> I can't think off hand of any CableCard capable TVs with built in ethernet (there probably are some) but there are quite a few with USB.


Having a USB port does not mean there is a means of obtaining a data path between the CableCard and the USB port. I doubt even a single TV out there is capable - even with a software upgrade - of forwarding tuning requests to the USB port.



moyekj said:


> The reality is probably that very few devices (if any) other than CableCard Tivos will ever include support for these TAs so ethernet would have been a perfectly viable choice.


I think that's a very tiny "if". It's possible some new TVs might come out with support for the TA, but adding an Ethernet port would be no more difficult than adding TA support via USB for a model in development. It's possible some manufacturers might offer a hardware retrofit, and there even might be a couple of sets out there which could be made to work with a software upgrade, but I'm skeptical.


----------



## emily12

If you have another links, please submit there. so it will valuable for everyone.


----------



## mikeyts

lrhorer said:


> Having a USB port does not mean there is a means of obtaining a data path between the CableCard and the USB port. I doubt even a single TV out there is capable - even with a software upgrade - of forwarding tuning requests to the USB port.


TA support doesn't actually require a data path between the CableCARD and USB port--the UDCP talks to the TA solely through the USB connection and forwards any information that the TA needs about the CableCARD over that path. I assume that these products (consumer TVs and STBs) have some central processor responsible for UI functions, listening to remote commands and formulating tuning requests--if that processor also handles communication with the USB port, TA compliance can be implemented. (I know that that's the basic architecture of TiVo).

There may be a handful of televisions out there which could potentially be upgraded to support it, which included USB ports for various reasons. I can't remember who, but I remember that at least one company produced some televisions which could accept firmware upgrades written to flash cards (the other use for the flash card slot was display of pictures from digital cameras)--you could download upgrades from their site, write the files in the appropriate directory of the flash card and upgrade your firmware that way. There's some company out there selling a system for upgrading firmware in devices with television tuners with files downloaded through ATSC datacasting streams--some OEMs have signed up for the service.

If there are CableCARD-equipped televisions with USB ports and easily field-upgradable firmware that could be modified to create TA compliance, there will damned few of them. Would it be worth upgrading them for TA compliance? I suppose that their owners could be notified that their model could be upgraded for TA compliance in the same way that the cable providers have been notifying TiVo users--by sending letters to every CableCARD using sub with the information, listing upgradeable television/STB models and giving URLs and/or television numbers of where to go for more information.


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## vstone

I have a 26" Panny in the bedroom (purchased July 07) that can be upgraded with a memory card like the one in my camera (but no USB slot). I presume that is available across the entire Panny line. However, I think the only CEM still putting cablecard slots in their TV sets is Mitsubishi.


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## mikeyts

vstone said:


> I have a 26" Panny in the bedroom (purchased July 07) that can be upgraded with a memory card like the one in my camera (but no USB slot). I presume that is available across the entire Panny line. However, I think the only CEM still putting cablecard slots in their TV sets is Mitsubishi.


If any products are upgradeable to TA compliance, they'll be few if any of last year's models. Unidirectional CableCARD was a failure, much to the credit of the cable providers (and the FCC, for giving them a 2 year grace period on the requirement that they use them in their own equipment). And you're right--I don't think that any of the OEMs other than Mitsubishi put CableCARD slots in their 07/08 model lines (those 07/08 Mits TVs with CableCARD slots all have USB ports as well, for viewing photos from USB flash drives and card readers and hints in the manuals would indicate that the port can be used for software update--they may be eligible for a TA-compliance upgrade). The CE OEMs all manufactured millions of televisions with CableCARD slots and the NCTA claims that only a few hundred thousand CableCARDs have been leased nation wide.

BTW, I remembered the company that's marketing that update-firmware-through-broadcast tech--it's called UpdateLogic.


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## jeffspam

Well, it looks to me that TWC in Columbus, OH is turning to SDV, which means I've got about 61 pages of this thread to catch up on. The whole argument of USB vs Ethernet interests me though. Really, why need an external adapter at all? If the device (i.e. my tivo) already has broadband connectivity, it should communicate directly with the headend equipment via IP to request the channel be setup. Same should be true for any two-way service (e.g. VOD). I'm sure this has been brought up before somewhere in this thread, but it seems to me that needing anything external to the Tivo is a waste. 

That said, I'm certainly curious when these adapters will be released, or more importantly, when my local CATV company will stock and distribute them. I'm not holding my breath.


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## shabby46

Maybe this has already been addressed but I didnt see it, so let me see if I understand this correctly...

Where I live (cox fairfax) SDV is now taking up about 25 of the 40 HD channels. They are saying that the tuning adapter is not rushed because there isnt much of a demand for it as very few people have tivos. The reason for SDV is to save bandwith, so if it is known that I have cablecards and I am one of the very few people in the area who has it, couldnt there be a way to have our (CC users) HD channels sent to us all the time which would barely use any bandwith since there are so few of us? At least until the TAs are available?

At the very least they could let me pick which HD channels I want to receive and have those turned on all the time. I can deal with OTA networks for now, but I miss Discovery and Food HD.


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## classicsat

Simply, the IP channel from the ethernet or wireless adapter on the TiVo is an unknown quantity (as far as security and identity goes), plus the cable providers would have to set up a web based back end to support it, not to mention a more complex software layer on the host device. The Tuning Adapter, as currently designed, connects locally to the host, using a rather simple and standard protocol, and requires little change to the cable head/back end, perhaps just marrying the serial number of the TA to the cablecard(s) in the host, if it doesn't marry itself to or assume the identity of the host cablecard.

The providers cannot send channels to particular providers, but at most to a node, and that does take up bandwidth, and work to administer just for a handful of customers, so will not happen.


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## mikeyts

shabby46 said:


> The reason for SDV is to save bandwith, so if it is known that I have cablecards and I am one of the very few people in the area who has it, couldnt there be a way to have our (CC users) HD channels sent to us all the time which would barely use any bandwith since there are so few of us? At least until the TAs are available?


There may only be a few CC users in any given area (and by "few", we're talking about, say, 2000 of 200,000 subscribers on a system), but they're probably spread randomly throughout the system, with some on many, if not most, network edge segments.


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## jeffspam

classicsat said:


> Simply, the IP channel ... on the TiVo is an unknown quantity (as far as security and identity goes),


Certainly security certificates and encryption, which devices such as the Tivo already make use of, can handle this part. 


> a web based back end ... more complex software layer on the host device


Why web-based? A simple server in the racks at the headend, doing all the authentication and communication with the consumer devices (e.g. my Tivo), could relay requests into the headend equipment. As far as the headend equipment is concerned, it'd be seen just as if a cable box had made the request. And as far as the Tivo (or whatever) goes, it just puts a simple request ("I"d like to reserve channel 632 for 1 hr") into an authenticated wrapper and opens a port to the (let's call it...) SDV translation server. The server sends back a yea or nay, and Bob's your uncle (I've always wanted to use that phrase. Apologies.).
Anyway, just a thought. I would think it'd be a lot easier to do this than deploy yet more equipment to end users, but I suppose I should have applied for a membership to CableLabs a while back.


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## JayBird

mikeyts said:


> I don't think that any of the OEMs other than Mitsubishi put CableCARD slots in their 07/08 model lines


The Pioneer KURO Plasmas had cable card slots up until the latest models that were just released in the last couple of months.


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## lrhorer

mikeyts said:


> TA support doesn't actually require a data path between the CableCARD and USB port--the UDCP talks to the TA solely through the USB connection and forwards any information that the TA needs about the CableCARD over that path.


I figured you might nit about that. It's true no data comes directly from the CableCard to the modulator. Rather, data passed to the CPU by the CableCard is acted upon by the CPU sending packets to the moduator. It's definitely an indirect path, but it also requires the processor be able to act upon data from the CableCard and send out data to the USB port. I expect many TV's have the CPU instructions on PROM, not in non-volatile RAM. Others may use different dedicated systems for the two, since the CableCard in a UDCP isn't expected to send data out the USB port.



mikeyts said:


> I assume that these products (consumer TVs and STBs) have some central processor responsible for UI functions, listening to remote commands and formulating tuning requests--if that processor also handles communication with the USB port, TA compliance can be implemented.


Yes, but I suspect many times that may not be the case, and even if it is the case, the firmware may not be downloadable.



mikeyts said:


> There may be a handful of televisions out there which could potentially be upgraded to support it


A very small handful, I think.



mikeyts said:


> I can't remember who, but I remember that at least one company produced some televisions which could accept firmware upgrades written to flash cards (the other use for the flash card slot was display of pictures from digital cameras)--you could download upgrades from their site, write the files in the appropriate directory of the flash card and upgrade your firmware that way.


I think my Mitsubishi is supposed to work that way, as I recall, but I never have found the software on their website. OTOH, I haven't looked in almost 2 years, either.


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## lrhorer

shabby46 said:


> The reason for SDV is to save bandwith


'Not to save bandwidth, per se, but to increase it manyfold. In short, it allows the CATV companies to potentially provide literally thousands of channels to their customers at an extremely low cost to the CATV provider per channel.



shabby46 said:


> so if it is known that I have cablecards and I am one of the very few people in the area who has it, couldnt there be a way to have our (CC users) HD channels sent to us all the time which would barely use any bandwith since there are so few of us?


That is just the oppostite. What you are proposing woud use much more bandwidth, not less, than SDV. Indeed, it is essentially just a regular linear channel. The bandwidth is the same whether 1 person is watching the channel or 100,000. Besides, how would the CATV company's equipment know where the TiVo owners are?



shabby46 said:


> At the very least they could let me pick which HD channels I want to receive and have those turned on all the time. I can deal with OTA networks for now, but I miss Discovery and Food HD.


You seem to be misunderstanding not only how SDV works, but also how legacy linear broadcast channels work.


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## lrhorer

classicsat said:


> Simply, the IP channel from the ethernet or wireless adapter on the TiVo is an unknown quantity (as far as security and identity goes), plus the cable providers would have to set up a web based back end to support it, not to mention a more complex software layer on the host device.


This is total nonsense. 'Give the TA a MAC address and ARP or similar capability, beacon from the Tivo to find a TA using the same ARP or ARP-like protocol, and from then on send all packets to the MAC address found by the TiVo. The TA then simply passes on any non-ARP packets to the modulator. 'Trivial.



shabby46 said:


> The Tuning Adapter, as currently designed, connects locally to the host, using a rather simple and standard protocol


The 802.1 specification is every bit as much a standard as USB. The Universal Serial Bus architecture is in no way any less complex than Ethernet. Finally, they are both bus architectures (notice the name: Universal Serial *Bus*) allowing multiple devices to be attached together in a single segment.

Since IP is layer 3, it can be transported over any sort of lower layer protocols, including Ethernet, Token Ring, Arcnet, SLIP, PPP over RS-232, RS-445, DS-1, DS-3, OC-3, OC-12, or PPTP, IPSec, L2TP, etc., or last but not least, USB.



classicsat said:


> , and requires little change to the cable head/back end, perhaps just marrying the serial number of the TA to the cablecard(s) in the host, if it doesn't marry itself to or assume the identity of the host cablecard.


It does nothing of the sort. All it does is provide layer 2 bridging from the host network segment to the CATV network segment. This only requires that it recognize data coming from the host as being destined for the CATV network and pass it on. It will ignore any data not destined for the CATV network (or the TA itself). This is its function whether it is Ethernet based or USB.



classicsat said:


> The providers cannot send channels to particular providers


(I think you meant "...to particular subscribers".) Well, they could, and indeed this is precisely what Uverse does, and FIOS's implementation of VOD, as well. SDV is generally a more attractive alternative for the CATV topology, however. In a CATV plant, it makes best sense to put the switch boundary at the node. Anywhere else is much less efficient. IPTV puts the switch boundary at the subscriber's dwelling.


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## mikeyts

As I said, lrhorer, the number of televisions eligibile to be adapted to TA-compliance will be small--probably only a few of the high-end models from two or three manufacturers in '06 and '07--certainly no more than ten distinct models altogether and probably fewer. One wonders if those manufacturers would bother--Mitsubishi is progressive enough that they might. I don't know about the others. For those few customers actually using the CableCARD slots in their televisions, it would be a great boon, cementing customer loyalty.


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## shabby46

lrhorer said:


> 'Not to save bandwidth, per se, but to increase it manyfold. In short, it allows the CATV companies to potentially provide literally thousands of channels to their customers at an extremely low cost to the CATV provider per channel.
> 
> That is just the oppostite. What you are proposing woud use much more bandwidth, not less, than SDV. Indeed, it is essentially just a regular linear channel. The bandwidth is the same whether 1 person is watching the channel or 100,000. Besides, how would the CATV company's equipment know where the TiVo owners are?
> 
> You seem to be misunderstanding not only how SDV works, but also how legacy linear broadcast channels work.


You are right that I dont understand SDV too well, Im not a big communications guy, but I guess what I am asking is why is that that with my cablecards, the company can still send me premium channels like HBO, but they cant somehow make a note to send the rest of the channels my way?


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## mikeyts

shabby46 said:


> You are right that I dont understand SDV too well, Im not a big communications guy, but I guess what I am asking is why is that that with my cablecards, the company can still send me premium channels like HBO, but they cant somehow make a note to send the rest of the channels my way?


The backbone of the most modern cable systems is fiber, with coax running into your neighborhood, which can't transport nearly as much information as the fiber backbone can. It's a bit like a river with little garden hoses siphoning from it, bringing the content past homes. (Not a very good analogy, but I'll stretch it ). Pre-switched-broadcast, all of the all-the-time channels were taken out of the river and put in your garden hose, but now they want to make more stuff available to subscribers than will fit in the hose at once. With switched broadcast, they pick and choose only the things that the homes attached to your local hose are actually using and put them in the hose; they can't send you anything that isn't also presented to everyone else using the same stretch of hose. (Yeah, it's a pretty poor analogy all right ).

In practice, they continue to send some things to eveyone all the time, but some other things become only available upon request, sharing a designated portion of each "hose's" capacity.

Take a good look at that illustration in the top post of this thread--in it, the big thick tube with the little houses on it represents my garden hose whereas the dashed yellow lines are the river.


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## CharlesH

Maybe I am just missing it, but do the alternative TA implementations being discussed here require that the user get their Internet service from the cable company?

There is the question of how TiVo talks to the TA: over USB vs over the home LAN connection (wired, wireless, whatever) to a centralized place on the home network. 

And the question of the upstream communication to the cable company SDV equipment: IP (over the public Internet vs over the cable) vs low level DOCSYS protocol on the cable.


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## lrhorer

shabby46 said:


> You are right that I dont understand SDV too well, Im not a big communications guy, but I guess what I am asking is why is that that with my cablecards, the company can still send me premium channels like HBO, but they cant somehow make a note to send the rest of the channels my way?


They don't "send you" anything, other than the encryption keys for the premium services you are authorized to receive, and they only do that once every few days or weeks. Linear services are there all the time, period. It's just that if you do not pay for them, your box is not given the encryption key so it can decrypt the data stream which appears at every house in the city. Any linear channel eats up its respective timeslot on the entire CATV plant.

An SDV stream is different. It does not appear at every house in the city. Instead, it appears at every house serviced by the fiber node of the subscriber who orders the stream. Typically this may be 400 - 1000 homes, or perhaps up to 3000 receivers. The stream in question then eats up the timeslot only on the node servicing the sub who requested it. The same timelsot on the other 100 - 500 or so nodes in the city is fee to carry some other video, or in fact up to the number of different videos as there are nodes. In an all digital CATV system (there are none of these yet) a typical plant may be able to handle about 600 QAMs, for a round figure. If all 600 are carrying 2 HD channels and one SD, that's 1200 HD channels and 600 SD. In a linear configuration, that's the limit. In a complete SDV configuaration, however, hypothetically a 500 node system with 600 QAMs could carry 600,000 HD videos and 300,000 SD videos. That's a big difference.

The "always on" configuration you are suggesting is a linear channel. In a 500 node CATV system, a single linear channel reduces the total number of available channels by 500. A single analog channel reduces the total number of videos by 1000 HD channels and 500 SD channels.

Note, however, that some channels, notably the National networks, the more popular "superstations" (WGN Chicago, TBS Atlanta, etc),, and the primary pay channel feeds (HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, TMC, Starz, etc) all have large enough market shares that those channels will be continuously viewed by at least one subscriber on every node. This being the case, SDV offers no significant advantage for the CATV provider over a linear implementation, so it is very likely that for the moderately long term future those channels will continue to be broadcast on linear QAMs. Any channel whose viewership during any significant period of the day is low enough so that at least one node on average will not be carrying the channel during that time represents a potential increase in the number of available channels if the provider switches them to SDV. In a system with 100 active receivers per node at that time of day, that means if during any period of the day a particular channel (including HD versions of popular channels) drops regularly below 1%, moving that channel to SDV will increase the humber of available channels, particularly VOD offereings. Since 99.9% of the viewing penetration is taken up by the 5 national networks, SD versions of the "superstations", and SD versions of the primary premium channels, plus a small handul of Cable Channels (Lifetime, Animal Planet, Discovery, etc), the remaining channels all represent lucrative conversions to SDV, or revenue left on the table if the provider does not convert. On the other side of the equation is the capital costs of conversion and the annoyance of subs who can no longer receive the channel.


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## dswallow

CharlesH said:


> Maybe I am just missing it, but do the alternative TA implementations being discussed here require that the user get their Internet service from the cable company?
> 
> There is the question of how TiVo talks to the TA: over USB vs over the home LAN connection (wired, wireless, whatever) to a centralized place on the home network.
> 
> And the question of the upstream communication to the cable company SDV equipment: IP (over the public Internet vs over the cable) vs low level DOCSYS protocol on the cable.


The TA implementations use private channels on the cable for communication with the head-end. It is really just IP traffic, but it isn't mixed in with or otherwise in any way related to internet service your cable company provides except that it's the same technology. The TiVo communicates with the TA via the USB port. The TA communicates with the head-end using the internal cable modem over the private channel the cable company supports.


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## lrhorer

CharlesH said:


> Maybe I am just missing it, but do the alternative TA implementations being discussed here require that the user get their Internet service from the cable company?


No, not necessarily at all. The most direct Ethernet solution would not necessarily require one even have internet service.



CharlesH said:


> There is the question of how TiVo talks to the TA: over USB vs over the home LAN connection (wired, wireless, whatever) to a centralized place on the home network.


Yes, that is the point. By utilizing the home LAN (not the internet), the TA could service multiple TiVos. Of course hypothetically the USB based TA could do the same thing utilizing a USB hub, but that solution is very messy, both from a cabling perspective and a networking perspective.



CharlesH said:


> And the question of the upstream communication to the cable company SDV equipment: IP (over the public Internet vs over the cable) vs low level DOCSYS protocol on the cable.


'Not at all. If the connection were over the internet - which would also be technically possible - then a TA is not required at all. In this case, however, there are IP security issues at the CATV headend. Firewalling and VPN tunnels could easily alleviate those issues, but while it is the most elegant solution of all, I can readily understand why the CATV companies would be loathe to dive into it. That, plus it would require the subscriber to have an internet conenction, while a TA, whether Ethernet or USB based, does not.

It would also have been possible to make an Ethernet solution work directly with the subscriber's existing DOCSIS modem quite outside the internet IP stream. While doing so would have eliminated the firewall issues at the CATV headend, it would have required the subscriber not just to have internet service, but internet service from their CATV provider. A lot of Series III owners may have balked at that.


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## lrhorer

mikeyts said:


> As I said, lrhorer, the number of televisions eligibile to be adapted to TA-compliance will be small--probably only a few of the high-end models from two or three manufacturers in '06 and '07--certainly no more than ten distinct models altogether and probably fewer.


Absolutely, and that's my point. In terms of being at the design stage of the TA, the desire to have make it compatible with a vanishingly small number of non-Tivo systems was one not really worth consideration.



mikeyts said:


> One wonders if those manufacturers would bother--Mitsubishi is progressive enough that they might. I don't know about the others. For those few customers actually using the CableCARD slots in their televisions, it would be a great boon, cementing customer loyalty.


True. Now that the decision has been made and implemented to provide a USB based TA, there is very little to prevent the manufacturers of the few TVs which either are or will be compatible with the TA from writing the siple code to implement it. Indeed, if you ask me it would serve the CATV companies, CableLabs, and the CATV manufacturers right if there were a sudden explosion of TA capable devices in the marketplace, totally screwing up their plans for tru2way. The problem is, the real people to blame are at the FCC, and nothing that happens in the real world is going to take any skin off their noses.

If my 62" Mitsubishi DLP can be made to work with a TA, I might even go to the trouble of getting one for it, but only if Time Warner will give me four TAs free of monthly charges.


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## lrhorer

dswallow said:


> The TA implementations use private channels on the cable for communication with the head-end. It is really just IP traffic, but it isn't mixed in with or otherwise in any way related to internet service your cable company provides except that it's the same technology.


That is correct. The internet exclusively makes use of TCP/IP networking and public IP addresses for its existence, but that in no way means IP is equivalent to the internet, despite its misleading name of "Internet Protocol". I haven't looked, but while I believe the handshaking for SDV probably is IP based, it may not be. It could possibly be OSI, or even IPX, although I would seriously doubt the latter. On the other hand if I were the one designing the SDV network, I would definitely seriously consider OSI. Assuming it is TCP/IP, and not OSI or some other set of networking protocols, I would bet a great deal the addresses are non-routable.


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## ADent

lrhorer said:


> The internet exclusively makes use of TCP/IP networking and public IP addresses for its existence


Don't forget UDP - the internet is not all TCP.


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## classicsat

CharlesH said:


> Maybe I am just missing it, but do the alternative TA implementations being discussed here require that the user get their Internet service from the cable company?


Not necessarily.
It would be, as said, a matter of tunneling internet traffic (securely) to the private network the cable boxes use, or to the SDV control gear.


> There is the question of how TiVo talks to the TA: over USB vs over the home LAN connection (wired, wireless, whatever) to a centralized place on the home network.


My understanding is the TiVo talks to the TA in , more or less a simple command protocol, The lower level protocol is handled by some sort of USB stack operated by a driver.

That stack could be IP on ethernet I suppose, but it would also have to run a VPN or other security means to an ethernet TA, or over the internet to the VPN connection at the cable headend. That VPN on the hos would have to be customized for each provider, and that customization could requires "secrets" be revealed, or at least vulnerable.


> And the question of the upstream communication to the cable company SDV equipment: IP (over the public Internet vs over the cable) vs low level DOCSYS protocol on the cable.


As said, the public internet would require the host device implement a VPN to the cable provider. For all intents and purposes, ones home network would be considered public internet (for security purposes, there would be no trusting the consumer keeping their home network "clean"), and the ethernet TA in one's home the providers SDV receptor, or an outside internet receptor at the node or headend.

The bigger picture, IMO, is that the TA as will be implemented is a lot more simpler and secure for most customers, the box developers (TiVo), and the cable providers.


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## lrhorer

ADent said:


> Don't forget UDP - the internet is not all TCP.


Indeed, it is not, but the topology is still known as TCP/IP. It is one of several misleading definitions running around in the networking world. Although UDP is specifically separate from TCP, even though both are layer 4 protocols which can be chosen by the developer as replacements for each other, even though both are commonly used not only on the internet but also in many other networks, and even though "IP" stands for "Internet Protocol", the term TCP/IP refers to any implementation which carriers layer 4 or above protocols over an IP stack. Go figure.


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## lrhorer

classicsat said:


> Not necessarily.
> It would be, as said, a matter of tunneling internet traffic (securely) to the private network the cable boxes use, or to the SDV control gear.


'Not internet traffic. The SDV control traffic, or rather probably only the half of it going towards the CATV headend.



classicsat said:


> My understanding is the TiVo talks to the TA in , more or less a simple command protocol, The lower level protocol is handled by some sort of USB stack operated by a driver.
> 
> That stack could be IP on ethernet


'Not unless the engineer were a fool. There is no reason to implement layer 3 or higher protocols, whether the TA is Ethernet based or USB. layer 2 is not only sufficient to the task, it is vastly perferable for this traffic. There is no reason to implement a layer 3 stack, or to implement routing.



classicsat said:


> I suppose, but it would also have to run a VPN or other security means to an ethernet TA, or over the internet to the VPN connection at the cable headend. That VPN on the hos would have to be customized for each provider, and that customization could requires "secrets" be revealed, or at least vulnerable.


If you are talking about VPN tunneling, VPN takes a layer 3 datagram whose destination (probably IP) address is inside the firewalled network, encrypts it, and encapsulates it into an unecrypted layer 3 datagram whose destination IP address is the VPN endpoint which is in turn packaged into an ordinary unencrypted layer 2 datagram whose destination address is the local router, and finally into an unencrypted layer 1 packet and sent out towards the internet. Along the way, layers 1 and 2 will be variously stripped and added back as the packet travels toward the VPN endpoint. Once at the endpoint, the unencrypted layers are all stripped away, the encrypted packet is decrypted back to an ordinary layer 3 packet, then ordinary layer 2 and 1 encapsulations are added back to the layer 3 packet to send it oward its final destination.



classicsat said:


> As said, the public internet would require the host device implement a VPN to the cable provider. For all intents and purposes, ones home network would be considered public internet (for security purposes, there would be no trusting the consumer keeping their home network "clean"), and the ethernet TA in one's home the providers SDV receptor, or an outside internet receptor at the node or headend.


None of this applies to a TA of any sort. It only would apply to a solution which did not use a TA at all, but instead used the internet. It also would not apply to a non-TA Ethernet solution which made use of the subscriber's DOCIS modem at layer 2. While perfectly secure (and then some) for the CATV provider, it would restrict the application only to those who happen to have broadband service through their CATV provider.

Enough. An Ethernet solution would have been just as simple, practical, and secure, but for purely specious reasons the protocol chosen was USB.



classicsat said:


> The bigger picture, IMO, is that the TA as will be implemented is a lot more simpler and secure for most customers, the box developers (TiVo), and the cable providers.


No, the bigger picture is people who understand little or nothing about networking and computer hardware were the ones who made the decisions on what protocols to submit in the standard. They were swayed by completely specious and erroneous arguments like yours. USB offers nothing whatsoever in this situation not offered at least as simply and securely if not moreso by Ethernet. What's more, 802.1 was crafted from the base up as a networking protocol. While serial networking predates 802.1 by quite some number of years, serial protocols, including USB, were never crafted with networking as a primary focus. Ethernet was, and so is established as a superior solution for any multi-peer topologies, such as one TA providing SDV for multiple UDCPs.


----------



## mikeyts

I think that there are a couple of different conversations going on here, one being about the pluses and minuses of implementing this using IP networking back to some sort of central server without any form of Tuning Adapter, and one is about whether the TA could have been implemented as a Ethernet LAN app with a single box serving all TiVos in the home. I believe that classicsat's last reply was about the former.


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## CharlesH

mikeyts said:


> and one is about whether the TA could have been implemented as a Ethernet LAN app with a single box serving all TiVos in the home.


In this proposal, the TA could have its own DOCSIS modem to talk to the SDV server over the cable (as in the adopted implementation), so no Internet service of any kind is required, but only one TA would be required in a household.


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## classicsat

My reply is about either, in that the ethernet or wireless network from a UDCP is "public internet" (even inside ones home network), for the purposes of the security of the TA, and that requires a level of security be developed on the UDCP host, and by the SDV receptor (be it the TA in ones home, or over the "outside internet" to an SDV receptor at the cable headend), a level of security which both UDCP developers and cable hardware/service providers would sooner not deal with.


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## shabby46

lrhorer said:


> They don't "send you" anything, other than the encryption keys for the premium services you are authorized to receive, and they only do that once every few days or weeks.


OK, thanks. That is the part that I was missing. I get the general idea behind SDV but I was under the impression that Premium services were handled in a similar way. Thanks for clearing that up.


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## jeffspam

classicsat said:


> requires a level of security be developed on the UDCP host, and by the SDV receptor (be it the TA in ones home, or over the "outside internet" to an SDV receptor at the cable headend), a level of security which both UDCP developers and cable hardware/service providers would sooner not deal with.


Given that crypto is already present in both the headend and consumer equipment, this would not be very difficult to implement. Encryption is well understood, and present in tons of devices (e.g. our Tivos), including those with modest CPU/RAM capabilities. My $30 wireless router can implement the "level of security" required to make this work (I'm not talking about WEP/WPA/etc., but about a general purpose ARM-based CPU, similar to what a Tivo already has in it, running something like OpenVPN).

Instead, we get a solution needing additional hardware to be deployed, inevitably requiring (not really, but tell that to TWC) an installer to make a trip out to the customer's location. I don't know enough about the history of the SDV TA, but it seems to me to be a hack which only serves to feed more money to GI/SA, yet simultaneously making CableCard less and less attractive to consumers.


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## bicker

jeffspam said:


> Instead, we get a solution needing additional hardware to be deployed, inevitably requiring ... an installer to make a trip out to the customer's location.


And what will folks do in November to address this failure of regulation to provide for what "we" get? Nothing. They'll still vote pro-business legislators into office, who will appoint pro-business officials, just like has been the case for the last thirty-five years. As much as these things seem to some people like they should be another way, the way they are is the way people (in general) have, time and time again, have voted to have them be.


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## Mordred

I think lrhorer might have been my networking professor  He's bringing back a lot of bad memories from that class at least. It is interesting reading, but I've forgotten a good 75% of everything I've learned so I'm feeling a little lost. Still nice to see someone who knows exactly what they're talking about. :up:


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## mel.simmons

Digeo has at times looked as if they wanted to become a direct competitor to TiVo. Their past announcements have not been followed by real products, and they have pulled back a lot as a company. They did not launch products to compete with TiVo Series 3 as cable card hosts. However they now seem to be carving out a role in cable card SDV by working with Charter Communications.

http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=161848&site=cdn

From the announcement, this seems to be an SDV solution with capabilities of a Tuning Adapter, but not full interaction with PPV or other cable company services. Their initial market is only through Charter, but there is mention of a possible future retail product.


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## mikeyts

As far as I know, Digeo's past has mostly been selling Moxi to cable providers (locally Adelphia--since annexed by TWC--was using Moxi on Motorola boxes and many people in that territory still have them). That article says that they have a new box that they're marketing to cable providers. If so, it must support PPV and VOD as well as SDV tuning. Certainly, Moxi as deployed on leased cable boxes today supports PPV and VOD (page 38 of the Moxi Media Center User's Guide talks about controlling PPV and On Demand purchases).

Saying that it has the "capabilities of a Tuning Adapter" is like saying that the Cisco and Moto boxes that the cable companies lease have the "capabilities of a Tuning Adapter"--kind of putting the cart before the horse. Digeo is working with BigBand networks to integrate their flavor of SDV tuning into Moxi. The article also says that BigBand Networks has integrated their SDV tuning system into Macrovision/Gemstar's Passport, TWC's Digital Navigator and Cisco's SARA IPGs.


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## lrhorer

shabby46 said:


> OK, thanks. That is the part that I was missing. I get the general idea behind SDV but I was under the impression that Premium services were handled in a similar way. Thanks for clearing that up.


No. IPPV may be, and depending on the provider probably is, and VOD definitely is, but regular Premium channels do not have to be, and generally only will be if their total market share on a node by node basis is less than about 1% or so. That's why it is likely at least some of your Premium channels - at least the SD versions - probably still work. If the instantaneous market share of a channel never drops below the inverse of the number of active receivers on a node, then it doesn't make much sense to configure the channel as SDV, unless there are just no linear slots left.


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## lrhorer

classicsat said:


> My reply is about either, in that the ethernet or wireless network from a UDCP is "public internet" (even inside ones home network), for the purposes of the security of the TA


So is the USB port. First of all, anything appearing at one of the USB ports will automatcially also appear at the other. What's more, there is nothing whatsoever preventing the Tivo owner from connecting his TiVo to a USB hub, or for that matter directly connecting the TiVo to whatever device one wants via the Ethernet port, making it a point-point connection. Any security desired by the manufacturer must be implemnented on the USB port, precisely as it must be on the Ethernet port. Only layer 1 is different, and the layer 1 code already exists for both devices, compiled into the kernel.

I don't know how else to break this to you classicsat, but you are just simply, completely wrong. There is nothing from a cost, engineering, security, software, or parts availability perspective to recommend USB over Ethernet in this situation. There are cases where USB is the better choice either for the manufacturer or for the consumer, but this is not one of those cases. It just is not.


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## lrhorer

Mordred said:


> I think lrhorer might have been my networking professor


Thanks. I think.



Mordred said:


> Still nice to see someone who knows exactly what they're talking about. :up:


It's also nice to know I have at least one person totally snowed. 

I haven't lectured a networking class in nearly ten years, and I've never been a professional educator, but my role as an engineer does frequently require me to provide tutoring. I hope I'm fairly competent at it, but I'm definitely not a professional teacher.


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## lrhorer

bicker said:


> And what will folks do in November to address this failure of regulation to provide for what "we" get? Nothing. They'll still vote pro-business legislators into office, who will appoint pro-business officials, just like has been the case for the last thirty-five years.


It's been a lot more than 35 years, and the problem is, the voters don't have a choice. Through political party contributions and direct control of the political parties, businesses make certain no one who is not pro-business ever even has his name on the ballot. Then, through PACs and lobbyist activities, they make certain their puppets keep voting in their favor. The only chance a non-business interest usually stands in any of it is engendered by the fact many businesses have opposing interests. What's good for oil and aluminum if often bad for steel and coal, for example. What's good for AT&T is frequently bad for the CATV industry. DirecTV and Echostar wish Verizon would eat $#[email protected] and die.


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## bicker

lrhorer said:


> It's been a lot more than 35 years


Well, I couldn't defend an assertion that putting Jimmy Carter into office was in any way "pro-business". Quite the opposite. However, since _then_ . . .



lrhorer said:


> and the problem is, the voters don't have a choice.


The voters always have had a choice: They simply are unwilling to put *this* consideration high enough on their list of priorities.



lrhorer said:


> Through political party contributions and direct control of the political parties, businesses make certain no one who is not pro-business ever even has his name on the ballot.


No more than half of the Democratic Party is pro-business. Some consumerist (anti-business) Democrats ran for President this year. And between the last two Democrats vying for the nomination, the more pro-business Democrat *lost*. So choice is at work. Will Obama win, and move this country a little ways back from the pro-business position we've been in? I don't know. (I'm not sure who I'm voting for, yet, by the way.) However, before this year, the American voter has been pretty consistently supporting the pro-business candidate. That's why things are they way they are.


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## snowbunny

erm... is the dongle/TA in the wild yet? 

I called TiVo on an unrelated matter today, and they said yes, available at your cable company now; but I think they confused SDV with the digital change coming early next year.


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## JayBird

snowbunny said:


> erm... is the dongle/TA in the wild yet?
> 
> I called TiVo on an unrelated matter today, and they said yes, available at your cable company now; but I think they confused SDV with the digital change coming early next year.


At least for those of us using Cox in AZ, the latest info I've seen indicates that the tuning adapter won't be ready for distribution until November, which we all know means we won't see it until sometime in 2009.


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## lrhorer

bicker said:


> Well, I couldn't defend an assertion that putting Jimmy Carter into office was in any way "pro-business". Quite the opposite. However, since _then_ . . .


I certainly can. He was not as pro-business as some, to be sure, but there is a difference between being less rabidly behnd something and being against something. More importantly, who the president may be is largely irrelevant. He does not propose legislation and he does not ratify it. He can veto it, but even that power is in practical terms limited to resolutions which fall close to but below the 2/3 line. Unless he attempts a pocket veto, only possible at the end of a congressionsal session, his veto will get overturned, and there is little point in even trying. Nonetheless, Jimmy Carter signed tons of pro-business legislation into law, and did nothing about even more already standing pro-business legislation.



bicker said:


> The voters always have had a choice: They simply are unwilling to put *this* consideration high enough on their list of priorities.


No, they don't. When was the last time a middle class person had their name placed on the ballot? One not affiliated with any political organization? A rich person, no matter how "liberal", is virtually assured to have a pro-business bias. After all, an anti-business bias will not only prevent a rich person from getting the necessary campaign funds and party support, it will personally cost them money. Hypothetically, a politician could allow his own personal gains to take a back seat in a major way to moral or ethical considerations. In practice, however, this would mean the individual must have ethics and morals, but by definition a politician is a person whose morals and ethics are for sale to the highest bidder.



bicker said:


> No more than half of the Democratic Party is pro-business. Some consumerist (anti-business) Democrats ran for President this year. And between the last two Democrats vying for the nomination, the more pro-business Democrat *lost*.


You are making several incorrect assumptions:

1. Had she won, it would have made a difference. In fact, in general it would not. The losing candidate had to accumulate just about as much money for her campaign as the winner, and had she won she would have been obligated to the people who bought the election. Failure to honor those obligations would have made it certain she would receive virtually no support from anyone for re-election, or for election to any other office. Bite the hand that feeds you, and no one will want to feed you, not just the person who was bitten.

2. A loss of a single pro business vote makes a difference. This is rarey the case. All business have to do is have enough out of 218 congressmen and 51 senators in their pocket to have their way. Since not 1 in 50 are going to vote significantly against businesses in general because they themselves stand to profit from successful businesses, all business intests have to do is have the ones in their pockets apply political pressure to the few who are not.

3. Hanging a label on a person makes some sort of difference. It doesn't, especially for someone whose livelihood is entirely dependant upon making people believe they are something they are not. Scratch the surface of any "pro-consumerist" politician and you will find a dedicated company man, bought and paid for. An "anti-business" politician will vote against business when they know the vote is going to be a landslide so they can point to their anti-business voting record, but when it comes down to it, the vast majority only care they can get enough financial backing the next time they run for something so they can get out in front of enough voters and be elected. Make no mistake, every election is bought. At least one person pays for it (with other people's money) and fails to buy it, while one person pays pretty much just as much for it and is successful in buying it. The people who give the winner his money to buy the election expect somethng in return. If they don't get it, they become very, very nasty. Perhaps you don't realize it, but every corporation in America who contriibutes to a political race (which is essentially every major corporation) contributes not to a single candidate, and not to just the so labeled "pro-business" candidates, but to *every* candidate in the race. Indeed, if the "pro-consumer" candidate is a much better political bet, they often give more money to the putatively pro-consumer candidate. The corporations which supported Hillary also supported Obama and McCain, and now continue to support Obama and McCain even more strongly now than they did Hillary. What does that tell you?

4. Elected officials determine policy. They do not. Although they may issue policy directives, if the bureaucrats who actually implement and enforce policy don't want to carry out one of the directives then they will each and every one individually see to it the directive is not enforced.

Are there exceptions to these rules? Without doubt, but an occasional exception to the rule does not get a majority of votes among a group of 530 plus rich businessmen, and a majority vote among 545 rich businessmen does not prevent an EPA inspector from taking a $50,000 bribe from a chemical plant, or an INS agent from looking the other way when his brother-in-law violates federal regulations concerning the hiring of illegal aliens. It also doesn't prevent a corrupt judge (or even one who isn't corrupt) from ruling arbitrarily in favor of a business interest no matter what the law says. It also doesn't compel FCC officials to get off their arses and force a draft of a reasonable, workable set of specifications and regulations concerning separable security in 2-way CATV devices.



bicker said:


> So choice is at work.


No, it isn't. Show me a way an individual with no business afiliations can win a national election with zero campaign spending, no approvals from any party officials, no promises made to any profitable organization, and also be moderately assured he might win a re-election or election to another position without any such strings attached, and I'll concede it's hypothetically possible. I won't concede it's even remotely likely, however, unless in addition you find a way to make the vast majority of voters independant of any paycheck from a business. Until then, the notion of "choice" is as illusory as the communist notion of allowing the voters to vote on a single candidate. Then show me how this miracle election is actually going to prevent businesses from buying hundreds of his peers (or even him) and tens of thousands of government officials below him, and I'll concede this non-existent choice actually has an effect except when clear-cut business interests are not at stake.



bicker said:


> Will Obama win, and move this country a little ways back from the pro-business position we've been in?


'Not a chance, whether he is elected or not, and no more so of a chance had George McGovern been elected, or even Mao Tse Tung. Make no mistake, even if they had the ability to actually do it, which they don't, they know perfectly well on which side their bread is buttered. So do the more than 1 million bureaucrats who actually shape and enforce policy and for which the public has no vote whatsoever.



bicker said:


> I don't know. (I'm not sure who I'm voting for, yet, by the way.)


The only thing for which I would gladly elect either of the current two bozos is to stand in front of a firing squad, but you illustrate my point. Our "choice" is between a totally corrupt, incompetent Democratic moron who should not be allowed to lead a conga line and a totally corrupt, incompetent Republican moron who should not be allowed to lead a conga line. Some choice, huh? When someone like Seargent Alvin York, George Washington Carver, or the nameless drifter in Georgia who refused to step off a train track when a train was rushing toward him because he and her husband weren't able to free the young woman whose foot was caught on the tracks have their name on the ballot, free of campaign obligations, then I will concede we have a choice. Until then, all we have a a choice of two or more big business lackeys for virtually every political position.



bicker said:


> However, before this year, the American voter has been pretty consistently supporting the pro-business candidate. That's why things are they way they are.


Things have been the way they are for 6000 years. I only say 6000, because we don't have records which go back much further than that.
Rich people have always ruled things. Today, to a certain extent the rich people have hidden their names behind the words "corporation" and "business", but it's still the same old, tired routine. The people who have money pay to get things their way, high up among the list of which is making sure they get more money. Anyone who actually, seriously attempts to do something about it (which virtually no politician does, no matter what they might say they do) is going to find themselves fighting on every front with the thousands or even millions of individuals who are paid by the rich to do their bidding. The number of people who will actually willingly give up a paycheck because their industry is engaged in activities which are thought to be bad for the nation as a whole is very, very small.

I'll give you a quick example. I live in San Antonio, the home of serveral military bases. Like nearly everyone else in the nation, I was for cutting military spending at the end of the cold war. Also, like most reasonable people, I realized that high among the necessary means for cutting military spending was going to be the need for shutting down and scaling back some military bases. Finally, llike anyone who bothered to look at the situation, I realized there was no justification for keeping two air force bases, an army air base, an air force comm squadron, a national guard armory, an army logistical base, and a miliatary aerospace medical research base all in one town. When it was announced at least two of the bases would be closing, I rejoiced that the miliatrary would be cutting spending and that in the loss in profits to me via my company I would be benefitting the nation as a whole. It was nothing more or less than my patriotic duty. The people in general here, however vehemently protested the closure. They demanded "our" congressmen fight hard against the closure. Similarly, people are all for curtailing businesses, until their own paychecks are impacted, at which point they sing a completely different tune. They want everyone else to suffer the consequences of their vote, but make sure their vote doesn't negatively impact them personally. Even if they were actualy given a choice, they still would choose personal profit over moral considerations. It's human nature.


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## mikeyts

Could you two take this _wildly_ off-topic political discussion to PM (or some more appropriate forum)?


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## bicker

He's not worth the effort, Mike. I'll just drop the topic.


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## joedandrea

Greetings! Wanted to share a link to Optimum's KB article about their VOOM HD channels requiring a "cable box" (which segues into SDV, and then mentions TiVo toward the end).

http://snurl.com/3iqtb [optimum_custhelp_com]

It cleared up some of my misconceptions about the whole "is it or isn't it in violation" argument so I figured someone else may find it useful as well.

Of course, if there's actually a gray area here that I'm missing, feel free to disabuse!


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## morac

lrhorer said:


> So is the USB port. First of all, anything appearing at one of the USB ports will automatcially also appear at the other. What's more, there is nothing whatsoever preventing the Tivo owner from connecting his TiVo to a USB hub, ....


Does TiVo even support USB hubs? If there's no driver for them than it won't.


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## djones18

Political rants containing opinionated, fatuous sweeping generalities, which by their nature identify hidden or obvious prejudices belong elsewhere. 

I agree with Mike Scott. Please take these to a PM or other forum. 

__________________

D Jones


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## lrhorer

mikeyts said:


> Could you two take this _wildly_ off-topic political discussion to PM (or some more appropriate forum)?


'Sorry, he just pushes my buttons. Mostly, I just ignore his posts, but I was in a cantankerous mood that evening. It would help, I think, if there were actually much that was on-topic to discuss. Until someone (who can talk about it) actually has a TA in their hands, there's not much to talk about in the TiVo / SDV world.


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## lrhorer

morac said:


> Does TiVo even support USB hubs? If there's no driver for them than it won't.


Well, not having developed any code for USB hubs, I could be mistaken, of course, but I was of the impression usb-ohci handled support for USB hubs. The drivers for usbcore, ehci-hcd, and usb-ohci are compiled into the 9.4 kernel. Of course, prior to 9.4, any use of hardware supported by those drivers required hacking with the backport drivers, but we're talking about the TA, so the discussion presupposes a 9.4 or later kernel.


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## Dadorama

So here is a question - If I have TWC, and in another room I have a TWC HD receiver, and I request a program that is on SDV, that should "switch on" that channel and my S3 unit - at least for a while - should be able to pick it up. Am I right? If I could rig that unit (perhaps by TWC DVR) to switch on the channel when I want to record something with my Tivo, as long as I point my Tivo at the correct SDV channel and set a manual recording of that channel, will that work and will I get my recording? Sneaky, but doable?


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## Dadorama

Next question - has anyone heard of any of the TA's being available for TWC anywhere? Particularly in SC? I am in Myrtle Beach, and have an email in to my inside guy, but he usually takes about a week or more to get back to me, and usually it is "we are working on it...."


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## SCSIRAID

Dadorama said:


> So here is a question - If I have TWC, and in another room I have a TWC HD receiver, and I request a program that is on SDV, that should "switch on" that channel and my S3 unit - at least for a while - should be able to pick it up. Am I right? If I could rig that unit (perhaps by TWC DVR) to switch on the channel when I want to record something with my Tivo, as long as I point my Tivo at the correct SDV channel and set a manual recording of that channel, will that work and will I get my recording? Sneaky, but doable?


The problem is that your S3 will have no idea where the SDV channel that you requested via the TWC box is actually located. The actual frequency and PID could vary from day to day. When you 'request' the channel via the TWC box.. you have no idea what frequency and PID it gets assigned to... neither does the S3. So it will be there... but you dont know where.


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## morac

Dadorama said:


> So here is a question - If I have TWC, and in another room I have a TWC HD receiver, and I request a program that is on SDV, that should "switch on" that channel and my S3 unit - at least for a while - should be able to pick it up. Am I right? If I could rig that unit (perhaps by TWC DVR) to switch on the channel when I want to record something with my Tivo, as long as I point my Tivo at the correct SDV channel and set a manual recording of that channel, will that work and will I get my recording? Sneaky, but doable?


I'm not positive, but I don't think this will work because, even though the channel will be active on some frequency, the S3 still doesn't know what that frequency is so it won't know where to tune to get the channel. Unless that information comes in via the OOB data and the cableCARD tells the S3 in which case it would work.


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## Dadorama

So just because a channel is listed as channel 925 for instance, on both boxes, "turning on" channel 925 by tuning to it on the DVR or hd-STB won't "turn on" that same channel for the entire house (or block or quadrant) so that it will be tunable by simple going to channel 925 on the Tivo? Weird. I am sure there is a scientific explanation of some kind, but it sounds more like magic.


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## classicsat

925 would be a virtual channel number. It has no relation to where the channel would physically be on the system. 

If the channel is SDV, it will be nowhere until somebody chooses it, at which point it is assigned a free physical channel slot (not one specific for channel 925, just any available one), which all tuners in the node can tune it, if they know it is there. There is the possibility active SDV assignments could be sent to Cablecards in UDCPs, and the UDCP could map that physical location in its map, so it can be tuned. Or the UDCPs have the SDV channels flagged as non-tunable in their map.


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## 188

Can someone update me on the best argument to get local cable to provide a tuning resolver? I spoke to someone at the FCC and explained that my cable company was denying channel access to cablecard users by moving to SDV and her response was that cable companies just have to provide the basic channels and digital and HD channels are in effect luxuries which they are not obligated to provide to cable card users. 

I asked her to send me the specific rules governing the issue but have not gotten anything back yet. 

In the meantime I am working on TW but am interested in being educated on arguments to make.

Thanks.


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## SCSIRAID

BL said:


> Can someone update me on the best argument to get local cable to provide a tuning resolver? I spoke to someone at the FCC and explained that my cable company was denying channel access to cablecard users by moving to SDV and her response was that cable companies just have to provide the basic channels and digital and HD channels are in effect luxuries which they are not obligated to provide to cable card users.
> 
> I asked her to send me the specific rules governing the issue but have not gotten anything back yet.
> 
> In the meantime I am working on TW but am interested in being educated on arguments to make.
> 
> Thanks.


The Tuning Adapter is coming... best advice is to ask to be a Beta tester and be reasonabally patient.


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## 188

I am very patient, but one of the preliminary responses I got from TW was that they had no plans to get any tuning resolvers in, that there are not many CC customers, etc. I am still working on them but want to be ready to argue.


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## SCSIRAID

BL said:


> I am very patient, but one of the preliminary responses I got from TW was that they had no plans to get any tuning resolvers in, that there are not many CC customers, etc. I am still working on them but want to be ready to argue.


Did you get a letter from TW indicating SDV was being turned on and that the cable industry had worked with TiVo to create a Tuning Adapter... and that they would be available later this year? We did. Perhaps an escalation to corporate would solve the 'we arent getting any' situation. Might not help the 'when' though.


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## 188

Is a copy of that letter available on-line somewhere? I don't think I got one of those.


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## SCSIRAID

BL said:


> Is a copy of that letter available on-line somewhere? I don't think I got one of those.


Here is the thread where it was discussed for our area.

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=402796

PM me an email address and I will send you a scan of mine.


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## mikeyts

Dadorama said:


> So just because a channel is listed as channel 925 for instance, on both boxes, "turning on" channel 925 by tuning to it on the DVR or hd-STB won't "turn on" that same channel for the entire house (or block or quadrant) so that it will be tunable by simple going to channel 925 on the Tivo? Weird. I am sure there is a scientific explanation of some kind, but it sounds more like magic.


To elaborate on what classicsat said, "952" and all the other channels on your cable system are just names. Before SDV, these names were assigned to permanent physical locations (such as "Video Program 10, Audio Program 10 in the 6 MHz QAM 256 carrier at 652 MHz"). In current SDV deployments, the great majority of channel number are still assigned to permanent physical locations, or you couldn't use unidirectional CableCARD devices like TiVo to tune any digital channels. The _switched_ channels aren't always present on the wire, and when someone asks for one of them an available chunk of bandwidth in the pool reserved for switched broadcast is allocated and the requestor is told where it is ("virtual channel 952 is Video Program 3, Audio Program 3 on the QAM carrier at 412 MHz"); if the switched channel is already being used by one or more other subs, no allocation has to occur, and the requestor is just told where the channel is. If everyone on a network edge segment stops watching a switched channel, the bandwidth is deallocated and the system stops transmitting the channel on the wire in their neighborhood (it's possible that this doesn't happen until the bandwidth becomes needed for something else). The next time someone asks for the channel, it will likely be placed on another QAM carrier using arbitrary available ID numbers for the video and audio stream elements.

People have reported occasionally being able to tune switched channels on their TiVo. I'm not sure if I understand why--my understanding of CableCARDs is that, if a channel is encrypted, the card has to have received a message telling it that it's allowed to decrypt that channel (called "Entitlement Management" and "Entitlement Control" messages, EMMs and ECMs). Most systems encrypt every digital channel except those in the core basic tier, encryption of which is forbidden by FCC regs. Even if you stumble upon the current tuning for a switched channel, your CableCARD(s) shouldn't have been enabled to decrypt it. Maybe some systems _don't_ encrypt everything.


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## mikeyts

BL said:


> Is a copy of that letter available on-line somewhere? I don't think I got one of those.


You can read a transcription of the letter that I received here on hdtv.forsandiego.com.

So far as I've been able to tell, FCC regs don't require that they make every digital channel available to you through CableCARD. Explicitly, they aren't required to give you access to interactive services (VOD, IPPV, etc) via unidirectional CableCARDs and moving a channel to SDV turns it into an interactive service. There'd be strong basis for objection if they were doing this capriciously, but they aren't.


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## morac

mikeyts said:


> People have reported occasionally being able to tune switched channels on their TiVo. I'm not sure if I understand why--my understanding of CableCARDs is that, if a channel is encrypted, the card has to have received a message telling it that it's allowed to decrypt that channel (called "Entitlement Management" and "Entitlement Control" messages, EMMs and ECMs). Most systems encrypt every digital channel except those in the core basic tier, encryption of which is forbidden by FCC regs. Even if you stumble upon the current tuning for a switched channel, your CableCARD(s) shouldn't have been enabled to decrypt it. Maybe some systems _don't_ encrypt everything.


My local system encrypts everything with the exception of those channels forbidden to be encrypted, TBS-HD and strangely enough On Demand streams. The later can't be accessed via my S3 since the frequencies aren't provided to the cableCARDS, but my TV (without cards) has no problem accessing them if I happen to stumble across them.


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## bicker

BL said:


> I asked her to send me the specific rules governing the issue but have not gotten anything back yet.


It is important to keep in mind the way the law works. The law includes prohibitions and requirements. Prohibitions are things that are not to be done; requirements are things that must be done. For example, there is a requirement that local broadcast channels be available, and there is a prohibition against relying on integrated decryption for addressable services. For the vast majority of things, though, there are no legal requirements nor legal prohibitions, applicable. For those things, the "rules" (as such) that govern the mass-market commercial transaction are based on what the supplier explicitly offers and the customer therefore implicitly accepts. Even then, most aspects of a service will be totally without requirements or prohibitions, and it is simply up to day-to-day decisions. For example, in September, you might pay by check, and in October you might pay by money order. Since there are no legal requirements nor legal prohibitions governing that, and the service offering didn't specify, both are valid, and you can switch of as you see fit.

So asking for the law that says that someone is "allowed" to do something is lost cause. Laws don't list what is allowed... again, they only list what is required and what is prohibited. So, in this case, you're looking for the requirement that says they have to provide the tuning resolver, *not* that says they're allowed not to. If you cannot find a requirement that says they have to provide one (or a prohibition that precludes them from not providing one), then, based on the way laws work, they are allowed to or allowed not to, as they choose.

There are folks that feel that the law does require them to provide the tuning adapter, and folks that feel that the law doesn't require them to do so. To be honest, I don't remember which law is the one that the former group of folks are relying on... I'm sure if you wait long enough, one of them will provide a citation and a quotation of the relevant law, and then there will be a long and heated argument about whether it applies.


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## bicker

morac said:


> My local system encrypts everything with the exception of those channels forbidden to be encrypted


Encryption isn't the issue; as Mikey pointed out, the issue is interactivity.



morac said:


> strangely enough On Demand streams. The later can't be accessed via my S3 since the frequencies aren't provided to the cableCARDS, but my TV (without cards) has no problem accessing them if I happen to stumble across them.


If you go with the interpretation that Mikey outlined, then that's fine, since VOD is interactive programming.


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## mikeyts

bicker said:


> Encryption isn't the issue; as Mikey pointed out, the issue is interactivity.
> 
> If you go with the interpretation that Mikey outlined, then that's fine, since VOD is interactive programming.


"Mike" or "Michael", please. Nobody's ever called me "Mikey" since I lived in the Philadelpia area, where they'd say "Yo, My-ghee!". 

I actually was saying that encryption should be an issue. It was my understanding that CableCARDs aren't supposed to be able to decrypt channels unless they've been explicitly told that they can decrypt them, and you shouldn't have been given permission to decrypt channels in the shared switched space. That may or may not be true, though, depending upon how the channels are identified in the entitlement management messages--those channels will have the same virtual numbers in the switched streams as they'd have in the fixed streams, and if entitlement to view and decrypt is provided in terms of virtual channel numbers, it may make sense.


----------



## bicker

mikeyts said:


> "Mike" or "Michael", please.


Sorry... didn't know where the name ended... I guess "yts" means something?


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## mikeyts

bicker said:


> Sorry... didn't know where the name ended... I guess "yts" means something?


Yes, "Mikey" is part of my username, but you'll notice that I don't use it in my sig. On AVS Forum, my username is "michaeltscott", my full name and middle initial, hence the "ts". Everywhere, if I have a sig, it says "Mike Scott". In any case, no BFD.


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## classicsat

My belief is that a channel is authorized by a Service ID, which is not necessarily related to the channel number or QAM location. One will receive service key for a channel based on the package they subscribe to, regardless if it is SDV or not, so, in theory, if your UDCP receives the dynamic channel maps which include SDV assignments, has the service keys for SDV channels which you subscribe to (or it is sent unencrypted), and someone on your node with an SDV capable device chooses that SDV channels, you could view it on your UDCP device.


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## ultrarunner

Where can I find out the roll-out status of tuning adapters for my TimeWarner service area?


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## socrplyr

ultrarunner said:


> Where can I find out the roll-out status of tuning adapters for my TimeWarner service area?


Wouldn't all of us like to know... No one that I have seen has confirmed any hard dates. However, when I contacted my local office they told me by the end of the year. I have also seen others post similar results after they contacted their offices.

I haven't see a single person report that they have a tuning adapter in hand at this point.

Edit: I am reporting on what I have seen for TWC Only.


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## bicker

ultrarunner said:


> Where can I find out the roll-out status of tuning adapters for my TimeWarner service area?


I suspect that would be considered proprietary company secrets, so that is why you won't see anyone who's word would be trustworthy providing that kind of information, until after TWC is ready to push that information out to the public.


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## billinaustin

I have a cable card in my Motorola, DCH3416. Does anyone know whether this is just a one way card or does it communicat back and forth. It is a DVR with VOD and PFV. The card is protected with a steel cage. I guess the question is whether a two way card does exist and is in use.


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## morac

There's nothing special about the card. It's the DCH3416 that handles the two way communication.

In other words even if you ripped the card out of your DCH3416 and put it in your TiVo, your TiVo wouldn't magically be able to do VOD and PPV.


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## lrhorer

...and there is no such thing as a one-way CableCard. Every CableCard ever manufactured from day 1 will work fine in any 2-way host, and such a host will be able to deliver every 2-way service the CATV company offers.  Note, however, that only a CableCard compatible with the specific CATV system's equipment will work in that CATV system, and only a 2-way host specifically designed to work with the CATV system's equipment will be able to deliver 2-way services in that system. Since it is not practical for TiVo to manufacture and sell an array of devices, each of which will probably quit working if taken to a different city, a 2-way TiVo is not practical at this time.


----------



## aquaphase

I just called Time Warner here in Dallas to check on any potential timeline for the SDV converter. After being transferred to the "special technical help" desk, I was surprised to know that they don't have any idea about SDV. Also, it's not in their "help" database at all. It was pretty frustrating explaining the technology to the guy who was supposed to be helping me. With about 90&#37; of my channels missing, it looks like I'm about to jump to uVerse and dump my HD TiVo.


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## mikeyts

lrhorer said:


> ...only a 2-way host specifically designed to work with the CATV system's equipment will be able to deliver 2-way services in that system. Since it is not practical for TiVo to manufacture and sell an array of devices, each of which will probably quit working if taken to a different city, a 2-way TiVo is not practical at this time.


I don't think that's actually true. Per the CableCARD Interface 2.0 Specification (aka, CCIF 2.0), the Host hardware implements a QPSK out-of-band transmitter which the connected CableCARD is given direct control of (alternately, if the network supports it, the host can also implement a DOCSIS modem which it can share with the CableCARD for upstream communication--if DOCSIS is there, the QPSK method must also be supported). In any case, if the host has something to say to the network, it does it by making the proper call into the CableCARD, which translates it into proprietary network-specific protocol data units and transmits them using the physical backchannel in the host. As with everything else network specific, details of how to talk back to the network are encapsulated in the CableCARD, which is the only network specific element.

Except perhaps for minor details, this was pretty much exactly the same in the original CableCARD specification. Since no one could agree on how they wanted to implement interactive services (rejecting a set of APIs for IPG, IPPV and VOD proposed by CableLabs in the spec), they shelved two-way comm.


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## lrhorer

mikeyts said:


> Except perhaps for minor details, this was pretty much exactly the same in the original CableCARD specification. Since no one could agree on how they wanted to implement interactive services (rejecting a set of APIs for the IPG, IPPV and VOD proposed by CableLabs in the spec), they shelved two-way comm.


Yeah, and that was my point. I suppose it's true TiVo could have attempted to create an SDV-only capable TiVo, but I doubt at the time CableLabs would have certified it. Even today I'm skeptical they would get it through, although at this point CableLabs might be willing to certify such a beast. Other than SDV, however, there's no way a 3rd party manufacturer (or anyone else, for that matter) can easily manufacture a device guaranteed to be compatible with essentially every CATV system in the country. Of course at this point in time, TiVo owners are most concerned about SDV, but the moment SDV is no longer an issue, the other concerns will come to the front of the stove.


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## morac

lrhorer said:


> Yeah, and that was my point. I suppose it's true TiVo could have attempted to create an SDV-only capable TiVo, but I doubt at the time CableLabs would have certified it.


Wouldn't such a beast basically have to contain the equivalent of both the Motorola and Cisco tuning adapters since they aren't compatible with each other?

That's basically the same reason no (non-Truway) hardware is 2-way compatible since there are at least 3 standards they'd have to implement.


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## lrhorer

morac said:


> Wouldn't such a beast basically have to contain the equivalent of both the Motorola and Cisco tuning adapters since they aren't compatible with each other?


Yes. Hypothetically it's possible, I suppose. It still wouldn't get other 2-way services, but incorporating three different QPSK modulators, or an agile QPSK modulator is possible. They would also have to have at a minimum three different code sets. No one, Tivo included, wants to get into that morass, and I don't blame them.


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## dswallow

morac said:


> Wouldn't such a beast basically have to contain the equivalent of both the Motorola and Cisco tuning adapters since they aren't compatible with each other?
> 
> That's basically the same reason no (non-Truway) hardware is 2-way compatible since there are at least 3 standards they'd have to implement.


Technically, they could have implemented the tuning adapter entirely in software on the TiVo. Yes, it would require special support on the head-end. But exactly who else is going to use the tuning adapter except TiVo anyway? And it's not like they had to implement one and only one way to do this.

Yes, it would mean providing a method for the TiVo to connect to the cable company head-end via the public internet; but that's simple enough -- adding a computer connected to the public internet that is the endpoint for encrypted communications of some sort utilizing keys delivered to the TiVo over the CableCARD, with it translating the communication to whatever form is needed by the head-end and delivering it.

But it could've been done that way, requiring no deployment of end-user hardware by any cable company to provide TiVo SDV support.

And then, technically, the "standard" would've just been the way to TiVo (or other device) initiated the connection to the centrally located "tuning adapter interface" over the public internet, and how it then communicated with that device. They didn't need to design the tuning adapter to be deployed at the end-user site, one per device.


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## mikeyts

lrhorer said:


> Yeah, and that was my point. I suppose it's true TiVo could have attempted to create an SDV-only capable TiVo, but I doubt at the time CableLabs would have certified it. Even today I'm skeptical they would get it through, although at this point CableLabs might be willing to certify such a beast. Other than SDV, however, there's no way a 3rd party manufacturer (or anyone else, for that matter) can easily manufacture a device guaranteed to be compatible with essentially every CATV system in the country. Of course at this point in time, TiVo owners are most concerned about SDV, but the moment SDV is no longer an issue, the other concerns will come to the front of the stove.


<tru2way> compliance (CCIF 2.0+M-Card+OCAP) is the way for manufacturers to make cable-system independent devices going forwards. TiVo has proposed a hybrid <tru2way> system to CableLabs (described in this ex parte FCC filing), which would have a bidirectional CCIF 2.0 interface. It would operate in either "TiVo Mode" or "Cable Mode". In "TiVo Mode" it would present the TiVo GUI that we know and love with no access to OCAP functionality other than the SDV tuning API; in "Cable Mode", it would present the cable IPG, with access to all interactive cable features (IPPV and VOD and anything else they throw at us, written for OCAP), but with no access to TiVo's recording capability. So, if you were on a TWC system and went into "Cable Mode", your "TiVo Series4" would start displaying TWC's horrible OCAP Digital Navigator, but you'd get access to VOD and PPV and, one assumes, their fancy switched sports tiers like "Nascar In Car", "NBA League Pass", "NHL Center Ice", etc; you wouldn't have any DVR trick-play functionality (except while watching VOD) or ability to record.


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## mikeyts

morac said:


> Wouldn't such a beast basically have to contain the equivalent of both the Motorola and Cisco tuning adapters since they aren't compatible with each other?
> 
> That's basically the same reason no (non-Truway) hardware is 2-way compatible since there are at least 3 standards they'd have to implement.


No, since the beast will be <tru2way>. Code for the specific SDV protocol in use on the cable system would be downloaded into it. In TiVo's imagined Series4 product, that would be the only OCAP code which could be accessed from the TiVo GUI.


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## lrhorer

mikeyts said:


> <tru2way> compliance (CCIF 2.0+M-Card+OCAP) is the way for manufacturers to make cable-system independent devices going forwards.


Yes, and it doesn't look like anyone is going to throw the brakes on tru2way any time soon. Indeed, it's getting less likely to be overturned every day. That doesn't necessarily mean purchasing a tru2way device guarantees operation in any particular CATV system, however, and if you have a tru2way system and it either doesn't work or the CATV provider refuses to allow you to use it, you're stuck. At this moment they must support CableCard UDCPs, but nothing says they have to support 3rd party tru2way devices.


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## mikeyts

lrhorer said:


> Yes, and it doesn't look like anyone is going to throw the brakes on tru2way any time soon. Indeed, it's getting less likely to be overturned every day. That doesn't necessarily mean purchasing a tru2way device guarantees operation in any particular CATV system, however, and if you have a tru2way system and it either doesn't work or the CATV provider refuses to allow you to use it, you're stuck. At this moment they must support CableCard UDCPs, but nothing says they have to support 3rd party tru2way devices.


No, but it's the cable providers who created <tru2way> and the cable providers who are ramming it down our throats; the CE manufacturers are just going along for the ride. The big MSOs are all going to support it in all of their systems, but there's a possibility that some of the smaller providers won't follow suit. Hopefully the FCC will update the plug-and-play regulations to add a requirement for <tru2way> support. since it's the near end-result of their plug-and-play DTV-over-cable initiative (OCAP+DCAS--no CCIF 2.0, no CableCARDs--will be the true end of the foreseeable road).


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## jcaudle

shabby46 said:


> Maybe this has already been addressed but I didnt see it, so let me see if I understand this correctly...
> 
> Where I live (cox fairfax) SDV is now taking up about 25 of the 40 HD channels. They are saying that the tuning adapter is not rushed because there isnt much of a demand for it as very few people have tivos. The reason for SDV is to save bandwith, so if it is known that I have cablecards and I am one of the very few people in the area who has it, couldnt there be a way to have our (CC users) HD channels sent to us all the time which would barely use any bandwith since there are so few of us? At least until the TAs are available?
> 
> At the very least they could let me pick which HD channels I want to receive and have those turned on all the time. I can deal with OTA networks for now, but I miss Discovery and Food HD.


I also live in Cox Fairfax's Service area. They won't tell you anything about the tuning adapter. They profess not to know, so either they aren't going to offer them or don't want to reveal their plans.


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## lrhorer

mikeyts said:


> No, but it's the cable providers who created <tru2way> and the cable providers who are ramming it down our throats; the CE manufacturers are just going along for the ride. The big MSOs are all going to support it in all of their systems, but there's a possibility that some of the smaller providers won't follow suit.


Perfectly correct, but there's a loophole. The MSOs are going to be moving to tru2way for their own equipment, but there is nothing that prevents them from refusing to allow a 3rd party tru2way device to be used by a consumer. There are any number of people right now in CATV systems who are attempting to refuse to allow the installation of CableCard systems. They haven't a legal leg on which to stand, but if it were a tru2way device, they would. There's also nothing which says CableLabs has to certify any device for tru2way use, no matter what specs it meets. OTOH, at that level I don't think they will balk, there being too much national scrutiny involved, but they could.


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## mikeyts

lrhorer said:


> Perfectly correct, but there's a loophole. The MSOs are going to be moving to tru2way for their own equipment, but there is nothing that prevents them from refusing to allow a 3rd party tru2way device to be used by a consumer. There are any number of people right now in CATV systems who are attempting to refuse to allow the installation of CableCard systems. They haven't a legal leg on which to stand, but if it were a tru2way device, they would. There's also nothing which says CableLabs has to certify any device for tru2way use, no matter what specs it meets. OTOH, at that level I don't think they will balk, there being too much national scrutiny involved, but they could.


Implementation of <tru2way> makes absolutely no sense for the cable providers, except as it give them control over the user interface presented in third party products. It's hugely expensive in memory and processing power and they could do all of the things that they want to do with custom IPGs programmed for specific boxes and pay far less per unit. ROI from leased cable boxes is minimal and takes a long time to realize and no matter what they do, no huge percentage of their subscribership is going to choose to buy their own equipment, so they really don't need to worry much about that. They've only been working on portable interactive services at the behest of the FCC and they dragged their feet until they could come up with a solution that gives them a lot of control of the equipment in your living room--<tru2way> is that solution.

<tru2way> does have some advantages for the cable providers vis-a-vis their leased equipment in that there should eventually be a large range of compliant STBs, and they can pick and choose among them dynamically (like the wireless carriers freely pick and choose which mobile handsets to offer). They never would have gone to all this trouble (and it ain't over) just to get that.

It's true that they could legally balk at supporting third-party <tru2way> equipment, but it would be pretty much suicidal, since they've been spending a lot of time and energy publicly romancing CE OEMs into building <tru2way> support into their upcoming retail products, both televisions and STBs. They'd get raked over the coals by the press and their competition would find some way to mock them in their advertisements.

Again, hopefully the FCC will codify required support for <tru2way> into the regs and become a source of final recourse for product compliance testing, as they are for compliance to the UDCR specifications. Since it's a response to an FCC ask that's where I'd assume things are going.


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## bicker

I would suspect that once tru2way is supported by the MSO for their own equipment, and that separable security can be implemented via software via tru2way, then MSOs will cease support for CableCARD. They are not required to provide two means of separable security. They can readily stop supporting new CableCARD connections, and sunset support for existing CableCARD connections over a period of a couple of years.


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## mikeyts

bicker said:


> I would suspect that once tru2way is supported by the MSO for their own equipment, and that separable security can be implemented via software via tru2way, then MSOs will cease support for CableCARD. They are not required to provide two means of separable security. They can readily stop supporting new CableCARD connections, and sunset support for existing CableCARD connections over a period of a couple of years.


The current FCC requirement is that they support S-Cards (with a priviso that they can additionally support any more advanced cards as they come along, which they have, with M-Cards, which are interchangeable with S-Cards)--Code of Federal Regulations, Title 47, §76.630(b)(3):


> (3) Cable operators shall ensure, as to all digital cable systems, an adequate supply of PODs that comply with the standards specified in paragraph (b)(2) of this section to ensure convenient access to such PODS by customers. Without limiting the foregoing, cable operators may provide more advanced PODs ( i.e. , PODs that are based on successor standards to those specified in paragraph (b)(2) of this section) to customers whose unidirectional digital cable products are compatible with the more advanced PODs.


Though I'm sure that they'll be allowed to drop support for CableCARDs at some future point, if they were allowed to drop support for them as they felt like it, all of us who are dependent on them (i.e., CableCARD model TiVo users) would be screwed.

They're planning to move away from the use of CableCARDs themselves with something called DCAS (Downloadable Conditional Access System), a separate initiative from <tru2way>, requiring that products incorporate special secure processors into which code for proprietary security protocols and encryption/decryption can be safely downloaded. When that becomes reality, they'll certainly phase out the use of CableCARDs in their leased boxes, but it won't relieve them of responsibility to support them in consumer products.


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## lrhorer

mikeyts said:


> <tru2way> does have some advantages for the cable providers vis-a-vis their leased equipment in that there should eventually be a large range of compliant STBs, and they can pick and choose among them dynamically (like the wireless carriers freely pick and choose which mobile handsets to offer). They never would have gone to all this trouble (and it ain't over) just to get that.


No, but add to it their loathing of DCR+...



mikeyts said:


> It's true that they could legally balk at supporting third-party <tru2way> equipment, but it would be pretty much suicidal, since they've been spending a lot of time and energy publicly romancing CE OEMs into building <tru2way> support into their upcoming retail products, both televisions and STBs. They'd get raked over the coals by the press and their competition would find some way to mock them in their advertisements.


It would be suicidal for MSOs to make it official policy. The actions of individual metropolitan providers is another matter, even if they are a division of an MSO. Look at the number of people in this forum who have been told flat out by CSRs or installers in MSO owned systems that they do not support CableCards. In addition, there are plenty of systems not owned by MSOs, and indeed not even members of CableLabs.



mikeyts said:


> Again, hopefully the FCC will codify required support for <tru2way> into the regs and become a source of final recourse for product compliance testing, as they are for compliance to the UDCR specifications.


I suggest you refrain from holding your breath in the mean time.


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## mikeyts

lrhorer said:


> Look at the number of people in this forum who have been told flat out by CSRs or installers in MSO owned systems that they do not support CableCards.


I hadn't heard any stories of that. Can you point to some threads? These people actually went to the FCC and complained about this violation of regs and got no satisfaction? (I thought that plug-and-play might exempt older, sub-750MHz capacity systems, but I just checked and those are merely exempted from compliance with a few specific standards, including implementing PSIP in streams containing unencrypted channels. Everyone using QAM for video transport qualifies as a "digital cable system" and must support CableCARD).


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## lrhorer

mikeyts said:


> I hadn't heard any stories of that. Can you point to some threads?


There are a lot of them. I really don't feel like searching through a couple of dozen threads right now to find examples. Suffice it to say a significant number of the people on this forum have reported that the CSR and / or installer claimed their system did not support CableCards, and CSRs are infamous for refusing to get a supervisor on the line. It's also true that it's rapidly getting to be less common, but there is at least one thread on this forum specifically devoted to such an instance:

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=315837&highlight=brighthouse

There was also a new post just a couple of days ago in a different thread from someone who was told their provider did not support CableCards, and another who was strongly counseled against getting a Series III TiVo because he would lose services, when he already had a CableCard in his TV and no STB.



mikeyts said:


> These people actually went to the FCC and complained about this violation of regs and got no satisfaction?


No, other than one guy in Puerto Rico, I think, ultimately I'm sure they were eventually able to resolve the issue. The point is, however, they are required by law to support CableCards in UDCP systems certified by CableLabs. They are not required by law to support any 2-way system of any sort, regardless of certification. That doesn't necessarily mean they won't, but they don't have to, and if the CSR or installer refuses to take the case, there's far less recourse available. I'm not saying it will happen, or even will be necessarily very commonplace, but it's not totally unlikely it might happen to some people.


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## bicker

And that's a good point, and why I'm not necessarily celebrating the fact that they have to continue supporting CableCARD even after they come up with an alternative: A lot of these rules are easy to ignore, because the details of them are not generally enforced. As long as folks keep ratifying a pro-business perspective at the federal level (and, for full disclosure, I generally do, and do so without reservation), then there will always be a gap between what's right for consumers and what is the reality consumers have to accept.


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## MichaelK

mikeyts said:


> ...
> 
> <tru2way> does have some advantages for the cable providers vis-a-vis their leased equipment in that there should eventually be a large range of compliant STBs, and they can pick and choose among them dynamically (like the wireless carriers freely pick and choose which mobile handsets to offer). They never would have gone to all this trouble (and it ain't over) just to get that.
> ....


I'm no expert but there are lots of bits on the internet (so consider the source) that the above is a major part of this. It breaks the back of the moto + SA/cisco doupoly. Comcast as an example has already contracted for piles of OCAP boxes from panasonic.

Seem's plausible to me that much of this is to "get the duopoly" in line.


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## MichaelK

mikeyts said:


> I hadn't heard any stories of that. Can you point to some threads? ....


here's mine...

moved to cable from directv with S3 introduction. 2 S3's worked fine for ~2 years with cablecards- small regional system called Patriot Media.

Patriot bought up by comcast.

My package pricing from patriot is up and comcast calls to 'convert' us to a new comcast package and gets my wife. Sales scumbag leads me wife to beleive that cable boxes are REQUIRED for new comcast packages- cablecards no longer will work. My wife is not an idiot- she has a college degree and then some- but she is not at all familiar with cablecard rules and all this BS. Perhaps the comcast salesperson used the appropriate legal terms but she made sure to leave my wife with the impression that tivo was dead and now we had to get their boxes. So my wife makes appointment to get these new boxes installed.

My wife tells me the story and I quickly explain that's not the case and call comcast to resolve it. I call comcast and get a new person and explain that my 4 cablecards are working just fine and to concel this stupid install appt. CSR agrees.

SCUMBAG saleswomen calls not 10 minutes later (must have been notified electronically that her bonus for deploying their boxes was being reduced by my call) and tries to "explain" to me why i "NEED" their boxes for all the vod stuff they offer. I tell her no thanks and she relents.

Some lowlife- likely the salesperson then reschedules the install for a new date. Comcast CSR's calls me on my cell phone while I'm at work and scolds me for not being home for installer and his new boxes. I tell her no thanks.

A couple days later, my tivo's start acting up. I get pissed off- thinking that 9.4 is acting screwy and is missing random recordings. After a couple hours of trouble shooting, I figure out someone at comcast has disabled 3 of my 4 cablecards. So now I have to call again and get them turned back on- wait on hold 7 minutes to get a csr who puts me on hold 3 minutes to "investigate"- he comes back after he figured out who to transfer me to. Transfers me and I sit on hold for another 10 minutes till someone who knows how to enable my cards finally helps me.

Had enough? It's clear that the average Joe who doesn't frequent these boards and read like a fiend on the internet may have been persuaded by all this to ditch tivo and go with the cable company's DVR.

I'm certain there is no written policy from comcast to attempt to push people away from tivo. But there is clearly a culture or lack of training/systems at play that in the real world that do discourage the use of cablecards. So sure people who are savy enough on the issues know to demand cards and fight "the man" to get them and installed. But plenty would be pushed away.

As irhorer said- it's not corporate wide but probably just some local inbred who culturally are against the cards.


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## Videodrome

My dealings with Comcast of Hillsboro (patriot) havent been postive. The calls i made to get a cablecard were handle so unprofessional. Basicly forwarding me into an voicemail , and never getting a callback. 

Try getsatisfaction.com and post your story.


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## rv65

MichaelK said:


> I'm no expert but there are lots of bits on the internet (so consider the source) that the above is a major part of this. It breaks the back of the moto + SA/cisco doupoly. Comcast as an example has already contracted for piles of OCAP boxes from panasonic.
> 
> Seem's plausible to me that much of this is to "get the duopoly" in line.


The Panasonic boxes are actually motorola compatible STB's. They might be made by Panasonic but are Motorola compatible. They do use OCAP which is universal.


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## lrhorer

MichaelK said:


> As irhorer said- it's not corporate wide but probably just some local inbred who culturally are against the cards.


Thanks, but please, that's lrhorer, not irhorer.


----------



## Scopeman

socrplyr said:


> Wouldn't all of us like to know... No one that I have seen has confirmed any hard dates. However, when I contacted my local office they told me by the end of the year. I have also seen others post similar results after they contacted their offices.
> 
> I haven't see a single person report that they have a tuning adapter in hand at this point.
> 
> Edit: I am reporting on what I have seen for TWC Only.


Some TWC locations *are* testing with small groups of local users - maybe not many TWC areas, but at least some.

From what I understand (sadly) you should be setting your expectations for Nov., not Sept., for mass shipments.


----------



## DCIFRTHS

bicker said:


> And that's a good point, and why I'm not necessarily celebrating the fact that they have to continue supporting CableCARD even after they come up with an alternative: A lot of these rules are easy to ignore, because the details of them are not generally enforced. As long as folks keep ratifying a pro-business perspective at the federal level (and, for full disclosure, I generally do, and do so without reservation), then there will always be a gap between what's right for consumers and what is the reality consumers have to accept.


...or *choose* to accept.


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## bicker

Yes, good point: Consumers always have a choice whether to accept or decline offerings.


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## JayBird

I received a letter today from Cox, indicating that they will now be implementing SDV here in AZ on October 10th. It was previously scheduled for July 1st, but due to various technical issues, it didn't happen as originally scheduled. It looks like the channels that are moving to SDV are the same as the channels that were listed in the previous letter. The only one that I'm going to really miss is 133 (DIY).

The letter also says that they are still offering an HD receiver (no DVR) for only $2/mo. (same as a cable card) for the first 6 months for those who want access to the SDV channels, On DEMAND, and the infamous cable box Interactive Program Guide. Personally, I'll pass, but others may want to take them up on this offer.

The letter also still says that the tuning adapter for TiVos is expected to be available "later this year", and will be provided for free. I'll believe it when I actually have one in hand.


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## MichaelK

Videodrome said:


> My dealings with Comcast of Hillsboro (patriot) havent been postive. The calls i made to get a cablecard were handle so unprofessional. Basicly forwarding me into an voicemail , and never getting a callback.
> 
> Try getsatisfaction.com and post your story.


comcast sucks. Clearly their system of call centers 1,000 miles away doesn't really work well.

if you can- try to get them to connect you directly to the former patriot office in somerset. Once you get a former patriot employee they will fix you up lickety split.


----------



## MichaelK

lrhorer said:


> Thanks, but please, that's lrhorer, not irhorer.


whoops- sorry


----------



## MichaelK

rv65 said:


> The Panasonic boxes are actually motorola compatible STB's. They might be made by Panasonic but are Motorola compatible. They do use OCAP which is universal.


????

if they are ocap then they are universal - so they will work on moto head ends that supprot OCAP. Or SA/cisco head ends that support ocap.

or are you saying they have natice moto support in additon to ocap? Seems silly to me to include that too but who knows...


----------



## rv65

MichaelK said:


> ????
> 
> if they are ocap then they are universal - so they will work on moto head ends that supprot OCAP. Or SA/cisco head ends that support ocap.
> 
> or are you saying they have natice moto support in additon to ocap? Seems silly to me to include that too but who knows...


Yep I heard that they have native moto support. Right now Panasonic hasn't begun mass production of their OCAP/tru2way/iDCR HD-DVR. They have had problems with it's design so they are going to fix the problems and then put it into market. It will be an MSO box not a box you can buy. With tru2way they might just offer a list of approved boxes that are guaranteed to work and they may still be able to have a few boxes for renting customers. Comcast has been using the RNG-200 for comcast areas that use SA/Cisco. That also uses OCAP but it doesn't seem to like certain universal remotes. Time Warner in San Diego will probably offer the next gen Cisco box called the 8550/8552 HDC. The non DVR will probably be the 4550HDC. They may also carry a samsung box.


----------



## will592

I got the same letter JayBird. I thought the most interesting part was the channel list on the back. Mostly Spanish language stations and sports packages. I too am not quite ready to jump onboard the USB dongle express


----------



## mel.simmons

Sigh. Another letter from Time Warner Cable in San Diego. They will be moving more channels to SDV on 27 October: Versus/Golf HD, Starz HD, Cinemax HD, Lifetime Movie Net HD, Fox Sports HD, and National Geographic HD. 

"We recognize the frustration this may cause you ..." is an understatement.

They say they expect to offer Tuning Adapters "later this year".


----------



## mikeyts

mel.simmons said:


> Sigh. Another letter from Time Warner Cable in San Diego. They will be moving more channels to SDV on 27 October: Versus/Golf HD, Starz HD, Cinemax HD, Lifetime Movie Net HD, Fox Sports HD, and National Geographic HD.
> 
> "We recognize the frustration this may cause you ..." is an understatement.
> 
> They say they expect to offer Tuning Adapters "later this year".


Not too bad for me--I don't subscribe to Starz or Cinemax (I'd drop them with a loud protest if I did), I've never watched anything on Lifetime Movies HD, FSN HD SW broadcasts one or two events every few months and the stuff on Versus that I want to watch (their occasional coverage of tennis) is never shown on VS/Golf HD. I might miss NatGeo HD, a little.

If they're not going to offer Tuning Adapters before 27 October, "later this year" would mean November or December, so you'll only lose them for a couple of months (if they're right about that).

I've been sharing homes for the past couple of years since retirement and have been the in market for a new place. I'd hoped that I'd land in Cox territory (no SDV and more HD channels to boot, including Sci Fi HD, which I'd kill for). Unfortunately, I found a great place to share in Bay Park, but it's still in TWC land--life in the big city .


----------



## 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 .


----------



## mikeyts

mikeyts said:


> 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 .


The guy who posted that thread reports today that he picked up his Tuning Adapter and that it's hooked up and working.


----------



## moyekj

mikeyts said:


> The guy who posted that thread reports today that he picked up his Tuning Adapter and that it's hooked up and working.


 That's good news. Strikes me as kind of ironic that the major cable provider probably with smallest SDV deployment (percentage wise) is the first to make these available. Wouldn't surprise me if TWC is the last


----------



## MickeS

moyekj said:


> That's good news. Strikes me as kind of ironic that the major cable provider probably with smallest SDV deployment (percentage wise) is the first to make these available.


Kinda makes sense though.


----------



## MichaelK

moyekj said:


> That's good news. Strikes me as kind of ironic that the major cable provider probably with smallest SDV deployment (percentage wise) is the first to make these available. Wouldn't surprise me if TWC is the last


sort of surprising but maybe not when we think comcast is the major provider with the longest (strongest?) relationship of the big boys.


----------



## vstone

Picture shows CISCO logo. Is this for SA systems? Comcast is supposedly about 80&#37; Moto boxes.

I had read that Comcast had decided to go all digital and defer SDV until later. Guess not. I've also read that they has replaced some euipment that would allow them to put 3 HD channels on a freq instead of two.


----------



## bdraw

Updated the first post to include details of the Tuning Adapter.


----------



## ah30k

vstone said:


> Picture shows CISCO logo. Is this for SA systems? Comcast is supposedly about 80% Moto boxes.
> 
> I had read that Comcast had decided to go all digital and defer SDV until later. Guess not. I've also read that they has replaced some euipment that would allow them to put 3 HD channels on a freq instead of two.


Comcast (like most other large operators) has both SA and Mot systems. Each system may have a different strategy so you can't make blanket statements about how Comcast will proceed. The SA systems are far ahead of the Mot systems in their deployment of SDV. Comcast has slowed their deployment of SDV in their Mot systems as a business decision as they focus on other capital intensive efforts. The time will come, though, that they go all out on Mot systems as well.


----------



## classicsat

Yes, Cisco = Scientific Atlanta.


----------



## sieglinde

Mediacom is deploying Motorola tuning adapters starting Friday of this week in the small town of Ridgecrest, CA. I won't be able to pick it up until Monday.


----------



## RoundBoy

Just curious to see if anybody had a unit and is using it. Is it a 'transparent' device or does it add any type of delay to channel switching, etc ?


----------



## mikeyts

As I reported back in this post (just 10 posts before your query), a Comcast system in New Jersey has been distributing them since Monday. There's a thread about it here.

Try scanning the last 20 or so posts for information next time .


----------



## RoundBoy

mikeyts said:


> As I reported back in this post (just 10 posts before your query), a Comcast system in New Jersey has been distributing them since Monday. There's a thread about it here.
> 
> Try scanning the last 20 or so posts for information next time .


Thats not very fair... your post said comcast was handing them out.. and the other post is about comcast in NJ handing them out. Nobody actually addresses the questions I asked.

The 2nd thread is more focused on the size / power consumption, rather then actual use since even though they have one, SDV isn't required in their area yet.


----------



## mikeyts

People in that thread are reporting that they've picked them up, plugged them in and that they're working. They have absolutely no idea whether there's any SDV in use in their area yet, since Comcast didn't deign to inform them of what channels they planned to present as SDV, but if they hadn't already had some SDV channels up, they obviously have the intent to use it and have tested it in their network or they wouldn't be distributing tuning adapters. It's quite possible that, like here in San Diego, they've been presenting part of their digital simulcast as SDV and are now mapping Tuning Adapters to those channels.

But you don't have to ask whether anyone's using Tuning Adapters yet--if any one of us who monitors this thread (and thus could read your question) had received one, I trust that he or she would report it here--if they have reason not to volunteer the information (such as having signed an NDA), a posted question isn't likely to make them give it up.


----------



## mikeyts

I hadn't noticed, but I see from the weaknees blog that TiVo has beefed up their SDV support page (here). Of particular interest is this, from the "TiVo upgrades and exchanges section:


> ...you can connect the Tuning Adapter to your new DVR and it will be operational immediately. All channels that are not copy protected, including SDV channels, will be visible.
> 
> You will still need to call your cable provider to get the CableCARD(s) paired to your new DVR before you can view copy-protected channels.


...which implies that TiVo can use the channel map in the TA just like it uses the CableCARD maps, even without CableCARDs plugged in. I'm sure that will get all of those people who want to use basic cable without CableCARDs all hot and bothered . Unfortunately, the guy who started that New Jersey Comcast thread states that they checked the computer to make sure that he had CableCARDs before giving him a TA. As I think that I heard bicker say somewhere, the cable companies will probably consider these things to be ancilliary to your lease of CableCARDs.


----------



## CharlesH

mikeyts said:


> ...which implies that TiVo can use the channel map in the TA just like it uses the CableCARD maps, even without CableCARDs plugged in.


The tuning resolver spec posted a few months ago said that the tuning resolver would provide a channel map that the host *must *use *instead *of the one provided by the cablecard. Of course, whether the tuning resolver will work in the absence of a cablecard is another matter.


----------



## mikeyts

CharlesH said:


> The tuning resolver spec posted a few months ago said that the tuning resolver would provide a channel map that the host *must *use *instead *of the one provided by the cablecard. Of course, whether the tuning resolver will work in the absence of a cablecard is another matter.


Yeah--I read that spec and knew that, but thanks anyway. The section of TiVo's FAQ that I quoted says that the Tuning Adapter will work without CableCARDs, being independently loaded with a channel map that TiVo can and will use. The question is whether any cable provider will distribute these things to anyone using a TiVo without CableCARDs.


----------



## FoxFireX

Just had to replace my Series 3, and needed to re-pair the CCs in the process. While browsing around to see how much I'm missing out on until the TA arrives, I noticed this page that I figured I'd share with any other TWC San Antonio folk: http://www.timewarnercable.com/SanAntonio/Products/Cable/sdv/default.html

Important bit is this: "Customers with TiVo Series 3, TiVo HD, and TiVo HD XL DVRs can order a FREE tuning adapter now." They've provided a form you can fill out to essentially be first in line when they're released here. The form says the "expected availability date is later this year," which is at least reassuring in that they're planning to release the things. Oh, and that nice word "FREE" has a really great ring to it.


----------



## mikeyts

Interesting. I looked at TWC San Diego's site and couldn't find a similar page on SDV with a pre-order form for a TA, but I did find this updated page on CableCARD, which talks about "Open Cable Products":


> *Open Cable Products* are two-way capable just like Time Warner Cables leased set top boxes and allow access to ALL of Time Warner Cables one-way and two-way services. We expect Open Cable Products to be available at retail in 2008.


They're obviously talking about products compliant with OpenCable's <tru2way> spec. Nice to see them promising support for them.


----------



## xirian

Any info on cablevision offering these yet?


----------



## Jimbo713

FoxFireX:

THANK YOU!!!!


----------



## sieglinde

Do I need a USB adapter for the HD Tivo? The instructions on the page say I do. The adapter does not have a USB port and the company says does not support them.


----------



## SCSIRAID

sieglinde said:


> Do I need a USB adapter for the HD Tivo? The instructions on the page say I do. The adapter does not have a USB port and the company says does not support them.


The Tuning Adapter connects to the USB port already present on the back of the TiVo S3 or THD.

What company are you referring to?


----------



## sieglinde

Mediacom. Of course my Tivo has a USB port. The tuning adapter does not and I called Mediacom and they said contact Tivo and that they were not going to support USB. Well I could care less about pay per view and on demand but I have the thing hooked up, activated it with the cable company and my Tivo is not receiving anything.


----------



## ajwees41

sieglinde said:


> Mediacom. Of course my Tivo has a USB port. The tuning adapter does not and I called Mediacom and they said contact Tivo and that they were not going to support USB. Well I could care less about pay per view and on demand but I have the thing hooked up, activated it with the cable company and my Tivo is not receiving anything.


who makes your tuning adapter? they both should have usb


----------



## CuriousMark

I bet they gave you a cable box that you can use on a separate input port of your TV to watch PPV and VOD live.


----------



## mikeyts

sieglinde said:


> Do I need a USB adapter for the HD Tivo? The instructions on the page say I do. The adapter does not have a USB port and the company says does not support them.


Which Tuning Adapter did you get from MediaCom? Moto or Cisco? In either case, the Tuning Adapter should have a USB Type B connection on it:






You can see such a connection on the back-panel picture in the Cisco STA1520 Tuning Adapter spec-sheet and in this picture of the back of the Moto MTR700 (and if you don't have one of these boxes, you don't have a Tuning Adapter). USB Type B is common on things like printers and scanners. You need a USB-A-Male-to-USB-B-Male cable to connect the two (like this one). I'm surprised that it didn't come with one.


----------



## sieglinde

I ended up calling Tivo and they suggested it was a cable box so I did what I should have done a few hours ago, I checked the model number on the internet. It is a nice cute little cable box. Interestingly, the cable company did not ask anyone to return their cable boxes. 

I am still not getting 2-13 they are acting like they are not authorized for my viewing so I will call the cable company and tell them that. Probably they need to hit the cable cards with a signal. I am learning way more about this than I should need to.


----------



## blacknoi

I was going to ask the question on whether the signal level would be reduced, as the SDV adapter is a pass-through for the coax.

But I was happily surprised to read this:



> While the Tuning Adapter is powered on, it boosts the signal strength slightly, so that there is no drop in signal strength due to the Tuning Adapter's operation.


at this address. WOOT


----------



## sieglinde

I ended up using the cute little cable box with my Series 2 which has a lifetime subscription that I was planning to sell. I would rather have a tuning adapter on my Tivo HD.


----------



## Talkincat

FoxFireX said:


> Just had to replace my Series 3, and needed to re-pair the CCs in the process. While browsing around to see how much I'm missing out on until the TA arrives, I noticed this page that I figured I'd share with any other TWC San Antonio folk: http://www.timewarnercable.com/SanAntonio/Products/Cable/sdv/default.html


I called the number for my local division (Milwaukee) and they sent me to this page:

http://www.timewarnercable.com/tuningadapter

If you go to that page and put in your zipcode, you can submit the "pre-order" form which seems to be a "hey, I have TiVo, call me when these things are out" database. You can't actually order the tuning adapter, but it should get you a notification when they're available from TW.


----------



## benegesserit

I followed the link above to request an adapter and it actually worked this time! (Last week I tried it and it did not) I am in Wisconsin zip code 54956. 

I also e-mailed customer service at Time warner last week. E-mailing them seems the best bet, because calling them is a hopeless waste of time. The customer service rep I got via e-mail said only that there was "limited interest" in the adapters and that he was "compiling a list of interested customers". His name was Steven. He also doesn't really understand the technology because he went on about needing "two way cable cards" to work with the adapter, etc... but at least he had a better clue than most. 

Hope this helps someone out there.


----------



## joedandrea

I checked in with Cablevision once again. Still no word on when the Tuning Adapter will be deployed. Meanwhile, they have made a(nother) note in my account that I'm eager to get one.

I'm using a Series 3 HD with two CableCARDs, and then we have VoIP x 3 and Internet x 2 to boot.

Meanwhile, Danella Line Services recently ran fiber through our neighborhood for Verizon FiOS. Hmm ...


----------



## Southie Boy

benegesserit said:


> He also doesn't really understand the technology because he went on about needing "two way cable cards" to work with the adapter, etc... but at least he had a better clue than most.


That is interesting, because I got the very same "two way CableCard" comment from a New England TWC service rep. Perhaps its a corporate training glitch.


----------



## JimWall

I used the link for TWC tuning adapter showed above and quickly got a reply e-mail. It said there is no release date in Southwest Ohio but I am on the list to be notified when it becomes available.


----------



## Southie Boy

Here is the reply I got from TWC:

From: twc.tuningadapter [mailto:[email protected]] 
Sent: Thursday, October 30, 2008 4:18 PM
To: twc.tuningadapter
Subject: Re: SDV Tuning Adapter Pre-Order

October 30, 2008

Thank you for your request for the SDV Tuning Adapter. Your Pre-Order has been received. At this time the Tuning Adapter is not available to the public but is currently undergoing testing to ensure the highest level of customer satisfaction upon release; which we will begin deployments later this year. We do not have a specific release date for your area, but once the Tuning Adapter becomes available a service representative will contact you to schedule the installation.

Thank you,

D. Jacobs
Corporate Tuning Adapter Desk
Time Warner Cable

Sounds to me that this is just a CYA letter so they can tell the FCC they are doing something while they continue to deprive TiVo/CableCard customers of the programing they are over paying for.


----------



## bicker

Are you suggesting that testing a service before deploying that service is a bad thing? 

If they deployed the tuning adapters without adequate testing and remediation, and there were problems, wouldn't you viciously condemn them for doing so?


----------



## Blahman

bicker said:


> Are you suggesting that testing a service before deploying that service is a bad thing?
> 
> If they deployed the tuning adapters without adequate testing and remediation, and there were problems, wouldn't you viciously condemn them for doing so?


And are you suggesting that the CableLabs testing is insufficient and the certification process by which they assert to the FCC that devices thus tested are compatible is not valid? I am sure either the FCC or CableLabs would love to hear such a claim.


----------



## mikeyts

If you're going to deploy thousands of units into customer premises, _nothing_ replaces field testing in your own system. _Nothing_. When your customers are crawling up your behind because it doesn't work as expected, CableLabs isn't going to assume any slightest bit of responsibility.

CableLabs (or some authorized alternative) supposedly thoroughly tested the interoperability of the first unidirectional CableCARDs in all the devices which shipped with slots for them, but they certainly didn't work smoothly.


----------



## Southie Boy

bicker said:


> Are you suggesting that testing a service before deploying that service is a bad thing?


No, I am suggesting that they are lying about the testing, and are not testing at all.
The reason I come to that conclusion is the letter I got from them explaining to me that they were "launching" SDV in my area, and that a solution ( the tuning adapter) for CableCard users would be coming soon. They went on to mention 2 obscure french language stations that would be the "first" stations to be moved to SDV. 
The truth is that SDV has been being used for 2 years in my area, and there are a raft of stations that are already on it.
TWC will say whatever it thinks will keep their customers from complaining to the FCC about the fact that they are not providing access to all the content they are being paid for by CableCard customers.


----------



## vstone

Given the experience that many had with cablecards, does anyone here really think that cable companies have sufficiently trained their field techs and their CSR (both office and phone) on SDV? The fact that SDV has been working in a given location for two is absolutely NO gurarantee that it is actually set up correctly or would interoperate with a new piece of equipment.

TWC-SC's PSIP streams changed in FEB 07, disabling some clear QAM tuners. Both the local headend techs and the state head-end techs (the whole state is run out of Columbia) said that NO, repeat, NO changes had been made!


----------



## bicker

Blahman said:


> And are you suggesting that the CableLabs testing is insufficient and the certification process by which they assert to the FCC that devices thus tested are compatible is not valid?


That assertion is non-sequitur. CableLabs testing is compatibility testing, not functional testing.


----------



## zablock

forgive my ignorance, but is there a way to just buy an sdv tuning adapter and set it up to work without the cable company? I really don't feel like waiting on twc to take it's sweet time on deploying these adapters if I don't have to.


----------



## SCSIRAID

zablock said:


> forgive my ignorance, but is there a way to just buy an sdv tuning adapter and set it up to work without the cable company? I really don't feel like waiting on twc to take it's sweet time on deploying these adapters if I don't have to.


No.


----------



## moyekj

zablock said:


> forgive my ignorance, but is there a way to just buy an sdv tuning adapter and set it up to work without the cable company? I really don't feel like waiting on twc to take it's sweet time on deploying these adapters if I don't have to.


 Just like with regular cable set top boxes there needs to be specific firmware and authorization for the tuning adapter so you can't just buy an adapter from anywhere, plug it in and expect it to work.


----------



## JimWall

I just received this e-mail from TWC. Looks like a December date!!!

November 12, 2008

Thank you for your request for the SDV Tuning Adapter. Your Pre-Order has been received and your information recorded. At this time the Tuning Adapter is not available to the public but is currently undergoing testing to ensure the highest level of customer satisfaction. We expect the Tuning Adapters to be released to the public sometime in December in many areas of the country. Although we do not have a specific release date for your area, once the Tuning Adapter becomes available a service representative will contact you to schedule the installation.

Thank you,

D. Jacobs

Corporate Tuning Adapter Desk

Time Warner Cable


----------



## Southie Boy

JimWall said:


> I just received this e-mail from TWC. Looks like a December date!!!
> 
> We expect the Tuning Adapters to be released to the public sometime in December in many areas of the country.


How much would you want to bet that your area of the country (or mine) will not be among the "many" that get the adapters. My letter was almost word for word the same but it said they would be beginning distribution before the end of the year.

I'd say it's just more TWC lies.


----------



## bicker

"Lies" because the truth doesn't fit your personal needs. Ooooookay. (backing away slowly)


----------



## wireman121

According to Cablevision's website http://optimum.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/optimum.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=2289&p_created=1205422410&p_sid=IWKqH_ij&p_accessibility=0&p_redirect=&p_lva=&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPTEmcF9zb3J0X2J5PSZwX2dyaWRzb3J0PSZwX3Jvd19jbnQ9MTcsMTcmcF9wcm9kcz0wJnBfY2F0cz0mcF9wdj0mcF9jdj0mcF9wYWdlPTEmcF9zZWFyY2hfdGV4dD1zd2l0Y2hlZCBkaWdpdGFsIHZpZGVv&p_li=&p_topview=1, requiring Cablevision customers to use their cablebox to view ALL available channels is not against the FCC regulations. Is there something different about the VOOM channels and NHL center ice (and the others they list) that lets them get around the FCC regulations?


----------



## mikeyts

wireman121 said:


> According to Cablevision's website http://optimum.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/optimum.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=2289&p_created=1205422410&p_sid=IWKqH_ij&p_accessibility=0&p_redirect=&p_lva=&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPTEmcF9zb3J0X2J5PSZwX2dyaWRzb3J0PSZwX3Jvd19jbnQ9MTcsMTcmcF9wcm9kcz0wJnBfY2F0cz0mcF9wdj0mcF9jdj0mcF9wYWdlPTEmcF9zZWFyY2hfdGV4dD1zd2l0Y2hlZCBkaWdpdGFsIHZpZGVv&p_li=&p_topview=1, requiring Cablevision customers to use their cablebox to view ALL available channels is not against the FCC regulations.


I'm sorry, but I don't see where it says that (it also doesn't sound as though Cablevision is requiring "customers to use their cablebox to view ALL available channels"). Can you quote the portion of what they say that you're interpreting that way?


----------



## vstone

Analog cable ready was an industry idea and not required by the FCC. After FEB 17, cable companies must continue to service analog TC sets for 3 years, but they can require you to use a cablebox and they can charge you for it.

In the digital world, there are requirements to allow you to use equipment other than a cable box. Existing devices are Tivo, a no longer available Sony DVR, a specially built PC, or a cablecard TV set, of which there are very few. CFR requires cablecard, but the SDV technology has not been officially addressed by the FCC, so cable companies can pretty much do as they wish.

Even with digital cable channels carrying local OTA, there is no technical requirement other than it be unencrypted. All of those millions of TV sets being sold today have clear QAM tuners, but many cable companies do not support them.


----------



## lrhorer

wireman121 said:


> requiring Cablevision customers to use their cablebox to view ALL available channels is not against the FCC regulations. Is there something different about the VOOM channels and NHL center ice (and the others they list) that lets them get around the FCC regulations?


Two-way CATV services are specifically excluded from the regulations covering broadcast services. Video on demand, pay-per-view, and SDV are two way services.


----------



## lrhorer

mikeyts said:


> I'm sorry, but I don't see where it says that (it also doesn't sound as though Cablevision is requiring "customers to use their cablebox to view ALL available channels"). Can you quote the portion of what they say that you're interpreting that way?


I think what he meant is there are channels one cannot view unless one has an STB, not that there are no channels which do not require an STB.


----------



## mikeyts

vstone said:


> Even with digital cable channels carrying local OTA, there is no technical requirement other than it be unencrypted. All of those millions of TV sets being sold today have clear QAM tuners, but many cable companies do not support them.


Code of Federal Regulations Title 47 §76.640(b)(1) provides technical specification of how digital channels will be carried on cable systems, by reference to the appropriate SCTE specs. Any clear QAM tuner which complies with these specs, which are based on the plug-and-play digital-television-over-cable "memorandum of understand", as agreed upon and signed by top execs of all the major cable MSOs and CE OEMs (Charter, Comcast, Cox, TWC, Cablevision, Insight, Cable One, Advance/Newhouse, Hitachi, JVC, Mitsubishi, Matsu****a, Philips, Pioneer, Runco, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, Thomson, Toshiba, Yamaha and Zenith) should be able to tune clear QAM channels on any complaint cable system. Personally, I think that those regulations and standards bind the cable companies to "support" modern clear QAM tuners, though no one could expect them to be able to help a sub with any specific piece of off-the-shelf equipment.


----------



## dswallow

mikeyts said:


> Code of Federal Regulations Title 47 §76.640(b)(1) provides technical specification of how digital channels will be carried on cable systems, by reference to the appropriate SCTE specs. Any clear QAM tuner which complies with these specs, which are based on the plug-and-play digital-television-over-cable "memorandum of understand", as agreed upon and signed by top execs of all the major cable MSOs and CE OEMs (Charter, Comcast, Cox, TWC, Cablevision, Insight, Cable One, Advance/Newhouse, Hitachi, JVC, Mitsubishi, Matsu****a, Philips, Pioneer, Runco, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, Thomson, Toshiba, Yamaha and Zenith). Personally, I think that those regulations and standards bind the cable companies to "support" modern clear QAM tuners, though no one could expect them to be able to help a sub with any specific piece of off-the-shelf equipment.


A better way to put the problem is to say that most every if not all cable systems with digital signals do certainly support and utilize the QAM standards. However what's missing is any connect between channels assignments and any sort of concept of guide data. Plus the typical QAM channels assignments can move around simply as part of how the cable system manages bandwidth, with no corresponding non-subscription methods or standards to allow for non-cable-box/non-CableCARD tuners to follow them automatically and seamlessly.


----------



## vstone

dswallow said:


> A better way to put the problem is to say that most every if not all cable systems with digital signals do certainly support and utilize the QAM standards. However what's missing is any connect between channels assignments and any sort of concept of guide data. Plus the typical QAM channels assignments can move around simply as part of how the cable system manages bandwidth, with no corresponding non-subscription methods or standards to allow for non-cable-box/non-CableCARD tuners to follow them automatically and seamlessly.


Actually, CFR does require the passing of channel ID from the broadcast, but few actually do this.


----------



## mikeyts

vstone said:


> Actually, CFR does require the passing of channel ID from the broadcast, but few actually do this.


Yeah--they're required to broadcast PSIP loops in QAM carriers containing clear content. As you say, compliance is splotchy. My current provider, TWC San Diego, does it and I can tune all of the digital locals with their assigned virtual channel numbers from the cable using my Mitsubishi panel's QAM tuner with no CableCARD installed (I can't be sure if they're carrying the PSIP program descriptions, since I have TV Guide On Screen activated). I lived in Cox territory up in Oceanside a year ago and they had PSIP working as well.


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## jim_newtivoguy

Posted this on the TWC thread, but for those of you who are wondering, these Tuning Adapters do exist. I picked mine up today, and it seems to work just fine. TWC Austin - the guy at the office had about 4-5 of them that he ordered after I went in today and they didn't have them.


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## Enrique

jim_newtivoguy said:


> Posted this on the TWC thread, but for those of you who are wondering, these Tuning Adapters do exist. I picked mine up today, and it seems to work just fine. TWC Austin - the guy at the office had about 4-5 of them that he ordered after I went in today and they didn't have them.


Do you have any pics?


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## Combat Medic

jim_newtivoguy said:


> Posted this on the TWC thread, but for those of you who are wondering, these Tuning Adapters do exist. I picked mine up today, and it seems to work just fine. TWC Austin - the guy at the office had about 4-5 of them that he ordered after I went in today and they didn't have them.


Interesting. I just got an eMail from the CEO of TWC SA and he says they are still in testing.


----------



## jim_newtivoguy

Yes, I have pics. (I'd have better ones, but I don't want to pull all the other gear out of my cabinet).


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## csm10495

wow at least some cable companies are getting something done. Cablevision thinks their to good to give the adapter. Anyone know when Cablevision give out the adapter?


----------



## bicker

See related discussions concerning the FCC recently citing companies for their deployments of SDV -- as a result of those, even relatively recent and reliable information about future deployments, if any, would be up in the air.


----------



## SCSIRAID

bicker said:


> See related discussions concerning the FCC recently citing companies for their deployments of SDV -- as a result of those, even relatively recent and reliable information about future deployments, if any, would be up in the air.


Not slowing TWC Raleigh down.... All these recent HD additions (except MGM HD) are SDV. More coming in December.

http://www.timewarnercable.com/Carolinas/programming/channelChangeUpdate.html

Nov. 20, 2008: The following channels will be added:

Planet Green HD - Channel 262 
CNN HD - Channel 269 
NBA League Pass HD Channel (for NBA League Pass subscribers) - Channel 720 
MLB Extra Innings/NHL Center Ice HD Channel (for MLB Extra Innings and NHL Center Ice subscribers) - Channel 745 
MGM HD - Channel 291 (replacing MOJO on HD Suite) 
Nov. 11, 2008: The NBA League Pass Preview Channel (710) is changed to an NBA League Pass package channel.

Oct. 29, 2008: The following HD channels are added to the Free HD lineup:

Discovery HD - Channel 260: Offers real life entertainment in shows such as American Chopper, Monster Garage, Unsolved History, and more. 
Speed HD - Channel 273: 24-hour cable network devoted exclusively to automotive, aviation, and marine entertainment and information. 
ESPNU HD - Channel 288: Coverage of NCAA college sports includes basketball, football, baseball, hockey, and more. 
Bio HD - Channel 296: BIO HD is about real people and their real lives: up close and personal, gritty and provocative, always unfiltered.


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## mikeyts

bicker said:


> See related discussions concerning the FCC recently citing companies for their deployments of SDV -- as a result of those, even relatively recent and reliable information about future deployments, if any, would be up in the air.


I've seen some posts from people saying that their cable company was backing out of SDV because of those decisions but if true, I don't understand why. They weren't particularly punitive--a small fine and an ordered rebate and decrease in the fees of CableCARD-using subs for tiers with many channels that they can't access. There were no orders to make them put channels they moved to SDV back as linear services.


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## lrhorer

Not only that, but none of the imposed fines had anything to do with consumers or directly with the implementation of SDV per se. The fines were entirely based upon the MSOs' failures to supply timely notice to the local franchise authority. Moreover, the fines themselves were piddling. I could pay such fines out of my own pocket (they are smaller than my yearly real-estate taxes), and I'm not a multi-billion dollar MSO raking in more than $300,000,000 a month.

Compared to the prospect of ultimately doubling or tripling that $300,000,000 a month revenue, or even compared to the prospect of giving up 10&#37; or 20% of it to Satellite and FIOS, the fines are completely insignificant.

Here in San Antonio we just lost a linear HD station - MoJo HD. A different HD station was added as an SDV only offering - MGMHD. It's definitely one I would like to have. For that matter, I would like to have MoJo HD back, but there are no regulations of which I know that can force a CATV company to carry anything other than a broadcast local channel defined to be must-carry.


----------



## bicker

I doubt your rosy perspective on this will prevail.


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## cableguy763

lrhorer-MojoHD is cancelled. No mas. That's why they are replacing it with MGMHD.


----------



## SCSIRAID

lrhorer said:


> Not only that, but none of the imposed fines had anything to do with consumers or directly with the implementation of SDV per se. The fines were entirely based upon the MSOs' failures to supply timely notice to the local franchise authority. Moreover, the fines themselves were piddling. I could pay such fines out of my own pocket (they are smaller than my yearly real-estate taxes), and I'm not a multi-billion dollar MSO raking in more than $300,000,000 a month.
> 
> Compared to the prospect of ultimately doubling or tripling that $300,000,000 a month revenue, or even compared to the prospect of giving up 10% or 20% of it to Satellite and FIOS, the fines are completely insignificant.
> 
> Here in San Antonio we just lost a linear HD station - MoJo HD. A different HD station was added as an SDV only offering - MGMHD. It's definitely one I would like to have. For that matter, I would like to have MoJo HD back, but there are no regulations of which I know that can force a CATV company to carry anything other than a broadcast local channel defined to be must-carry.


MGM HD stayed on the same linear channel that was Mojo here...

I guess San Antonio looked at it as half a channel the could reclaim for SDV.


----------



## mikeyts

lrhorer said:


> Not only that, but none of the imposed fines had anything to do with consumers or directly with the implementation of SDV per se. The fines were entirely based upon the MSOs' failures to supply timely notice to the local franchise authority.


From my layman's reading of those orders, they didn't seem to be _entirely_ based on failure to inform franchise authorities. The first ruling, against Cox Fairfax County Virginia, was based in part on that, but the second ruling, against TWC Oceanic in Hawaii (here) was based on findings of violations of CFR Title 47, §76.1201 ("Rights of subscribers to use or attach navigation devices") and CFR Title 47, §76.640 ("Support for unidirectional digital cable products on digital cable systems"). From the order:


> 1. In this Notice of Apparent Liability for Forfeiture and Order (NAL and Order), we find that Oceanic Time Warner Cable (Oceanic Oahu), a division of Time Warner Cable, Inc. (together with Oceanic Oahu, TWC) apparently willfully violated Sections 76.1201 and 76.640(b)(1) of the Commission's Rules Rules) in its Oceanic Oahu Central cable system.1 Specifically, Oceanic Oahu apparently violated Section 76.1201 by moving certain channels to a Switched Digital Video (SDV) platform on November 6, 2007, thereby preventing subscribers with CableCARD-equipped unidirectional digital cable products (UDCPs) from using their navigation devices to access these channels.2 Further, in its deployment of SDV on November 6, 2007, TWC apparently violated Section 76.640(b)(1) by failing to provide a virtual channel table which conforms to the standards required under Sections 76.640(b)(1)(i)and 76.640(b)(1)(v). We conclude, pursuant to Section 503(b) of the Communications Act of 1934, as amended (Act),3 that TWC is apparently liable for a forfeiture in the amount of twenty thousand dollars ($20,000). We also require TWC to make appropriate refund of fees charged to customers affected by TWCs movement of linear channels to the SDV platform on November 6, 2007.


So, the complaint again TWC Oceanic didn't actually have anything to do with the 30 days notification requirement--it was all about taking access to channels away from UDCP users (and further, about it being wrong to thereafter charge them the same amount as people who can get those channels).


----------



## bicker

That's it in a nutshell: The FCC punishing cable for actually _using _SDV as it was intended to be used.


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## mikeyts

The use of SDV is arguably an end-run around the FCC's requirement to support UDCPs (which all of the major cable companies agreed to do before it was codified into the regs); they had to at least slap them on the hands for it. Again, they didn't order them to stop using SDV or to change any of the channels taken away from UDCP-using subs back to non-switched services. At $20K per system (and they charged TWC Oceanic $20K for each of 3 separate systems they operate), and rebates and rate reductions to UDCP users, it could get pricey corporate wide, but nothing compared to the cost of non-SDV measures they'd have to take to compete with satellite's offerings.


----------



## MichaelK

bicker said:


> That's it in a nutshell: The FCC punishing cable for actually _using _SDV as it was intended to be used.


would be interesting to see if they rule in any cases where SDV is used only for NEW channels. since item 1 just muddies things.

then the arguement about paying the same for less is taken away and the entire issue is if deploying SDV is against the rules or not.

item 1- is above "moving certain channels"
and 
Item 2 is apparently about PSIP data- it's tough to tell if that's because time warner didn't transmit psip at all or only for the sdv channels. If they didn't do it for the sdv channels- of course they wouldn't and it would almost be saying you cant do sds at all.


----------



## MichaelK

here's another article discussing it:

http://www.commlawblog.com/2008/10/...gramming-to-switched-digital-video-platforms/

some interesting points of view and quotes but they dont link to their sources so not sure where it comes from



> In the Plug and Play Order, there was some recognition that the approved standards did not support "two-way" cable services. SDV is a sort of two-way service: unlike traditional cable technology which sends all channels to the subscriber at all times, in order to conserve bandwidth SDV sends only the channel that the subscriber is watching, and sends that particular channel in response to a signal received from the subscriber's equipment when the subscriber selects the channel. The cable operators attempted to use as a defense, the recognition of limits on two-way services acknowledged in the Plug and Play Order.
> 
> The FCC rejected that defense, stating that it recognized two-way issues only with "interactive services" (such as video-on-demand, pay-per-view or certain electronic program guides), not with "linear programming" (i.e., programming offered on a set schedule, such as traditional cable channels).


so SDV in the FCC's eyes is NOT TWO-WAY- wow!

and then further


> The Commission concluded that it "is not TWC's deployment of SDV technology that violates Section 76.1201, but TWC's migration of existing linear programming to an SDV tier that [they] find inconsistent with the Commission's Rules." This sentence suggests that the FCC might approve making new (as opposed to existing) programming available only on an SDV platform, but that suggestion is undercut by the statement in the Order that "TWC's movement of linear programming to an SDV platform is particularly troubling because no bi-directional navigation devices are commercially available at this time."


so moving is the problem and the adapter trumps the argument that "no bi-directional navigation devices are commercially available at this time."

so that sounds like it's easy enough to remedy- dont take away channels, and only use SDV on new chennels on systems where the adapter is availible.,

BUT- BIG BUT- the PSIP thing...

says-


> In essence, Section 76.640(b)(1)(i) requires cable operators to send a one-way stream of data that is separate from the video programming (an out of band Forward Data Channel) that includes channel lineups and other programming information otherwise known as "service information tables." These tables allow the consumer devices (referred to by the FCC as unidirectional digital cable products, or "UDCPs") to find and display a scrambled programming service on a particular channel. Because of the bi-directional nature of SDV technology, however, UDCPs cannot view programming provided on such an SDV platform. If a cable operator transmits a virtual channel table that includes SDV programming to a UDCP, the UDCP will indicate that SDV programming should appear on certain channels but will be unable to display it.
> 
> To avoid such a scenario, some cable operators (including TWC) unilaterally excluded SDV programming from the virtual channel tables transmitted to customers with CableCARD-equipped UDCPs. This failure to transmit the service information table data constitutes a violation of Section 76.640, according to the Notices.


so what's cable supposed to do- provide psip data and then udcp without adapter subs try to tune and get nothing? Is the FCC saying that SDV just isn't allowed becasue PSIP wont work?


----------



## mikeyts

MichaelK said:


> then the arguement about paying the same for less is taken away and the entire issue is if deploying SDV is against the rules or not.


How's that? When cable providers add channels to existing tiers as SDV, they're not charging people with UDCPs any less to subscribe to those tiers, even though they can't get all of the content. Perhaps they're getting everything that they originally paid for, but that doesn't change the fact that people leasing cable boxes are getting an improvement in service without be asked to pay more.


----------



## lrhorer

cableguy763 said:


> lrhorer-MojoHD is cancelled. No mas. That's why they are replacing it with MGMHD.


Yeah, I know, or do you mean the station no longer exists at all on any system? Either way, I liked the channel, and it's gone, whatever the reason. It would have been nice if they had made MGMHD linear, at least until after the adapter is available. I realize TWC is under no obligation to do so, but it would have been nice for us Tivo users.


----------



## lrhorer

SCSIRAID said:


> MGM HD stayed on the same linear channel that was Mojo here...
> 
> I guess San Antonio looked at it as half a channel the could reclaim for SDV.


Well, it's a lot more than half a channel, of course, which is the reason for not doing so. One SDV timeslot can carry potentialy several hundred videos.


----------



## lrhorer

mikeyts said:


> From my layman's reading of those orders, they didn't seem to be _entirely_ based on failure to inform franchise authorities.


I had not read the references you cited. The references I had were here and here. I hadn't read anything further.


----------



## lrhorer

MichaelK said:


> so SDV in the FCC's eyes is NOT TWO-WAY- wow!


Frankly, that's technologically obtuse, but I'll allow even in the best light it' a bit of a gray area. That said, it's not often the fundamentally obtuse mentality of the bureaucracy works in our favor, but this would appear to be such a case, at least on the surface. It could turn and bite us, however. Nonetheless, while the fines - even at their maximum - are trifling compared to the prospect of losing 10% of their customer base, they are not trifling compared to the cost of deploying and maintaining a supply of tuning adapters. Perhaps this will accelerate the deployment of the adapters. I'm still not holding my breath, though.


----------



## bicker

MichaelK said:


> would be interesting to see if they rule in any cases where SDV is used only for NEW channels. since item 1 just muddies things.


I think not even Kevin Martin could formulate a rationalization for such persecution, as long as the new channels are on a special tier, and not mixed in with channels that are NOT on SDV. If they are on a tier with channels that are not SDV, and there is no way to get those channels without also "paying for" the SDV channels (but being unable to get them), then I bet we would see a citation.


----------



## bicker

lrhorer said:


> Nonetheless, while the fines - even at their maximum - are trifling compared to the prospect of losing 10% of their customer base, they are not trifling compared to the cost of deploying and maintaining a supply of tuning adapters.


You're assuming that the fines are isolated -- that the FCC won't assess more and larger fines, in reaction to what they perceive or choose to perceive as transgressions against the regulations, reactions to actions that are simply the normal progress of continuing to deploy SDV.


----------



## mikeyts

lrhorer said:


> Yeah, I know, or do you mean the station no longer exists at all on any system?


That's what he meant. As of December 1st, MOJO HD won't exist on any system (see this). Apparently some of the programming may survive on other channels, and the MOJO MIX VOD service will continue into 2009.


----------



## morac

bicker said:


> You're assuming that the fines are isolated -- that the FCC won't assess more and larger fines, in reaction to what they perceive or choose to perceive as transgressions against the regulations, reactions to actions that are simply the normal progress of continuing to deploy SDV.


I doubt that the new FCC chairman (whoever that might be) will be as anti-cable as Martin is.


----------



## SCSIRAID

lrhorer said:


> Yeah, I know, or do you mean the station no longer exists at all on any system? Either way, I liked the channel, and it's gone, whatever the reason. It would have been nice if they had made MGMHD linear, at least until after the adapter is available. I realize TWC is under no obligation to do so, but it would have been nice for us Tivo users.


Mojo is being shut down.

"Mojo HD, the male-targeted, ad-supported programming outlet, is being shut down by In Demand Networks, the distributor confirmed."

http://www.multichannel.com/index.asp?layout=articlePrint&articleID=CA6602558


----------



## bicker

morac said:


> I doubt that the new FCC chairman (whoever that might be) will be as anti-cable as Martin is.


There is no question about that.


----------



## lrhorer

bicker said:


> You're assuming that the fines are isolated -- that the FCC won't assess more and larger fines, in reaction to what they perceive or choose to perceive as transgressions against the regulations, reactions to actions that are simply the normal progress of continuing to deploy SDV.


I'm not assuming any such thing. According to the regulation, the maximum fine per entity is $325,000. Even assuming the "entity" is taken to be a local franchise unit, it's piddling - barely a day's revenue for many franchises. For an entire MSO, it's less than is spent on janitorial services.


----------



## lrhorer

SCSIRAID said:


> Mojo is being shut down.
> 
> "Mojo HD, the male-targeted, ad-supported programming outlet, is being shut down by In Demand Networks, the distributor confirmed."
> 
> http://www.multichannel.com/index.asp?layout=articlePrint&articleID=CA6602558


That's too bad. They habitually broadcast IMAX films and occasionally had a good movie on. MGMHD looks to have some really terrific content, but it's not available on TiVo without a TA in San Antonio. Indeed, my favorite movie of all time, The Big Sleep, with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall is showing this month on MGMHD, and I surely would love to record it.


----------



## bicker

Such maximums are per citation. If you refuse to remedy what you were cited for, they will simply cite you again.


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## mikeyts

You don't have to "remedy" what you were cited for, you just have to follow the order at the end of the citation. "You will pay us this much money in fines by such and so date, you will rebate this much to the affected subscribers by such and so date and you will make the following changes." None of these citations ordered them to stop using SDV or to return channels which they'd changed to switched presentation back into linear channels--the just ordered payment of fines and rebates and a reduction of fees to UDCP-using subs for tiers where channels had been converted to SDV.


----------



## bicker

Reduction in fees. That's the crux of the issue. 

Again, I think your rosy perspective on this will only lead to further disappointment.


----------



## MichaelK

mikeyts said:


> How's that? When cable providers add channels to existing tiers as SDV, they're not charging people with UDCPs any less to subscribe to those tiers, even though they can't get all of the content. Perhaps they're getting everything that they originally paid for, but that doesn't change the fact that people leasing cable boxes are getting an improvement in service without be asked to pay more.


i envisioned they just make a new tier- charge 8 cents more and called it "digital plus" or some nonsense. Not even sure you have to charge more. Many places (my local system as of this months price increase) - charge exactly the same for analog basic as for the digital basic tier which has like 100 more channels. Presumably an enticement for subs to go digital and avoid all these headaches anyway.

also- specifically the fcc apparently said the issue was taking away channels people already had


----------



## bicker

That's actually a good idea; just have two tiers, with just enough difference in price to avoid prosecution, with the only other difference being SDV channels. However, I don't think that helps with the citation about taking channels away from digital and adding them to digital plus.


----------



## mikeyts

MichaelK said:


> also- specifically the fcc apparently said the issue was taking away channels people already had


That was only part of it--the TWC Oceanic ruling also cites them to charging the customers the same thing after taking the channels away:


> Those CableCARD customers who chose not to obtain the TWC-supplied settop boxes after the implementation of SDV nevertheless have paid the same monthly rate for their cable service even though they can view significantly fewer channels.


As I read it now, the requirement to lower rates seems only to affect the customers who were using CableCARDs when SDV was deployed who continued to use them afterwards:


> (b) For CableCARD customers that kept their CableCARDs even after notice of the SDV deployment, TWC must refund the customers subscriber fees based on the diminished value of their service following the movement of linear programming to an SDV platform and *reduce their rates on a going-forward basis accordingly*.


I can't find anywhere that the ruling states that customers with new orders to use services with CableCARDs in UDCPs need to be offered a reduced rate for tiers containing switched services. I guess that anyone who does that knows what they're getting up front.


----------



## MichaelK

not sure what you are arguing for- I give. I give.

they can't take away channels AND CHARGE the same- we comepleteing agree that is what the FCC said.

But does it really matter when they can just create a new tier with piles of new sdv and charge exactly the same for it as the tier without sdv? (or maybe a dollar more to keep things "fair" in the FCC's eye's)

they couldn't move anything out- but they can add a new tier and add a bazillion SDV channels and it doesn't matter. That's probably doable on more systems then not that are playing with sdv. 

so fine- they can't undo anything they have already but they can go forward. Move any PPV to all switched instead of linear, take the fringe HD channels people have and jam them 3 to a qam, put 20 sd digital channels on a qam instead of the 16 (made up numbers) they do now. Take advantage of mojo dying. Do whatever you need to in order to squeeze the existing tiers for a handfull of free slots and you are in business. You could even ruin the existing HD by putting it 4 to a qam and then put up a "good" copy SDV- sort of like Directv did for a time with their NY and LA locals with the MPEG2 for the legacy subs but new subs got (theoretically better) MPEG4 streams.

If you want to link taking away with price - then they can take away all they want and just lower the price for the 1&#37; of cablecard subs they have. Fine.


----------



## mikeyts

MichaelK said:


> not sure what you are arguing for- I give. I give.
> 
> they can't take away channels AND CHARGE the same- we comepleteing agree that is what the FCC said.
> 
> But does it really matter when they can just create a new tier with piles of new sdv and charge exactly the same for it as the tier without sdv? (or maybe a dollar more to keep things "fair" in the FCC's eye's).


As I said, I'm not sure that's even necessary. They're just making them reduce the price of the tiers going forward for the people who used to have access to the full tier through their CableCARDs and chose to continue using the CableCARDs despite the reduction in service--they can charge the same for less to new customers who order new service for a UDCP with CableCARDs, so long as it's clear from the beginning what they'll be able to tune with the CableCARDs. They don't need to muck with the tiers if they don't want to.


----------



## bicker

MichaelK said:


> so fine- they can't undo anything they have already but they can go forward.


Which is probably not worth the cost of deploying SDV.



MichaelK said:


> Move any PPV to all switched instead of linear


This is already the case, here.



MichaelK said:


> take the fringe HD channels people have and jam them 3 to a qam


Also already the case here; but I bet if Kevin Martin had another four years, he'd find some way of finding MSOs for _that_, too.

Actually, what they really could do, if their carriage contracts allowed them to, would be to take fringe HD channels and present them as ED (576i perhaps -- so 5 or 6 to a QAM). That would help mitigate the *need* for SDV. How many people here are willing to raise their hands stating they'd support that move? And regardless, I bet a Kevin Martin-like FCC would find a way to cite the MSOs for this, too.



MichaelK said:


> put 20 sd digital channels on a qam instead of the 16 (made up numbers) they do now.


I think _that's_ infeasible -- I think SD channels at 10 per QAM is their only choice (but I'm not sure about that).


----------



## bicker

mikeyts said:


> they can charge the same for less to new customers who order new service for a UDCP with CableCARDs, so long as it's clear from the beginning what they'll be able to tune with the CableCARDs.


I see nothing that indicates that MSOs can have different fee schedules for different customers. I'm almost positive that that is illegal.


----------



## MichaelK

bicker said:


> I see nothing that indicates that MSOs can have different fee schedules for different customers. I'm almost positive that that is illegal.


they just make up new tiers or packages.

my cable company does it all the time.
their official rate sheet is litered with "this package no longer availible after xx/yy/zzzz"

that aside-I'm not sure why you think adding NEW content in SDV is not a viable model. Take out the specifics of YOUR cable system. I'm talking in general. Cable has probably on average 30-40 HD channels- Satellite and Fios have 100+, if cable wants to compete they need to bridge that gap. Why wouldn't they add 60 HD channels on 10 slots?

You think it's cheaper to clear out 60 Slots then to come up with 10 and buy SDV gear? I guess that's possible but i don't think you or I know the specifics enough to make such a business decision.

10 slots can come buy pretty easy- mojo is 1. Bump down some of your HD crap to ed as you suggest. Plenty of places (maybe not yours) still have LINEAR ppv. Plenty of places are not 3 HD to a QAM. AS above i don't know how many SD you can normally get to a qam, but squeeze just one more in across all your qams for your 100 SD channels and thats some room. Figure out how to multiplex HD and SD on the same QAM so you can run 3 HD and 1-2 SD. Hec take your existing HD and go 4 to a qam because you can then probably get enough slots to redo all of those anyhow in SDV in high quality also. Move their 3 ananlog shopping channles to digital. ETC, ETC, be creative, there's plenty of ways they can squeeze a slot out here or there so they can come up with piles. What about the providers like TW rochester that have been 'testing' sdv for years and years and have had channels up without every having been linear- they can keep adding.

the 'cant take away' bit isn't necessarily the death knell for SDV.

What MAY BE the end of it is that second claim about not providing the channel table/PSIP data for the SDV channels. Is the FCC just using that as a pile on in these cases or do they intend to pursue that line of reasoning on every SDV system no matter what the specifics of channel adds or moves or deletions?


----------



## mikeyts

bicker said:


> I see nothing that indicates that MSOs can have different fee schedules for different customers. I'm almost positive that that is illegal.


And I see nothing that indicates that they can't. A grandfathered reduction of rates for a bunch of people who were receiving services which were taken away from them is perfectly reasonable--other businesses do it all the time, at least in reverse (raise the price for new customers while leaving the price for current customers alone). I'm pretty certain that my current cable provider has grandfathered rates from time to time. It'd be the FCC who drafted any regulations prohibiting it and they can make exceptions to their rules as they see fit.

In any case, that's what the language of that decision says to me--the end of a sentence which begins, "For CableCARD customers that kept their CableCARDs even after notice of the SDV deployment" is "and reduce their rates on a going-forward basis accordingly". Nothing there says that they have to reduce the rates for that tier for any new customers (or even CableCARD customers who chose to dump their CableCARDs and take the provider's offer of free STB lease) and it would certainly have been easy enough to say that if that'd been the intent.


----------



## ah30k

I think what bicker means is that two people calling today can't be offered different fee schedules. Provided they are in the same franchise area of course.


----------



## bicker

MichaelK said:


> they just make up new tiers or packages.


And what? get rid of the old tiers? Sorry, the FCC is dull, but not dumb. I'd figure Kevin Martin would find a way to fine MSOs just for engage in that kind of deception.



MichaelK said:


> that aside-I'm not sure why you think adding NEW content in SDV is not a viable model.


Because the intention for SDV was to free up lots of bandwidth for new services, like faster HSI -- stuff they can charge a lot extra for. Adding only new content reduces the value to *comparatively *very little.


----------



## bicker

mikeyts said:


> And I see nothing that indicates that they can't.


We'll just have to agree to disagree about that. Anything that smacks of avoiding FCC regulations would be a worthy candidate for someone like Kevin Martin to attack cable further. The fix isn't wishing and hoping; the fix is to get rid of the punitive regulations. Folks who want advancement in services should be working to free up their suppliers from such regulations, rather than throwing pennies into fountains.


----------



## moyekj

This is the first post I've seen confirming what was already suspected, that using a SDV Tuning Adapter without CableCards gives you proper channel mapping (and thus full guide data) for unencrypted QAM channels:
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=6869616#post6869616


----------



## mikeyts

moyekj said:


> This is the first post I've seen confirming what was already suspected, that using a SDV Tuning Adapter without CableCards gives you proper channel mapping (and thus full guide data) for unencrypted QAM channels:
> http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=6869616#post6869616


TiVo's SDV FAQ has said that that would work--why are people surprised that it does?

What will shock and amaze me is if any lifeline-basic-only subs with a TiVo _ever_ gets a cable provider to give them a Tuning Adapter. There's no reason why they should _give_ such subscribers extra equipment when a low-cost lease of a CableCARD solves their problem. You might as well ask them to give you CableCARDs. The function of the TA is to tell UDCP devices where to tune switched broadcasts--to my knowledge, no system has converted a service in their lifeline-basic tier into a switched broadcast. They're deploying TAs so that UDCP TiVo users can subscribe to (or at least _stay_ subscribed to) optional programming tiers where all or most of the services are switched broadcasts.


----------



## moyekj

mikeyts said:


> TiVo's SDV FAQ has said that that would work--why are people surprised that it does?
> 
> What will shock and amaze me is if any lifeline-basic-only subs with a TiVo _ever_ gets a cable provider to give them a Tuning Adapter. There's no reason why they should _give_ such subscribers extra equipment when a low-cost lease of a CableCARD solves their problem. You might as well ask them to give you CableCARDs. The function of the TA is to tell UDCP devices where to tune switched broadcasts--to my knowledge, no system has converted a service in their lifeline-basic tier into a switched broadcast. They're deploying TAs so that UDCP TiVo users can subscribe to (or at least _stay_ subscribed to) optional programming tiers where all or most of the services are switched broadcasts.


 It's not a matter of surprise. In fact we postulated about it way before the Tivo FAQ was ever there and the TA hardware was finalized, but nobody had gone through the exercise to confirm for sure that it works on a Tivo, and now we have that confirmation.
I don't want to rehash all the CableCard low cost arguments but suffice it to say that for many providers you can't lease CableCard without signing up for at least a minimum digital cable package which usually means much higher cost than lifeline cable package. Of course getting a TA without digital cable (or CableCard) most likely is also impossible for those same providers so it's kind of academic that it does work, but it's good to know about it if nothing else.


----------



## JimWall

Here is an idea for those with TIVO and lifeline. See if Cable Company stupidity can be in your favor. Order Digital and get cablecard and TA for one month. Then call and cancel digital. Get them to let you return the cablecards yourself to save a truck roll. Act dumb if they ask about the tuning adapter.


----------



## mikeyts

You can also act dumb when they show you the signed receipt and and put a $200 charge on your bill for non-returned equipment .

It's not likely to work in any case, since the TA has to be authorized to work at the CO, just like a leased STB or a CableCARD. If I were designing the process, an account would have to have activated CableCARDs in order to have a TA activated and I'd automatically de-authorize the TA when the CableCARDs are returned.


----------



## AKThunder

Will I need a tuning adapter if I have a cable box seperate from my HD Tivo? I am not using a CABLECard.


----------



## ajwees41

Kriever said:


> Will I need a tuning adapter if I have a cable box seperate from my HD Tivo? I am not using a CABLECard.


Why are not using a cablecard? You will only need the adapter if the channels you want are sdv'ed


----------



## dswallow

Kriever said:


> Will I need a tuning adapter if I have a cable box seperate from my HD Tivo? I am not using a CABLECard.


If your TiVo HD is not using CableCARDs it can only receive analog cable channels (plus OTA analog and digital channels, of course; and technically you can tune to digital unencrypted channels, though you'll have no way to make them correspond to guide data and thus recording won't be particularly useful or easy with them.) The TiVo HD cannot control a cable box, so any cable box is completely unrelated to the function of a TiVo HD receiver.

If you want your TiVo HD to tune the digital channels offered by your cable company, you need CableCARD(s). If your cable system uses SDV on channels that you subscribe to, you need a tuning adapter as well to be able to receive those channels.


----------



## StringFellow

Any updated list of SDV enabled markets? I have missing channels which started on 12/8.


----------



## AKThunder

dswallow said:


> If your TiVo HD is not using CableCARDs it can only receive analog cable channels (plus OTA analog and digital channels, of course; and technically you can tune to digital unencrypted channels, though you'll have no way to make them correspond to guide data and thus recording won't be particularly useful or easy with them.) The TiVo HD cannot control a cable box, so any cable box is completely unrelated to the function of a TiVo HD receiver.
> 
> If you want your TiVo HD to tune the digital channels offered by your cable company, you need CableCARD(s). If your cable system uses SDV on channels that you subscribe to, you need a tuning adapter as well to be able to receive those channels.


Yea I know that. The reason is I had the cable box before I got the Tivo HD. And the way it is, I like it because the box I can watch while tivo records two other shows. IDK I am kinda weird like that. lol


----------



## mikeyts

Kriever said:


> Yea I know that. The reason is I had the cable box before I got the Tivo HD. And the way it is, I like it because the box I can watch while tivo records two other shows. IDK I am kinda weird like that. lol


If you leased a CableCARD, TiVo could be recording those two other things in HD, if they were available in that form. It could also be recording them from HBO, Showtime/TMC, Cinemax or whatever other premium services to which you subscribe.


----------



## billdav

StringFellow said:


> Any updated list of SDV enabled markets? I have missing channels which started on 12/8.


I don't know but apparently TWC in San Diego CA has started moving channels to SDV, in spite of the adapters not being available.

I've complained to TWC and to the local franchise authority. They should not be allowed to deploy SDV until after the adapters are available.


----------



## mikeyts

billdav said:


> I don't know but apparently TWC in San Diego CA has started moving channels to SDV, in spite of the adapters not being available.
> 
> I've complained to TWC and to the local franchise authority. They should not be allowed to deploy SDV until after the adapters are available.


They started using SDV back in the end of July (see this thread at hdtv.forsandiego.com).

Good luck with your campaign. In a couple of places, the FCC has "punished" some cable providers for deploying SDV, but they didn't force them to stop or anything. Lord only knows how long it took from initial complaint to those decisions being issued.


----------



## ultrarunner

Hey folks, just an FYI that the TA's are being mailed out in Rochester, NY. Should have mine by end of the week.


----------



## gary325

ultrarunner said:


> Hey folks, just an FYI that the TA's are being mailed out in Rochester, NY. Should have mine by end of the week.


I got my call tonight as well (Rochester, NY). The TA will be free and mailed directly to me. Since I did not have Cable cards they are sending the Tech out next Tuesday, I hope the TA shows up before that time. Then I can have it all checked out.
Time to revisit the CableCard sticky's.


----------



## ultrarunner

gary325 said:


> I got my call tonight as well (Rochester, NY). The TA will be free and mailed directly to me. Since I did not have Cable cards they are sending the Tech out next Tuesday, I hope the TA shows up before that time. Then I can have it all checked out.
> Time to revisit the CableCard sticky's.


Sounds good Gary. I have had the duplex card in the Tivo since early this past summer, and have had no problems with it.

The Cisco TA arrived today, and I'm headed down to hook it up. Looks pretty straight forward, and I'll report back.

Ultra--


----------



## ultrarunner

Ok, getting transferred to Level 3 support. Tuning adapter up and running, but a bunch of channels still missing....

But the install was straight forward. Took about 5 minutes for the tuning adapter menu to come up.


----------



## skaggs

ultrarunner said:


> Ok, getting transferred to Level 3 support. Tuning adapter up and running, but a bunch of channels still missing....
> 
> But the install was straight forward. Took about 5 minutes for the tuning adapter menu to come up.


This type of information may be more appropriate for the SDV Tuning Adapter-Time Warner thread.


----------



## ultrarunner

Ok


----------



## gary325

ultrarunner said:


> Sounds good Gary. I have had the duplex card in the Tivo since early this past summer, and have had no problems with it.
> 
> The Cisco TA arrived today, and I'm headed down to hook it up. Looks pretty straight forward, and I'll report back.
> 
> Ultra--


The Cable Cards got installed OK. I had two techs come over. The first had very good knowledge of CC's. But he brought ONE M-card and had to have the other guy get another for my Series 3.

The TA has not arrived 
I can get only 5 channels that are not SDV'd.
How could you have survived?


----------



## lrhorer

Well, 2008 is gone, and I don't have a Tuning Adapter in my hands, yet. Hmmm. I seem to recall someone saying Time Warner San Antonio wouldn't have the TAs out for General Availability before 2009. I wonder who it was said that?


----------



## berkshires

lrhorer said:


> Well, 2008 is gone, and I don't have a Tuning Adapter in my hands, yet. Hmmm. I seem to recall someone saying Time Warner San Antonio wouldn't have the TAs out for General Availability before 2009. I wonder who it was said that?


You are usually right about these things.

I hope the email I got the other day from TW re: Berskhire Co. saying January (2009) will turn out right.


----------



## lrhorer

I'm not too skeptical about January 31, and I'll be quite annoyed if we don't have them by Feb 27. If I still don't have one by April Fool's day, I'm going to start sending letters. Q3 2008 was an unrealistic expectation, and Q4 was unlikely given the minuscule impact to revenue, but breaking into Q2 of 2009 without deployment in major* SDV markets would be nothing but heal dragging.

*Major in terms of the percentage of SDV-only HD channels, not necessarily the total number of subscribers.


----------



## timstack8969

Is comcast using "SDV" in Cherry Hill, NJ currently??? I haven't heard anything on this lately. Just wondering if "SDV" will be coming to Philly in 2009.


----------



## FoxFireX

Just got a call from TWC San Antonio. They report the adapters will be available for pickup at two locations beginning Monday, January 12. Looks like I've got a new trip to make!


----------



## moyekj

It's interesting that so far I have not seen a single mention of public deployment of Motorola Tuning Adapters anywhere in the country from any provider. It's likely most SDV deployments currently are in SA/Cisco headends but there are some Motorola ones as well - including my headend.


----------



## SCSIRAID

moyekj said:


> It's interesting that so far I have not seen a single mention of public deployment of Motorola Tuning Adapters anywhere in the country from any provider. It's likely most SDV deployments currently are in SA/Cisco headends but there are some Motorola ones as well - including my headend.


I noticed that too.... I remember when everybody on SA systems were freaking out when Motorola announced their TA with not a peep from SA for some time after....


----------



## dswallow

SCSIRAID said:


> I noticed that too.... I remember when everybody on SA systems were freaking out when Motorola announced their TA with not a peep from SA for some time after....


Yeah. I guess SA/Cisco was too busy actually working to produce their tuning adapters to talk about them much while Motorola was too busy talking about theirs to actually get around to making any.


----------



## cableguy763

How many cable systems are using motorola for their switched services now? I cant think of any.


----------



## moyekj

cableguy763 said:


> How many cable systems are using motorola for their switched services now? I cant think of any.


 Cox Orange County, CA is (probably one of the few).


----------



## cableguy763

Cool, I honestly didnt know which moto systems had even deployed sdv. Not much reason to really rush for them if only a couple of systems even need it.


----------



## ah30k

moyekj said:


> Cox Orange County, CA is (probably one of the few).


And I think that Cox, while a Mot-based system, is actually using the BigBand SDV controller rather than the Mot SDV controller. Even less motivation for Mot to get the TAs out.

Actually, to be fair to Mot, I believe the hold-up now is with the cable providers who need to test and deploy the TAs in their environments.


----------



## moyekj

ah30k said:


> And I think that Cox, while a Mot-based system, is actually using the BigBand SDV controller rather than the Mot SDV controller. Even less motivation for Mot to get the TAs out.
> 
> Actually, to be fair to Mot, I believe the hold-up now is with the cable providers who need to test and deploy the TAs in their environments.


 Yes that's correct. Cox OC is using BigBand which supposedly can work in either SA/Cisco or Motorola systems. There was a press announcement from BigBand at one point which I'll try and dig up. That's probably leading to some complications I would guess while testing the TA's with BigBand system.

Here's a press release:
http://www.cedmagazine.com/Cox-picks-BigBand-for-SDV.aspx


> BigBand's John Connelly, executive VP of marketing, points to Cox's plan of using SDV in both Motorola and Scientific Atlanta set-top boxes as proof that BigBand is committed to open systems.
> 
> "To the best of our knowledge, we're the first vendor that has announced being able to deploy in both of those environments," Connelly said. "From our perspective, this demonstrates our commitment to open systems. There's a lot of talk about open systems, but at the end of the day the proof is in the pudding. We're in the process of deploying in systems that support a wide range of set-top boxes and electronic program guides."


----------



## jacksonian

I have TWC in Greensboro, NC. Just got the TA installed on Thursday in my S3 with 2 S-cards. Everything works fine, but the TA is only paired to CC#1. That works fine most of the time unless I'm already recording/pausing an SDV channel with CC#1 and want to record/watch another SDV channel, then I'm out of luck. I'm also concerned that the TiVo might use CC#1 to record a non-SDV channel by chance and then I won't be able to tune/record an SDV channel.

So my questions are:
1) is that correct that a TA can only pair with one CC at a time?
2) if #1 is correct, then what are my options?

Do I need to sell the S3 and get a TiVoHD with an M-card? If the TA is paired with an M-card, can you then tune SDV channels on both streams?


----------



## SCSIRAID

jacksonian said:


> I have TWC in Greensboro, NC. Just got the TA installed on Thursday in my S3 with 2 S-cards. Everything works fine, but the TA is only paired to CC#1. That works fine most of the time unless I'm already recording/pausing an SDV channel with CC#1 and want to record/watch another SDV channel, then I'm out of luck. I'm also concerned that the TiVo might use CC#1 to record a non-SDV channel by chance and then I won't be able to tune/record an SDV channel.
> 
> So my questions are:
> 1) is that correct that a TA can only pair with one CC at a time?
> 2) if #1 is correct, then what are my options?
> 
> Do I need to sell the S3 and get a TiVoHD with an M-card? If the TA is paired with an M-card, can you then tune SDV channels on both streams?


From my reading of the spec, the TA isnt 'paired' with a cablecard at all. It simply provides a channel map and a frequency resolving service for an attached UDCP device. If you have a tuner/cablecard that isnt properly decoding SDV channels then you may have an 'entitlement' problem on that cablecard.


----------



## jacksonian

SCSIRAID said:


> From my reading of the spec, the TA isnt 'paired' with a cablecard at all. It simply provides a channel map and a frequency resolving service for an attached UDCP device. If you have a tuner/cablecard that isnt properly decoding SDV channels then you may have an 'entitlement' problem on that cablecard.


Hmm, I was just going by what the installation tech was telling me. Let me ask him about this. Are there any other people having this issue with the TA?


----------



## lrhorer

jacksonian said:


> Hmm, I was just going by what the installation tech was telling me. Let me ask him about this. Are there any other people having this issue with the TA?


I'm missing two channels: A&E HD and Palladia. Other TA users here in San Antonio are reporting the same thing. Everything else seems to be working fine.


----------



## lrhorer

SCSIRAID said:


> From my reading of the spec, the TA isnt 'paired' with a cablecard at all. It simply provides a channel map and a frequency resolving service for an attached UDCP device. If you have a tuner/cablecard that isnt properly decoding SDV channels then you may have an 'entitlement' problem on that cablecard.


That's right. I picked up 3 TAs today. None of them were paired with any particular CableCard(s).


----------



## SCSIRAID

lrhorer said:


> That's right. I picked up 3 TAs today. None of them were paired with any particular CableCard(s).


The next facet of the question would be whether the TA's have an affinity to any particular TiVo.... I.E are they simply 'authorized' to the account and will work with any TA aware device perhaps not even a TiVo (such as HT computer). The spec seemed to indicate that this was the case.


----------



## cableguy763

SCSIRAID said:


> The next facet of the question would be whether the TA's have an affinity to any particular TiVo.... I.E are they simply 'authorized' to the account and will work with any TA aware device perhaps not even a TiVo (such as HT computer). The spec seemed to indicate that this was the case.


Yes, they are simply authorized by the account. A htpc maker could make their product work with a ta, but tivo seems to be the only ones with the initiative to do so.


----------



## SCSIRAID

cableguy763 said:


> Yes, they are simply authorized by the account. A htpc maker could make their product work with a ta, but tivo seems to be the only ones with the initiative to do so.


Thanks! That is what I thought would be the case... Now if TWC Raleigh could just get me a couple TA's I would be in business  Hopefully this month.


----------



## lrhorer

I wouldn't be surprised if one or two CE manufacturers came out with TA capable models by year's end, now that deployment of the TA has commenced. I doubt consumer appetite will be very high, however.


----------



## SCSIRAID

cableguy763 said:


> Yes, they are simply authorized by the account. A htpc maker could make their product work with a ta, but tivo seems to be the only ones with the initiative to do so.


Here is another question.... Anybody see any issues with using a unique coax to the TA instead of using the pass thru capability of the TA. I have two cable feeds into my cabinet and would just as soon avoid the split inside the TA. I dont believe there is any kind of communications between the TA and TiVo on the coax (given that TiVo doesnt have an upstream xmitter) so it would seem to be just fine.


----------



## lrhorer

SCSIRAID said:


> Here is another question.... Anybody see any issues with using a unique coax to the TA instead of using the pass thru capability of the TA. I have two cable feeds into my cabinet and would just as soon avoid the split inside the TA. I dont believe there is any kind of communications between the TA and TiVo on the coax (given that TiVo doesnt have an upstream xmitter) so it would seem to be just fine.


It should work. It appears the TA has a little built-in amplifier (or at least it appears the Cisco TA does), so there shouldn't really be an issue with going through the TA, but if it floats your boat to do it the other way, it shouldn't hurt.


----------



## dswallow

SCSIRAID said:


> Here is another question.... Anybody see any issues with using a unique coax to the TA instead of using the pass thru capability of the TA. I have two cable feeds into my cabinet and would just as soon avoid the split inside the TA. I dont believe there is any kind of communications between the TA and TiVo on the coax (given that TiVo doesnt have an upstream xmitter) so it would seem to be just fine.


There should be no issue at all with that. Though I also would not expect a splitter to be involved anyway, so it probably would have no effect on signal levels for cable tuning on the TiVo. And of course even if there were a slightly lower signal level, it wouldn't likely matter unless there were analog signals you had to tune and they were weak to begin with.


----------



## cableguy763

SCSIRAID said:


> Here is another question.... Anybody see any issues with using a unique coax to the TA instead of using the pass thru capability of the TA. I have two cable feeds into my cabinet and would just as soon avoid the split inside the TA. I dont believe there is any kind of communications between the TA and TiVo on the coax (given that TiVo doesnt have an upstream xmitter) so it would seem to be just fine.


That works fine. The usb is obviously the important part. There is a +3dbmv gain from the output of the ta.


----------



## SCSIRAID

cableguy763 said:


> That works fine. The usb is obviously the important part. There is a +3dbmv gain from the output of the ta.


One thing I dont need any more of is signal level.... Im already at 0dbm in the 700Mhz area. I was also concerned about reverse channel filtering (or potential lack thereof). Didnt want any of the high transmit levels of the reverse channel applied to the tivo (as lrhorer said in some other thread... trying to have a conversation while standing next to the concert speakers.. a IM challenge for the tuner). Im pushing back thru an amp with an 8 way splitter so my return channel transmit levels are kinda high.


----------



## PumiceT

cwoody222 said:


> Do you have any info about TWC Buffalo?


I was on the phone with a Time Warner rep, regarding some issues with my CableCARDs, and got the following list of SDV channels for Time Warner WNY Suburban (not the city of Buffalo):

SDV Channels
123
127
158
168

190 ???
191
192
193
195
196
197 ???

300
510-519
531-544
715-716
719-721
723-724
728-739
741-745
747-751
753
757
760
769-770
773-774
789
793

Mind you, this list is a little odd, considering some channels don't exist for the numbers she gave me, but to her credit, I was trying to type numbers on a laptop without a number pad, so I wasn't as quick as I needed to be!

*I think the following list is pretty accurate:* (at the time of this post, anyway)
123 - FIT TV (Digital Cable)
127 - New York State Legislative Channel (Digital Cable)
158 - Boomerang (Digital Cable)
168 - Trinity Broadcasting Network (Digital Cable)
715 - HGTV HD (Free High Definition)
716 - Food Network HD (Free High Definition)
719 - Fox Business Network (Free High Definition)
720 - Fox News HD (Free High Definition)
721 - CNN HD (Free High Definition)
723 - TBS in HD (Free High Definition)
724 - TNT HD (Free High Definition)
728 - ESPN News HD (Free High Definition)
730 - MSG HD (Free High Definition)
731 - SportsNet NY HD (Free High Definition)
734 - National Geographic HD - Digital Variety
735 - Travel Channel HD (Free High Definition)
736 - TLC HD (Free High Definition)
737 - Science Channel HD (Free High Definition)
738 - Discovery Channel HD (Free High Definition)
739 - Animal Planet HD (Free High Definition)
741 - Planet Green HD (Free High Definition)
742 - A&E HD (Free High Definition)
743 - BIO HD (No Channel Group)
744 - History in HD (Free High Definition)
745 - Crime & Investigation HD (Free High Definition)
747 - Cartoon Network HD (Free High Definition)
748 - Toon Disney HD (Digital Variety)
749 - ABC Family HD (Free High Definition)
750 - Disney HD (Free High Definition)
751 - Lifetime Movie Network HD (Digital Variety)
753 - MGM HD (Digital HD Tier)
757 - FX HD (Free High Definition)
760 - Palladia (Free High Definition)
769 - SPEED HD (Digital Variety)
770 - YES HD (Free High Definition)
789 - Hallmark Movie Channel HD (Free High Definition)


----------



## lrhorer

Uh, guys, I'd take it as a personal favor if you would be a little more careful with your units. A gain or attenuation is measured in dB, not dBmV. One dBmV is a very specific unit of power; 16.79 nanowatts, to be exact. A gain or attenuation is said to change a level by a specific FACTOR, not by a specifc amount pf power. Thus, a 3 dB gain or attenuation doubles or halves the original amount of power, respectively. Zero dBmV is equal to a 1 millivolt signal across a 75 ohm impedance, or 13.33 nanowatts. Zero dBm is equal to one milliwatt, or 48.75 dBmV. I know this may seem like an incredibly picky nit, but it's rather a pet peeve of mine. Besides, sometimes units can be really important. After all, NASA lost a $125 million Martian Orbiter spacecraft because one set of engineers working on the Climate Orbiter used metric calculations and another engineering team used English units. 



SCSIRAID said:


> One thing I dont need any more of is signal level.... Im already at 0dbm in the 700Mhz area. I was also concerned about reverse channel filtering (or potential lack thereof). Didnt want any of the high transmit levels of the reverse channel applied to the tivo (as lrhorer said in some other thread... trying to have a conversation while standing next to the concert speakers.. a IM challenge for the tuner). Im pushing back thru an amp with an 8 way splitter so my return channel transmit levels are kinda high.


'Shouldn't be an issue. First of all, as long as all the ports on whatever splitters, combiners, and couplers are employed are properly terminated, the port to port isolation on any quality splitter / combiner is usually at least 20 or 30 dB. Secondly, although there can be some issues with a high level signal at TVIF (the region near 38.9 MHz), broadband superheterodyne receivers generally handle OOB signals below their active band pretty well (that's one reason why 38.9 MHz was chosen for TVIF, and also partially why TV channel 1 was eliminated from the television spectrum). Thus, even though the return signal is very high in signal level - possibly over 50 dBmV - It probably won't cause problems with your setup. If it does, you could replace that 8-way with a pair of 4-way splitters and a high quality 2-way splitter, with the Tivo and the TA on different 4-way splitters. That will increase your isolation by at least 14 dB.

Note since the TA has a built-in diplexer and an amplifier, it is highly unlikely it will pass any significant amount of signal below 50 MHz from its input to its output, so interference from a DOCSIS modem or a digital phone setup won't cause issues on that venue. If you have problems seemingly related to the return carrier or other OOB signals below 50 MHz, you could always pad down the output of the TA and move the TiVo back to the TA port to see if it alleviates the problem. I don't really expect that you will have problems, however. Do be absolutely certain all the ports on that 8-way are properly terminated, though. An improperly terminated port on a combiner can completely trash the return loss and port isolation, causing the very problem you fear. What's worse, it can be intermittent. A small change in temperature can radically change the port isolation and return loss if the combiner has unterminated ports. It also has been known to cause the most bizarre signal quality issues.


----------



## SCSIRAID

lrhorer said:


> Uh, guys, I'd take it as a personal favor if you would be a little more careful with your units. A gain or attenuation is measured in dB, not dBmV. One dBmV is a very specific unit of power; 16.79 nanowatts, to be exact. A gain or attenuation is said to change a level by a specific FACTOR, not by a specifc amount pf power. Thus, a 3 dB gain or attenuation doubles or halves the original amount of power, respectively. Zero dBmV is equal to a 1 millivolt signal across a 75 ohm impedance, or 13.33 nanowatts. Zero dBm is equal to one milliwatt, or 48.75 dBmV. I know this may seem like an incredibly picky nit, but it's rather a pet peeve of mine. Besides, sometimes units can be really important. After all, NASA lost a $125 million Martian Orbiter spacecraft because one set of engineers working on the Climate Orbiter used metric calculations and another engineering team used English units.
> 
> 'Shouldn't be an issue. First of all, as long as all the ports on whatever splitters, combiners, and couplers are employed are properly terminated, the port to port isolation on any quality splitter / combiner is usually at least 20 or 30 dB. Secondly, although there can be some issues with a high level signal at TVIF (the region near 38.9 MHz), broadband superheterodyne receivers generally handle OOB signals below their active band pretty well (that's one reason why 38.9 MHz was chosen for TVIF, and also partially why TV channel 1 was eliminated from the television spectrum). Thus, even though the return signal is very high in signal level - possibly over 50 dBmV - It probably won't cause problems with your setup. If it does, you could replace that 8-way with a pair of 4-way splitters and a high quality 2-way splitter, with the Tivo and the TA on different 4-way splitters. That will increase your isolation by at least 14 dB.
> 
> Note since the TA has a built-in diplexer and an amplifier, it is highly unlikely it will pass any significant amount of signal below 50 MHz from its input to its output, so interference from a DOCSIS modem or a digital phone setup won't cause issues on that venue. If you have problems seemingly related to the return carrier or other OOB signals below 50 MHz, you could always pad down the output of the TA and move the TiVo back to the TA port to see if it alleviates the problem. I don't really expect that you will have problems, however. Do be absolutely certain all the ports on that 8-way are properly terminated, though. An improperly terminated port on a combiner can completely trash the return loss and port isolation, causing the very problem you fear. What's worse, it can be intermittent. A small change in temperature can radically change the port isolation and return loss if the combiner has unterminated ports. It also has been known to cause the most bizarre signal quality issues.


The 8 way is actually integrated into the amp and you can be assured that the unused output IS terminated with a proper shorting plug.

I also have some return path filters which would also help with my 'fear' or the high return level... 

Thanks!!


----------



## lrhorer

SCSIRAID said:


> The 8 way is actually integrated into the amp and you can be assured that the unused output IS terminated with a proper shorting plug.


OK, good, but one must also be sure the drops attached to the 8-way are also properly terminated. If they are plugged in to active devices, then it should be OK (although occasionally I have come across an active device with a bad terminating resistor which raised all manner of havoc until the bad - but still functional - device was removed), but if the drops go to unused wall plates, they really should be terminated. Few people bother - including me, truth be told, but then a situation like you describe is just the sort of thing that can sometimes jump up and bite you if one or more legs is not properly terminated.

Note an 8-way with an integrated amp is only really "integrated" in that the component are all in the same case. Functionally, the setup is little different than an 8-way with an external amp. There may be one difference, however. It is possible the device in question utilizes multiple 2 and / or 4-way splitters rather than a single integrated 8-way array, in which case the port to port isolation may be much better than a monolithic 8-way. The down side (pretty much irrelevant in this case) is the flat loss may be a bit higher.



SCSIRAID said:


> I also have some return path filters which would also help with my 'fear' or the high return level...


'Sounds like you have it covered. I seriously doubt you'll have any issues.


----------



## SCSIRAID

lrhorer said:


> OK, good, but one must also be sure the drops attached to the 8-way are also properly terminated. If they are plugged in to active devices, then it should be OK (although occasionally I have come across an active device with a bad terminating resistor which raised all manner of havoc until the bad - but still functional - device was removed), but if the drops go to unused wall plates, they really should be terminated. Few people bother - including me, truth be told, but then a situation like you describe is just the sort of thing that can sometimes jump up and bite you if one or more legs is not properly terminated.
> 
> Note an 8-way with an integrated amp is only really "integrated" in that the component are all in the same case. Functionally, the setup is little different than an 8-way with an external amp. There may be one difference, however. It is possible the device in question utilizes multiple 2 and / or 4-way splitters rather than a single integrated 8-way array, in which case the port to port isolation may be much better than a monolithic 8-way. The down side (pretty much irrelevant in this case) is the flat loss may be a bit higher.
> 
> 'Sounds like you have it covered. I seriously doubt you'll have any issues.


Yup... Ive only have one unused wall plate and it is terminated.

The amp is a Viewsonics (Emerson) VSMA-608. Specs show 32db isolation 15-40Mhz and 25db from 5-15Mhz and 53-860Mhz... 22db above 860Mhz. Flatness is +/- .75db forward and +/- .5 db reverse. Ive also got an 8 output PCT amp in the box that I havent used.

Thanks


----------



## madoverlord

Has anyone in the Wilmington NC area gotten a tuning adapter yet. I filled out the preorder form months ago but haven't heard boo from TWC.


----------



## lrhorer

madoverlord said:


> Has anyone in the Wilmington NC area gotten a tuning adapter yet. I filled out the preorder form months ago but haven't heard boo from TWC.


Here in San Antonio, ronfl started a thread specifically dedicated to delivery of the TA in the San Antonio market. The thread helped keep us all abreast of developments on virtually an hourly basis, and when we pointed TWC personnel to the website, it was instrumental in helping to resolve a number of small issues. I would recommend someone in each area slated to receive a TA in the near future do the same.


----------



## tguerrette

I received a call from Time Warner Cable in Portland Maine telling me the SDV Tuning Adapter was available and they would be shipping me one via UPS with 3-5 day delivery. I signed up for this a while back on the general Time Warner Tuning Adapter notification page.

I'll post more info when I receive and install it.


----------



## ajergo

Please reply to this post if you are using Time Warner Cable in Rochester, NY and have successfully used a Tuning Adapter for SDV channels with a TiVo HD box. *Also let me know if you have had problems with this*. I am about to purchase a TiVo HD box and want to make sure that there are no problems with getting Time Warner (specifically in Rochester, NY) to come out and install the Cable Cards along with hooking up the Tuning Adapter.

I understand you have to order the Tuning Adapter by mail first before the TWC installer comes to install a 'M' cable card.

Thanks in advance for your help.

A.J.


----------



## berkshires

ajergo said:


> Please reply to this post if you are using Time Warner Cable in Rochester, NY and have successfully used a Tuning Adapter for SDV channels with a TiVo HD box. *Also let me know if you have had problems with this*. I am about to purchase a TiVo HD box and want to make sure that there are no problems with getting Time Warner (specifically in Rochester, NY) to come out and install the Cable Cards along with hooking up the Tuning Adapter.
> 
> I understand you have to order the Tuning Adapter by mail first before the TWC installer comes to install a 'M' cable card.
> 
> Thanks in advance for your help.
> 
> A.J.


This thread is TWC specific, and there are alot of Albany/upstate NY posters in there.

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=408060

Also this is a great thread about it from another place...

http://albanyhdtv.proboards18.com/in...ad=2876&page=4


----------



## mgerenser

I'm in Rochester, NY and I just got 2 TiVo HD units a couple weeks ago. I was sick and tired of the awful SA 8300 from Time Warner and finally decided to spend the money on the TiVos. Best investment I ever made, and I'm kicking myself that I didn't do it sooner! Of course, what finally pushed me over the edge was the availability of the Tuning Adapters in this market.

Here's my story:

I had the CableCards installed on Monday, January 26. Took the tech about 20-30 minutes per TiVo. Most of the time was actually spent with him waiting on hold for the office to pair CableCards. This tech wasn't 100% knowledgeable about CableCards, but he knew enough to get them working. One bit of advice: read the install instructions that comes with your TiVo before the tech arrives, and watch everything he does. As long as you're there to coach him, I don't see any issues.

My only issue was that Time Warner Rochester wouldn't send out the tuning adapters with the tech. They said they had to make sure the CableCards were installed properly first, and then asked me to call in and order the adapters separately. Whatever. I called in immediately after the tech left and they sent me my 2 tuning adapters via UPS. One arrived January 27, the other on January 29. Both installed in in a matter of minutes and both work perfectly with all the HD channels. In fact, Time Warner in Rochester just added a few new SDV HD channels to the 1070 tier, and they all showed up on my TiVo within 48 hours.

I should also note that I spoke to one of Time Warner's network admins who actually deploys the HD channels here in Rochester. He was very knowledgeable and helpful, and is genuinely interested in making sure everything works with the TiVos. My experience with level 1 CSRs at Time Warner has been pretty dismal in the past, but let it be known from experience that the smart guys higher up on the food chain are good at what they do and very willing to help.

Just a note on the Cisco Tuning Adapter: this thing is freakin' huge! I have mine hidden behind my TV stand because its so big and ugly. I imagine there's a lot of empty space inside this thing.

I've been using my 2 new TiVos a lot over the past week, and I am *very happy* with them. 10,000 times better than the junk HD box from Time Warner!

Anyone that's in the Rochester area that is thinking about getting a TiVo HD with Time Warner Cable is free to ask me any questions. I'll be happy to help.

Mike



> Please reply to this post if you are using Time Warner Cable in Rochester, NY and have successfully used a Tuning Adapter for SDV channels with a TiVo HD box. Also let me know if you have had problems with this. I am about to purchase a TiVo HD box and want to make sure that there are no problems with getting Time Warner (specifically in Rochester, NY) to come out and install the Cable Cards along with hooking up the Tuning Adapter.
> 
> I understand you have to order the Tuning Adapter by mail first before the TWC installer comes to install a 'M' cable card.
> 
> Thanks in advance for your help.
> 
> A.J.


----------



## SCSIRAID

mgerenser said:


> Just a note on the Cisco Tuning Adapter: this thing is freakin' huge! I have mine hidden behind my TV stand because its so big and ugly. I imagine there's a lot of empty space inside this thing.


Im not sure Id hide it behind the TV. Id like to be able to see the light on the front. If its flashing... then something is wrong and recordings may not be working.

One thing Im a bit concerned about is the TA's behavior when (if) it gets a firmware update. SA STB's always seem to turn off after a FW update. It will be ugly if the TA has to be manually turned on after a FW update.


----------



## ajergo

Mike - thanks so much for all the detailed info on installing a TiVo HD with TWC in Rochester. This helps a lot. I was told on the phone that they have the 'M' cards instead of two single cable cards per TiVo. Is that what you got? I am in the process of ordering a TiVo HD from Amazon, so I have not received it yet. BUT, on the TWC web site there was a link to request a free Tuning Adapter to be mailed to me and I submitted that request ... will see if they send it to me before even scheduling an appointment for the Tech to come and install the cable card(s).

I have a Series 2 TiVo *and *a SA 8300 now and could not agree more about what a piece of junk the SA 8300 is from TWC. TiVo has a way of spoiling you though. If a stop a playback of a recorded show in the middle on the SA 8300 and then continue watching it the next day, it can not even remember where I left off and I have to search for the position that I stopped at. And then of course there is the automatic slight rewind that TiVo does when you hit play after fast forwarding at triple speed; the SA 8300 (and probably most other DVR's) do not do that, which is a great TiVo feature.

BUT, the downsides of giving up my SA 8300 once I get the TiVo HD are:
- No more Caller ID on the TV for my Digital Phone calls.
- No more "Start Over" feature on some shows; although I can usually find another time to record the same show at a later time.
- No more free On Demand movies or channels.
Will have to keep a plain HD cable box for above features.

Mike - some more questions for you:
1) Do you know which channels are in SDV format. Is it only the ones in the 1070's? How can I find this out?
2) I have one annoying problem with my SA 8300 now that I am hoping is the SA 8300 and not the cable signal. The picture on HD channels sometimes pauses for about 2 or 3 seconds, but the sound continues; after 2 or 3 seconds the picture catches up. Have you ever had this problem and if yes, has it stopped with your new TiVo HD box?
3) Can you give me the approximate dimensions of the huge Cisco Tuning Adapter box?

Again for thanks so much for this detailed reply.
A.J. (in Webster)



mgerenser said:


> I'm in Rochester, NY and I just got 2 TiVo HD units a couple weeks ago. I was sick and tired of the awful SA 8300 from Time Warner and finally decided to spend the money on the TiVos. Best investment I ever made, and I'm kicking myself that I didn't do it sooner! Of course, what finally pushed me over the edge was the availability of the Tuning Adapters in this market.
> 
> Here's my story:
> 
> I had the CableCards installed on Monday, January 26. Took the tech about 20-30 minutes per TiVo. Most of the time was actually spent with him waiting on hold for the office to pair CableCards. This tech wasn't 100% knowledgeable about CableCards, but he knew enough to get them working. One bit of advice: read the install instructions that comes with your TiVo before the tech arrives, and watch everything he does. As long as you're there to coach him, I don't see any issues.
> 
> My only issue was that Time Warner Rochester wouldn't send out the tuning adapters with the tech. They said they had to make sure the CableCards were installed properly first, and then asked me to call in and order the adapters separately. Whatever. I called in immediately after the tech left and they sent me my 2 tuning adapters via UPS. One arrived January 27, the other on January 29. Both installed in in a matter of minutes and both work perfectly with all the HD channels. In fact, Time Warner in Rochester just added a few new SDV HD channels to the 1070 tier, and they all showed up on my TiVo within 48 hours.
> 
> I should also note that I spoke to one of Time Warner's network admins who actually deploys the HD channels here in Rochester. He was very knowledgeable and helpful, and is genuinely interested in making sure everything works with the TiVos. My experience with level 1 CSRs at Time Warner has been pretty dismal in the past, but let it be known from experience that the smart guys higher up on the food chain are good at what they do and very willing to help.
> 
> Just a note on the Cisco Tuning Adapter: this thing is freakin' huge! I have mine hidden behind my TV stand because its so big and ugly. I imagine there's a lot of empty space inside this thing.
> 
> I've been using my 2 new TiVos a lot over the past week, and I am *very happy* with them. 10,000 times better than the junk HD box from Time Warner!
> 
> Anyone that's in the Rochester area that is thinking about getting a TiVo HD with Time Warner Cable is free to ask me any questions. I'll be happy to help.
> 
> Mike


----------



## skaggs

ajergo said:


> Do you know which channels are in SDV format. Is it only the ones in the 1070's? How can I find this out?


Here are some instructions to tell what Time Warner Cable channels are using Switched Digital Video:

1. Get into the cable box's diagnostic menu by holding the "+" or "SELECT" button ON THE BOX in for a few seconds until the mail light begins flashing. (The "+" button in the center of the up, down, left, right arrow buttons.) Press the INFO button.

You can page through the informational screens by using the left & right arrow buttons. You can see the TV picture by pressing the "+" button...once will make the diagnostic info about 50% opaque and twice will make it about 20%. A third time will bring you back to 100%.

2. Go to the last page in the diagnostic menu (page 39)

3. Look at the SamSvcid/Type. It will show a number and "/Switched" if the channel you are tuned to is SDV (if it is not switched it will show "Broadcast")

4. The SDV Freq: will show a number depending on the SDV pool that gets assigned.

5. Change the channels and look to see what appears in the SamSvcid/Type location.


----------



## mgerenser

ajergo said:


> Mike - thanks so much for all the detailed info on installing a TiVo HD with TWC in Rochester. This helps a lot. I was told on the phone that they have the 'M' cards instead of two single cable cards per TiVo. Is that what you got?


Yes, they delivered m cards. In fact, the tech said he always brings along twice as many m cards, just in case one of them is not working. So he came armed with 4 of them, but the first 2 he installed worked just fine.



> I have a Series 2 TiVo *and *a SA 8300 now and could not agree more about what a piece of junk the SA 8300 is from TWC. TiVo has a way of spoiling you though. If a stop a playback of a recorded show in the middle on the SA 8300 and then continue watching it the next day, it can not even remember where I left off and I have to search for the position that I stopped at.


This was one of the most irritating things with the SA 8300. This would happen to my fiance and I several times a week. We'd start a show late at night and end up getting too sleepy to continue. Unfortunately, the dumb SA box wouldn't remember where we left off when morning came!



> BUT, the downsides of giving up my SA 8300 once I get the TiVo HD are:
> - No more Caller ID on the TV for my Digital Phone calls.
> - No more "Start Over" feature on some shows; although I can usually find another time to record the same show at a later time.
> - No more free On Demand movies or channels.
> Will have to keep a plain HD cable box for above features.


For me, these were non-issues because: I don't have a landline (cell phone only) and I never once used Time Warner's On Demand channels. I have Netflix, so between the discs in the mail and the instant streaming of Netflix videos on my TiVo, I'm all set with VOD. As for the start over feature, its nice, but I rarely used it. Besides, I updated one of my TiVos to a 1TB hard drive, so it is literally ALWAYS recording something. Everything I could ever want is being recorded, and I have no shortage of good content to watch. It lessens the need to "start over" if nearly everything I want to record is already being saved for me.



> 1) Do you know which channels are in SDV format. Is it only the ones in the 1070's? How can I find this out?


I'm at work right now so I can't confirm with 100% certainty which channels are SDV, but the vast majority of them are (including the Food Network). The Time Warner Rochester network admin I spoke to said going forward, ALL new HD channels they add will be SDV.



> 2) I have one annoying problem with my SA 8300 now that I am hoping is the SA 8300 and not the cable signal. The picture on HD channels sometimes pauses for about 2 or 3 seconds, but the sound continues; after 2 or 3 seconds the picture catches up. Have you ever had this problem and if yes, has it stopped with your new TiVo HD box?


I had this problem a couple times with my SA 8300, but it was random. I'm not a cable tech, so I'm just guessing here, but it could be a signal issue. Or it could be a glitch with the 8300. If it happens often, and on a certain channel, I'd report it to Time Warner. They'll send a tech out to your place for free to diagnose and (hopefully) fix it.



> 3) Can you give me the approximate dimensions of the huge Cisco Tuning Adapter box?


The Cisco TA is about 12 inches wide x 8 inches deep x 1.75 inches tall.

Hope some of this helps.

Mike


----------



## mgerenser

> on the TWC web site there was a link to request a free Tuning Adapter to be mailed to me and I submitted that request ... will see if they send it to me before even scheduling an appointment for the Tech to come and install the cable card(s).


It is my understanding that in our market, the Tuning Adapters are readily available. I'd ignore the web form and just call Time Warner Rochester directly once the CableCard is installed. They should be able to send you the Tuning Adapter immediately for delivery in 1-2 days. At least that was my experience.


----------



## lrhorer

mgerenser said:


> I'm in Rochester, NY and I just got 2 TiVo HD units a couple weeks ago. I was sick and tired of the awful SA 8300 from Time Warner and finally decided to spend the money on the TiVos. Best investment I ever made


I know! Can you believe that piece of turdware? Some spastic engineer must have been whacked out on quaaludes and cheap rum, and decided he would design the worst possible DVR, no doubt as a joke. Some moron of a marketing guy must have walked by, seen it, and thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread.



mgerenser said:


> and I'm kicking myself that I didn't do it sooner!


I suffered through 9 months with an 8300HD, until the S3 was released. I didn't care it cost $1000 with lifetime service. I whipped out my credit card just as fast as I could.



mgerenser said:


> I've been using my 2 new TiVos a lot over the past week, and I am *very happy* with them. 10,000 times better than the junk HD box from Time Warner!


You understate the case. I'd rather have a tooth drilled with a dull bit and no anesthesia than go back to the 8300HD.


----------



## lrhorer

mgerenser said:


> This was one of the most irritating things with the SA 8300.


Yeah, except for all the other intensely irritating things.



mgerenser said:


> This would happen to my fiance and I several times a week. We'd start a show late at night and end up getting too sleepy to continue. Unfortunately, the dumb SA box wouldn't remember where we left off when morning came!


Even worse than that (at least with the software version I had), if one started to watch a program before it had completely finished recording, when the live broadcast ended, the user would be unceremoniously and without warning dumped out of the recording, whereupon the POS would, as you say, not remember where one was before being booted. 'Aggravating as Hell.


----------



## lrhorer

ajergo said:


> BUT, the downsides of giving up my SA 8300 once I get the TiVo HD are:
> - No more Caller ID on the TV for my Digital Phone calls.


Actually, this is available if you hack the TiVo or have someone do it for you. Personally, I would pay to have this feature disabled if the TiVo came with it.



ajergo said:


> - No more "Start Over" feature on some shows; although I can usually find another time to record the same show at a later time.


I never watch live TV - ever - so for me this is a completely moot point.



ajergo said:


> - No more free On Demand movies or channels.


I never bothered with this when I had the feature. Truly, a TiVo makes these features moot for the most part.



ajergo said:


> Will have to keep a plain HD cable box for above features.


There's nothing wrong with that, if it's what you want to do. Personally, I could not get rid of that piece of offal fast enough. If it had been mine, rather than a rental, I would have taken a sledge hammer to it.



ajergo said:


> 2) I have one annoying problem with my SA 8300 now that I am hoping is the SA 8300 and not the cable signal. The picture on HD channels sometimes pauses for about 2 or 3 seconds, but the sound continues; after 2 or 3 seconds the picture catches up.


It's been a couple of years, and the 8300 had so many problems it's hard to remember specific ones, but I seem to recall something of the sort. My TiVos have never done this.



ajergo said:


> 3) Can you give me the approximate dimensions of the huge Cisco Tuning Adapter box?


I wouldn't call it huge. It's less than a standard 1RU 19" rackmount device. 'Much smaller than the TiVo. Mike already gave the dimensions.


----------



## bicker

lrhorer said:


> You understate the case. I'd rather have a tooth drilled with a dull bit and no anesthesia than go back to the 8300HD.


I think everyone who *****es about the Motorola DVRs should spend a few days with the SA 8300HD/HDC... that'll cure them of their hatred for Motorola.


----------



## mgerenser

bicker said:


> I think everyone who *****es about the Motorola DVRs should spend a few days with the SA 8300HD/HDC... that'll cure them of their hatred for Motorola.


Hahaha! So true. I went from a ReplayTV in the early part of the decade to the SA 8300HD. What a downgrade! The only reason I switched was to get HD programming. Its ironic that the ReplayTV interface, which was developed more than 10 years ago, is still more advanced than Time Warner's interface. It's like comparing Mac OS X to MS DOS! I'm so glad to join the TiVo family. There's almost no learning curve, and it just works the way I would expect.

By the way, you should have seen the look on the cable tech's face when he first arrived on the scene to install the CableCards. He couldn't understand why I was giving up the SA 8300. He asked whether I wanted to return it to TWC myself or have him take it when he left. I told him he better take that piece of junk with him, because otherwise I'd be too tempted to go all "Office Space" on that box. Good riddance.


----------



## mikeyts

I don't think that there's anything particularly wrong with the Cisco/SA boxes--it's some of the IPGs which suck. I'm a dyed-in-the-wool TiVo user who gave up his "Series1" box because I needed to timeshift HD and used an SA8000HD for two years, quite happily most of the time. It was running Passport Echo. I moved to from TWC territory into a Cox system and was tearing my hair out after using SARA on an SA8300HD for a few weeks.


----------



## lrhorer

bicker said:


> I think everyone who *****es about the Motorola DVRs should spend a few days with the SA 8300HD/HDC... that'll cure them of their hatred for Motorola.


For once we agree completely.


----------



## lrhorer

mikeyts said:


> I don't think that there's anything particularly wrong with the Cisco/SA boxes--it's some of the IPGs which suck. I'm a dyed-in-the-wool TiVo user who gave up his "Series1" box because I needed to timeshift HD and used an SA8000HD for two years, quite happily most of the time. It was running Passport Echo. I moved to from TWC territory into a Cox system and was tearing my hair out after using SARA on an SA8300HD for a few weeks.


True, the hardware is not horrendous. Actually, I wish the TiVo had a Firewire port, like the 8300 does. It's the SARA software that's worse than fingernails on a chalkboard. Since one does not have the option to select which software is loaded on the box, the point is rather moot, however.

I still find the hardware unacceptable, though. A DVR I cannot hack isn't worth my time, and the hard drive on the 8300HD is far, far too small. Of course, one can add an external drive to the 8300, but at the time I used one this feature was not available. The lack of networking capabilities is also a deal-breaker for me, although they may have incorporated networking capabilities into the product line since I used one over 2 years ago.

At the time, at least, there were also (unsurprisingly) no 3rd party applications available for the 8300. I doubt this has changed much.

When I got the 8300, I had intended it as an interim replacement for my S1, moving the S1 from the living room to the guest room, but after using it less than a week, I moved the S1 back into the living room and only used the 8300 when I had to for HD purposes. Even then, I still recorded the same programs on the S1, because there was a very good chance the 8300 would not record what it was told to record.


----------



## lrhorer

mgerenser said:


> Hahaha! So true. I went from a ReplayTV in the early part of the decade to the SA 8300HD. What a downgrade! The only reason I switched was to get HD programming. Its ironic that the ReplayTV interface, which was developed more than 10 years ago, is still more advanced than Time Warner's interface.


It's not only more advanced, it's just plain better. Faster, smoother, more accurate, and almost in every case easier to control. Even the most basic features just work better.



mgerenser said:


> It's like comparing Mac OS X to MS DOS! I'm so glad to join the TiVo family. There's almost no learning curve, and it just works the way I would expect.


'Welcome to our home. 



mgerenser said:


> By the way, you should have seen the look on the cable tech's face when he first arrived on the scene to install the CableCards. He couldn't understand why I was giving up the SA 8300.


Yeah, I've gotten that a few times over the years. I always make it a point to give them a friendly little demonstration. Often they bring up "neat" little features of the 8300 they think the TiVo does not offer. I just politely show them how the corresponding feature (or often multiple features) in the TiVo completely blow the doors off the 8300HD. They always walk away with wide eyes and slack jaws. About half way through my little demo, one of them started saying over and over again, "I gotta get me one of those!"



mgerenser said:


> He asked whether I wanted to return it to TWC myself or have him take it when he left. I told him he better take that piece of junk with him, because otherwise I'd be too tempted to go all "Office Space" on that box. Good riddance.


I was tempted, myself. I would never act on the impulse to damage something not belonging to me, however. That, plus the installer who took away the 8300 was an extremely pleasant young man, so I wasn't disposed to any ill behavior in his presence.


----------



## kerouac555

Ok, I just called to get a tech out (time warner in kansas city) to install a card in my new hd tivo. I asked about SDV and they said "yes, you need a tuning adapter."

no problem.

I tried to verify that they'd be bringing a multistream cablecard out. the response was "you don't need a multistream card with a tuning adapter."

is that a true statement or do I need to call back?

thanks!!


----------



## moyekj

kerouac555 said:


> Ok, I just called to get a tech out (time warner in kansas city) to install a card in my new hd tivo. I asked about SDV and they said "yes, you need a tuning adapter."
> 
> no problem.
> 
> I tried to verify that they'd be bringing a multistream cablecard out. the response was "you don't need a multistream card with a tuning adapter."
> 
> is that a true statement or do I need to call back?
> 
> thanks!!


 You need the Tuning Adapter to be able to tune SDV channels and you still need cable card to decrypt any encrypted digital channels (regardless if they are SDV or not).


----------



## kerouac555

moyekj said:


> You need the Tuning Adapter to be able to tune SDV channels and you still need cable card to decrypt any encrypted digital channels (regardless if they are SDV or not).


Exactly.. but i was being told (by the TW rep) that it doesn't have to be a multistream, which totally doesn't sound right to me.


----------



## ajwees41

kerouac555 said:


> Exactly.. but i was being told (by the TW rep) that it doesn't have to be a multistream, which totally doesn't sound right to me.


if it was not multisteam only one tuner would work.


----------



## MichaelK

I vote the rep read the script and your question as "you dont need an M-card for the tuning adapter to work"- it will work fine with a single s-card (and you will only get one tuner) or with 2 s-cards (and you will get both tuners)


----------



## kerouac555

MichaelK said:


> I vote the rep read the script and your question as "you dont need an M-card for the tuning adapter to work"- it will work fine with a single s-card (and you will only get one tuner) or with 2 s-cards (and you will get both tuners)


that's what i needed to know. 

thanks so much.


----------



## sesmith3

S3 User w s cards. Need to know when if ever the tuning boxes are going to arrive? Will m cards help me? I am confused and have a new tv I want to watch in HD...


----------



## classicsat

One M-card will not get you anything more than two S-cards do, except saving a few dollars on your cable bill. You likely should be able to get local HD channels in HD from cable, if not from an antenna.

It is up to the provider to have Tuning Adapters available. The TiVo is fully ready for using the Tuning adapter.


----------



## rumleyus

I just got off the phone with Time Warner (Cincinnati) and they tol me to go pick up my "free" tuning adapters for my TiVo HD cable cards. They said that the East Gate Mall and Dayton Mall locations were the only ones in the area that would be stocking the adapters. I could also chose to have the adapters mailed to me. I'm going to try to go get it today and see if it works.


----------



## dickweis

I just got a letter from Comcast San Francisco saying that I will need an SDV adapter by March or I will loose most digital channels. I picked up the recommended adapter at my local office and it has no USB port. When I protested I was told that my Series 3 does not need one and that my (two-year old twin single-stream) cable cards will do the job. This seems highly unlikely to me. The Tivo website (www.tivo.com/switched) states that USB is the only solution for the Series 3 since it lacks an IR blaster.

Can anyone suggest what I should do next?


----------



## SCSIRAID

dickweis said:


> I just got a letter from Comcast San Francisco saying that I will need an SDV adapter by March or I will loose most digital channels. I picked up the recommended adapter at my local office and it has no USB port. When I protested I was told that my Series 3 does not need one and that my (two-year old twin single-stream) cable cards will do the job. This seems highly unlikely to me. The Tivo website (www.tivo.com/switched) states that USB is the only solution for the Series 3 since it lacks an IR blaster.
> 
> Can anyone suggest what I should do next?


Id take whatever they gave you back and get a Tuning Adapter 

A Tuning Adapter connects to the TiVo via USB.... No ifs, ands, or buts.

The Cisco Tuning Adapter has a USB connector on it... In fact it has two... one on the front and one on the back. You only care about the one on the back though.

Does what they gave you have a Cisco Logo and a model number STA1520? or perhaps are you on a Motorola system...

Here is a pic of the back of the Moto adapter

http://www.engadgethd.com/photos/hands-on-with-the-motorola-tuning-adapter/812521/

Here is info on the Cisco adapter

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/video/ps9159/ps9195/ps9828/7013834.pdf


----------



## dickweis

> A Tuning Adapter connects to the TiVo via USB.... No ifs, ands, or buts.


Agreed! My problem is that my local Comcast office AND the online help support person both said this is the only one they have. It was very small and not branded so I don't know who made it.

If I could get a Comcast SDV box with USB (e.g., from NJ), do you think it would work with Comcast in SF?


----------



## SCSIRAID

dickweis said:


> Agreed! My problem is that my local Comcast office AND the online help support person both said this is the only one they have. It was very small and not branded so I don't know who made it.
> 
> If I could get a Comcast SDV box with USB (e.g., from NJ), do you think it would work with Comcast in SF?


It would have to be authorized in your local system... I would escalate locally as what they gave you isnt a tuning adapter... Their technical team should be able to get you what you need but you will have to get thru the CSR folks to get to the intelligent life.

What brand cablecards does your system use? Motorola? Cisco/Scientific Atlanta? NDS?

A Motorola sysem needs a motorola tuning adapter. A Cisco/Scientific Atlanta or NDS system uses a Cisco tuning adapter. I dont believe anybody other than Moto and SA/Cisco make tuning adapters.

What they may be giving you is a converter that is used when your system removes all the analog channels and goes all digital.


----------



## SCSIRAID

dickweis said:


> Agreed! My problem is that my local Comcast office AND the online help support person both said this is the only one they have. It was very small and not branded so I don't know who made it.
> 
> If I could get a Comcast SDV box with USB (e.g., from NJ), do you think it would work with Comcast in SF?


Check this thread....

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=417990

What they gave you is probably a DTA which handles the fact that your system has gone all digital....

http://images.google.com/imgres?img...t+DTA&um=1&hl=en&rls=com.microsoft:en-us&sa=N


----------



## dickweis

> What they may be giving you is a converter that is used when your system removes all the analog channels and goes all digital


I just got off the phone with tech support and apparently the letter I received had to do with replacing analog stations with digital, not the SDV transition. He said if that were occuring, he would have been trained on it and he has not been. He does not know when this will occur in the Bay Area.


----------



## muya

So here's a little update for those of us in San Diego, CA.

I twittered how much TWC is pissing me off about the whole SDV and Tivo thing. I get a DM from a TWC customer service rep. He said he's on it, he's forwarding my message to his "cr&#232;me de la crem of customer service reps". I think, yeah, whatever. Heard it all before. 15 minutes later I get a call from this rep in New York, explain the whole SDV and Tivo thing. He says he'll put a call into the San Diego office, and they'll be in touch. Again, I think to myself, yeah, whatever. To my surprise, I get a call an hour later from a TWC "Customer Retention Specialist" from the San Diego office. She tells me they have the adapter in the field and are testing it, to be patient, maybe 1 or 2 months.

This is farther than I have ever gotten with any customer service. All from twittering how unhappy I was about Time Warner Cable.


----------



## Dmon4u

Another one bites...

http://www.multichannel.com/article/179710-Buckeye_To_Boost_HD_With_Switched_Video.php

"Ohio's Buckeye CableSystem has selected the BigBand Networks switched digital video solution to expand high-definition services."


----------



## dhalesky

I've been though a complete nightmare with my experience in the Northern Virginia are with COX and my Tivo HD. I first picked up a Cisco STA1520 TA box from COX in early Dec 2008 and when connected it would immediately reboot itself about every 20 to 30 minutes, of course stopping anything your trying to record or watching which migth be switched video channels. I called COX and on one understood the technology at all, couldn't help me, finally a regional service manager emailed me to wait until Jan 09 for a Tivo software update. I did that, not using the TA adapter, and when no update happened from Tivo call Tivo customer support and they knew nothing about an update. 

This is a really long story but COX sent out a senior tech how know almost everything the did about the TA, Tivo and their cabling system. He almost rewired my complete location, all new filters and replace my single stream cablecards with a multistream card, and a new Cisco TA box. That seemed to stop the TA rebooting, but after he left it rebooted about every 3 to 4 hours. COX asked me to get Tivo to swap out my TIVO HD for a new unit. I spent a week asking Tivo to do that, got tired of them asking me to wait for level 2 TIVO support to contact me, they never did so last week I bought a new TIVO HD to make sure this isse was or was not TIVO. After many connections into TIVO to bring my unit up to software release 11 my TA box actually ran 7 hours without a reboot, then started acting up once again. COX sent out an engineer who swapped the multistream cablecard and that seemed to settle the box down again, but once again today the TA box (3rd box I've had) is rebooting every hour or so. 

I'm loosing any faith this technology between TIVO, CISCO and COX is anywhere near stability!!


----------



## SCSIRAID

dhalesky said:


> I've been though a complete nightmare with my experience in the Northern Virginia are with COX and my Tivo HD. I first picked up a Cisco STA1520 TA box from COX in early Dec 2008 and when connected it would immediately reboot itself about every 20 to 30 minutes, of course stopping anything your trying to record or watching which migth be switched video channels. I called COX and on one understood the technology at all, couldn't help me, finally a regional service manager emailed me to wait until Jan 09 for a Tivo software update. I did that, not using the TA adapter, and when no update happened from Tivo call Tivo customer support and they knew nothing about an update.
> 
> This is a really long story but COX sent out a senior tech how know almost everything the did about the TA, Tivo and their cabling system. He almost rewired my complete location, all new filters and replace my single stream cablecards with a multistream card, and a new Cisco TA box. That seemed to stop the TA rebooting, but after he left it rebooted about every 3 to 4 hours. COX asked me to get Tivo to swap out my TIVO HD for a new unit. I spent a week asking Tivo to do that, got tired of them asking me to wait for level 2 TIVO support to contact me, they never did so last week I bought a new TIVO HD to make sure this isse was or was not TIVO. After many connections into TIVO to bring my unit up to software release 11 my TA box actually ran 7 hours without a reboot, then started acting up once again. COX sent out an engineer who swapped the multistream cablecard and that seemed to settle the box down again, but once again today the TA box (3rd box I've had) is rebooting every hour or so.
> 
> I'm loosing any faith this technology between TIVO, CISCO and COX is anywhere near stability!!


There is a known rebooting issue with TA's. Cisco has reproduced and are working on it. Ive never seen it to the magnitude as you describe though. Mine reboot every 48 hours regular as clockwork.


----------



## lrhorer

Hmm. I have three, and none have ever rebooted. Everyone in San Antonio had a glitch a few weeks ago where we lost all our SDV channels and had to reboot the TiVos and the TAs, but it was only one incident, and it impacted everyone with a TA. Other than that, my TAs have all been rock solid since I picked them up on January 12th.


----------



## SCSIRAID

lrhorer said:


> Hmm. I have three, and none have ever rebooted. Everyone in San Antonio had a glitch a few weeks ago where we lost all our SDV channels and had to reboot the TiVos and the TAs, but it was only one incident, and it impacted everyone with a TA. Other than that, my TAs have all been rock solid since I picked them up on January 12th.


Hmmm... Perhaps is is code level specific. Other than the periodic reboot... mine are also solid and trouble free. The reboot hasnt been a big deal for me. Its happening around noon when nothing is recording. Ive only lost recordings once when it rebooted around 1am. For some reason it moved its schedule from 1am to noon... The time move happened right after I got the second TA so perhaps new provisioning from the billing system may be involved. Who knows... Im confident they will fix it. The TW guy is keeping me in the loop.


----------



## lateknight

Can anyone confirm or deny whether Comcast is utilizing SDV in the SF Bay Area...specifically in Oakland? I can't seem to get an answer from the online customer service rep. Also, will the Tuning Adapter allow watching of VOD through Comcast? I couldn't seem to find the answer after a quick search. Thanks!


----------



## bicker

If you don't get an answer here, you should ask here;

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=16024146


----------



## mikeyts

lateknight said:


> Also, will the Tuning Adapter allow watching of VOD through Comcast?


I don't know whether SDV is being used in your area, but I can tell you that the Tuning Adapter won't enable you to watch VOD channels.


----------



## andygriffith

Hi,

I am a Cox customer in the Phoenix metro area and got my adapter last night. It is up and functioning and I am dealing with the MRV impact.

My question is related to the firmware.

I know that the latest firmware for the Cisco adapter is 801 and I am on 701.

How do I get this upgraded? I searched this forum and if the answer is here, I couldn't find it. Does it happen automagically from my cable provider? How long does it usually take?

I called my cable provider and they "tried" to upgrade it, but I don't know if they really did anything.

I don't see anything on the Cisco website about these things either as I would be willing to try and update it myself.

Please advise and TIA!


----------



## SCSIRAID

andygriffith said:


> Hi,
> 
> I am a Cox customer in the Phoenix metro area and got my adapter last night. It is up and functioning and I am dealing with the MRV impact.
> 
> My question is related to the firmware.
> 
> I know that the latest firmware for the Cisco adapter is 801 and I am on 701.
> 
> How do I get this upgraded? I searched this forum and if the answer is here, I couldn't find it. Does it happen automagically from my cable provider? How long does it usually take?
> 
> I called my cable provider and they "tried" to upgrade it, but I don't know if they really did anything.
> 
> I don't see anything on the Cisco website about these things either as I would be willing to try and update it myself.
> 
> Please advise and TIA!


It will happen automagically when your cableco releases the new firmware.


----------



## mikeyts

Well, TWC finally rolled out Tuning Adapters in San Diego . There are multiple reports of happy people picking them up at the end of this thread.

I've been beta testing one since mid-January (it took them almost exactly two months since to get it to a state in which they're willing to deploy it). I may trade it in, since, if it's on a cable split with TiVo, internal or external to the TA, TiVo can't tune channels in the stream at 525 MHz (the HD channels of the Fox and PBS affiliates and a VOD preview loop). No one else seems to have this problem, so it's probably a fault in mine.


----------



## SCSIRAID

mikeyts said:


> Well, TWC finally rolled out Tuning Adapters in San Diego . There are multiple reports of happy people picking them up at the end of this thread.
> 
> I've been beta testing one since mid-January (it took them almost exactly two months since to get it to a state in which they're willing to deploy it). I may trade it in, since, if it's on a cable split with TiVo, internal or external to the TA, TiVo can't tune channels in the stream at 525 MHz (the HD channels of the Fox and PBS affiliates and a VOD preview loop). No one else seems to have this problem, so it's probably a fault in mine.


Interesting... there is a guy here in Raleigh that is having the same problem but it may be on a different frequency. He cannot tune anything that is on that one QAM. Everything else is OK.


----------



## mikeyts

SCSIRAID said:


> Interesting... there is a guy here in Raleigh that is having the same problem but it may be on a different frequency. He cannot tune anything that is on that one QAM. Everything else is OK.


You know, I do recall seeing that in another thread. So I'm not the only one, anywhere .


----------



## m_jonis

mikeyts said:


> You know, I do recall seeing that in another thread. So I'm not the only one, anywhere .


Mine works in "reverse" sometimes.

Twice so far, I've only been able to watch the SDV channels and nothing else. The TivoHD will claim no signal at all from any non-SDV channel.

If I unplug the USB cable to the Cisco TA, then the non-SDV channels come in (obviously the SDV channels go out).

Plug the USB cable back in and about a minute later, the TivoHD says no signal on the non-SDV channels. This includes my HD Local Broacast channels as well.

Or, if I unplug power to the TA, the same thing happens (non-SDV channels are watchable).

The only fix I've been able to come up with so far is to reboot the TivoHD. then, and only then, unplug the power to the TA. Wait a minute, plug it back in and then wait the 5-10 minutes for the TA to stop blinking and then things are fine.

But twice in the last month this has happened is ridiculous.

TW is clueless and has no idea (they didn't even know what a Tuning Adapter was when they came for the service call. I had to explain it was THEIR own equipment).


----------



## mikeyts

m_jonis said:


> Mine works in "reverse" sometimes.
> 
> Twice so far, I've only been able to watch the SDV channels and nothing else. The TivoHD will claim no signal at all from any non-SDV channel.
> 
> If I unplug the USB cable to the Cisco TA, then the non-SDV channels come in (obviously the SDV channels go out).
> 
> Plug the USB cable back in and about a minute later, the TivoHD says no signal on the non-SDV channels. This includes my HD Local Broacast channels as well.
> 
> Or, if I unplug power to the TA, the same thing happens (non-SDV channels are watchable).
> 
> The only fix I've been able to come up with so far is to reboot the TivoHD. then, and only then, unplug the power to the TA. Wait a minute, plug it back in and then wait the 5-10 minutes for the TA to stop blinking and then things are fine.
> 
> But twice in the last month this has happened is ridiculous.
> 
> TW is clueless and has no idea (they didn't even know what a Tuning Adapter was when they came for the service call. I had to explain it was THEIR own equipment).


Hmm. I had that problem when I first got mine in mid-January. It worked for about a day and a half, then went into that state and no amount of cold-booting my Series3 or TA would fix it. I used to surf the SDV channels and to watch _Battlestar Galactica_ live on Sci Fi HD, but in general I had to be careful to unplug it before primetime so that my Season Passes would record. (I couldn't even record the last 12 SDV channels added manually, because they weren't in TiVo's guide and there was a bug in the TiVo rev 11 firmware--fixed in 11b--which prevented manual recordings of channels with no guide data. It took me five calls to TiVo support over a 6 week period to get them to add all 12 channels; they'd add a few after every call ).

I never did find a fix for the "can only tune switched channels with TA attached" problem--when they updated the TA to new firmware in mid-February, it went away and I haven't seen it again. What version of the firmware do you have? (To find out, go to TiVo Central->Messages & Settings->Account & System Information->Tuning Adapter->Tuning Adapter Diagnostics->Versions and MACs; I'm interested in the value after FLASH. Mine reads "STA1.0.0_1520_LR_F.0801").


----------



## m_jonis

The firmware says:

1.0.0_1520_LR_F.0701


----------



## mercurial

Well, just ordered my 3 TA's. No idea when they'll arrive but at least they're self install unlike the cable cards...


----------



## mikeyts

m_jonis said:


> The firmware says:
> 
> 1.0.0_1520_LR_F.0701


Yeah. I never looked, but I assume that was the version I had before the upgrade to .0801. If so, sounds like it's working better for you than it did for me . You can take some solace in the fact that what you're seeing should be fixed in the next update your provider pushes.

There are a number of complaints about that version in the "Time Warner Cable Tuning Adapter (ALL LOCATIONS) / Bugs & Issues" thread.


----------



## joekun

I just picked up a Tivo HD yesterday but reading about SDV makes me think that we're likely to see a new Tivo that will support this technology internally and that it would be better for me to wait. Has there been any word about such a model in the works or a reason why there wouldn't be? I would rather not have an additional box to get service from a cable provider.


----------



## bicker

Nothing concrete, AFAIC.


----------



## classicsat

Right now, if there is anything, it is "in development". For the purposes of shopping for equipment today, I'd not consider that to wait for it, just get what is available today.


----------



## landrumdh

Just got my SDV adapter in NC today. I'm noticing occasional hiccups in the SDV programming with 80+ quality according to TiVo, the non-SDV channels aren't having the issue and look great at 40-50.

I was very surprised by the size of this thing!


----------



## mercurial

landrumdh said:


> Just got my SDV adapter in NC today. I'm noticing occasional hiccups in the SDV programming with 80+ quality according to TiVo, the non-SDV channels aren't having the issue and look great at 40-50.
> 
> I was very surprised by the size of this thing!


When'd you order yours? I put my order in earlier in the week.

On a side note, I wonder if there is an option with TWC to just get the basic cable, HD locals, and HD tier and skip the other digital tier?


----------



## mikeyts

mercurial said:


> On a side note, I wonder if there is an option with TWC to just get the basic cable, HD locals, and HD tier and skip the other digital tier?


In San Diego, you can order basic cable and it will get you the HD locals (FCC regs forbid them to encrypt them). For that, you don't even need CableCARDs, though you need them with TiVo to use the guide to tune the digital channels. To get any of the other HD channels, you have to additionally subscribe to expanded basic. I assume that they'll lease you CableCARDs so that you can decrypt the HD versions of expanded basic channels without requiring you to subscribe to any HD tiers.

If we subscribe to a tier containing the standard-def channel, we get access to the HD channel. We get the six local HD channels with basic and 28 other HD channels with expanded basic. The only HD channels for which we have to subscribe to a digital tier are:
Bio HD, NatGeo HD, Big 10 HD (Digital Choice Pack)
Science HD, Hallmark Movies HD, MLB HD (Digital Variety Pack)
HDNet, HDNet Movies, UHD and MGM HD (HD VIP Pack)
SPEED HD (Digital Sports Pack)
HBO HD, Cinemax HD, Starz HD, Showtime HD West and East, TMC HD East (various premium tiers)
So, the cheapest deal for getting a bunch of HD channels (6 locals, 25 others) is "Advantage Cable" (local+expanded basic) for $55.65/month + CableCARD lease fees ($1.75/month each).


----------



## GiveMeHDNow

I just got back from the Cox store here in Phoenix, AZ and I was given the Cisco STA1520. I don't have a Cable Card though. Is this needed in order to use the tuning adapter? I told the gut that I needed a cable card and tuning adapter. I thought it was all in the same box.


----------



## moyekj

GiveMeHDNow said:


> I just got back from the Cox store here in Phoenix, AZ and I was given the Cisco STA1520. I don't have a Cable Card though. Is this needed in order to use the tuning adapter? I told the gut that I needed a cable card and tuning adapter. I thought it was all in the same box.


 The TA will handle the channel mapping capabilities but you still need CableCard to decrypt encrypted digital channels (which generally are most of them except local broadcast channels).


----------



## ianfarrell

So what is it with TWC and their ***** fest at TiVo?

Here's my TA adapter story.
I get my Cisco device via UPS last week from the local Morrisville, NC office.
I wait until the wife goes to bed on Thursday so I don't interfere with her evening.
Plug the device in per instructions and things seem to be OK.
But, the next morning I'm finding TiVo complains about nearly all the SDV channels, Press SELECT, video appears for a few seconds then Press SELECT, etc.
Rebooted both devices, OK for a while then bam, same crap again.
Unplug, reboot, the usual song and dance routine as when the Cable Cards first came out.
So I call TWC and they had a Tech in the area and sent him over to investigate.
Two hours later he still hadn't figured it out and moaned I would have had less problems with one of their boxes. Funny thing is he tried his SA brand box and it froze up on a Software Update (LOL).
He said it must be the TA and that a "TiVo Expert" from the Cary location would call me later and set up to bring over a replacement after I heard the two of them *****ing about TiVo and how they wish they'd just go under (WTF?)
Ha! No call.
So last night I called up CS and reamed them a new one about how lousy their support was and that I just wanted it to work.
So they said I could have somebody here today.
Well they sent two guys, a Regional Supervisor and Senior Tech (now we're talking).
They had a brand new TA box that had come in from Cisco yesterday (I looked at the box and it had been sent overnight, Holy S%^t).
They powered up the box and it took twenty minutes to do what I can only guess was a bunch of updates (sorry I'll have to report back version numbers).
The Senior Tech said he cringes when he hears the name TiVo on a Service Call and said he knows he is going to be there for a long time in those cases.
I told him I couldn't be happier and had nothing but issues with their SA box.
He made the usual "never heard that before" excuse and left.
So now it's working but am not happy as several of the channel SciFi HD in particular is getting pretty bad Macroblocking and audio break up. It comes and goes, staying OK for a few minutes then breaking up again every few seconds.
I have read that others are also seeing the same problems with SDV channels.
Is this something we are going to have to live with or just still complain?


----------



## SCSIRAID

ianfarrell said:


> So what is it with TWC and their ***** fest at TiVo?
> 
> Here's my TA adapter story.
> I get my Cisco device via UPS last week from the local Morrisville, NC office.
> I wait until the wife goes to bed on Thursday so I don't interfere with her evening.
> Plug the device in per instructions and things seem to be OK.
> But, the next morning I'm finding TiVo complains about nearly all the SDV channels, Press SELECT, video appears for a few seconds then Press SELECT, etc.
> Rebooted both devices, OK for a while then bam, same crap again.
> Unplug, reboot, the usual song and dance routine as when the Cable Cards first came out.
> So I call TWC and they had a Tech in the area and sent him over to investigate.
> Two hours later he still hadn't figured it out and moaned I would have had less problems with one of their boxes. Funny thing is he tried his SA brand box and it froze up on a Software Update (LOL).
> He said it must be the TA and that a "TiVo Expert" from the Cary location would call me later and set up to bring over a replacement after I heard the two of them *****ing about TiVo and how they wish they'd just go under (WTF?)
> Ha! No call.
> So last night I called up CS and reamed them a new one about how lousy their support was and that I just wanted it to work.
> So they said I could have somebody here today.
> Well they sent two guys, a Regional Supervisor and Senior Tech (now we're talking).
> They had a brand new TA box that had come in from Cisco yesterday (I looked at the box and it had been sent overnight, Holy S%^t).
> They powered up the box and it took twenty minutes to do what I can only guess was a bunch of updates (sorry I'll have to report back version numbers).
> The Senior Tech said he cringes when he hears the name TiVo on a Service Call and said he knows he is going to be there for a long time in those cases.
> I told him I couldn't be happier and had nothing but issues with their SA box.
> He made the usual "never heard that before" excuse and left.
> So now it's working but am not happy as several of the channel SciFi HD in particular is getting pretty bad Macroblocking and audio break up. It comes and goes, staying OK for a few minutes then breaking up again every few seconds.
> I have read that others are also seeing the same problems with SDV channels.
> Is this something we are going to have to live with or just still complain?


Macroblocking and breakup have nothing to do with TA. All the tuning and decryption are done in the TiVo. The RF cable between TA and TiVo could be suspect. What does DVR Diags say relative to signal strength, SNR and RS Corrected and Uncorrected on the channel with issues.


----------



## ianfarrell

SCSIRAID said:


> Macroblocking and breakup have nothing to do with TA. All the tuning and decryption are done in the TiVo. The RF cable between TA and TiVo could be suspect. What does DVR Diags say relative to signal strength, SNR and RS Corrected and Uncorrected on the channel with issues.


On the road at the mo but will check when I get home.
I only asked the question as I read others here were in the same situation with SDV.


----------



## ianfarrell

SCSIRAID said:


> Macroblocking and breakup have nothing to do with TA. All the tuning and decryption are done in the TiVo. The RF cable between TA and TiVo could be suspect. What does DVR Diags say relative to signal strength, SNR and RS Corrected and Uncorrected on the channel with issues.


So I got home and thanks to the info you had me look at and think I have a "Hot" Signal.
Here's how things stood when I first looked.
Bear in mind the first two channels have been on at least since 6am this morning.
Order of numbers are Signal Strength, SNR, RS Corrected, RS Uncorrected.

Ch67 (TCM) = 95, 35, 497, 358
Ch255 (WRALHD) = 95, 35, 0, 0

I changed to the SDV channels and waited 15 minutes.

Ch267 (SciFiHD) = 100, 36, 0, 0
Ch245 (FxHD) = 100, 36, 0, 0

Then put in a Splitter (haven't got an attenuator just yet) between the TA and TiVo on the -8dB output and waited 20 minutes.

Ch258 (USAHD) = 100 (flickers to 95 every 10-15 secs), 36, 0, 0
Ch267 (SciFiHD) = 100 (flickers to 95 every 10-15 secs), 36, 0, 0

I have left it on the above channels and will check again in a few hours but it looks like an attenuator is needed.
However, lower channels have a SS of 90. How low can you go before problems?
I would think it'd be nice to get the channels stuck almost always at 100 into the 90's. At least I would know the TiVo isn't being signal swamped.

[EDIT] I still notice the break up on at least 258 (USAHD) and 267 (SciFiHD) and the RS Corrected on both channels has not incremented. I'm at a loss.
Do I need to reduce the signal further?
Do I have a Hard Drive failing? Doubt it as it doesn't happen on non SDV channels.
I noticed the break up happen at the same time on both SDV channels.
If I switched one cable card to a non SDV Channel the break up doesn't happen on that channel while continuing to intermittently break up on the SDV Channel.
I'm wondering if it's happening at the source but haven't read of SciFiHD break up reports on this Forum?


----------



## lrhorer

ianfarrell said:


> So I got home and thanks to the info you had me look at and think I have a "Hot" Signal.


Yeah, it looks that way. Any time the signal level reported by the TiVo hits 100, it means you are at the end of the AGC range. Slightly above this point, you will start to see significant numbers of errors. The system will of course correct them if it can. Note levels higher than design parameters can also cause errors in the CATV plant, not just the TiVo itself.



ianfarrell said:


> Then put in a Splitter (haven't got an attenuator just yet) between the TA and TiVo on the -8dB output and waited 20 minutes.


 Be sure to terminate any unused ports with a proper 75 ohm terminator.



ianfarrell said:


> Ch258 (USAHD) = 100 (flickers to 95 every 10-15 secs), 36, 0, 0
> Ch267 (SciFiHD) = 100 (flickers to 95 every 10-15 secs), 36, 0, 0


'Looks like you are still at the end of the range. As long as all the channels report signal strengths above 40, I would consider padding a bit more. BE sure to check a large sample of channels. Remember that up to 11 SD channels may be on a single QAM, so if all 11 channels you check are on the same QAM, then you've really only checked one channel.



ianfarrell said:


> I have left it on the above channels and will check again in a few hours but it looks like an attenuator is needed.
> However, lower channels have a SS of 90. How low can you go before problems?


A lot lower. Probably at least 15 dB, depending on how low the lowest channel is compared to the highest.



ianfarrell said:


> I would think it'd be nice to get the channels stuck almost always at 100 into the 90's. At least I would know the TiVo isn't being signal swamped.


Well, this is only possible if all the channels are at about the same level on your incoming feed. This is not typically the case. More often than not, there will be a "tilt" on the system, meaning the signal level generally increases or decreases with increasing frequency. As long as the tilt is not too large, this is normal, and requires no remedy. It will, however, cause the reported signal strength to be lower or higher as the case may be. If the tilt is too great or there is a large "peak" or "valley" in the spectrum, then corrective action may be necessary. Note however that should this be the case, then unless you have an unusual situation in your house (an unusually long distance from the tap with long wall drops or an unusually short distance from the tap with very short wall drops), then it is the CATV company's responsibility to address the issue.



ianfarrell said:


> [EDIT] I still notice the break up on at least 258 (USAHD) and 267 (SciFiHD) and the RS Corrected on both channels has not incremented. I'm at a loss.


What about uncorrected errors? That's what can cause problems. If not, then your provider may be having some sort of problems with their receivers.


----------



## cavalier

Just want to note that Bright House - Central Florida (probably Tampa too?) have quietly re-enabled SDV. You'll find you are missing channels 275-300 (Encore/Starz/IFC/Flix). You have to be subscribed to the a la carte Encore Package ($4.99) to see these channels anyhoo, I guess this is there idea of a soft rollout. 

Dispatch, customer service, and first level techs don't know anything about it. Had a service call because I suspected some authorization issue at head end with cablecard, guy came out, no idea, called higher level guy out, he took one look and said SDV.

Tuning Adapters are Cisco STA1520's. These need to be activated ("hit") or registered with bright house to function. In Central FL Bright House will charge you $3.80 a month per adapter, on top of $2.95 for cable card.

Works good so far.


----------



## mikeyts

cavalier said:


> Tuning Adapters are Cisco STA1520's. These need to be activated ("hit") or registered with bright house to function. In Central FL Bright House will charge you $3.80 a month per adapter, on top of $2.95 for cable card.


Wow--that's the first report of a provider charging for a Tuning Adapter that I've seen (pretty high CableCARD lease charge too).


----------



## ianfarrell

lrhorer said:


> What about uncorrected errors? That's what can cause problems. If not, then your provider may be having some sort of problems with their receivers.


No uncorrected errors at that time.
I did however see a few hundred Corrected and UnCorrected this morning on Ch258 but not on 267.
This is probably because of the still high signal.
I'm going to order some attenuators as I can't source 75ohm terminators locally and the splitters look a bit messy but it was only to try and see how much reduction was needed.
It looks like the tilt is biased towards the high frequencies but I'm only seeing about a level difference on the TiVo of 10 on the extremities.


----------



## lrhorer

ianfarrell said:


> No uncorrected errors at that time.
> I did however see a few hundred Corrected and UnCorrected this morning on Ch258 but not on 267.
> This is probably because of the still high signal.
> I'm going to order some attenuators as I can't source 75ohm terminators locally and the splitters look a bit messy but it was only to try and see how much reduction was needed.
> It looks like the tilt is biased towards the high frequencies but I'm only seeing about a level difference on the TiVo of 10 on the extremities.


'Without being on the scene myself, it sounds pretty good to me. Installing a 10dB attenuator almost surely won't hurt. Note as the year turns to summer and the temps outside rise, the attenuation in the CATV plant is going to increase, especially at the higher frequencies, tending to lower the signals. This will be less noticeable if the CATV plant is underground. The amplifiers in the CATV plant have thermal compensation built-in, but unless your house is very close to one of the amps, then invariably the signal will tend to drop, perhaps as much as 3 or 4 dB, as the summer progresses. Again, without being on the scene myself, it sounds as if your levels are plenty high to allow for the variance, and flat enough so there won't be an issue with the low end being too low in summer and the high end being too high in winter.


----------



## lrhorer

mikeyts said:


> Wow--that's the first report of a provider charging for a Tuning Adapter that I've seen (pretty high CableCARD lease charge too).


I agree entirely. I pay $2.95 per CableCard, but the TA is free. I would complain to the franchise authority, if I were he. The CATV companies need to be able to deploy SDV, so I heartily opposed the attempt by many members of this forum to derail that effort, but I'm on quite the opposite side of the fence on this aspect of the issue. The CATV companies want to implement SDV in order to increase their profit margin and compete with satellite services. That's all well and good. It's not fair to load the non-TiVo owners with the cost of the TA, since they derive no benefits from it, however, so IMO a different solution is in order. I believe that for both CableCards and TAs, the CATV company should be allowed to load the bill of the customer for a limited time, until some of the costs of delivering the units is deferred, after which time the CATV company should be required to drop the fee for the units. I think $5 a month for a CableCard / TA pair limited to 24 months would be fair.


----------



## FrancesTheMute

i got my TA a couple weeks ago. Seemed to work fine at first, but I noticed the LED on the front was blinking. Then a few days later, the LED stopped blinking and was just on, and the TA isn't working correctly, most SDV channels won't come in, all non-SDV channels work fine. I just disconnected it this weekend, was tired of dealing with it. I have my TWC HD-DVR hooked up to the same TV, I just use that for viewing/recording SDV channels.


----------



## ajwees41

FrancesTheMute said:


> i got my TA a couple weeks ago. Seemed to work fine at first, but I noticed the LED on the front was blinking. Then a few days later, the LED stopped blinking and was just on, and the TA isn't working correctly, most SDV channels won't come in, all non-SDV channels work fine. I just disconnected it this weekend, was tired of dealing with it. I have my TWC HD-DVR hooked up to the same TV, I just use that for viewing/recording SDV channels.


The tuning adapter is for tivo not tvs.

Why do you need to worry about sdv since you already have the STB?


----------



## jsshattuck

SCSIRAID said:


> Here is another question.... Anybody see any issues with using a unique coax to the TA instead of using the pass thru capability of the TA. I have two cable feeds into my cabinet and would just as soon avoid the split inside the TA. I dont believe there is any kind of communications between the TA and TiVo on the coax (given that TiVo doesnt have an upstream xmitter) so it would seem to be just fine.


Not a problem. I have a "clean" coax feed for my Series 3 TiVo, and drive the TA with the line to my Series 2 TiVo. Works very well except that the COAX IN connector has a short on my TA, and the cable that came with the TA has a bad connector. Can you say CHEAP? Otherwise, the TA's operation is flawless and the only connection to the Series 3 is the USB cable.


----------



## lrhorer

FrancesTheMute said:


> i got my TA a couple weeks ago. Seemed to work fine at first, but I noticed the LED on the front was blinking. Then a few days later, the LED stopped blinking and was just on, and the TA isn't working correctly, most SDV channels won't come in, all non-SDV channels work fine.


This can usually be fixed by simply un-plugging the USB cable from the TiVo and plugging it back in. It's possible the TA may need to be power cycled.


----------



## timstack8969

Hello, I have Comcast of Garden State and live in Mt Laurel, NJ. Thinking about buying a Series 3 TIVO. Is Comcast using "Switched Digital Video" here in Mt. Laurel? Does anyone know?


----------



## MichaelK

i believe the cherry hill area is using SDV and has already handed out the adapters- search around some more.


----------



## mikeyts

timstack8969 said:


> Hello, I have Comcast of Garden State and live in Mt Laurel, NJ. Thinking about buying a Series 3 TIVO. Is Comcast using "Switched Digital Video" here in Mt. Laurel? Does anyone know?


I did a search and found a thread in this forum on that topic: "SDV no more? - Comcast (Garden State)". I scanned it briefly and saw at least one response from someone in Mt. Laurel, here. The guy indicates that he picked up a couple of Tuning Adapters for his TiVos, though it wasn't clear whether they were needed on that system anymore.


----------



## gsquared00

Edit** nevermind I RTFM.. thanks


----------



## ianfarrell

gsquared00 said:


> Hi all....long time lurker...I have a tivo HD with 2 cards and 2 coax cables.
> can anyone tell me if I need 1 or 2 TA for my HD.
> I'd like the ability to record one show and watch another.


You only need 1 TA.


----------



## ajwees41

gsquared00 said:


> Hi all....long time lurker...I have a tivo HD with 2 cards and 2 coax cables.
> can anyone tell me if I need 1 or 2 TA for my HD.
> I'd like the ability to record one show and watch another.


well the tivoHD is a dual tuner so you only need one cable and one tuning adapter to watch one show and record another.


----------



## dlfl

An earlier post said there should be a TWC web page telling what channels are SDV. I have TWC Southwest Ohio, specifically Dayton North. After the difficulty I've had just trying to find out what channels are provided with their "Digital Service", I am skeptical that a listing of SDV channels exists. Their channel lineup web page is very confusing, involving about 20 color coded packages with colors that are not unique. After three tries via email, I finally got someone to tell me which "packages" are included in "Digital Service", not that I have total confidence in this information.

If a web page listing SDV channels for my service area exists, could someone please post a link? (Or tell me how to get this info from their channel lineup page.)

I'm about to get digital service, cable card(s) and tuning adapter, and I would like to know what channels I should get, so I can tell whether all this stuff is installed correctly.


----------



## lrhorer

With the TA, you'll get the entire digital tier, including all regular HD channels. The only things you won't be able to get are VOD and IPPV. It's possible you might even be able to order an IPPV event by calling in, however.


----------



## Spoonerr

Hi everyone, I was wondering if anybody are in the orange county Cox area have any information on the tuning adapters, I tried to callling orange county cox to speak to everyone and they have no idea what I'am talking about. Does anyone know if they would come out one soon? or are they not even thinking making it available. Thanks


----------



## SCSIRAID

Spoonerr said:


> Hi everyone, I was wondering if anybody are in the orange county Cox area have any information on the tuning adapters, I tried to callling orange county cox to speak to everyone and they have no idea what I'am talking about. Does anyone know if they would come out one soon? or are they not even thinking making it available. Thanks


Orange county Florida? California? Indiana? New York? North Carolina? Texas? Vermont? Virginia?


----------



## Spoonerr

opps sorry. Orange county, CA


----------



## deuelpm

Finally!! CableVision (a.k.a. Io) in Northern NJ finally delivered my Terminal Adapter for SDV.


----------



## bcronin

deuelpm said:


> Finally!! CableVision (a.k.a. Io) in Northern NJ finally delivered my Terminal Adapter for SDV.


Ditto here in Dutchess County NY. And by and large the install went OK. I have 2 TiVo HD's so got 2 TA's. One of them installed fine. The other had a non-functional coax cable which I had to replace and then all went well.

EXCEPT ... can anyone suggest reasons why some of the SDV channels (specifically those inthe 8xx range on the CableVision system) do not show up in the program guide? Its driving me crazy.
--
bc


----------



## mikeyts

bcronin said:


> EXCEPT ... can anyone suggest reasons why some of the SDV channels (specifically those inthe 8xx range on the CableVision system) do not show up in the program guide? Its driving me crazy.


I went through something similar here. TWC San Diego added a bunch of new channels around Christmas, all of them SDV, none of which immediately appeared in TiVo's guide. (You can see the list in this post at AVS Forum. At that time, the TA hadn't rolled out here, but I was beta-testing it for TWC).

It took several calls to TiVo support, spread over a period of months to get all of those channels into the guide, 2 or 3 at a time  (they ask that you give them 5 business days to hopefully make the change and if you call back before that they'll ignore you).

I feel your pain--hopefully you'll get results faster and with less effort. Good luck!


----------



## bradenmcg

I'm about ready to take my Tuning Adapter and throw it against a brick wall. Every few weeks it will decide that it doesn't want to tune. Power cycling it alone does not resolve the problem, and rebooting the TiVoHD doesn't help either. Add to this that SDV stations have frequent blocking/breakup, both on picture and the digital sound dropping out.

:down:

I'm in North-East Ohio, Cuyahoga County. I do give props to TWC for handling the TA situation cleanly and easily - I got my adapters quickly and instructions to hook them up were clear. Unfortunately, no communication was given after I got the adapters, so I had no idea when I should actually start expecting new channels, etc. TWC NEOH scores an epic fail on communication.


----------



## mikeyts

bradenmcg said:


> I had no idea when I should actually start expecting new channels, etc. TWC NEOH scores an epic fail on communication.


Cable providers are required by FCC regulation to publicly post a "legal notice" of intent to make changes in services delivered, no less than 30 days before those changes happen, to give their subscribers time to decide whether or not to drop their subscriptions to one or more tiers, should they not approve of the changes. Case in point: they recently dropped HDNet and HDNet Movies everywhere from their extra-cost package of four HD channels (called the "HD VIP Pack" here) and replaced them with Smithsonian HD and something called Mav HD. Many subscribers might want to drop that extra-cost package because they were subscribing to it mostly to get the HDNet channels; if they see the legal notice, they can do it before they're billed again.

They sometimes print the legal notice on their bills and in some community newspaper (probably not a major one). They also generally post it on their websites, which can be difficult to find. For NE Ohio, the notice of planned and possible changes to programming is here. Enjoy.


----------



## bicker

There is no such FCC regulation. Many states do have such a regulation though, but it is not a federal law.


----------



## jacksonian

bradenmcg said:


> I'm about ready to take my Tuning Adapter and throw it against a brick wall. Every few weeks it will decide that it doesn't want to tune. Power cycling it alone does not resolve the problem, and rebooting the TiVoHD doesn't help either. Add to this that SDV stations have frequent blocking/breakup, both on picture and the digital sound dropping out.
> 
> :down:


Yeah, I have the exact same issue with TWC Greensboro, NC. I have them coming out today because both S3's have lost all the SDV channels after an electrical storm.

It actually seemed like things were working pretty good after initial install and have gotten progressively worse. Don't know if they've been making changes or what.


----------



## mikeyts

bicker said:


> There is no such FCC regulation. Many states do have such a regulation though, but it is not a federal law.


Huh. So...what's this, then ? Code of Federal Regulations, Title 47 §76.1603:


> (b) Customers will be notified of any changes in rates, programming services or channel positions as soon as possible in writing. Notice must be given to subscribers a minimum of thirty (30) days in advance of such changes if the change is within the control of the cable operator. In addition, the cable operator shall notify subscribers 30 days in advance of any significant changes in the other information required by §76.1602.
> 
> (c) In addition to the requirement of paragraph (b) of this section regarding advance notification to customers of any changes in rates, programming services or channel positions, cable systems shall give 30 days written notice to both subscribers and local franchising authorities before implementing any rate or service change. Such notice shall state the precise amount of any rate change and briefly explain in readily understandable fashion the cause of the rate change (e.g., inflation, change in external costs or the addition/deletion of channels). When the change involves the addition or deletion of channels, each channel added or deleted must be separately identified. For purposes of the carriage of digital broadcast signals, the operator need only identify for subscribers, the television signal added and not whether that signal may be multiplexed during certain dayparts.
> 
> (d) A cable operator shall provide written notice to a subscriber of any increase in the price to be charged for the basic service tier or associated equipment at least 30 days before any proposed increase is effective. The notice should include the name and address of the local franchising authority.
> 
> (e) To the extent the operator is required to provide notice of service and rate changes to subscribers, the operator may provide such notice using any reasonable written means at its sole discretion.


The unquoted paragraph (a) implies that it might be within the discretion of local franchising authorities to decide whether or not to enforce this, but you can see an FCC ruling imposing fines for violation of it here. Perhaps it's that franchising authorities are allowed to enforce it themselves, though the FCC will enforce it if they receive a complaint of violation.

I thought that it was one of the things that the FCC slammed TWC Oceanic for (or Cox NoVA): the use of SDV constituted a change in available services to CableCARD users without the required 30 days notice (or any notice, for that matter).


----------



## bicker

Hmph! I did not know that. It surely seems inconsistently applied!

Thanks for the citation.


----------



## mikeyts

bicker said:


> Hmph! I did not know that. It surely seems inconsistently applied!
> 
> Thanks for the citation.


Unfortunately, the FCC doesn't go looking for violations (of most of their regs, at least)--someone's got to complain. Usually, that requires someone to get pissed off enough to find out that what's ticked them off is also a violation of FCC rules.

Around here, they've gotten very careful about giving 30 days or more notice about things like moving channels from one tier to another or changing them to switched video. Finding that notice can be tricky, since, other than they're hard-to-find pages online, it might be buried in the back of some free weekly entertainment rag or community newspaper all of which qualify as "reasonable written means".


----------



## bicker

> The Federal Communications Commission on Friday reversed orders by the agency's Enforcement Bureau that fined Time Warner Cable and Cox Communications for deploying switched digital video.
> 
> ...
> 
> FCC commissioner Robert McDowell, in a statement, concurred that the migration of programming to a switched digital video platform does not violate FCC rules.
> 
> "Deployment of SDV technology to deliver video programming is consistent with the plain language of the regulations," McDowell said. "It also can serve the public interest by allowing cable operators to comply with the Commission's 'viewability' rules and deliver more programming options, including HD channels and niche programming, without displacing significant numbers of existing channels."


http://www.multichannel.com/article/306974-FCC_Vacates_SDV_Rulings_Against_Time_Warner_Cable_Cox.php


----------



## lew

bicker said:


> http://www.multichannel.com/article/306974-FCC_Vacates_SDV_Rulings_Against_Time_Warner_Cable_Cox.php


This ruling leaves (the few) viewers using cable cards with cable card compatable TV sets out of luck. Unfortunate for those folks who paid a premium price in order to purchase a TV set with cable card capability.


----------



## bicker

Yes, it sucks for those people.


----------



## lrhorer

It's not a perfect world. Those people either have to fork out for a leased STB / DVR, get an S3 class TiVo, get a Moxi, or do without. Some sweet talking might get them a discount on a leased unit. That, or what the heck, the wife unit might accept it as an excuse to buy a new OCAP TV.


----------



## ianfarrell

bradenmcg said:


> I'm about ready to take my Tuning Adapter and throw it against a brick wall. Every few weeks it will decide that it doesn't want to tune. Power cycling it alone does not resolve the problem, and rebooting the TiVoHD doesn't help either. Add to this that SDV stations have frequent blocking/breakup, both on picture and the digital sound dropping out.
> 
> :down:
> 
> I'm in North-East Ohio, Cuyahoga County. I do give props to TWC for handling the TA situation cleanly and easily - I got my adapters quickly and instructions to hook them up were clear. Unfortunately, no communication was given after I got the adapters, so I had no idea when I should actually start expecting new channels, etc. TWC NEOH scores an epic fail on communication.


You're not alone. I and many others here are in the same boat.
It seems TWC doesn't give a rats and to me it seems like TWC is deliberately crippling Tivo units by delivering inferior equipment and/or signal hoping that many users will replace with TWC's unit so they can screw more money out of Tivo customers, IMO.


----------



## dlfl

I have a TiVo HD, two s-cards and a Cisco/SA 1520 Tuning Adapter. I know that excess signal strength is suspected in some freeze problems. The numbers quoted are always tuner SNR and signal strength. I see a lot of numbers in the Tuning Adapter diagnostics pages, including:

Tuner: -5 dBmV
FDC: -6 dBmV
RDC: 44 dBmV

Is there some way to use these numbers to know if the TA is getting too much (or too little) signal, so attenuators could be inserted/removed?

Or is signal strength just not an issue for TA's?


----------



## SCSIRAID

dlfl said:


> I have a TiVo HD, two s-cards and a Cisco/SA 1520 Tuning Adapter. I know that excess signal strength is suspected in some freeze problems. The numbers quoted are always tuner SNR and signal strength. I see a lot of numbers in the Tuning Adapter diagnostics pages, including:
> 
> Tuner: -5 dBmV
> FDC: -6 dBmV
> RDC: 44 dBmV
> 
> Is there some way to use these numbers to know if the TA is getting too much (or too little) signal, so attenuators could be inserted/removed?
> 
> Or is signal strength just not an issue for TA's?


Those numbers are OK. I assume you have the TiVo attached to the output of the TA? Note that the TA diags is only going to give you 'tuner' signal strengths for the SDV QAM frequencies.... It isnt giving you any info on the other channels.


----------



## dlfl

SCSIRAID said:


> Those numbers are OK. I assume you have the TiVo attached to the output of the TA? Note that the TA diags is only going to give you 'tuner' signal strengths for the SDV QAM frequencies.... It isnt giving you any info on the other channels.


Good to know these are OK, but which numbers are the important ones, and what is the OK range for them (if you know)? Are there known or suspected lock up, freeze, or other bad behavior from bad TA numbers?


----------



## SCSIRAID

dlfl said:


> Good to know these are OK, but which numbers are the important ones, and what is the OK range for them (if you know)? Are there known or suspected lock up, freeze, or other bad behavior from bad TA numbers?


All three are important from a TA functionality perspective. 'Tuner' is the actual channel signal strength and the one most likely resposible for small 'glitches'. RDC and FDC have to do with the TA hearing and talking to the Hub. If it cant converse with the hub, its not going to work properly.... it can reboot or just not tune the channels you want. The TiVo needs the FDC to be good so it can get its cablecard authorizations. Only the TA cares about RDC.

As to values... Tuner and FDC should probably be between -8 and 0 (considering the gain in the TA). RDC should be less than 50.


----------



## ianfarrell

ianfarrell said:


> No uncorrected errors at that time.
> I did however see a few hundred Corrected and UnCorrected this morning on Ch258 but not on 267.
> This is probably because of the still high signal.
> I'm going to order some attenuators as I can't source 75ohm terminators locally and the splitters look a bit messy but it was only to try and see how much reduction was needed.
> It looks like the tilt is biased towards the high frequencies but I'm only seeing about a level difference on the TiVo of 10 on the extremities.


So several months into this now and I still get break up of most SDV channels with only the odd daily 1 or 2 RS Corrected and no RS Uncorrected.
SNR at 34dB and Signal around 86 to 90.
I have a TWC tech coming out for the umpteenth time this morning.
What gets me is if it was break up on all channels I could understand there being either a signal or Tivo problem, but only SDV channels (nearly all HD) makes me believe it's TWC's problem. 
Maybe somebody wiser here can correct me if I'm wrong.


----------



## SCSIRAID

ianfarrell said:


> So several months into this now and I still get break up of most SDV channels with only the odd daily 1 or 2 RS Corrected and no RS Uncorrected.
> SNR at 34dB and Signal around 86 to 90.
> I have a TWC tech coming out for the umpteenth time this morning.
> What gets me is if it was break up on all channels I could understand there being either a signal or Tivo problem, but only SDV channels (nearly all HD) makes me believe it's TWC's problem.
> Maybe somebody wiser here can correct me if I'm wrong.


TWC is aware and is working with TiVo and Cisco on the issue. So far, they havent been able to track it down.


----------



## lrhorer

I have Cisco TAs, but I haven't seen this issue. What does happen form time to time is the TA just quits properly handshaking with the TiVo. When this happens, I usually lose not only all SDV channels, but frequently all encrypted channels, as well. When it happens, the TA must be rebooted, and sometimes the TiVo also. I've had it happen at different times on all three TiVos.


----------



## SCSIRAID

lrhorer said:


> I have Cisco TAs, but I haven't seen this issue. What does happen form time to time is the TA just quits properly handshaking with the TiVo. When this happens, I usually lose not only all SDV channels, but frequently all encrypted channels, as well. When it happens, the TA must be rebooted, and sometimes the TiVo also. I've had it happen at different times on all three TiVos.


If you are referring to the SDV Pixelation issue... It may not be seen on systems that dont use Cisco GQAM's. The symptom is pixelation only on SDV channels. When the pixelation occurs, the RS Corrected/Uncorrected stats remain zero. Ive recorded the same program at the same time on an 8300, S3 and THD and the 8300 does NOT exhibit the problem while the S3 and THD have the pixelation at exactly the same place in the program. The events seem to cluster around the top and bottom of the hour when you would expect the GQAM to be building up or tearing down the transport stream and/or lots of SDV 'chatter' in the network. Ive compared notes with people in other areas of town and on different service groups and they see the same thing... but... their glitches occur in different places in the same show.

It would seem to me that the GQAM may be generating some 'interesting' mpeg that is tripping up TiVo but not 8300 or the TA or cablecard is generating some status sequence that is tripping up TiVo. Hopefully they will figure it out soon. TWC has crawled all over this thing trying to figure it out (kudos to TWC Raleigh). They have logs from the TiVo and several samples of mpeg pulled via TTG.

My wife's TiVo/TA did exactly what you mentioned last week. It was an interesting situation. She tried to tune a couple SDV channels and couldnt. I went to my SA3250 and tuned the channels and they was ok. She went back to channel 190 and found it ok. When I tuned away from 190 on the 3250, her picture froze on the TiVo. When I tuned back to 190, her picture resumed... Very cool....  Rebooting the TA fixed the problem.


----------



## lrhorer

SCSIRAID said:


> If you are referring to the SDV Pixelation issue...


No, I'm not . I haven't seen any great amount of pixelation, SDV or otherwise. When the event of which I am speaking occurs, all the affected channels become unavailable.



SCSIRAID said:


> My wife's TiVo/TA did exactly what you mentioned last week. It was an interesting situation. She tried to tune a couple SDV channels and couldnt. I went to my SA3250 and tuned the channels and they was ok. She went back to channel 190 and found it ok. When I tuned away from 190 on the 3250, her picture froze on the TiVo. When I tuned back to 190, her picture resumed... Very cool....  Rebooting the TA fixed the problem.


When the problem has occurred here, changing channels doesn't help.


----------



## dlfl

Is there a way to tell which channels are SDV from the diagnostics pages in the TiVo HD?

On TWC (Dayton, OH) can you assume all channels are switched except the locals?

Also, there was uncertainty (earlier in this thread I think) about whether RS error counts are correct for SDV channels, or are always just zero. Has that been resolved?

*EDIT:* Actually the uncertainty about error counts for SDV channels was expressed by *bkdtv* in this post in the HD Pixellation sticky thread.


----------



## dlfl

dlfl said:


> ......there was uncertainty ....... about whether RS error counts are correct for SDV channels, or are always just zero. Has that been resolved?


I was surprised to find talk of RS counts in the support documents on the TiVo web site. There was no indication that they only applied to non-SDV channels so I am assuming they are meaningful for all channels.


----------



## dlfl

dlfl said:


> An earlier post said there should be a TWC web page telling what channels are SDV. I have TWC Southwest Ohio, specifically Dayton North. After the difficulty I've had just trying to find out what channels are provided with their "Digital Service", I am skeptical that a listing of SDV channels exists. Their channel lineup web page is very confusing, involving about 20 color coded packages with colors that are not unique. After three tries via email, I finally got someone to tell me which "packages" are included in "Digital Service", not that I have total confidence in this information.
> 
> If a web page listing SDV channels for my service area exists, could someone please post a link? (Or tell me how to get this info from their channel lineup page.)
> .........


Well TiVo says my cable provider should tell me which channels are SDV so I gave them a call today and (after some difficulty) got them to read me the list of SDV channels, which I had to write down. The agent said she was pulling them from a "manual" and there is no separate list that she could send me -- the channel numbers were in jumbled order.

I only got the ones in the 1-200 and 700-799 range as I don't subscribe to anything outside those ranges except the music channels. She read me 69 numbers. Of course if she accidentally missed some, there is no way I could know.

If the info is correct, the channel where I see the most video and audio glitches (788 CNBC HD) is NOT SDV. I suspect it actually is SDV. My theory is that the SDV channels have more video glitches -- but maybe not. None of my channels show any uncorrected RS errors and zero or very few corrected RS errors.


----------



## SCSIRAID

dlfl said:


> Well TiVo says my cable provider should tell me which channels are SDV so I gave them a call today and (after some difficulty) got them to read me the list of SDV channels, which I had to write down. The agent said she was pulling them from a "manual" and there is no separate list that she could send me -- the channel numbers were in jumbled order.
> 
> I only got the ones in the 1-200 and 700-799 range as I don't subscribe to anything outside those ranges except the music channels. She read me 69 numbers. Of course if she accidentally missed some, there is no way I could know.
> 
> If the info is correct, the channel where I see the most video and audio glitches (788 CNBC HD) is NOT SDV. I suspect it actually is SDV. My theory is that the SDV channels have more video glitches -- but maybe not. None of my channels show any uncorrected RS errors and zero or very few corrected RS errors.


The easiest way to tell if a channel is SDV is to unplug the USB cable between TiVo and TA and then see if you can tune the channel (after you acknowledge the screen telling you the TA has gone). If it is still tuneable... its a linear channel.

The error counters work fine for SDV channels. The tuner doesnt care if the channel is SDV or linear. The magic is knowing what frequency and program id the desired stream is on. From there the cablecard takes care of everything.


----------



## dlfl

SCSIRAID said:


> The easiest way to tell if a channel is SDV is to unplug the USB cable between TiVo and TA and then see if you can tune the channel (after you acknowledge the screen telling you the TA has gone). If it is still tuneable... its a linear channel..........


Thanks *SCSIRAID*. I'll grant that is *much* easier than trying to get TWC to tell me! (I spent at least an hour of "chat" and phone time trying to get the info from TWC and I still don't trust what they told me.)


----------



## skaggs

dlfl said:


> Is there a way to tell which channels are SDV from the diagnostics pages in the TiVo HD?
> 
> On TWC (Dayton, OH) can you assume all channels are switched except the locals?


If you have a TWC issued Sci-Atl set-set-top box using SARA software, you can determine which channels are SDV by following these steps:

1. Get into the cable box's diagnostic menu by holding the "+" or "SELECT" button ON THE BOX in for a few seconds until the mail light begins flashing. (The "+" button in the center of the up, down, left, right arrow buttons.) Press the INFO button.

You can page through the informational screens by using the left & right arrow buttons. You can see the TV picture by pressing the "+" button...once will make the diagnostic info about 50% opaque and twice will make it about 20%. A third time will bring you back to 100%.

2. Go to the last page in the diagnostic menu (page 39)

3. Look at the SamSvcid/Type. It will show a number and "/Switched" if the cahnnel you are tuned to is SDV (if it is not switched it will show "Broadcast")

4. The SDV Freq: will show a number depending on the SDV pool that gets assigned.

5. Change the channels and look to see what appears in the SamSvcid/Type location.


----------



## dlfl

Thanks *skaggs*,

I don't have a STB. My configuration is a the typical TiVo HD, cable cards and tuning adapter. It is a Scientific Atlanta TA, and I am on TWC.

However, your post provided the clue that allowed me to discover the same information via the TiVo menus as follows:

Account & System Information ==> Tuning Adapter ==> Tuning Adapter Diagnostics==>SDV SESSION INFO

There will be info for two sessions and the third item in each set is SamSvcid/Type: which will be #####/Broadcast (or) #####/Switched

(##### represents a five digit number).

All you have to do is determine which session corresponds to which of the two tuners. The easy way to tell this is by the channel frequency, given in DVR Diagnostics. Note the freq is given in kHz in one place and MHz in the other, so there is a factor of 1,000 difference in the numbers.


----------



## dlfl

I was surfing to find info on the Tuning Adapter Diagnostics Screens and found this interesting link announcing that some tech writers at Cisco had received an award for a document entitled: *Understanding the Cisco STA1520 Tuning Adapter Diagnostic Screen Application Guide*.

I believe it's an internal document only available in print -- I couldn't find it on the Cisco web pages. I sent an email to their support asking about getting a copy.

My immediate goal was to find out what FDC and RDC stand for. My wild guesses are "Forward Data Carrier" and "Return Data Carrier".


----------



## morac

dlfl said:


> I was surfing to find info on the Tuning Adapter Diagnostics Screens and found this interesting link announcing that some tech writers at Cisco had received an award for a document entitled: *Understanding the Cisco STA1520 Tuning Adapter Diagnostic Screen Application Guide*.


Anyone else find it a bit strange that apparently awards are being given out to companies who write documentation that help users interpret what the company's GUI actually is trying to convey?


----------



## ontherebound

I'm also in Dayton, OH as well with TWC (using a TiVo HD and a Cisco TA). Their switched channels are all over the place. The only place I haven't found any switched channels is between 2 and 59. Everything else is fair game. The TA said that as of a few days ago there were 139 SDV channels, but who knows if this really means anything since I can't get an interpretation of what all the screens mean (since we don't have this critically acclaimed document about the STA1520!). But don't assume that all of the 700 series channels are in SDV, either. A number of those channels are non-switched. You'll have to ask your tuning adapter to tell if they are switched or not.

I noticed that the Dayton area had their sub-100 analog channels recently switched to digital if you have a STB or a CableCard. You can still view any of the non-switched channels without them (so they are being broadcast both ways), but they wanted to prepare for the switch to all digital at some point I assume.

I have been dealing with a supervisor out of Hamilton who had resolved some recent issues. As of yesterday, I now have about 20+ channels that are not coming in and I believe they are all SDV (since I am getting the "Channel Temporarily not availble message"). Two of them did tune at one time and they were on the same frequency, which makes me think they've made some changes at the Dayton head-end and they've got some fixing to do. They added channel 185 on Saturday, which is one of the channels I'm not getting, but that is on a different frequency. I'm going to have to call that supervisor to get him working on this issue.

To keep things in perspective, I had heard from either TWC or TiVo that in the Cincy Region (including Cincy and Dayton) when they were fixing some initial TA problems, that there are only just over 400 CableCard users. So, we're not a priority to them at all. 

I just wanted to get you some info from another Dayton user who has been having some issues as well. I'm learning their darn network better than they are, especially since I am dealing with a supervisor from Hamilton (since I almost live in Warren county) and he is on the Cincy head-end himself. It makes for a lot of confusion since he doesn't know my channels and what changes the Dayton head-end team have made. It also means he doesn't get a lot of answers to e-mails about problems from the same Dayton head-end team since they really don't know him. He actually blamed it on the fact that I was able to give him so much information that their normal covering the blatantly obvious bases with the customer don't work. By the time they get an e-mail from him, they're getting signal levels, SNR, etc. He said they normally never give them any of this info, so it leaves them actually having to think about problems with their system. That's what happens when you have a user who can actually note when problems happen and document the details. 

Sorry for being windy...I'll try to be around a little more because I do have my share of problems and info that I can help others with.


----------



## dlfl

Interesting comments, *ontherebound*,

How did you get to talk to a supervisor? And here's the big question: how could one get to talk to an engineer who actually knows what is going on technically?

I don't know if you noticed it but there is a definite way to tell which channels are SDV (once you can receive them that is) given in my post #2206 just above. There is also the brute force way of just disconnecting the Tuning Adapter USB cable and the non-SDV channels are the ones that are left.

Trying to get the listing of SDV channels from Time Warner was a losing cause for me. I finally got a list (read to me over the phone - no actual list) but I know it was partially incorrect.

On my system roughly one third of the 700-799 channels are SDV and there are some HD channels that are not SDV. And some of the channels below 100 are SDV, specifically 57 and 72 that I have checked. However 36 is not.

I'm northwest of Dayton, quite a ways from you actually. At least I do seem to get all the channels I'm supposed to.

BTW the lineup is being completely reshuffled in August -- so don't get too comfortable with the current version.


----------



## ontherebound

dlfl said:


> Interesting comments, *ontherebound*,
> 
> How did you get to talk to a supervisor? And here's the big question: how could one get to talk to an engineer who actually knows what is going on technically?
> 
> I don't know if you noticed it but there is a definite way to tell which channels are SDV (once you can receive them that is) given in my post #2206 just above. There is also the brute force way of just disconnecting the Tuning Adapter USB cable and the non-SDV channels are the ones that are left.
> 
> Trying to get the listing of SDV channels from Time Warner was a losing cause for me. I finally got a list (read to me over the phone - no actual list) but I know it was partially incorrect.
> 
> On my system roughly one third of the 700-799 channels are SDV and there are some HD channels that are not SDV. And some of the channels below 100 are SDV, specifically 57 and 72 that I have checked. However 36 is not.
> 
> I'm northwest of Dayton, quite a ways from you actually. At least I do seem to get all the channels I'm supposed to.
> 
> BTW the lineup is being completely reshuffled in August -- so don't get too comfortable with the current version.


Glad to be here. I was blessed with a supervisor when a Dayton call center CSR made a note to send a supervisor out to me when I had 2 truck rolls in under two weeks. I didn't get a supervisor (but he had been around a while), but he had a friend who was one. He called him for me and I got a call the next afternoon. It was a miracle. I have his office and mobile numbers, too!!! I'm the luckiest customer -- to actually be able to get UDCP issues looked into instead of just getting the confused look. 

He's not the absolutely most knowledgeable, but he does know how to get people who are and finally was taking an approach of testing every item that fell under his realm, FieldOps (from the TV to the tap), and eliminating those and then dumping it on SysOps (from the tap to the head-end) by telling them I've done EVERYTHING I can do. It worked the last go around (which I just told him it was corrected successfully a week ago Friday -- oh well, he's getting a call today). He isn't the best, either, because he runs off of the Cincy head-end, so he doesn't know when Dayton is making changes. But, he is a supervisor and he will get things done. He even showed up at my house one day just to find out what was going on at the beginning. I've been impressed with him (and the three other techs he's gotten involved, along with the pole man, who seemed to fix my last issues).

I knew about the looking in the TA diagnostic screen for finding out if a channel was switched or not. I typically go into DVR Diagnostics to get the frequency of the channel I'm trying to figure out and then go looking. Later on the same TA diags page, it gives the frequency. It seems to work well.

Getting a list of what is switched is a joke. I got a tier 3 CSR e-mail an initial spreadsheet with the switched channels and their frequencies. That was back in early February or so, right before the TA roll-out (or crash, depending on your view of things ). They are now taking channels that were once switched and making them non-switched. So, the wonderful letters listing which channels were going to be moved to SDV and when, that the FCC made the MSOs (like TWC) send out after fining them for not doing it, are useless as guides.

There was a document that someone mentioned in this thread (or another) that Cisco had written an award winning technical document about understanding the STA1520's Diagnostic Screens. I couldn't find it in the public anywhere, but do have an e-mail into Cisco to see if I can get it. If it's award-winning, they should want to share it. It might make figuring out these things easier and giving information to TWC easier as well.

Sorry for the ramble, again. Good luck. I'm getting daily updates of posts on this thread, so let me know if you have questions.

And what's changing in August?!?!


----------



## dlfl

ontherebound said:


> .........
> There was a document that someone mentioned in this thread (or another) that Cisco had written an award winning technical document about understanding the STA1520's Diagnostic Screens. I couldn't find it in the public anywhere, but do have an e-mail into Cisco to see if I can get it. If it's award-winning, they should want to share it. It might make figuring out these things easier and giving information to TWC easier as well.
> ..........
> And what's changing in August?!?!


Yeah, I was the OP who mentioned that Cisco document. I emailed their support and got an acknowledgement, but so far no other response.

Here is a link to a Cisco paper that describes the overall SDV architecture. Doesn't help much for consumer diagnostic purposes but it illustrates the complexity of the system -- many distributed elements and a lot of communication links -- a debugging nightmare. At least it gave me an idea of what the "Carousel" is that you see in the TA diagnostics pages.

Check out this post and the following post about the August lineup changes. I clipped the notice from the DDN. They also put a legal notice in the same issue (magnifying glass required). It looks so complicated I haven't even tried to make sense of it. If this doesn't cause major pain for TiVo users I will be amazed.


----------



## ontherebound

dlfl,

Right now, I am experiencing an outage of about 35 switched channels from numbers 4 to 788, so in other words, for a UDCP user, the entire channel spectrum. I've reported it and am about to call my "friend" to see if he's heard ANYTHING yet. I'm guessing not.

About those channel changes, do you have the date of the posting in the DDN? Or could you possibly scan and post the listing (if it's not a pain)? I would assume it wouldn't be on the DDN's website because it was essentially an ad (required by the whatever they call the State of Ohio franchising authority -- you know, what SB185 created, and took away from the local governments). It looks like they may be moving to a channel structure more commonly found around the country. Ours in a little antiquated, but we love it and are used to it.

Thanks for the info. I'm getting pissed about this SDV outage, because everyday I check for channels, more and more are affected.


----------



## dlfl

ontherebound said:


> dlfl,
> .........About those channel changes, do you have the date of the posting in the DDN? Or could you possibly scan and post the listing (if it's not a pain)? I would assume it wouldn't be on the DDN's website..........


Actually, they gave a URL in the notice:

www.twcinfo.com

which redirects to:

http://twcinci.com/printyourlineup/

The web page has everything the paper notice had plus more.


----------



## gamo62

Just got a mailer from TWC. They are going SDV on Aug. 24th.


----------



## dlfl

gamo62 said:


> Just got a mailer from TWC. They are going SDV on Aug. 24th.


They went SDV long ago. They are just doing more channels.


----------



## wublet

[Note: This issue is SOLVED a few posts later, it is NOT an SDV issue and also does NOT affect Series 3 owners. Sorry for posting under the wrong category; I misinterpreted the situation.]

I'm on Comcast in Oakland CA with a Series3, running just fine with 2 CableCARDs.

Just received a "network enhancement" mailer saying to go to comcast.com/digitalnow with the Unique Digital ID in the letter, to get the appropriate box delivered for self-install. I presume, though it does not say, that this is an SDV conversion issue.

Before I go and do anything foolish... which box option should I be getting for my situation? What would the wrong options be, so I can be on guard for them?

Thanks in advance to any and all who may reply!

- - - - - - - - -

Further info from the mailer, in case it's helpful to anyone:
- Contact them by Sept. 1 2009 to order equipment
- Change effective Sept. 1 2009
- Network enhancement to affect channels in the 35-82 range except 76 & 77
- First 2 adapters free, add'l ones billed @ $1.00/mo


----------



## dlfl

wublet said:


> I'm on Comcast in Oakland CA with a Series3, running just fine with 2 CableCARDs.
> 
> Just received a "network enhancement" mailer saying to go to comcast.com/digitalnow with the Unique Digital ID in the letter, to get the appropriate box delivered for self-install. I presume, though it does not say, that this is an SDV conversion issue.
> 
> Before I go and do anything foolish... which box option should I be getting for my situation? What would the wrong options be, so I can be on guard for them? ........


I assume the "box" is a Tuning Adapter (TA). AFAIK, there have never been options in selecting a TA. Each cable system has just one model. Did the documentation mention options?

Read the first post in this thread to get an idea of what SDV is and what TA's do.


----------



## wublet

Thanks for replying. 

The reason I ask about different options is that the flyer says "We'll help determine what equipment is best for you." I do understand about SDV and TA, and only avoided using those terms because (a) the mailer doesn't use them, and (b) I haven't found any posts here on tivocommunity about Comcast Oakland going SDV, so SDV is only a guess on my part.


----------



## dlfl

wublet said:


> Thanks for replying.
> 
> The reason I ask about different options is that the flyer says "We'll help determine what equipment is best for you." I do understand about SDV and TA, and only avoided using those terms because (a) the mailer doesn't use them, and (b) I haven't found any posts here on tivocommunity about Comcast Oakland going SDV, so SDV is only a guess on my part.


Yeah, I went to the ComCast web site you gave and poked around. The "Digital Transport Adapter" they mention sure doesn't appear to be a Tuning Adapter for use with TiVo's. TA's have a USB connection used to communicate with the TiVo. And they do NOT have a remote control!

There is no hint they are talking about SDV, which would be the only reason a TiVo would need a TA. Maybe you will luck out and not have to add anything!


----------



## wublet

Thanks for taking a look. 

Looks like this is a non-issue for all CableCARD customers including Series3 owners, for the following reasons.

I went to the site and entered my Unique Digital ID. The next page included this footer note: "If you have any digital TV sets or any sets with CableCard, Tru2Way, or TiVo Series 3 connected to Comcast, click here for further instructions." I clicked and the following came up: "Further Instructions -- Most customers who have purchased these advanced TV sets or other equipment should already lease a CableCard TM from Comcast, and therefore already receive digital signals on that set and don't need any additional equipment."

So it looks like this is not about SDV. Apologies for starting this on the SDV thread, obviously I misinterpreted the Comcast mailer. And thanks much for looking into it!


----------



## dlfl

dlfl said:


> I was surfing to find info on the Tuning Adapter Diagnostics Screens and found this interesting link announcing that some tech writers at Cisco had received an award for a document entitled: *Understanding the Cisco STA1520 Tuning Adapter Diagnostic Screen Application Guide*.
> 
> I believe it's an internal document only available in print -- I couldn't find it on the Cisco web pages. I sent an email to their support asking about getting a copy...........


I got the document! I won't bore you with the war story of what hoops I had to jump through -- I don't _think _I told any lies.

It does look helpful so I'm making it available. It's a 1.4 MB PDF, so I've put it on a free download site. (It only compressed 15% with zipping, so why bother?)

Enjoy!


----------



## moyekj

Looks like the first deployment of *Motorola* Tuning Adapter is slated for September/October time frame for Cox Orange County, CA (Motorola headends) depending on how long beta testing takes:
http://gadgetress.freedomblogging.c...st-to-test-tivo-adapters-from-motorola/20165/
There are already a bunch of SDV channels deployed in that market including the latest round of HD channel additions.

(As probably most of you know to date all Tuning Adapters publicly deployed to date have been Cisco).


----------



## Danno

Actually, I received a Motorola MTR700 from TWC way up here in Bangor, Maine on 9/4. Seems to be working fine, but I can't be sure until SDV is implemented here on 9/15.


----------



## mikeyts

Danno said:


> Actually, I received a Motorola MTR700 from TWC way up here in Bangor, Maine on 9/4. Seems to be working fine, but I can't be sure until SDV is implemented here on 9/15.


Who's your cable provider and what IPG are they running on their leased boxes? Macrovision/Gemstar's i-Guide?


----------



## Danno

Mike -

Cable provider is Time Warner. If you tell me how to find the other info you asked for, I'll be happy to supply it.

Dan


----------



## mikeyts

Danno said:


> Cable provider is Time Warner. If you tell me how to find the other info you asked for, I'll be happy to supply it.


Thanks, but I went to the TWC Maine site and found the DVR Quick-Start Guide which would indicate that it is i-Guide, which would mean that they've got an SDV capable version. There haven't been many SDV rollouts on Moto networks, which is why I was interested.


----------



## cdeckert219

dlfl said:


> I got the document! I won't bore you with the war story of what hoops I had to jump through -- I don't _think _I told any lies.
> 
> It does look helpful so I'm making it available. It's a 1.4 MB PDF, so I've put it on a free download site. (It only compressed 15% with zipping, so why bother?)
> 
> Enjoy!


Hey, this is very interesting...may help me solve my TA ongoing issues. Thanks for sharing! Very much appreciated.


----------



## floridaman01

I am in the process of ordering a Tivo HD XL TCD658000 DVR. I am currently using FIOS and have ordered the required "M" card to use. From the research I have done it appears that FIOS doesn't utilize SDV channels so I shouldn't experience any problems receiving all of the FIOS channels on the Tivo DVR. Is this statement correct? I have also read that the signal strength could be too strong and may have to be toned down some otherwise the channels might pixelate. Is this true? Any input from FIOS subscribers using the Tivo HD XL box would be great.

Thanks


----------



## moyekj

True that FIOS does not implement SDV so no worries there. Also with latest Tivo series 3 software there is no need to attenuate the signal from FIOS anymore as a fix was implemented for that problem.


----------



## floridaman01

Moyekj:

Thanks very much for your reply. It is greatly appreciated. 

Thanks
Doug


----------



## wcohoe

SCSIRAID said:


> ianfarrell said: So several months into this now and I still get break up of most SDV channels with only the odd daily 1 or 2 RS Corrected and no RS Uncorrected. SNR at 34dB and Signal around 86 to 90.
> I have a TWC tech coming out for the umpteenth time this morning.
> What gets me is if it was break up on all channels I could understand there being either a signal or Tivo problem, but only SDV channels (nearly all HD) makes me believe it's TWC's problem. Maybe somebody wiser here can correct me if I'm wrong.
> 
> TWC is aware and is working with TiVo and Cisco on the issue. So far, they havent been able to track it down.


Bump. I have the exact same problem. occasional breakup of SDV channels only. Now that it's hockey season, with FSCAROLINA showing HD hockey, I am prepared to be royally annoyed again this year. Is there any end in sight to this breakup issue?


----------



## SCSIRAID

wcohoe said:


> Bump. I have the exact same problem. occasional breakup of SDV channels only. Now that it's hockey season, with FSCAROLINA showing HD hockey, I am prepared to be royally annoyed again this year. Is there any end in sight to this breakup issue?


I believe they are close to the 'smoking gun'. Now how long it will take after the gun is found to implement a fix is hard to tell. That is where the finger pointing between Cisco and TiVo could start as to 'whose' problem it is and 'who' needs to implement a fix.... I expect the fix will untimately come from TiVo/Broadcom if what I believe is the problem is correct. TWC may be able to tweak some compression parameters and improve the situation too but at the expense of PQ for non TiVo users. Im not sure they will be willing to do that but you never know. They do care about us TiVo people.... they have proven that to me.


----------



## mercurial

SCSIRAID said:


> They do care about us TiVo people.... they have proven that to me.


The next time I have an issue, can you call it in and give them my address so they can prove it to me?


----------



## dlfl

SCSIRAID said:


> ............ They do care about us TiVo people.... they have proven that to me.


But who does "they" include? All TWC regions ???


----------



## SCSIRAID

dlfl said:


> But who does "they" include? All TWC regions ???


I can only speak relative to the folks I have worked with on this issue... I truly believe they care about their product and want it to be 'right'. One mans opinion.. but one who has spent a lot of time with TWC folks in the last several months trying to figure this one out. YMMV.


----------



## m_jonis

SCSIRAID said:


> I believe they are close to the 'smoking gun'. Now how long it will take after the gun is found to implement a fix is hard to tell. That is where the finger pointing between Cisco and TiVo could start as to 'whose' problem it is and 'who' needs to implement a fix.... I expect the fix will untimately come from TiVo/Broadcom if what I believe is the problem is correct. TWC may be able to tweak some compression parameters and improve the situation too but at the expense of PQ for non TiVo users. Im not sure they will be willing to do that but you never know. They do care about us TiVo people.... they have proven that to me.


TW cares about Tivo people?

Not sure about all TW areas, but from what I've seen the vast majority of TW areas implement CCI bytes to render MRV and TTG useless (that's caring?) Our local TW in Albany, NY says it's a Corporate policy for ALL of TW.

And our local TW doesn't give a rats ... about Tivo. We've had nothing but problems with the TA and SDV with Tivos since the day it got rolled out and we're still having issues. The constant retort is either to reboot the TA and the Tivo, or "if you had TW DVR you wouldn't have this problem", or "why do you have a Tivo?".

But again, I suppose you could live in the odd TW area that doesn't set every channel except local broadcast to 0x02 and one that doesn't have massive pixelation, TA reboots, and SDV channel outages all the time.


----------



## dlfl

SCSIRAID said:


> ........... I expect the fix will untimately come from TiVo/Broadcom if what I believe is the problem is correct. TWC may be able to tweak some compression parameters and improve the situation too but at the expense of PQ for non TiVo users. .........


From this I am getting what you don't explicitly state: The TiVo decoding process is not properly handling valid cable mpeg2 streams, correct?

If this is the case, could it provide hope for users in other TWC regions (and maybe other cable cos) in the sense that whatever improvements TiVo eventually may implement to handle this should make their decoding process generally more robust? That would be something to be happy about!

What makes this particular to just SDV channels? Are they encoded with different parameters?


----------



## SCSIRAID

dlfl said:


> From this I am getting what you don't explicitly state: The TiVo decoding process is not properly handling valid cable mpeg2 streams, correct?
> 
> If this is the case, could it provide hope for users in other TWC regions (and maybe other cable cos) in the sense that whatever improvements TiVo eventually may implement to handle this should make their decoding process generally more robust? That would be something to be happy about!
> 
> What makes this particular to just SDV channels? Are they encoded with different parameters?


I didnt say it specifically because it isnt proven yet... The mpeg coming from the compressor may work with Cisco equipment but that doesnt mean that its 'legal'... From my discussions with the TWC MPEG guy... the mpeg 'spec' is open to interpretations. The worst case scenario is where Cisco says its legal and TiVo says its not... Who arbitrates?

Also... this current thinking may be wrong... Another possible place for the problem to be is in the Edge QAM. My understanding is that for linear, the transport stream is built upstream and shipped straight thru the Edge QAM. For SDV, the Edge QAM has to rebuild the transport stream based on what programs the service group is 'requesting'. If anybody has further insight, Id love to hear it.


----------



## dlfl

SCSIRAID said:


> I didnt say it specifically because it isnt proven yet... The mpeg coming from the compressor may work with Cisco equipment but that doesnt mean that its 'legal'... From my discussions with the TWC MPEG guy... the mpeg 'spec' is open to interpretations. The worst case scenario is where Cisco says its legal and TiVo says its not... Who arbitrates?
> 
> Also... this current thinking may be wrong... Another possible place for the problem to be is in the Edge QAM. My understanding is that for linear, the transport stream is built upstream and shipped straight thru the Edge QAM. For SDV, the Edge QAM has to rebuild the transport stream based on what programs the service group is 'requesting'. If anybody has further insight, Id love to hear it.


If the "current thinking" is correct, I'm still wondering what would explain problems only occurring on SDV channels? Are they generally encoded with different parameters.

The other possible theory obviously explains differences between linear and SDV channels.

Given the technical complexities it's amazing things work as well as they do. The only way to guarantee performance equal to the STB's would be to duplicate their hardware and software. And that would only cover one brand and model of STB.

It's also surprising TWC is willing to show this much interest in a problem that only effects about 0.5% of their digital subscriber base. I wonder if they have an ulterior motive, e.g., prep work for a future collaboration with TiVo ?

Is the TWC mpeg guy national or local?


----------



## SCSIRAID

dlfl said:


> If the "current thinking" is correct, I'm still wondering what would explain problems only occurring on SDV channels? Are they generally encoded with different parameters.
> 
> The other possible theory obviously explains differences between linear and SDV channels.
> 
> Given the technical complexities it's amazing things work as well as they do. The only way to guarantee performance equal to the STB's would be to duplicate their hardware and software. And that would only cover one brand and model of STB.
> 
> It's also surprising TWC is willing to show this much interest in a problem that only effects about 0.5% of their digital subscriber base. I wonder if they have an ulterior motive, e.g., prep work for a future collaboration with TiVo ?
> 
> Is the TWC mpeg guy national or local?


Yes.. That is what impresses me about them in this case. They have poured much effort into this issue. My email file with discussions is huge and I get responses in hours to sometimes minutes. Once you get into Tech Ops... everything changes. One of the guys I deal with has a TiVo S2 DT himself.

Carolinas... but not based in Raleigh.


----------



## pavanb500

Just got a letter from Bright House saying they're going SDV around the beginning of November (Port Orange/Daytona Beach, FL). 

However, when I called them, they said that I HAD to pay ~$70 for a truck roll... They did this for the Cable Cards as well, even though the tech was clueless and I ended up doing all the work - including calling in to pair it. 

What is the general experience in regards to having to pay for an installer vs. picking it up from the local office? Has anyone on Brighthouse been able to get out of the extortion fee?

Thanks!


----------



## mikeyts

I get the impression that most people have been having been picking them up and self-installing. (When I had one, I was a beta test installation--TWC San Diego's first--so a tech and two engineers showed up to install it and I wasn't charged).


----------



## dlfl

mikeyts said:


> I get the impression that most people have been having been picking them up and self-installing. (When I had one, I was a beta test installation--TWC San Diego's first--so a tech and two engineers showed up to install it and I wasn't charged).


I get the opposite impression but .... it is what it is.

My theory is if you already have cards installed, there is at least a chance you might be able to pick up and install the TA. But policies on installation seem to be individually set by each local cable provider, and as far as I know there is no governing law, and not even a legal requirement for them to provide a TA.


----------



## SCSIRAID

pavanb500 said:


> Just got a letter from Bright House saying they're going SDV around the beginning of November (Port Orange/Daytona Beach, FL).
> 
> However, when I called them, they said that I HAD to pay ~$70 for a truck roll... They did this for the Cable Cards as well, even though the tech was clueless and I ended up doing all the work - including calling in to pair it.
> 
> What is the general experience in regards to having to pay for an installer vs. picking it up from the local office? Has anyone on Brighthouse been able to get out of the extortion fee?
> 
> Thanks!


TWC Carolinas is no charge self install for TA's. You place your order online and they drop ship one to you preauthorized on your account. Simple as pie.


----------



## apsarkis

SCSIRAID said:


> TWC Carolinas is no charge self install for TA's. You place your order online and they drop ship one to you preauthorized on your account. Simple as pie.


TWC Hudson Valley (NY) is self-install but you have to pick them up at one of their offices. Their Port Ewen, NY office is rationing them out. They were promised on 10/7, only got 3 in on 10/16, so they only gave me one (though I have an S3 and an HDT), and a friend with an HD Tivo took another. I went back today (10/21) and they said they're still short and limiting to one to a customer (and they've already started moving some of my premium channels to SDV).
Perry


----------



## Hystyk28

Does anyone know if they flipped the switch Comcast-Garden State Cable ? I was issued a box way back, but then told not to use it. I now have a bunch of missing channels. any help would be appreciated.


----------



## JimMatthews

I got a Cisco tuning adapter from Time Warner here in Portland, Maine a few weeks ago. I went into the local office (by the Jetport) for an unrelated issue, and the customer service person (Matt, who was very TiVo/CableCard savvy) offered me one. About a year ago I had signed up to be notified when they became available, but I hadn't received any notice.

SDV channels did not show up immediately, but a call to Time Warner got them working.


----------



## Richard Berg

Still trying to get a tuning adapter from Comcast in NJ. Level 1 techs are totally clueless, of course.


----------



## deandashl

dlfl said:


> I get the opposite impression but .... it is what it is.
> 
> My theory is if you already have cards installed, there is at least a chance you might be able to pick up and install the TA. But policies on installation seem to be individually set by each local cable provider, and as far as I know there is no governing law, and not even a legal requirement for them to provide a TA.


FCC rules. All cable franchises using SDV must provide tuning adapters. If you get the runaround, you can file a complaint.


----------



## dlfl

deandashl said:


> FCC rules. All cable franchises using SDV must provide tuning adapters. If you get the runaround, you can file a complaint.


Close but not exact, I believe. If they move a channel currently *not* SDV to SDV they have to provide the TA. If they just use SDV to add *new* channels it's not required. Probably a distinction without a difference since they always seem to move some existing channels to SDV.

I believe the rules just say they have to provide a way to keep getting all the channels you were already getting -- not specifically a TA. Probably another distinction without a difference.


----------



## mikeyts

deandashl said:


> FCC rules. All cable franchises using SDV must provide tuning adapters. If you get the runaround, you can file a complaint.





dlfl said:


> Close but not exact, I believe. If they move a channel currently *not* SDV to SDV they have to provide the TA. If they just use SDV to add *new* channels it's not required. Probably a distinction without a difference since they always seem to move some existing channels to SDV.
> 
> I believe the rules just say they have to provide a way to keep getting all the channels you were already getting -- not specifically a TA. Probably another distinction without a difference.


Where exactly is this rule you're talking about? I don't think that the FCC has codified anything about SDV into regulations, and I haven't seen where they've required that a service provider distribute TAs. They have examined a few complaints about SDV and ruled on them. In those cases, they've required the provider to issue a rebate to Unidirectional CableCARD customers, reduced fees going forward and, I think, use of a leased box without charge for a while, but AFAIK, they haven't mentioned the TA (which would only help TiVo--and now Moxi--users in any case). They've never required that people continue to get the same services, but only that they be warned when things are being added or removed.

I could be wrong, though. Perhaps you've heard something more recent. If so, please cite your source.


----------



## dlfl

mikeyts said:


> Where exactly is this rule you're talking about? I don't think that the FCC has codified anything about SDV into regulations, and I haven't seen where they've required that a service provider distribute TAs. They have examined a few complaints about SDV and ruled on them. In those cases, they've required the provider to issue a rebate to Unidirectional CableCARD customers, reduced fees going forward and, I think, use of a leased box without charge for a while, but AFAIK, they haven't mentioned the TA (which would only help TiVo--and now Moxi--users in any case). They've never required that people continue to get the same services, but only that they be warned when things are being added or removed.
> 
> I could be wrong, though. Perhaps you've heard something more recent. If so, please cite your source.


I didn't refer specifically to a rule and I didn't say I thought any rules mentioned a TA specifically. Anyway, my statements (right or wrong) are based on these two links:

http://fjallfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DA-09-122A1.pdf

http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=162284&site=cdn

Both of these reference rules by Section, Paragraph numbers, although I haven't tracked the actual rules down (yet).

The penalties in both referenced cases are so puny as to seem meaningless to me.


----------



## bicker

It's all fading in my memory, but wasn't that all just a matter of lack of notification -- that with notification they could have done what they did no problem -- and also wasn't that something that was eventually reversed?


----------



## dlfl

bicker said:


> It's all fading in my memory, but wasn't that all just a matter of lack of notification -- that with notification they could have done what they did no problem -- and also wasn't that something that was eventually reversed?


I"m not sure. Take a look at the Forfeiture Order for Cox and see what you think. It seems like more than just lack of notification to me but .... ? Note that it's pretty recent, January of this year.


----------



## bicker

Reversed in June of this year:



> *FCC Vacates SDV Rulings Against Time Warner Cable, Cox*
> *Agency Cites Benefits of Switched Digital Video to Consumers*
> 
> The Federal Communications Commission on Friday reversed orders by the agency's Enforcement Bureau that fined Time Warner Cable and Cox Communications for deploying switched digital video.
> 
> ... in Friday's order, the FCC said it rules regarding access by unidirectional digital cable products "were not intended to provide access to bidirectional services or to freeze all one-way cable programming services in perpetuity."
> 
> ... The FCC's June 26 ruling, however, upheld the forfeiture order against TWC relating to the bureau's finding that the migration of programming to an SDV platform constitutes a "change in service" requiring 30-day advanced written notice to the relevant local franchise authority.
> 
> ... The FCC's order is available here: http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-09-52A1.pdf.


http://www.multichannel.com/article/306973-FCC_Vacates_SDV_Rulings_Against_Time_Warner_Cable_Cox.php

I've got a pretty good memory for an older guy eh? 

So SDV is okay (even without providing a TA). Just don't deploy SDV (even with providing TAs) without providing the advance notification you're supposed to provide.


----------



## dlfl

bicker said:


> Reversed in June of this year:
> 
> http://www.multichannel.com/article/306973-FCC_Vacates_SDV_Rulings_Against_Time_Warner_Cable_Cox.php
> 
> I've got a pretty good memory for an older guy eh?
> 
> So SDV is okay (even without providing a TA). Just don't deploy SDV (even with providing TAs) without providing the advance notification you're supposed to provide.


So we're back to: There is no ruling or law that requires cable cos. to provide TA's, correct?

It doesn't warm my heart to say anything in defense of cable cos. but I believe this is fair. They tell you they are going to change the terms of their service in advance, and you have the option of dropping the service if the new terms are not acceptable. They could offer to reduce your rates in accordance with the channels you lose (without a TA), which might induce you to take that deal.


----------



## bicker

dlfl said:


> So we're back to: There is no ruling or law that requires cable cos. to provide TA's, correct?


Correct.


----------



## Shmooh

How can this be? Isn't the point of CableCards that they provide access to the same channels as the rented set-top-box customers?

I get (and have no problem with) the lack of pay-per-view and video on demand - CC's were never meant for that, and those really are a kind of 'premium' service that is not part of core television distribution. However, SDV is basically a different form of broadcasting channels. While the technology requires 2-way communication, doesn't it seem like it violates the spirit of cable card law if cable card customers can't receive those channels?

To take it a step further, what's to stop a cable company from moving to an entirely 'video on demand' service and saying, "Sorry chumps. Rent one of our boxes or you're SOL. Yeah, we know you don't have any other cable choices. Too bad."

I'm not arguing legality (which I know very little about for this). Just arguing that this shouldn't be allowed. Normally, I wouldn't even care - a business can conduct themselves however they want, right? But when they have a government sanctioned monopoly that is intended to provide equal and fair service, things get dicey.

Are we sure we're interpreting the ruling correctly..? That the Cable Co's only have to provide notice that they're removing channels or adding channels CableCard customers can't receive - not actually provide access to them?


----------



## mikeyts

Yeah, it does violate the spirit of the Plug and Play DTV Over Cable agreement. However it should be noted that (1) the FCC frog-marched cable and the CE OEMs into drafting that agreement before they felt ready and (2) the FCC has to recognize that cable cannot effectively compete with satellite's HD channel offerings without more bandwidth capacity and SDV is a fast and relatively inexpensive way for them to, in essence, increase bandwidth capacity. Forbidding them to use it would be unfair restraint of trade, unless they also forbid the satellite companies to use MPEG4 .

It sucks, but there it is.


----------



## bicker

Shmooh said:


> How can this be? Isn't the point of CableCards that they provide access to the same channels as the rented set-top-box customers?


... the same *linear* channels as the rented STBs... There are no regulations requiring consumer-owned host device access to *non*-linear services, such as PPV, VOD and SDV.



Shmooh said:


> I get (and have no problem with) the lack of pay-per-view and video on demand - CC's were never meant for that, and those really are a kind of 'premium' service that is not part of core television distribution. However, SDV is basically a different form of broadcasting channels.


The law determines the relevant distinction, not any one subscriber's personal preference.



Shmooh said:


> While the technology requires 2-way communication, doesn't it seem like it violates the spirit of cable card law if cable card customers can't receive those channels?


References to "the spirit of the law" is the most common refrain of people who are unhappy with the law as it was passed and adopted. The law is very explicit... if something was intended, then it must be written into the law. If it isn't written into the law, then there wasn't enough foresight or consensus to put it into the law and there is no way to tell which except by fiat. Fiat is the prerogative of the courts, making the decision based on what's best for *all* of society, consumers and business, not individual people, based on what's best for themselves as consumers.



Shmooh said:


> To take it a step further, what's to stop a cable company from moving to an entirely 'video on demand' service and saying, "Sorry chumps. Rent one of our boxes or you're SOL.


Nothing. There is actually nothing requiring any of them to offer any services except local over-the-air broadcast channels. That's why expanded basic is an advanced service and unregulated.



Shmooh said:


> I'm not arguing legality


Then don't make legal arguments (which is essentially the entirety of your message up to this point). If you are sad about the way things are, then just say *that*.



Shmooh said:


> Just arguing that this shouldn't be allowed.


"Shouldn't be allowed" is exclusively and unequivocally a legal contention.



Shmooh said:


> Are we sure we're interpreting the ruling correctly..?


I am. The reversal of the Enforcement Bureau's over-zealousness make that very clear.



Shmooh said:


> That the Cable Co's only have to provide notice that they're removing channels or adding channels CableCard customers can't receive - not actually provide access to them?


Correct.


----------



## bicker

mikeyts said:


> ... the FCC has to recognize that cable cannot effectively compete with satellite's HD channel offerings without more bandwidth capacity ...


This really hits on a major consideration: *The satellite services are exempt from* the rules that we're talking about, that require cable companies to provide the ability for consumer-owned host devices to interact with their networks. Exempt. Folks upset about SDV should switch to DirecTV or Dish Network and see how much *worse* those companies satisfy their needs.



mikeyts said:


> Forbidding them to use it would be unfair restraint of trade, unless they also forbid the satellite companies to use MPEG4 .
> 
> It sucks, but there it is.


Indeed.


----------



## lrhorer

bicker said:


> This really hits on a major consideration: *The satellite services are exempt from* the rules that we're talking about, that require cable companies to provide the ability for consumer-owned host devices to interact with their networks. Exempt.


Actually, so are FIOS and Uverse, at least for the moment. FIOS is voluntarily going along. Uverse could easily come up with a separable security option, but CableCards are out for them.



bicker said:


> Folks upset about SDV should switch to DirecTV or Dish Network and see how much *worse* those companies satisfy their needs.


Some people greatly prefer Dish or DirecTV. For my sister and others like her, Satellite service (or nothing) is the only option.


----------



## dlfl

Is FIOS exempt just because the laws did not anticipate fiber going into the house? I believe TWC is fiber optic to our curb.


----------



## mikeyts

dlfl said:


> Is FIOS exempt just because the laws did not anticipate fiber going into the house? I believe TWC is fiber optic to our curb.


FIOS got an exemption from having to use CableCARDs in their own leased devices, but they still support CableCARDs in customer equipment, like TiVo. Is that the exemption that you're talking about?

Since Verizon puts their television content on your house coax, their bandwidth available for television has its limits, but all of it is available for digital television, unlike the cablecos, many of whom spend half their copper bandwidth on analog basic and expanded basic channels, and some of the rest on telephone and network service. It should be a long time, if ever, before they need to resort to SDV and Tuning Adapters.


----------



## Shmooh

Re: bicker's response to my last post... Geez, dude - no need to jump on my case. I understand how actual law works in that it must be explicit. No worries, though - I'll just assume you were trying to enlighten me. 

(By the way - I still maintain that SDV is in a different category than VoD or PPV. If it's not, then it ought to be. It's not a preference thing, just an implication thing - it behaves very differently than on-demand type services and is much more analogous to traditional cable broadcasting.)

So what's the point of the original CableCard legislation, then? If cable companies can simply bypass them by changing their television delivery system, then won't they just become a moot point? (Sure - tech changes all the time. It's a natural evolution.)

To put it another way - if there are no restrictions on the use of SDV and the cable companies can force consumers to rent their boxes to access everything but local channels, would new laws need to be drafted to accomplish the same -intent- as the original CableCard legislation? (The legal answer is apparently yes - I'm asking about thoughts/opinions.)

To be clear - I have zero problem with cable companies using SDV. I think it's a great idea, actually. The issue I have is with the required rental of their box (which is what CableCards were supposed to prevent, right?).


----------



## bicker

Shmooh said:


> Re: bicker's response to my last post... Geez, dude - no need to jump on my case. I understand how actual law works in that it must be explicit.


It is really important to not lose sight of that. I cannot tell you how often I see folks post complaints about things not working the way they expected them to, where it is very clear that their disappointment stems from them holding unfounded expectations, along these lines, i.e., that the law is about what's best for them. And I have to believe that they get that impression from casual conversations they have with folks who seem to know, but really are just being, as you were, casual about the reality of the situation. Best to be explicit, just in case.



Shmooh said:


> No worries, though - I'll just assume you were trying to enlighten me.


 Sorry for upsetting you. 



Shmooh said:


> (By the way - I still maintain that SDV is in a different category than VoD or PPV. If it's not, then it ought to be.


I can understand you wanting it to be.



Shmooh said:


> It's not a preference thing, just an implication thing - it behaves very differently than on-demand type services and is much more analogous to traditional cable broadcasting.)


That's still a "preference thing". Your preference. Stand proud: You're allowed to have personal preferences. Trying to make them sound like laws is what prompted my reply to your earlier message. 



Shmooh said:


> So what's the point of the original CableCard legislation, then?


This is a fantastic question. At its core, the CableCARD mandates *benefit consumer electronics manufacturers* who wish to compete in this market. Consumers also benefit, from such competition as their willingness to pay might bring about in the market.



Shmooh said:


> If cable companies can simply bypass them by changing their television delivery system, then won't they just become a moot point? (Sure - tech changes all the time. It's a natural evolution.)


And if that results in a situation where new laws are needed, then new laws will be passed. That's simply not the case yet. Rather, technology is going to catch up. tru2way paves the way. Us early adopters pay a penalty from being early adopters -- that's always the way of things. So our early CableCARD devices will eventually no longer be very useful. That shouldn't be very surprising to anyone.


----------



## Stormspace

I was following cable card in the news up until just before the date of the integration ban was to take effect. At the time Cable card had been broken before it was even released due to cable companies moving to SDV. 

At the time I remember speculation that suggested cable companies were moving to SDV to defeat the cable card mandate and keep their own devices in customer homes. Shortly afterward my life got complicated and I stopped following it. 

Recently, with the help of Bicker and others I've discovered that the "Level playing field" cable cards were supposed to give didn't actually happen. Cable companies are apparently using devices that have integrated cable cards and support SDV, VOD, and PPV. I haven't discovered why the Cable Boxes would support all of this with a cable card and Tivo doesn't, however I suspect someone will chime in with the answer.

The net result as far as I can see is that all of those cable card ready TV's sold years ago (With the integration ban in mind) will not work with SDV cable systems. Essentially maintaining the status quo before the integration ban. Certainly cable companies knew about this before cable labs finalized the cable card spec? And if so, did they try to get SDV in the spec and if not, why not?


----------



## Shmooh

(To set my tone - I intend no heat in these words, just food for thoughtful discussion.)



bicker said:


> Shmooh said:
> 
> 
> 
> (By the way - I still maintain that SDV is in a different category than VoD or PPV. If it's not, then it ought to be.
> 
> 
> 
> I can understand you wanting it to be.
Click to expand...

Yes, that's what I mean. It ought to be - I'm stating my view of an ideal world.  I'm not trying to say it's currently what the law says.



bicker said:


> Shmooh said:
> 
> 
> 
> It's not a preference thing, just an implication thing - it behaves very differently than on-demand type services and is much more analogous to traditional cable broadcasting.)
> 
> 
> 
> That's still a "preference thing". Your preference. Stand proud: You're allowed to have personal preferences. Trying to make them sound like laws is what prompted my reply to your earlier message.
Click to expand...

My apologies for not being clear. I was never trying to say that things are laws when they aren't (I even said I wasn't arguing legality, after all.). I'm saying the way I think things should be - not the way they are.

The implications of lumping SDV with VoD and PPV (while that may be true legally) are much more far reaching. Not to split hairs, but I don't consider a logical view of the technologies to be my _preference_ as to how they _should_ be categorized. The categorization just makes the most logical sense. Hence - not a preference.  (But maybe that interpretation of the words is just my preference! Ha!)



bicker said:


> Shmooh said:
> 
> 
> 
> So what's the point of the original CableCard legislation, then?
> 
> 
> 
> This is a fantastic question. At its core, the CableCARD mandates *benefit consumer electronics manufacturers* who wish to compete in this market. Consumers also benefit, from such competition as their willingness to pay might bring about in the market.
Click to expand...

Interesting point. Really interesting, actually. What does it mean for companies like TiVo if SDV forces them out of the market? Okay, well - we know what it means. 

My thought/point is this (hypothetical but very plausible future scenario): The DVRs we bought become obsolete because cable companies (monopolies) create new technologies that make TiVos useless. Laws adjust to benefit equipment manufacturers again (like the original CableCard legislation). Who will buy that equipment, knowing it can and will just happen again, and could happen at any time? (Fool me once, yadda yadda...) Doesn't that effectively prevent competition in that market space by an implied threat of changing technology by a monopoly? How can any company compete in that kind of market?

Whether you look at it from a consumer perspective or device vendor perspective, hasn't cable company monopoly harmed you?

(Getting a bit off topic, but in case you hadn't guessed, my opinion is that the cable company monopolies were a bad idea and should be done away with as soon as possible. I've always liked the idea of a municipality owning/running coax and/or fiber lines to homes and leasing bandwidth to companies who want to provide services on them as an alternative.)



bicker said:


> Us early adopters pay a penalty from being early adopters -- that's always the way of things.


Well, I'd hardly call somebody buying a CableCard device an 'early adopter'. They've been around for ages. 

Interesting discussion, none the less.


----------



## Shmooh

Stormspace said:


> The net result as far as I can see is that all of those cable card ready TV's sold years ago (With the integration ban in mind) will not work with SDV cable systems. Essentially maintaining the status quo before the integration ban. Certainly cable companies knew about this before cable labs finalized the cable card spec? And if so, did they try to get SDV in the spec and if not, why not?


Bicker and others undoubtedly know more about this than I do, but isn't tru2way just the new "cable card" spec that's supposed to provide 2-way communication, and thus provide SDV support (among other things)? Assuming yes, why wasn't tru2way finalized before SDV was rolled out? (Short answer - because they weren't legally obligated to do so?)

Of course, all existing TiVo and cable-card TV owners are still screwed. It would be interesting to know if that screwing was a result of natural technological evolution or because of specific and planned intent on the part of cable companies.

We'll probably never find out for sure, but if we think about how data networking and television delivery have evolved in the past 10 years, it's not _that_ surprising that CableCards are one-way. Of course, it's equally plausible that somebody had the foresight, and simply chose not to include it in the spec.

How much of a cynic are you?


----------



## dlfl

As I understand it tru2way is already designed into current CableCARDs. Full 2-way mplementation (VOD, SDV handling) requires the host device to be designed accordingly (which current TiVo's aren't) and the cable system to support it too, which largely they don't -- yet.

This post by *bkdtv* is informative, I think.


----------



## dlfl

Shmooh said:


> ...........
> My thought/point is this (hypothetical but very plausible future scenario): The DVRs we bought become obsolete because cable companies (monopolies) create new technologies that make TiVos useless. Laws adjust to benefit equipment manufacturers again (like the original CableCard legislation). Who will buy that equipment, knowing it can and will just happen again, and could happen at any time? (Fool me once, yadda yadda...) ......


Answer: Us! We can't resist. We are .... early adopters! 


Shmooh said:


> ...........
> I've always liked the idea of a municipality owning/running coax and/or fiber lines to homes and leasing bandwidth to companies who want to provide services on them as an alternative.......
> .........


Similar to what's happening with natural gas and electricity, eh? I like the idea but the technical, economic and political complications of getting from here to there seem ... to say the least ... daunting!

Don't expect laws and regulations to effectively anticpate future technical developments. Glitches that screw early adopters are iintrinsic overhead to trying to regulate hi-tech things.


----------



## JWThiers

bicker said:


> And if that results in a situation where new laws are needed, then new laws will be passed. That's simply not the case yet. Rather, technology is going to catch up. tru2way paves the way. Us early adopters pay a penalty from being early adopters -- that's always the way of things. So our early CableCARD devices will eventually no longer be very useful. That shouldn't be very surprising to anyone.


Yes with time new laws will need to be written, but I don't think SDV or Tru2way does anything to make cable cards obsolete. Cable cards fulfills the requirement for separable security devices. I suspect that the cable companies will still have to have some form of separable security no matter what other changes they make to their networks. Our early cable card devices will be obsoleted by SDV and Tru2way not because of cable cards.


----------



## bicker

Shmooh said:


> The implications of lumping SDV with VoD and PPV (while that may be true legally) are much more far reaching. Not to split hairs, but I don't consider a logical view of the technologies to be my _preference_ as to how they _should_ be categorized.


There is nothing inherently "logical" about your preferred differentiation. The logical differentiation is the one that is imposed by the law: linear versus non-linear. It is a reflection of the objective, non-controversial, not prejudicial physics of the situation. Any other criteria that one could come up with would not be able to rise to the same level. Generally, such other criteria would involve more tenuous qualities, such as could be affected by marketing, packaging, or personal selection.



Shmooh said:


> The categorization just makes the most logical sense.


To you.


Shmooh said:


> Hence - not a preference.


Hence, a preference. 



Shmooh said:


> What does it mean for companies like TiVo if SDV forces them out of the market?


It's immaterial. SDV didn't force them out of the market.



Shmooh said:


> My thought/point is this (hypothetical but very plausible future scenario): The DVRs we bought become obsolete because cable companies (monopolies) create new technologies that make TiVos useless.


Didn't happen, so it is pointless to speculate about it. Truly.



Shmooh said:


> Laws adjust to benefit equipment manufacturers again (like the original CableCard legislation). Who will buy that equipment, knowing it can and will just happen again, and could happen at any time? (Fool me once, yadda yadda...) Doesn't that effectively prevent competition in that market space by an implied threat of changing technology by a monopoly? How can any company compete in that kind of market?


The problem though was prompted by the government rushing regulation when the marketplace was not sufficiently stable enough to determine what the requirements should have been. Heck, the way things are now, is the path forward even clear enough yet? The alternative would be to have government, or a single Ma Bell, impose reality. Neither is acceptable to enough people in the country. So everyone is forced to live with the ramifications of living in a free society, where things sometimes aren't very smooth because of how a free society works.



Shmooh said:


> Whether you look at it from a consumer perspective or device vendor perspective, hasn't cable company monopoly harmed you?


The cable companies don't have a monopoly. If you don't like cable, switch to satellite. Or just use your own antenna and Netflix. If it is important enough, move to where you can get better reception, or choices. This is the reality. The FCC even has tried to deny it, but when they did so they were spanked by the US Court of Appeals.



Shmooh said:


> Well, I'd hardly call somebody buying a CableCard device an 'early adopter'.


Anyone buying anything before the marketplace for that thing is sufficiently stable is an early adopter. I cannot imagine what you could possibly be thinking is the definition of early adopter, besides that.


----------



## bicker

Shmooh said:


> Assuming yes, why wasn't tru2way finalized before SDV was rolled out? (Short answer - because they weren't legally obligated to do so?)


"They" are still not obligated to do so. The obligation to put such strictures in place rests on the government. What you're seeing is a reflection of the government lacking the intelligence to foresee what technologies are going to be needed in the future, and building those technologies before the marketplace prompts suppliers to provide capabilities for which those technologies that government should have already put in place would provide the kinds of flexibility that we might want.

Again, back when I was working for Ma Bell, before there were more than one phone company, we did this. We thought ahead. We put everything in place before consumers even knew they wanted it. We were provided vast resources beyond what a normal company would normally have -- our profit was a percentage of expense, not a percentage of revenue. Those days are gone though. The people of our country decided that they didn't want that kind of overhead, and they therefore decided that they were willing to live with the consequences of that decision, in return for the promise that competition between cable companies and satellite providers provide.



Shmooh said:


> Of course, all existing TiVo and cable-card TV owners are still screwed.


I have a TiVo S1. I've been "screwed" before. It won't be a big shock to be "screwed" again. My TiVo S1 does exactly what I paid for it to do. The fact that the environment within which I would use such a device has changed so much in less than a decade that I effectively, now, have a big paperweight, doesn't mean anyone did anything wrong, or someone is getting away with something that they shouldn't be able to get away with. It is just a reflection of reality.



Shmooh said:


> It would be interesting to know if that screwing was a result of natural technological evolution or because of specific and planned intent on the part of cable companies.


Curmudgeons love to raise the specter of stuff like that, but it is simply bull. I know; In my previous career, I used audit them all. I know, from personal observation, that such accusations are not much more than baseless whining, and self-centered myopia.


----------



## morac

JWThiers said:


> Yes with time new laws will need to be written, but I don't think SDV or Tru2way does anything to make cable cards obsolete. Cable cards fulfills the requirement for separable security devices. I suspect that the cable companies will still have to have some form of separable security no matter what other changes they make to their networks. Our early cable card devices will be obsoleted by SDV and Tru2way not because of cable cards.


That's actually a point most people forget or ignore. CableCards aren't going away nor are they aren't being replaced by SDV or Tru2Way. As you said, none of these has anything to do with the others. CableCards handle the encryption, SDV is a method of sending channels only as needed and Tru2Way is communication standard to allow consumer electronic devices to talk to the cable head-end.

I'll point out that there is one exception to cable cards obsoleting our early cable card devices and that's the M-Cards. Some devices can't use M-Cards at all and some can only use M-Cards in S-Card mode (like the S3).


----------



## dlfl

JWThiers said:


> Yes with time new laws will need to be written, but I don't think SDV or Tru2way does anything to make cable cards obsolete. Cable cards fulfills the requirement for separable security devices. I suspect that the cable companies will still have to have some form of separable security no matter what other changes they make to their networks. Our early cable card devices will be obsoleted by SDV and Tru2way not because of cable cards.


I agree except I wonder if (hope?) you are a too pessimistic about "our early cable card devices." I have periods of several weeks without any major TA (or CableCARD) problems and during that time "how sweet it is!" -- well relatively speaking; still an assortment of small problems that I can live with. Maybe TA/CableCARD problems will settle down eventually and our devices won't be obsoleted. We'll probably never have VOD but that doesn't bother me that much. There's Netflix, Amazon and YouTube. For MRV with CCI = 0x02, I wonder it isn't feasible for TiVo to give us a solution through just a software update?


----------



## mikeyts

When I read "our early CableCARD devices", TiVo didn't spring to mind. I thought about the millions of televisions sold with CableCARD slots; eventually they won't be able to get much of anything with just a CableCARD.

TiVo's fine right now and I don't see that immediately changing. If you wanted cable providers VOD, why'd you buy a TiVo? As for MRV, they probably should redo that to use some secure streaming method (as they should have done to begin with, like Moxi) instead of just slowly copying files around. (I wonder what Moxi uses for that? There are a few different streaming protocols emerging which use DTCP/IP for authentication and protection).


----------



## JWThiers

morac said:


> I'll point out that there is one exception to cable cards obsoleting our early cable card devices and that's the M-Cards. Some devices can't use M-Cards at all and some can only use M-Cards in S-Card mode (like the S3).


Then the technology that the cards use isn't obsolete, they are reduced function with the older S3 units.


----------



## JWThiers

dlfl said:


> I agree except I wonder if (hope?) you are a too pessimistic about "our early cable card devices." I have periods of several weeks without any major TA (or CableCARD) problems and during that time "how sweet it is!" -- well relatively speaking; still an assortment of small problems that I can live with. Maybe TA/CableCARD problems will settle down eventually and our devices won't be obsoleted. We'll probably never have VOD but that doesn't bother me that much. There's Netflix, Amazon and YouTube. For MRV with CCI = 0x02, I wonder it isn't feasible for TiVo to give us a solution through just a software update?


SDV probably won't do it, IF they continue to work out the kinks with the TA's. I just don't know enough about Tru2way to say. Can they upgrade the OS enough to do it with a firmware /OS update or does it actually require a hardware update. But the Cable Card is probably going to be around a while.

Out of curiosity does anyone remember, why they decided to use CC in the first place? IIRC the cable companies fought to get something to address security issues with 3rd party CE devices and the CC was what came out from that.


----------



## mikeyts

morac said:


> Some devices can't use M-Cards at all and some can only use M-Cards in S-Card mode (like the S3).


Do you know which devices can't use them? By spec, M-Cards are supposed to be indistinguishable from an S-Card when plugged into an S-Card-only slot (I assume that the card can tell by some difference in signalling and puts itself into compatibility mode). This was so service providers wouldn't have to continue stocking S-Cards when M-Cards became available.


----------



## mikeyts

JWThiers said:


> Out of curiosity does anyone remember, why they decided to use CC in the first place? IIRC the cable companies fought to get something to address security issues with 3rd party CE devices and the CC was what came out from that.


The Telecommunications Act of 1996 required the cable industry to separate the mechanisms which they use for secure conditional access from the devices which they lease so that the those mechanisms could be incorporated into retail products in such a way as to be portable from cable system to cable system. This was similar in intent to the congressional fiat which resulted in the creation of the modular phone jack; I date myself, but when I grew up you had to lease phone handsets from your service provider (at that time, always a division of Bell).

The cable industry created CableLabs to create standards for that and a few other things (like data modems); CableCARD was a creation of their OpenCable project.

The FCC asked the cable industry and CE OEMs to sit down and agree upon a standard for carriage of digital television over cable; the separable security requirement got rolled up into that. The two sides went round and round arguing about the details until the FCC finally told them to decided on something by a given date, or they were going to decide for them (having a solution in place was considered to be crucial to the success of the DTV transition). At the end of 2002, the industries came back with the "Plug and Play Memorandum of Understanding", signed by all of the major cable MSOs and CE manufacturers. In September of 2003, the FCC adopted those recommendations (with, I believe, some minor modifications), codifying them into their regulations.


----------



## JWThiers

Thanks for the history lesson.


----------



## Shmooh

Re: bicker's response to my recent posts - I think we'll just have to agree to disagree, here. I don't agree with your rationale, you don't agree with mine. That's cool - it's an internet message board. Where would we be without conflicting opinions? 

One genuine question, though:


bicker said:


> The problem though was prompted by the government rushing regulation when the marketplace was not sufficiently stable enough to determine what the requirements should have been.


I thought the government gave the cable co's lots of time to do this, but that they were dragging their feet and stalling because they didn't want to help their potential competition? Quite seriously - is that not what happened or is this just your personal interpretation?


----------



## bicker

Read the words you quoted again. I said, "... the *government *rushing regulation ..." The point I was making was that the entity that rushed was the *government*... The government acted before it (the government) was adequately prepared to act (in a manner that would have deftly avoided the imperfect situations that we have been discussing).

Now, whether that was because (1) the government dragged its feet, or was otherwise unwilling to invest the resources it needed to invest to get itself to the point where it could be adequately prepared to act (i.e., issue regulations to deftly avoid the aforementioned imperfect situations), 
*or* 
(2) because the reality simply was that there was no way for the government to have been adequately prepared to act (because the future directions of technology and need were not yet clear enough for any reasonable person to have reliably determined what they were going to be) at the time that political pressures were applied, effectively forcing the government to act before it was adequately prepared to act,​... *that's* an open question.


----------



## Shmooh

bicker said:


> Read the words you quoted again. I said, "... the *government *rushing regulation ..." ...


I understood that you said the government was the one who rushed the regulation - sorry if I was unclear.

I'm not trying to be contentious, but what I'm asking is what evidence you have of that being the case? I'm not accusing, it just wasn't what I thought was the case so I'd like more information about it.


----------



## JWThiers

bicker said:


> "They" are still not obligated to do so. The obligation to put such strictures in place rests on the government. What you're seeing is a reflection of the government lacking the intelligence to foresee what technologies are going to be needed in the future, and building those technologies before the marketplace prompts suppliers to provide capabilities for which those technologies that government should have already put in place would provide the kinds of flexibility that we might want.


For starters I don't have an issue withe SDV if it gets more channels on the system fine. Nobody can see into the future that well to predict what the situation will be in 1 year let alone the 5+ years since those regulations were codified. (regulations that the CE OEM's and cable companies helped write I might add) And while the cable companies don't have a legal responsibility to help with TA's, they probably did so voluntarily to prevent the FCC from getting involved. The FCC wanted to help promote competition so they opened up the cable systems to 3rd party devices like Tivo. If the cable companies after years of negotiation with CE OEM's come up with a standard that the FCC codified, then unilaterally made changes to their systems that makes those standards obsolete, without making attempts to minimize the impact of those changes (i.e. help with developing TA's), the FCC would have been justifiably concerned with such actions. IMO that is probably why that enforcement decision was overturned. If they hadn't been working with CE OEM's like Tivo to where possible add an external tuning adapter that enforcement action might have stuck.


----------



## Stormspace

JWThiers said:


> For starters I don't have an issue withe SDV if it gets more channels on the system fine. Nobody can see into the future that well to predict what the situation will be in 1 year let alone the 5+ years since those regulations were codified. (regulations that the CE OEM's and cable companies helped write I might add) And while the cable companies don't have a legal responsibility to help with TA's, they probably did so voluntarily to prevent the FCC from getting involved. The FCC wanted to help promote competition so they opened up the cable systems to 3rd party devices like Tivo. If the cable companies after years of negotiation with CE OEM's come up with a standard that the FCC codified, then unilaterally made changes to their systems that makes those standards obsolete, without making attempts to minimize the impact of those changes (i.e. help with developing TA's), the FCC would have been justifiably concerned with such actions. IMO that is probably why that enforcement decision was overturned. If they hadn't been working with CE OEM's like Tivo to where possible add an external tuning adapter that enforcement action might have stuck.


Unfortunately for me SDV hasn't been ruled out as the reason for my issues.


----------



## morac

mikeyts said:


> Do you know which devices can't use them? By spec, M-Cards are supposed to be indistinguishable from an S-Card when plugged into an S-Card-only slot (I assume that the card can tell by some difference in signalling and puts itself into compatibility mode). This was so service providers wouldn't have to continue stocking S-Cards when M-Cards became available.


I don't know of any personally, but I recall reading posts by some people who have older TVs that don't work with M-Cards. Remember originally the TiVo S3 didn't work at all with M-Cards until a software upgrade gave it the partial compatibility it has now. So apparently M-Cards aren't 100% backwards compatible or that wouldn't have been an issue. That or chip manufacturers weren't building the card interface to spec.

Many older TVs don't have the ability to upgrade their firmware so if there is a compatibility problem with M-Cards the user is SOL. The number is probably small though since TVs with cableCARD slots never really caught on.


----------



## bicker

Shmooh said:


> I understood that you said the government was the one who rushed the regulation - sorry if I was unclear.
> 
> I'm not trying to be contentious, but what I'm asking is what evidence you have of that being the case? I'm not accusing, it just wasn't what I thought was the case so I'd like more information about it.


I think we're talking at cross-purposes. Let's turn this around, and let me ask you: Why do you think that the government's rules for separable security and facilitation of digital cable-ready access failed to satisfy your personal criteria, with regard to the discussion we're having?


----------



## bicker

JWThiers said:


> IMO that is probably why that enforcement decision was overturned. If they hadn't been working with CE OEM's like Tivo to where possible add an external tuning adapter that enforcement action might have stuck.


I don't see anything in the FCC decision overturning the fines of the enforcement division that would support that.


----------



## dlfl

JWThiers said:


> IMO that is probably why that enforcement decision was overturned. If they hadn't been working with CE OEM's like Tivo to where possible add an external tuning adapter that enforcement action might have stuck.





bicker said:


> I don't see anything in the FCC decision overturning the fines of the enforcement division that would support that.


In the decision as you linked in an earlier post:

In para. 14:


> We do recognize, as the Bureau found, that implementation of SDV may have a
> disruptive effect on the relatively small percentage of consumers who use CableCARD-equipped
> UDCPs. Again, however, that negative impact must be considered in the context of our rules and the
> consumer benefits of SDV described above. In addition, the potential disruption may be limited because:
> (1) the more popular cable channels are not prime candidates for SDV migration because cable operators
> only free up capacity to the extent that subscribers do not request a particular channel at a particular time;
> (2) market demand for UDCPs is not strong and *consumers with TiVo UDCP devices can use the tuning
> adapter to access SDV programming*;and (3) bi-directional devices that will work with SDV content are
> beginning to be introduced in the marketplace. We further note that TWC and Cox have sought to
> minimize the inconvenience associated with SDV migrations by offering set-top boxes to subscribers with
> UDCP devices at reduced rates for a limited period. *In addition, TWC has offered customers free tuning
> adapters, which allow TiVo UDCPs to access SDV programming without a set-top box*.


Bold emphasis added by me.

Then in the Para. 15:


> For the above reasons, we find that TWCs and Coxs migration of programming to an
> SDV platform did not violate Sections 76.1201 and 76.640(b) of the Commissions rules, and we vacate
> the Bureaus previous decisions proposing and instituting forfeitures against TWC and Cox related to
> their deployment of SDV.


Thus it seems there is at least some support for *JWThiers*'s opinion, noting that the highlighted text was only a small portion of the overall collection of reasons given. If the highlighted reasons did not exist, would the decision have been the same? We can't be sure of that in fact.


----------



## JWThiers

And the TA would work with other CE devices that have an actual USB port (Unfortunately that does NOT include any TV's That I am aware of), not just Tivo's. I have seen where people have used a TA with Windows Media Centers on PC's equipped with cable card devices.


----------



## mikeyts

JWThiers said:


> And the TA would work with other CE devices that have an actual USB port (Unfortunately that does NOT include any TV's That I am aware of), not just Tivo's. I have seen where people have used a TA with Windows Media Centers on PC's equipped with cable card devices.


The TA can be made to work on any CableCARD tuner device with a functional USB port, if the manufacturer of that device chooses to modify its code to handle it and can distribute the new firmware to the owners for installation. I believe that there are quite a few televisions on the market with USB ports, generally put there to give access to photos on flash drives and to allow for firmware updates. My 3 y/o Mits LT-46231 (w/CableCARD slot) has a USB connection; I've got a flash drive with a firmware update to give its TV Guide On Screen feature the ability to get data from DTV channels (as opposed to the VBI of now non-existent analog channels).

Any new Unidirectional Digital Cable Ready devices should probably come with the ability to handle a TA, or be prepared to update soon after launch, like Moxi DVR. However, I suspect that the Moxi DVR will be that last UDCP ever brought to market.


----------



## Shmooh

bicker said:


> I think we're talking at cross-purposes. Let's turn this around, and let me ask you: Why do you think that the government's rules for separable security and facilitation of digital cable-ready access failed to satisfy your personal criteria, with regard to the discussion we're having?


Yeah, maybe our signals have crossed a bit.

My issue with the whole situation is this: SDV was rolled out before a solution for people with CableCards was created and solidified. While I think the blame lies with the cable company for the rollout timeline, if faulty government regulation allowed this, then that would be my issue with the regulation.

When "broadcast" (i.e., non VoD or PPV) channels are offered to standard customers, they should be offered to CableCard customers (so other devices could use the cable network). That's basically the issue regulation was trying to resolve (right?).

I think this comes down to the fact that to a non-cablecard customer, SDV doesn't even appear to exist. Yes, it's a new technology that operates behind-the-scenes a tiny bit like VoD, but ultimately it's just a more efficient way of doing broadcast television on a cable network.

If cable companies can bypass support for third-party devices (Tivo, Moxi, CC-ready TVs, etc.) and force people to rent their boxes to receive "broadcast" service, then that's the issue I have with the regulation and/or cable company rollout of SDV (depending on where you want to put the blame).

I think the FCC recognized what was happening (how SDV is really just broadcast television with new technology), and fined the cable companies for their premature rollout. The fines were recinded when it appeared the cable companies were trying to make amends via tuning adapters.

So, my thoughts summary:
* CableCards are supposed to supply decryption service to allow consumers their choice of device so they wouldn't have to rent boxes from the cable company to watch broadcast television.
* SDV is really just efficient broadcast television.
* The regulation is poorly written if it allows "broadcast" television to be delivered without support for third party devices.
* It appears cable companies took advantage of this loop-hole to roll out SDV without CableCard support and thus not allow/enable "broadcast" television service to third party devices.
* The FCC fined the cable companies for doing this.

That seems pretty clear cut to me. It all comes down to whether or not SDV is truly broadcast television or if it's a specialized service like VoD. Legally, it may be classified as the latter (from what has been said here). However, because of how it behaves, it _should_ be classified as the former.

It's hard/impossible to predict where technology will go, so I don't think it's fair to blame the government for not planning for all contingencies in its regulation. I believe the argument Bicker is trying to make is that the regulation was faulty because it was premature.

That very well may be true, but if it is, my long held belief was that the cable companies were trying to stall/block this regulation altogether, and were "dragging their feet" to achieve that goal. If the regulation is poorly written (which it apparently is), then I've always thought it's a result of this foot-dragging, not the government jumping the gun as it was simply trying to put an end to the stalling tactics.

So, if there's any evidence one way or the other, I'd genuinely like to know.

(Sorry for the length of the post - I'm trying to explain myself as clearly as I can.)


----------



## imrickster

SCSIRAID said:


> Yes.. That is what impresses me about them in this case. They have poured much effort into this issue. My email file with discussions is huge and I get responses in hours to sometimes minutes. Once you get into Tech Ops... everything changes. One of the guys I deal with has a TiVo S2 DT himself.
> 
> Carolinas... but not based in Raleigh.


I am on the Greensboro TWC system and I have experienced nothing but frustration. I would love to have a contact that actually understands the technology. Most support people that I have spoken to have limited (if any) understanding of cable cards / tuning adaptors /Tivos.


----------



## dlfl

Shmooh said:


> .........When "broadcast" (i.e., non VoD or PPV) channels are offered to standard customers, they should be offered to CableCard customers (so other devices could use the cable network). That's basically the issue regulation was trying to resolve (right?).
> ...........
> That seems pretty clear cut to me. It all comes down to whether or not SDV is truly broadcast television or if it's a specialized service like VoD. Legally, it may be classified as the latter (from what has been said here). However, because of how it behaves, it _should_ be classified as the former.
> .............


It muddies these discussions to use an incorrect defintion of "broadcast", (e.g., "non VoD or PPV"). From FCC regulations, Title 47, Part 2.1 (Terms and Definitions):


> Broadcasting Service. A
> radiocommunication service in which
> the transmissions are intended for direct
> reception by the general public.
> This service may include sound transmissions,
> television transmissions or
> other types of transmission


Thus only local broadcast stations are encompassed by the definition in the context of this discussion, which for most systems *excludes* the major portion of non-Vod or PPV channels.

This is an important distinction because there are FCC rules for cable services that are specific to broadcast TV stations, e.g., "must carry".


----------



## jacksonian

imrickster said:


> I am on the Greensboro TWC system and I have experienced nothing but frustration. I would love to have a contact that actually understands the technology. Most support people that I have spoken to have limited (if any) understanding of cable cards / tuning adaptors /Tivos.


I'm in Greensboro and have had TiVo with cablecards and tuning adapter since they came out. I was the first tuning adapter install in Greensboro.

What kind of trouble are you having? If you're having trouble with SDV channels, call TWC and say, "I need to be connected to Cable Card Support". Those guys know what they're doing. If you need someone local, pm me and I can give you the email or phone for the supervisor for our area.


----------



## Shmooh

dlfl said:


> It muddies these discussions to use an incorrect defintion of "broadcast", (e.g., "non VoD or PPV"). From FCC regulations, Title 47, Part 2.1 (Terms and Definitions):
> Thus only local broadcast stations are encompassed by the definition in the context of this discussion, which for most systems *excludes* the major portion of non-Vod or PPV channels.
> 
> This is an important distinction because there are FCC rules for cable services that are specific to broadcast TV stations, e.g., "must carry".


Good point. I was thinking of 'broadcast' from a perspective where a transmission is sent out with no particular target in mind, not the apparently much narrower FCC definition.

What word should I use to mean: "channels sent out to all people simultaneously on a cable network"?

Incidentally - I'm perfectly willing to admit that I don't know what I'm talking about in this discussion. I'm not a lawyer, nor a television industry expert. I'm an engineer in an unrelated field with some very basic knowledge of the underlying technologies and how they behave, and I _thought_ I had some basic knowledge of how and why things are they way they are in the cable TV industry. I'm really just looking for new information or clarifications of that knowledge, as it seems like the CableCard situation is even muddier than I already thought it was (which is pretty muddy).


----------



## dlfl

Shmooh said:


> Good point. I was thinking of 'broadcast' from a perspective where a transmission is sent out with no particular target in mind, not the apparently much narrower FCC definition.
> 
> What word should I use to mean: "channels sent out to all people simultaneously on a cable network"?
> 
> Incidentally - I'm perfectly willing to admit that I don't know what I'm talking about in this discussion. I'm not a lawyer, nor a television industry expert. I'm an engineer in an unrelated field with some very basic knowledge of the underlying technologies and how they behave, and I _thought_ I had some basic knowledge of how and why things are they way they are in the cable TV industry. I'm really just looking for new information or clarifications of that knowledge, as it seems like the CableCard situation is even muddier than I already thought it was (which is pretty muddy).


"Broadcast" has traditionally meant OTA, i.e., from an antenna, in the radio and TV industry. In the TCP/IP world there is a broadcast mode that matches your concept, I think. I'm not sure what single word would mean what you intend. Frequently it's just left as implicit context, but I suppose you could say "non-premium, non-PPV and non-VOD" (very clumsy of course).

My perspective is very similar to yours actually, EE by education at a time when vacuum tubes were mainstream technology. 

I think we engineers (being nerds of course) tend to think if we can understand a situation we can devise a solution. In the case of TiVo and Digital Cable, from a user perspective, it may not work that way. It involves so many interlocking political, technical and economic factors.


----------



## moyekj

Unlike Cisco TAs the Moto TAs don't have any specific diagnostics page to indicate which channels are SDV. However after some fooling around I came up with a reliable indirect method:

There is an indirect way to find out if a channel is SDV with TiVo and Motorola Tuning adapter, but it's not very eloquent:
1. Tune to channel you want to check
2. Go to TiVo Central->Messages&Settings->Account&System Information->Tuning Adapter->DVR Diagnostics and note the Frequency associated with the channel you tuned to.
3. Left click out and then choose Tuning Adapter Diagnostics and then scroll down to DOWNSTREAM STATUS and click SELECT. If the INBAND FREQ listed on that screen matches the frequency you noted in step 2 then this is an SDV channel.

The key is that the INBAND FREQ in DOWNSTREAM STATUS page only updates when tuning to an SDV channel. You will note for example if you tune to known non-SDV channels such as local broadcast channels that the INBAND FREQ will not update.


----------



## bradenmcg

Not sure if anyone is still updating the original post here, but TimeWarner has SDV in the Northeast Ohio / PA market. They do have TAs, but in my area at least the SDV channel quality can come and go. Sometimes it is fine but other times you get a LOT of macroblocking making it unwatchable.

They do have the flag set on SDV preventing suggestions from tuning SDV channels too, at least in my area.


----------



## Sicklybutsexy

I have a Tivo with an M-card and I am consistently not getting two channels (channels 234 and 254, NHLHD and REDZONE HD). Sometimes the NHLHD comes in but most of the time I get a black screen "searching for signal, cable in" or some sorts. My cable box upstairs get these channels fine. I called comcast and of course the person I talked to didn't even know what SDV was and so couldn't tell me if that was the problem. They're gonna send another guy out today (after the first one failed to rectify the issue) as I'm paying for these channels and just not receiving them.

Is this an SDV issue?


----------



## dlfl

bradenmcg said:


> Not sure if anyone is still updating the original post here, but TimeWarner has SDV in the Northeast Ohio / PA market. They do have TAs, but in my area at least the SDV channel quality can come and go. Sometimes it is fine but other times you get a LOT of macroblocking making it unwatchable.
> 
> They do have the flag set on SDV preventing suggestions from tuning SDV channels too, at least in my area.


See **this post** in the TWC Carolinas thread and other posts by *SCSIRAID* in that thread. It's pretty conclusive the pixelation on TWC SDV channels is a TiVo software problem although only actually proved for the Raleigh NC area. I have TWC in SW Ohio and I'm convinced I have the same issue.


----------



## JimWall

Make sure the tech checks signal strength and noise levels. If that is OK then probably an issue with properly setting up your account for the channels you are paying for.


----------



## FrancesTheMute

Shmooh said:


> * SDV is really just efficient broadcast television.


If by "really efficient broadcast television" you mean "complete cop out by the cable companies to avoid having to invest the billions of profits they get every year into actually upgrading and improving their infrastructure" then, yes.


----------



## bicker

That's a pretty myopic perspective, though. Those cable companies are in business specifically to make money for their investors. Spending "billions in profits" when that's not what is in the best interest of those investors is irresponsible, and indeed, deliberately ignoring the overriding obligations that the cable companies have to pursue some purist perspective of how you personally would prefer they achieve greater capacity may even be legally actionable.

There is no question that broadcast hundreds of linear channels when any significant number of them are *not being watched by anyone* is wasteful. Waste is not an ethic.


----------



## Joe Siegler

Add Dallas/Ft Worth to the list of places it's at. Time Warner Cable has been sending out letters this week to cable card customers saying that starting on April 5th, a slew of HD channels are going SDV.

If you bring their letter to one of the listed areas in the letter, you can get a free Tuning Adapter. I have three cable cards in two TiVo's, so I'm hoping they let me get two, or I'll be annoyed.


----------



## DaveDFW

Joe Siegler said:


> If you bring their letter to one of the listed areas in the letter, you can get a free Tuning Adapter. I have three cable cards in two TiVo's, so I'm hoping they let me get two, or I'll be annoyed.


I went by the Plano service center today to get the tuning adapters, but they don't have them in stock yet.

The guy at the desk just took my name and phone number and asked how many I needed. I don't think there is an issue with getting more than one, as long as the number requested isn't higher than the number of cablecards you rent. 

TTYL
David


----------



## lrhorer

dlfl said:


> It muddies these discussions to use an incorrect defintion of "broadcast", (e.g., "non VoD or PPV").


Well, actually, he is using the correct definition of the term. In context, the correct term is not "broadcast", but "OTA Broadcast".



dlfl said:


> This is an important distinction because there are FCC rules for cable services that are specific to broadcast TV stations, e.g., "must carry".


Yes, but the distinction most properly lies not in the definition of the general term "broadcast", but rather in being specific enough in the terms that are used. OTA broadcast video channels are a subset of all broadcast video channels.


----------



## lrhorer

FrancesTheMute said:


> If by "really efficient broadcast television" you mean "complete cop out by the cable companies to avoid having to invest the billions of profits they get every year into actually upgrading and improving their infrastructure" then, yes.


It is physically impossible to upgrade or improve the infrastructure of a non-switched system in any fashion which would allow the same level of services that SDV does, so your argument is nonsense. If the CATV companies spent such a huge amount on upgrading their infrastructure that they would have to charge $10,000 a month to every subscriber in order to recoup the costs, it still would not allow the CATV companies to offer even a tiny fraction of the services a switched protocol like SDV does. Although I cannot stop you or anyone else from displaying one's ignorance by spouting off concerning issues concerning which they have not the slightest clue whatsoever, I heartily suggest you learn something about the underlying issues before expressing an opinion concerning what engineering choices a company should undertake.


----------



## lrhorer

Shmooh said:


> My issue with the whole situation is this: SDV was rolled out before a solution for people with CableCards was created and solidified.


CableCards have nothing directly to do with SDV, except that SDV requires a CableCard capable device. But then, so does every encrypted digital channel, SDV or not.



Shmooh said:


> While I think the blame lies with the cable company for the rollout timeline, if faulty government regulation allowed this, then that would be my issue with the regulation.


There's plentyu of fault to go around in the situation, including no small part whihc must be places squarely at the feet of consumers. The cornerstone, however, lies with the FCC. They allowed the CE manufacturers to demand a UDCP spec by requiring the CATV companies (vis-a-vis CableLabs) to develop one, but then did not require them to develop a bidirectional spec. Frankly, they should never have caved in to the CE manufacturers, although admittedly given the rationale put forward at the time, this is a case of 20/20 hindsight. What they should not have under any circumstances failed to do was demand a 2-way spec (with or without a 1-way spec) from the outset.



Shmooh said:


> When "broadcast" (i.e., non VoD or PPV) channels are offered to standard customers, they should be offered to CableCard customers (so other devices could use the cable network). That's basically the issue regulation was trying to resolve (right?).


No.



Shmooh said:


> I think this comes down to the fact that to a non-cablecard customer, SDV doesn't even appear to exist. Yes, it's a new technology that operates behind-the-scenes a tiny bit like VoD


It's not "a tiny bit like VOD". That's like saying, "A catfish is a tiny bit like a fish." VOD is SDV, start to finish. VOD is merely one of the myriad uses to which SDV can be put. The fact VOD and IPPV are not offered with the Tuning Adapter is entirely artificial. The CATV systems don't offer it with TA based systems because they don't want to. It's all the same underlying mechanism, and that mechanism is SDV.



Shmooh said:


> but ultimately it's just a more efficient way of doing broadcast television on a cable network.


SDV can do a great deal more than that. Part of the problem as it developed was the notion 2-way services would not be deployed for non-interactive video. At that time it was not envisioned by many that ordinary scheduled video would ever really require a 2-way infrastructure, and thus a standard could reasonably be developed which applied only to 1-way protocols, and ordinary scheduled programming would be covered sufficiently by the spec to allow any non-interactive video content to be viewed. It was myopic. The notion you express above is equally myopic in the other direction.



Shmooh said:


> * CableCards are supposed to supply decryption service to allow consumers their choice of device so they wouldn't have to rent boxes from the cable company to watch broadcast television.


Close enough.



Shmooh said:


> * SDV is really just efficient broadcast television.


SDV provides the ability to make extremely effcient use of bandwidth. It is not limited to broadcast video, or to any particular type of broadcast video.



Shmooh said:


> * The regulation is poorly written if it allows "broadcast" television to be delivered without support for third party devices.


The regulations (plural) are poorly written, period.



Shmooh said:


> * It appears cable companies took advantage of this loop-hole to roll out SDV without CableCard support and thus not allow/enable "broadcast" television service to third party devices.


Nothng of the sort, on several levels. CableCard support is fi8rmly embedded into the SDV specs. It is the lack of bidirectional devices (and a spec thereof) that prevents people from getting SDV. It has nothing to do with CableCards.



Shmooh said:


> That seems pretty clear cut to me. It all comes down to whether or not SDV is truly broadcast television or if it's a specialized service like VoD. Legally, it may be classified as the latter (from what has been said here). However, because of how it behaves, it _should_ be classified as the former.


Now that is much closer to the mark. SDV is a delivery mechanism. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the content being delivered or how the product in question is packed and marketed by the CATV system. The fact the CATV company chooses to provide some services in bundles, ala carte on a monthly basis for others, and individually on a per viewing basis for yet others has essentially nothing to do with the delivery mechanism.



Shmooh said:


> It's hard/impossible to predict where technology will go, so I don't think it's fair to blame the government for not planning for all contingencies in its regulation. I believe the argument Bicker is trying to make is that the regulation was faulty because it was premature.


It was in no way premature, and the major flaw had nothing to do with the timing. The major flaw was the FCC was trying to appease the involved industries. They should never have caved in to the demands of the CE manufacturers or the CATV providers either one. They should not have even caved in to the demands of consumers. Two way services were a hot item long before the 1996 act. If anything, the FCC should have required the formation of a completely independent standards organization, not some industry lackey made up of industry members. It should have required the development of universal standards not merely for security or for specific consumer-owned devices, but for every device of any type to be used in a CATV environment. From a standards viewpoint, no differentiation should have been allowed for any particular type of programming.



Shmooh said:


> That very well may be true, but if it is, my long held belief was that the cable companies were trying to stall/block this regulation altogether, and were "dragging their feet" to achieve that goal.


It's more complex than that, but the attitude of the CATV companies has much more to do with them wanting to control all aspects of their product delivery than anything else.


----------



## lrhorer

bicker said:


> That's a pretty myopic perspective, though. Those cable companies are in business specifically to make money for their investors.


That's not the most important point, nor the best reason for supporting SDV, no matter who is doing the support. The fact is no amount of money, no matter how huge, could ever match the capabilities of SDV (or other switched protocol) by an exceedingly wide margin. It isn't that it is unwise to employ another means of delivering the potential. It is that it is impossible to employ some other means of delivering the same potential. That SDV is vastly less expensive than some other hair-brained and highly limited means of deploying additional channels is beside the main point: more a matter of icing on the cake than being the cake itself.



bicker said:


> There is no question that broadcast hundreds of linear channels when any significant number of them are *not being watched by anyone* is wasteful. Waste is not an ethic.


That's not quite on the mark, eitehr. SDV does not only allow transmission of content when no one else is watching the competing content. It allows transmission of content at the very same time and on the same timeslot as competing content, provided it is on a different switch realm. Half the people in the city could be watching a particular program, but if a particular node (one node out of perhaps 100 - 1000 different nodes) doesn't have anyone watching the program on it, then that timeslot can be used by something else on the node in question.


----------



## Shmooh

Sorry for the delay - Haven't checked back here in a while because the thread was so quiet.

Thanks, lrhorer, for the clarifications. I have no disagreements with anything you said, but do have a couple questions.



lrhorer said:


> Shmooh said:
> 
> 
> 
> When "broadcast" (i.e., non VoD or PPV) channels are offered to standard customers, they should be offered to CableCard customers (so other devices could use the cable network). That's basically the issue regulation was trying to resolve (right?).
> 
> 
> 
> No.
Click to expand...

So what were the regulations trying to solve, exactly? If they weren't designed to allow third party (CE) vendors access to scheduled content, what were the regulations for? (Or is it just my former/above wording that sucks? This sentence is what I meant.)



lrhorer said:


> ... Part of the problem as it developed was the notion 2-way services would not be deployed for non-interactive video. At that time it was not envisioned by many that ordinary scheduled video would ever really require a 2-way infrastructure, and thus a standard could reasonably be developed which applied only to 1-way protocols ...


Oops. Guess they missed the mark on THAT one. 



lrhorer said:


> CableCard support is firmly embedded into the SDV specs. It is the lack of bidirectional devices (and a spec thereof) that prevents people from getting SDV. It has nothing to do with CableCards.


I agree that this is an important distinction with the technologies, and that it's good to clarify it. Many people have not made the distinction between SDV the technology and SDV-supplied programming (myself included - which I will try to not be guilty of in the future).

I am curious about how CableCards and SDV (the technology) relate to each other, though. If CableCard support is firmly embedded in the SDV technology specs, how was SDV-programming ever supposed to work with CableCard devices? Rhetorical question - you've already said that it wasn't. However, how DO they relate to each other? Just in how the signals are decrypted? I.e., SDV-supplied program streams can be decrypted via CableCard, end of story?



lrhorer said:


> SDV is a delivery mechanism. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the content being delivered or how the product in question is packed and marketed by the CATV system. The fact the CATV company chooses to provide some services in bundles, ala carte on a monthly basis for others, and individually on a per viewing basis for yet others has essentially nothing to do with the delivery mechanism.


No disagreement, here. This is also the crux of the problem - The delivery mechanism really shouldn't matter (from a user perspective - not a technology perspective, obviously).

Personally, the engineer in me really likes SDV (the technology) and the ability for the CATV company to provide more content without drastic/expensive network overhauls. That's really awesome.

However, it would be pretty friggen handy if there was a way to isolate the delivery mechanism from the technology that provides the final consumption of the content (e.g., Tivo software). This can be done, of course, but the CATV companies really don't want to allow anybody else to supply that technology.

I don't blame them - it's their network and they don't want third parties messing it up - but I think that problem could be solved with a standardized spec. My guess is that what they really don't want is people cutting them out of the loop - hence tru2way with OMAP - running their interface software on a third party device.

...

Hrm.. re-reading the end of your response, you're basically saying the same thing. Makes sense to me. Case in point:



lrhorer said:


> If anything, the FCC should have required the formation of a completely independent standards organization, not some industry lackey made up of industry members. It should have required the development of universal standards not merely for security or for specific consumer-owned devices, but for every device of any type to be used in a CATV environment. From a standards viewpoint, no differentiation should have been allowed for any particular type of programming.


Agree 100%.

Thanks for the well-informed and enlightening response.


----------



## RayChuang88

I think we should consider ourselves lucky. TiVo--being very familiar to most cable company techs and being only a two-tuner unit--works fairly well with most SDV adapter boxes provided by most cable companies out there. The people that seem to complain the most right now are Moxi HD users with the three-tuner box, which has known compatibility issues with SDV adapter boxes.

Comcast in my area has no plans to require the use of SDV adapters, but if they do in the future, they have said the boxes *MUST* be TiVo Series 3 and TiVo Premiere compatible (Comcast has a lot of TiVo users in northern California, not surprising given TiVo is headquartered in Alviso, CA, which is just east of Sunnyvale, CA on California highway 237).


----------



## sbiller

Shmooh said:


> However, it would be pretty friggen handy if there was a way to isolate the delivery mechanism from the technology that provides the final consumption of the content (e.g., Tivo software). This can be done, of course, but the CATV companies really don't want to allow anybody else to supply that technology.


This will all be resolved by the end of 2012. 2013 at the latest assuming there is a delay allowed.

FCC Floats 'Simple' Gateway, CableCARD Rules
http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=189236&site=lr_cable&f_src=lightreading_gnews


----------



## dlfl

RayChuang88 said:


> I think we should consider ourselves lucky. TiVo--being very familiar to most cable company techs and being only a two-tuner unit--works fairly well with most SDV adapter boxes provided by most cable companies out there. The people that seem to complain the most right now are Moxi HD users with the three-tuner box, which has known compatibility issues with SDV adapter boxes.
> ..........


Perhaps that's the world as seen by ComCast subscribers (especially by those like you who don't need Tuning Adapters) but it isn't the one seen by many Time Warner subscribers, noting that TWC has the second largest digital subscriber base. The norm for TWC techs is they are far from familiar with TiVo although they may have "heard" of it. And tuning adapters frequently have major problems on TWC systems, including needing to be "hit" by TWC frequently and failing to tune SDV channels reliably, resulting in lost recordings. There are several large threads in this forum with Time Warner in their titles that will illustrate this.


----------



## RayChuang88

dlfl said:


> Perhaps that's the world as seen by ComCast subscribers (especially by those like you who don't need Tuning Adapters) but it isn't the one seen by many Time Warner subscribers, noting that TWC has the second largest digital subscriber base. The norm for TWC techs is they are far from familiar with TiVo although they may have "heard" of it. And tuning adapters frequently have major problems on TWC systems, including needing to be "hit" by TWC frequently and failing to tune SDV channels reliably, resulting in lost recordings. There are several large threads in this forum with Time Warner in their titles that will illustrate this.


I wonder who makes the SDV adapter boxes for Time-Warner systems. I believe that Comcast uses mostly Cisco or Motorola SDV adapters for Comcast systems in other parts of the country that require its use. You ought to read the ranting and raving on AVS Forum from Moxi HD three-tuner owners on cable systems that require the use of the SDV adapter box. I almost bought a Moxi HD box but given that Moxi doesn't support Wi-Fi connections for program guide updates and the issues with SDV adapters, I went with a TiVo HD XL instead. :up:


----------



## dlfl

RayChuang88 said:


> I wonder who makes the SDV adapter boxes for Time-Warner systems. I believe that Comcast uses mostly Cisco or Motorola SDV adapters for Comcast systems in other parts of the country that require its use. You ought to read the ranting and raving on AVS Forum from Moxi HD three-tuner owners on cable systems that require the use of the SDV adapter box. I almost bought a Moxi HD box but given that Moxi doesn't support Wi-Fi connections for program guide updates and the issues with SDV adapters, I went with a TiVo HD XL instead. :up:


TWC uses mostly Cisco TA's but some systems use, or will use, Motorola. I believe the need for TA's to be "hit" results from a flaw in the way some TWC systems operate -- not a defect in the TA itself. Tuning failures could also be due to TiVo deficiencies rather than the TA alone. When this happens for a manual tune, you can retry using Tune Up/Down and the channel will come in after one or two retries (this is documented in TiVo support pages actually). I think TiVo software could implement the equivalent for scheduled tunes -- and hope they did so in 11.0f which I don't have yet.


----------



## mikeyts

The objections of the Moxi 3-tuner crowd is that the Cisco TA will only work with 2 tuners. They may not have the option of using two and even if they do who wants to deal with two of the stupid things? I believe that the Moto TA will support up to 6 tuners, same as an M-Card.

Unfortunately, the Tuning Resolver Interface Specification explicitly states (a few lines into PDF page 39):


> The TR SHALL support at least two tuners.


Brain-dead move on the part of CableLabs.


----------



## thewebgal

I have COX Fairfax and TIVOHD with 2 cable cards. 
I've also had the CISCO SDV adapter for about a year and a half. 
I regularly see it drop authorization or something - the green light starts flashing and I can't watch BBC America and Top Gear - one of my SDV channels. It was working yesterday, but tonight when I wanted to watch Jonathan Ross with Goldfrapp on BBCA - its blinking and just gives me a grey screen on that channel. Totally useless!

I've found sometimes I can go through and cycle power, unhook and reconnect the USB connector, and dink with it a bit and sometimes it will lock up for me a few moments later, and the SDV channels come through. Sometimes. But not tonight.
The few times I called and had the cable guy come out, and shows me a good picture on his box and acts like its the TIVOs fault - what can I say, I don't know what is at fault. I don't really care - I'm paying for TV I can't watch and I shouldn't need 3 gadgets from different vendors to interact just so I can watch TV. 
But I'm really tired of having to play with this mess once a week or so to get those "extra" channels that I've been paying for all along that they put on SDV service and made it more difficult for me to rely on TIVO catching them in Season pass so I can watch them when I get a chance. 

If I rip this COX cable all out, does FIOS and the TIVO work any better?
Because all I really care about is that it works when I want to watch the shows I am paying for, and this current rube goldberg mess isn't reliable and doesn't cut it.


----------



## moyekj

If you have the option of FIOS over Cox then run, don't walk to make the switch! You will get better picture quality, probably more HD channels, no TAs to mess with and no CCI issues to deal with and faster internet to boot. No brainer IMO.


----------



## JimWall

The TA's are a pain but support here is getting better.
I seem to have trouble with 1 of 3 about once a month.
2nd last time 2 went out at exactly the same time. Which leads to the theory they need reauthorization once a month to keep working.
So far I have not needed a truck roll. I have said no and called back next day where a different csr got it working.
Last time one went out the CSR admitted she had no experience but could not get ahold of a supervisor. She found the current procedures and got it working!!! It appears in this area the support docs are getting better. They used to have 2 hits to send and the new CSR said they now have something like 7 different hits to send. One that works leaves it with no green light and then I press the button in front and it works.
Also be patient. It TA takes 4 to 5 minutes to reboot and initialize. Check the tuning adapter diagnostics on TIVO while waiting. TWC CSRs cannot see this info. One first screen go to the "Next Page" then "Tuning Resolver" page which indicates it is Authorized. If not and if page 2 of "Network and Tuning status" has an RF Network IP then time for CSR to send another hit.


----------



## sbiller

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/04/fcc-to-improve-cablecard-rules-this-month.ars


----------



## denialmark

SDV is a file extension associated with Semicolon Divided Values files. Incorrect associations are the cause of many file extension errors. Scan your system to prevent, identify and repair SDV file extension association errors.


----------



## IsItLive

Thought I'd be free of the problems of SDV, but alas, got a letter today from Time Warner telling me I can pick up a tuning adapter free of charge starting on June 7th. Hope I don't have any problems with it.


----------



## svakaskutla

I got that letter as well, it worries me a bit that you have to "present the CableCARD .." in person to pick up the adapter (!) I thought those should never be removed, does this mean that I will have to run the whole set-up process again???? And if so, why wouldn't TWC give me the cards to begin with (I suffered a great deal during their installation process)...?
Any thoughts on this?


----------



## mikeyts

svakaskutla said:


> I got that letter as well, it worries me a bit that you have to "present the CableCARD .." in person to pick up the adapter (!) I thought those should never be removed, does this mean that I will have to run the whole set-up process again???? And if so, why wouldn't TWC give me the cards to begin with (I suffered a great deal during their installation process)...?
> Any thoughts on this?


I've taken the CableCARDs out of my S3 while on the phone with a TiVo CSR trying to diagnose a problem (or possibly a cable CSR while trying to diagnose a problem with a Tuning Adapter) and they continued to work when we were done.

Both TiVo and the CableCARD(s) should remember the information which paired them. Otherwise the relationship wouldn't survive the TiVo being unplugged.


----------



## cgsussman

svakaskutla said:


> I got that letter as well, it worries me a bit that you have to "present the CableCARD .." in person to pick up the adapter (!) I thought those should never be removed, does this mean that I will have to run the whole set-up process again???? And if so, why wouldn't TWC give me the cards to begin with (I suffered a great deal during their installation process)...?
> Any thoughts on this?


You don't need to present the cable card. You present the card only if your DVR (or other device) is NOT compatible with the TA, at which point they'll swap your card for a regular cable box. Since your Tivo is compatible, you just need to go pick up the TA.


----------



## bicker

Also, shutting down the device, removing the CableCARD, and then reinserting it before powering-up the device again (handling with appropriate care, of course), almost surely could not have any impact whatsoever on the pairing.


----------



## dlfl

JimWall said:


> ...........I seem to have trouble with 1 of 3 about once a month.
> 2nd last time 2 went out at exactly the same time. Which leads to the theory they need reauthorization once a month to keep working.........
> ............


**This thread** concerns exactly this problem being experienced by many in TWC SW Ohio. Some interesting info and experiences are being accumulated there, including how you can read the "Sub Expires" date from your TA diagnostics screens, which is when you will get *8 blinks".


----------



## yetis

I looked through several of the pages, but couldn't find an answer. Do I need one SDV cable adapter per device? I have all my cables distributed from one source in my media rooms. Thus, can I just use the adapter at the source and distribute the signal after my adapter? How important is the USB connection? 

Thank You


----------



## bicker

Each adapter connects to a specific TiVo via USB connection.


----------



## timstack8969

There 's been alot talk this week about comcast using Switched Digital Video (SDV) again. I am currently using my TIVO Premiere in the Cherry Hill-Comcast of Garden State system. Does anyone know if comcast will be using SDV on this comcast system soon?


----------



## morac

timstack8969 said:


> There 's been alot talk this week about comcast using Switched Digital Video (SDV) again. I am currently using my TIVO Premiere in the Cherry Hill-Comcast of Garden State system. Does anyone know if comcast will be using SDV on this comcast system soon?


I thought SDV was already being used there. Cherry Hill is supposed to be a test area. Oh and you have my condolences as I've heard that's one of the Comcast systems with the least amount of HD channels.


----------



## bicker

Comcast has made it clear that SDV is the future for their further HD expansion. 

I'd rather service providers stick with the number of HD channels that they offer now, but it isn't up to me.


----------



## nrnoble

I read the OP in this thread, it has not been updated to include any info about the Premier TiVo. Does the Premier also require a external SDV box?


----------



## SCSIRAID

nrnoble said:


> I read the OP in this thread, it has not been updated to include any info about the Premier TiVo. Does the Premier also require a external SDV box?


Yes, TA is required.


----------



## bdraw

I update the main post and made a few other changes to the future of TAs as well as removed the out dated section listing which areas use SDV.


----------



## atroy

About to get an adapter on Friday. Any word on how they're functioning for TW customers in North Jersey or NYC?


----------



## Stormspace

dlfl said:


> Perhaps that's the world as seen by ComCast subscribers (especially by those like you who don't need Tuning Adapters) but it isn't the one seen by many Time Warner subscribers, noting that TWC has the second largest digital subscriber base. The norm for TWC techs is they are far from familiar with TiVo although they may have "heard" of it. And tuning adapters frequently have major problems on TWC systems, including needing to be "hit" by TWC frequently and failing to tune SDV channels reliably, resulting in lost recordings. There are several large threads in this forum with Time Warner in their titles that will illustrate this.


And don't forget that a CC and TA enabled TiVo will not record suggestions in some markets since TWC disables unattended channel changes of that nature.


----------



## atroy

Does that problem include season pass recordings or just tivo suggestions?


----------



## SCSIRAID

Stormspace said:


> And don't forget that a CC and TA enabled TiVo will not record suggestions in some markets since TWC disables unattended channel changes of that nature.


I think you will find that this is not true. The no suggestions is a TiVo S3 problem. My S3 and THD wont record suggestions with the TA attached but my Premiere records suggestions just fine with the TA attached.


----------



## SCSIRAID

atroy said:


> Does that problem include season pass recordings or just tivo suggestions?


The issue with THD and S3 relative to the presence of a TA impacts only Suggestions.


----------



## JimWall

Stormspace said:


> And don't forget that a CC and TA enabled TiVo will not record suggestions in some markets since TWC disables unattended channel changes of that nature.


Guess I am lucky in Mason/Cincinnati Ohio. Suggestions are working fine with my S3.
They are getting better with Blinking problem. Last month a new person on phone followed instructions and they worked. She said they now have a list of several different hits to send instead of just one or two.

If TA cannot tune a switched channell I wonder if it is because they allocated too many channels to SDV and no free channel was available when trying to tune it. At hasn't happend to me for a while.


----------



## Stormspace

SCSIRAID said:


> I think you will find that this is not true. The no suggestions is a TiVo S3 problem. My S3 and THD wont record suggestions with the TA attached but my Premiere records suggestions just fine with the TA attached.


Interesting. Makes you wonder if TiVo changed the type of channel change the Premiere requests or if the difference is hardware related.


----------



## SCSIRAID

Stormspace said:


> Interesting. Makes you wonder if TiVo changed the type of channel change the Premiere requests or if the difference is hardware related.


TiVo could not have changed the channel request type or it wouldnt have passed cablelabs cert.

Im 100% confident the issue is TiVo Software. They had a very similar problem where S3/THD boxes with TA's could not 'see' S2 boxes via the network. That was fixed with the last S3/THD SW update.

Here is a clip from my email exchange with TWC Corporate Engineering on 'background tunes'.

_Per the Channel change spec, speculative recordings are in the same class as background recordings. For example when a MDN box is buffering a channel not on the main screen that is considered a background recording. The same background time shift buffer is coming soon to ODN. Because of the amount of SDV blocks Charlotte was having awhile back I believe Charlotte and Raleigh changed the background aging setting down to 1 second.

So what this does is, after 1 second the USRM will consider this background stream reclaimable and it can be potentially torn down if additional bandwidth is needed. Im pretty sure this is what is going on. He is most likely in a SG that blocks on a frequent basis and because these types of recordings are best effort, and the timer is set low, it interrupts background or speculative recordings._


----------



## dlfl

SCSIRAID said:


> TiVo could not have changed the channel request type or it wouldnt have passed cablelabs cert.
> 
> Im 100% confident the issue is TiVo Software. They had a very similar problem where S3/THD boxes with TA's could not 'see' S2 boxes via the network. That was fixed with the last S3/THD SW update.
> 
> Here is a clip from my email exchange with TWC Corporate Engineering on 'background tunes'.
> 
> _Per the Channel change spec, speculative recordings are in the same class as background recordings. For example when a MDN box is buffering a channel not on the main screen that is considered a background recording. The same background time shift buffer is coming soon to ODN. Because of the amount of SDV blocks Charlotte was having awhile back I believe Charlotte and Raleigh changed the background aging setting down to 1 second.
> 
> So what this does is, after 1 second the USRM will consider this background stream reclaimable and it can be potentially torn down if additional bandwidth is needed. Im pretty sure this is what is going on. He is most likely in a SG that blocks on a frequent basis and because these types of recordings are best effort, and the timer is set low, it interrupts background or speculative recordings._


Jeez, SCSIRAID, again with the acronyms!  
MDN? ODN? USRM? SG?
Do you have cable TV experience that makes these common to you, or did you learn them from interacting with TWC engineering?


----------



## SCSIRAID

dlfl said:


> Jeez, SCSIRAID, again with the acronyms!
> MDN? ODN? USRM? SG?
> Do you have cable TV experience that makes these common to you, or did you learn them from interacting with TWC engineering?


HAHA.... sorry bout that... That came from the TWC guy... not me... I do a lot of reading and talking about this stuff so I knew what they meant though...

MDN is Mystro Digital Navigator - the sw that runs on the older Cisco 8300HD non cablecard boxes

ODN is OCAP Digital Navigator - the sw that runs on the cablecard based 8300HDC boxes with OCAP

USRM is Universal Session and Resource Manager (USRM) - its part of the Cisco software stack

SG is Service Group... its all the folks on the share the same SDV QAM pool... i.e. who you are competing with to get a channel.


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## galewis

I have a Series 3 TiVo HD that I purchased back in 2007. It has an upgraded hard drive (Weaknees) also purchased in 2007. My cableco is Charter Communications (Greenville, SC). Everything was working fine until earlier this summer when TiVo stopped recording Suggestions... or only recorded one very rarely. Right now I have 329 deleted programs and only about 20 programs in Suggestions. When I review my thumbs ratings, I can see that there are *many* programs that TiVo could be recording as Suggestions. The most recently recorded Suggestion is more than a month old.

6-8 weeks ago I called TiVo for help and they suggested I do a "clear and delete everything." Didn't fix the problem. It wasn't until today I realized that the difficulty began about the time Charter replaced my two single-stream cable card decoders with a tuning adapter (Motorola MTR700). I haven't read through the mass of posts here on tivocommunity, but I don't think the timing is a coincidence.

And so my next step should be...???

Many thanks.


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## SCSIRAID

galewis said:


> I have a Series 3 TiVo HD that I purchased back in 2007. It has an upgraded hard (Weaknees) also purchased in 2007. My cableco is Charter Communications (Greenville, SC). Everything was working fine until earlier this summer when TiVo stopped recording Suggestions... or only recorded one very rarely. Right now I have 329 deleted programs and only about 20 programs in Suggestions. When I review my thumbs ratings, I can see that there are *many* programs that TiVo could be recording as Suggestions. The most recently recorded Suggestion is more than a month old.
> 
> 6-8 weeks ago I called TiVo for help and they suggested I do a "clear and delete everything." Didn't fix the problem. It wasn't until today I realized that the difficulty began about the time Charter replaced my two single-stream cable card decoders with a tuning adapter (Motorola MTR700). I haven't read through the mass of posts here on tivocommunity, but I don't think the timing is a coincidence.
> 
> And so my next step should be...???
> 
> Many thanks.


S3/THD's sometimes stop recording suggestions when a Tuning Adapter is installed. Both of mine exhibit this behavior. The Premiere doesnt seem to have this issue... mine is recording suggestions like crazy while my S3/THD's just 'sit there'. Hopefully TiVo will release a SW fix to address it.


----------



## galewis

SCSIRAID said:


> S3/THD's sometimes stop recording suggestions when a Tuning Adapter is installed. Both of mine exhibit this behavior. The Premiere doesnt seem to have this issue... mine is recording suggestions like crazy while my S3/THD's just 'sit there'. Hopefully TiVo will release a SW fix to address it.


Ah... Not exactly a solution, but a helpful answer nonetheless. I've contacted TiVo so they can add me to their list of "troubled" users. 

Thanks for your reply.


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## JimWall

My S3 has no problem recording suggestions in SW Ohio Time Warner with tuning adapter. It may be a problem with your cable company's TA implementation or if back end hardware is different then a TIVO issue.
You could bring it up with your cable company and insist it gets to the group the implemented the TAs so it doesn't get lost.


----------



## sasmps

Question: 

My provider (Surewest Communications) is going SDV in 30 days. It looks like they will provide me with one Tuning Adaptor.. I need 3. Has anyone else been told there is only 1 per houshold? Can you get them on the market directly?


----------



## atr

My area just started sdv and I have lost several channels. Recieved a tuning adapter from time warner, hooked up, doesn't work. After several chats with clueless people on the phone they schedule a truck roll. Day of appointment service manager calls to get more info. Explain everything to him. Asks me brand of tuning adapter - Cisco - Tells me they sent me wrong one. Only motorola will work with my cable cards. Dont have any available for my area. Dont know when they will. So I'm SOL. Any suggestions on what to do next??


----------



## mikeyts

atr said:


> My area just started sdv and I have lost several channels. Recieved a tuning adapter from time warner, hooked up, doesn't work. After several chats with clueless people on the phone they schedule a truck roll. Day of appointment service manager calls to get more info. Explain everything to him. Asks me brand of tuning adapter - Cisco - Tells me they sent me wrong one. Only motorola will work with my cable cards. Dont have any available for my area. Dont know when they will. So I'm SOL. Any suggestions on what to do next??


Nothing much to do until they get the Moto TAs. You could call them and demand a rate reduction until they get you a working TA. Did you lose whole extra-cost tiers? If so, cancel them until they have working TAs and make sure that they know that's why.


----------



## sasmps

sasmps said:


> Question:
> 
> My provider (Surewest Communications) is going SDV in 30 days. It looks like they will provide me with one Tuning Adaptor.. I need 3. Has anyone else been told there is only 1 per houshold? Can you get them on the market directly?


ugg..sorry to hear ATR about the wrong TA. Hard to beleive your provider would be so clueless.

Still asking the forum for any history on getting only 1 TA from their provider, and or if they found a way to get there own.


----------



## mrro82

Charter here in West Michigan is going to SDV. Got a notice in the mail saturday and have an appointment scheduled for today. The notice said on or after August 25th I would start losing channels. Luckily it didn't happen yet. The back of the notice had the channel lineup listed but didn't specifically say which channels were moving over to SDV. Hope all goes well.


----------



## morac

Comcast announced that they will be testing SDV in Philadelphia very shortly. It's all ready to go now, they just need to turn it on. It will primarily be used to deliver 3D channels.

If all goes well they will be rolling it out Nationwide in the next year or two.

http://wallstreetpit.com/42427-comcast-deploys-sdv-in-philadelphia

http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=196124&site=lr_cable&


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## kimsmarkin

Switched Digital Video is a new technology that allows cable providers to expand programming for the transmission of some channels to the homes of customers until the required channels. If you have Premiere, Premiere XL TiVo HD XL TiVo HD or Series 3 HD DVR CableCARDs, you see a blank screen channels if the cable service provider makes the transition to SDV.


----------



## mikeyts

kimsmarkin said:


> Switched Digital Video is a new technology that allows cable providers to expand programming for the transmission of some channels to the homes of customers until the required channels. If you have Premiere, Premiere XL TiVo HD XL TiVo HD or Series 3 HD DVR CableCARDs, you see a blank screen channels if the cable service provider makes the transition to SDV.


Have you noticed that you're posting in the SDV FAQ thread, where we've been discussing the technology and its effect on TiVo for the past three years?

Try to read a bit of a thread before posting. The first posts of threads whose name end in FAQ generally have a large amount of information about the topic.


----------



## au_en_bear

I have been through several months of pain trying to get my Tivo HD with SA tuning adapter working properly. I have finally managed to get to a point where all but two channels work. The two that do not work show the "this channel not available...please press select to try and tune again" message. I have had a contractor installer here about 4 times for just those two channels and still no luck. They have changed the cable card twice and the tuning adapter once. The interesting part is that I have a SA cable set top box sitting beside my tivo that I use when I just want to channel surf. The two "bad" channels work fine on the SA set top box. Does anyone have any ideas of what magic words I could use to get the idiots that the tech calls at the dispatch office to send the right hit or message or EMM or whatever to get the two "bad" channels to be tuned by the tivo/ta?

Thanks,

auenbear


----------



## mikeyts

How about, "I guess I'll have to switch to AT&T--thanks for trying. Could you connect this call to the right department for disconnection, please?" .


----------



## au_en_bear

mikeyts said:


> How about, "I guess I'll have to switch to AT&T--thanks for trying. Could you connect this call to the right department for disconnection, please?" .


Believe me, I have thought about it. If AT&T U-verse worked with Tivo I would be gone in about 6 nanoseconds.


----------



## mikeyts

I didn't say that it would be a threat that you'd follow through on...


----------



## Stuxnet

au_en_bear said:


> I have been through several months of pain trying to get my Tivo HD with SA tuning adapter working properly. I have finally managed to get to a point where all but two channels work. The two that do not work show the "this channel not available...please press select to try and tune again" message. I have had a contractor installer here about 4 times for just those two channels and still no luck. They have changed the cable card twice and the tuning adapter once. The interesting part is that I have a SA cable set top box sitting beside my tivo that I use when I just want to channel surf. The two "bad" channels work fine on the SA set top box. Does anyone have any ideas of what magic words I could use to get the idiots that the tech calls at the dispatch office to send the right hit or message or EMM or whatever to get the two "bad" channels to be tuned by the tivo/ta?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> auenbear


When I lost an SDV channel I called in and they "hit" my cable card (reauthorized). Within 5 minutes the channel returned. YMMV.


----------



## JimWall

au_en_bear said:


> I have been through several months of pain trying to get my Tivo HD with SA tuning adapter working properly. I have finally managed to get to a point where all but two channels work. The two that do not work show the "this channel not available...please press select ......
> auenbear


Most likely they not entered the billing information properly. This is part of the Hit they do to the tuning adapter. There is the remote chance the signal is too weak for TIVO but I would think the service guy would have checked the two channels signal strength.


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## au_en_bear

I have had the problem with the missing two channels for about 4 weeks. This morning they both just appeared. Spooky....you post a problem and the Tuning Adapter Fairy just stops by during the night and makes things right. 

Thanks for the reply's!!!


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## kevin120

TWC in my area just switched about 140 or so SD channels to SDV and this not including the 106 we already had on SDV. In doing so they added 8 new SDV QAMs for a total of 24 SDV QAMs total in my service group:up:

I guess being on a 860MHz system has its benefits

we now have SDV on these frequencies:
687MHz
693MHz
699MHz
705MHz
711MHz
717MHz
723MHz
729MHz
735MHz
741MHz
747MHz
753MHz
759MHz
765MHz
771MHz
777MHz
819MHz
825MHz
831MHz
837MHz
843MHz
849MHz
855MHz
861MHz

this on a motorola system that has the MTR700s.


----------



## unitron

kevin120 said:


> TWC in my area just switched about 140 or so SD channels to SDV and this not including the 106 we already had on SDV. In doing so they added 8 new SDV QAMs for a total of 24 SDV QAMs total in my service group:up:
> 
> I guess being on a 860MHz system has its benefits
> 
> we now have SDV on these frequencies:
> 687MHz
> 693MHz
> 699MHz
> 705MHz
> 711MHz
> 717MHz
> 723MHz
> 729MHz
> 735MHz
> 741MHz
> 747MHz
> 753MHz
> 759MHz
> 765MHz
> 771MHz
> 777MHz
> 819MHz
> 825MHz
> 831MHz
> 837MHz
> 843MHz
> 849MHz
> 855MHz
> 861MHz
> 
> this on a motorola system that has the MTR700s.


And your area is?


----------



## lrhorer

sasmps said:


> ugg..sorry to hear ATR about the wrong TA. Hard to beleive your provider would be so clueless.


'Not so hard, really.



sasmps said:


> Still asking the forum for any history on getting only 1 TA from their provider, and or if they found a way to get there own.


The policy is up to each individual provider. Currently, any number of TAs are free on Time Warner Cable systems. Whether there is a limit, I don't know, but I have three, all provided for no extra cost. They could decide to start charging for them tomorrow.


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## kevin120

unitron said:


> And your area is?


TWC North Texas (Dallas Metro)


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## dlfl

unitron said:


> And your area is?





kevin120 said:


> TWC North Texas (Dallas Metro)


Wish people would put their location in their profiles! (So it shows on every post)


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## unitron

dlfl said:


> Wish people would put their location in their profiles! (So it shows on every post)


Absolutely. How are we supposed to know which prejudices and stereotypes to let come into play without that information?


----------



## LoREvanescence

What a nightmare to get a tuning adapter

This past week I got a letter in the mail stating that cox will be rolling out SDV on November 7th in in my area. And that I can call to request a tuning adapter to be mailed to me or for pick up at a cox retail location.

So I call, and get an automatic phone system asking me how may I help you. so I ask: "I would like to request a turning adapter" and it responds with "It sounds like the clock on your cable box is incorrect, is that correct?"

I hit zero a bunch of times and finally I get a person. Who then transfers me to tech support, who then transfers me to sales, who then transfers me back to tech, then I got transferred back to sales. who then transferred me back to tech. So finally I get a guy who knows about tuning adapters, but he tells me I have to talk to sales, they tech can't mail them out or have them available for pick up, so he finally gets me someone. 

Talking to this person, I get placed on hold for a couple minutes, then he comes back with we have a promotion, if I swap out my cable cards for a cable box they will only charge me $1.99 a month for the cable box. I tell him no chance, I want to keep my tivo. I get placed on hold for 5 minutes, then he comes back with they will have a truck roll between 10:30 and 12:30 tomorrow with a $50 truck roll fee and wanted to know if I was going to be available / home.

I argued that the letter states that I can have one mailed to me or can pick one up. He had me hold again while he looked into how to do self installs. It took them 15 minutes to figure out how and get one UPS'ed to me.

I was on the phone for 55 minutes and 35 seconds to get a turning adapter...

Does tivo have any email address to report how difficult it is to get one of these from the cable companies?


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## CuriousMark

LoREvanescence said:


> Does tivo have any email address to report how difficult it is to get one of these from the cable companies?


Not to my knowledge.

This sounds exactly like the kind of thing you should report to the FCC at http://www.fcc.gov/complaints.

Your cable company is supposed to ensure you have access to all linear channels. Cable operators must ensure that subscribers can use their retail device to access all of the linear channels that comprise the cable package to which you subscribe.

Offering you a switch to their cable box sounds like a violation to me. They are supposed to know about this and getting an SDV adapter should be no more difficult than getting their own cable box.


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## dlfl

LoREvanescence said:


> .........I was on the phone for 55 minutes and 35 seconds to get a turning adapter...


You think maybe customers who use tuning adapters (mostly TiVo users) aren't really important to them?  They comprise less than 1% of digital cable users. And you came close to paying $50 for something that should be free.


CuriousMark said:


> .......This sounds exactly like the kind of thing you should report to the FCC at http://www.fcc.gov/complaints.
> ..........


I and many others do this. We can always hope it will make a difference, although I'm pretty doubtful about it. CableCARD and Tuning Adapters have already been recognized as failures by the FCC and they're trying to foster new approaches.


----------



## acomenzo

Hi, I need some quick help.

I recently discovered (Cox never told me) that the reason I'm not receiving all the channels I paid for is that I require an SDV. They just provided me with two Motorola MTR700 units to install for the two cable cards in my TiVo.

My question is - do I really need two? If this box is serving channel info via USB, will it accept requests from both cards (in a single TiVo box)? I'd really like to avoid using a coax splitter to feed these two SDV boxes if I can avoid it - any ideas? Thanks!


----------



## rhain

*Short story: You only need ONE TUNING ADAPTOR.*
I finally called COX San Diego because I was not getting some HBO / STARZ / ENCORE channels. They sent a tech to my house to assess the situation. Luckily, I got a good one and he spent more than his allotted time trying to figure out what the problem was. His first guess was the cable card were not working correctly and he was trying to get a couple of them from a co-worker but he was too far away. He said he would drive and get them and come back and install them (it was 5:00 pm) or he said he would come back in the morning (first call). I told him it was not worth it to come back that night and it was fine to come back the next day.

Well, when he came back the next day he told me he was talking to a couple of co-workers and they determined that the channels I was missing were on SDV as of several months ago. I knew I was not getting these channels that long ago but I chose not to worry about it. The bummer here was the phone representative could not tell me that the channels I were not getting were on SDV.

When he showed up he had the tuning adaptor and hooked it up. It did not work at first and he called a co-worker who told him he needed two tuning adaptors. I gently told him I did not think that was the case because I was on Tivo's WEB site checking out how to hook up a tuning adaptor to a Series-3 Tivo. He called somebody else and they said he would need TWO TUNING ADAPTORS. Again, I gently told him I did not think that was the case and suggested we re-boot the tuning adaptor.

After the final reboot of the Tuning Adaptor, the Tivo saw the Tuning Adaptor and after a few menu selections I was up and running.

I was lucky, the tech they sent for my service call was open to my suggestions and listened to me; if not I think I still would be missing those channels.

Oh, and I am not paying anything for two cable cards or the tuning adaptor.


----------



## jak146

I am using a TIVO on one tv and a standard Scientific Atlanta (non-dvr HD box) on my other tv. My TIVO is constantly getting the message the "this channel not currently available..." especially if I stay on a channel for any length of time. My cable issued box NEVER gets this message or times out. I also never had this happen on my Scientific Atlanta DVR when I had one. Can someone explain with the TIVO handles SDV differently than the cable issued boxes? I posed this question in the Charter Community forum and they feel that it must be a tivo related issue.

Another interesting note is that the tivo will have a difficult time re-tuning the channel and say its unavailable but I can go in the other room and the Scientific Atlanta (4240HDC) will tune it instantly. The SA box never times out or has trouble tuning in a channel.

Thoughts?


----------



## mikeyts

It may be that your cable company is being preferential to their own cable boxes. SDV is supposed to drop a channel if no one is using it and the bandwidth is needed by something else. Before doing that, it's supposed to send a message to the box to have it pop up a dialog "Are you still watching? Yes or No"; if you don't answer within a certain time limit it can decrease the count of people watching by one. It's not so strange that TiVo is letting the channel go, but that your standard cable boxes aren't.


----------



## jak146

mikeyts said:


> It may be that your cable company is being preferential to their own cable boxes. SDV is supposed to drop a channel if no one is using it and the bandwidth is needed by something else. Before doing that, it's supposed to send a message to the box to have it pop up a dialog "Are you still watching? Yes or No"; if you don't answer within a certain time limit it can decrease the count of people watching by one. It's not so strange that TiVo is letting the channel go, but that your standard cable boxes aren't.


That is what I thought and posed to Charter but they insist that there should be no difference between the way the TIVO handles the SDV channel and the cable box. I am wondering if there is just an unintentional technical difference or glitch with the way the TIVO handles it that caused the problem. Unfortunately it is very inconvenient to have the channel disappear on a 2 year old who doesn't know how to fix it. Charter tech said I should pose this question to TIVO. Is anyone else experiencing the same issue where their cable box handles the SDV timeouts differently then their TIVO?


----------



## unitron

jak146 said:


> That is what I thought and posed to Charter but they insist that there should be no difference between the way the TIVO handles the SDV channel and the cable box. I am wondering if there is just an unintentional technical difference or glitch with the way the TIVO handles it that caused the problem. Unfortunately it is very inconvenient to have the channel disappear on a 2 year old who doesn't know how to fix it. Charter tech said I should pose this question to TIVO. Is anyone else experiencing the same issue where their cable box handles the SDV timeouts differently then their TIVO?


Well, there's unintentional and then there's unintentional, and we are talking about a cable company who makes more when you rent their equipment than if you use a TiVo.


----------



## CoxInPHX

jak146 said:


> Unfortunately it is very inconvenient to have the channel disappear on a 2 year old who doesn't know how to fix it. Charter tech said I should pose this question to TIVO. Is anyone else experiencing the same issue where their cable box handles the SDV timeouts differently then their TIVO?


You should just set the TiVo to record during the 2 year olds watching time, that should solve the problem.

Every provider and market most likely handles the prompts slightly differently, I even notice a difference in the frequency of the prompt between different SDV channels.

My provider seems to handle them fairly well because I do not see them very often, and Cox AZ does provide a list of SDV channels so I know which ones they are. Occasionally my Cable boxes also prompt.


----------



## mikeyts

On Cox San Diego South, if I tune Tennis Channel HD and switch to my PC or some video device or game console for an hour or two, when I come back it's most likely released the channel. Pressing SELECT tunes it again.


----------



## JimWall

In Southwest Ohio Time Warner Cable had all kinds of problems with SDV and TIVO. It took many months for TW to learn the proper hits to send and how often so the tuning adapter works properly. Seems like each franchise does not help the others once they figure things out.

Turns out there are many different types of hits to send. And at least one needs to be sent on a regular basis like once a month or turning adapter loses authorization and quits working. 

If issues are with the same channel/frequency I had a problem with interference with an over the air TV station 100 miles away. It was a very weak signal and aparently the digital signal on the coax is also weak. Replacing coax and the very cheap one that came with the tuning adapter solved the problem.


----------



## thewebgal

I've had an interesting problem turn up. Cox CATV Fairfax, VA - 2 Cable cards in a TIVOHD, with a CISCO SD adapter for those issues. Over the last maybe 6 months, I would find the TIVOHD occasionally doing a scheduled recording, but see the channel was black (blank?), and the result being a missing recording for that event. I found if I cycled power for the CISCO adapter, it would come back on, the TIVO would give me the "found Adapter" message and sync up, then maybe 5 mins later I'd get the "Found Adapter" message again and this time the pays (HD channels and all of that) would sync up. I figured the 2nd "hit" was when the CISCO box got authorized by the cable company.

Lately, its been happening more frequently. We created a Season pass for the CBS Evening news (6:30PM) so we can watch that every evening, even when we are not home at 6:30. The last couple weeks it was intermittent. last 2 nights I was home and happened to be watching ... the 6PM local news would be playing just fine and when the CBS Evening news came on at 6:30, the channel would go grey! Its like it lost sync or authorization or something like that. Right at 6:30 when we went from local news to CBS network news. Doesn't seem like a week signal issue or anything like that, right? Picture is typically nice and clear, and we only have 2 connections in the house - one for that TV, the other for Internet.

Do you think they have copy protection turned on for that show or something?

I do have a service call in for a truck roll this evening, for someone to come and check it out, but if the tech doesn't see the channel drop at 6:30PM - well, it does sound crazy ... Hopefully the tech'll bring replacement cards and a CISCO box ... 

I want to record the Olympics opening ceremonies tonight, and Breaking bad every Sunday night!

Otherwise, COX will be heading out and it will be "Hello FIOS!"


----------



## dlfl

I'm assuming this is a local station, which by law should not be copy protected. While the "gray" screen recording is in progress, go to DVR Diagnostics and look at the info for that channel. What is the CCI Byte value? Is should be 0x00. If it's copy protected it will be non-zero.

However, even a copy protected channel should still record on your tivo!

I'm not sure what a CISCO SD adapter is. Did you mean Tuning Adapter (TA)?


----------



## lrhorer

unitron said:


> Well, there's unintentional and then there's unintentional, and we are talking about a cable company who makes more when you rent their equipment than if you use a TiVo.


The statement is true, but misleading. CATV companies typically make very little, if anything, off STB and DVR rentals. Often they lose money. Where they make money, howver, is selling additional services on those platforms. Paradoxically, they could make just as much money, or even more, by supporting those services on platforms like TiVo, but in order to do so they would have to give up the control over their subs they find so very dear. Hard to believe as it may be, their paranoia is even greater than their greed.


----------



## grcote235

I live in Boulder and got a TiVo Premiere in April. I started having problems with intermittent channels. I determined after multiple calls with TiVo and Comcast that I have Switched Digital Video (SDV) from Comcast and that is causing the issue.

TiVo says all I need is a Digital Tuning Adapter. Comcast keeps trying to give me a digital to analog converter. I've spent hours on this issue.

Question: Does anyone in this area have the same problem? Have you been able to get it fixed? Does Comcast provide a solution in the area? (Note that my CableCard is working and I get most channels most of the time).

Thanks in advance for any help.


----------



## morac

I didn't think Comcast used SDV anywhere. I know they were testing it in Denver, Colorado about 5 years ago, but I thought they gave up on that. Are you sure you have SDV and not just signal problems?


----------



## SCSIRAID

We are moving to Vero Beach next year. Does any one know if Comcast in Vero uses SDV? I believe they are on Cisco products. The above post suggests that Comcast doesnt use SDV anywhere... that would be great if true.

Found this.... http://forums.comcast.com/t5/Channels-and-Programming/Switched-Digital-Video-SDV/td-p/1434027

"There are no present or future plans for Comcast to implement Switched Digital Video at this time." I love it!!


----------



## lrhorer

SCSIRAID said:


> We are moving to Vero Beach next year. Does any one know if Comcast in Vero uses SDV? I believe they are on Cisco products. The above post suggests that Comcast doesnt use SDV anywhere... that would be great if true.


Not so great, really. I finally got tired of TWC's customer service and told them to stick it. I jumped ship and ordered service with Grande Cable TV. The reduced pricing is nice, and their customer service leaves TWC in the dust, but I surely do miss SDV. There are at least 40 HD channels on TWC I recorded on a regular basis, and they are all missing on Grande, because they have not deployed SDV.


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## SCSIRAID

lrhorer said:


> Not so great, really. I finally got tired of TWC's customer service and told them to stick it. I jumped ship and ordered service with Grande Cable TV. The reduced pricing is nice, and their customer service leaves TWC in the dust, but I surely do miss SDV. There are at least 40 HD channels on TWC I recorded on a regular basis, and they are all missing on Grande, because they have not deployed SDV.


Well, thats true. It could be a double edged sword. I should go look at Comcast's lineup and compare it with what I have now with TWC.


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## morac

SCSIRAID said:


> Well, thats true. It could be a double edged sword. I should go look at Comcast's lineup and compare it with what I have now with TWC.


The only TWC I have to compare with is NYC since my brother there has TWC. He has more channels, but many of them are extremely niche. So much that I've never heard of them.

Anyway the following thread at AVS forum has a chart of all the HD channels carried by the various major providers. Note though, that Comcast doesn't offer all the HD channels they carry in all markets, but they have been getting quicker at rolling channels out.

http://www.avsforum.com/t/1058081/o...-lineups-cable-dbs-fiber-iptv-updated-9-10-12


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## SCSIRAID

morac said:


> The only TWC I have to compare with is NYC since my brother there has TWC. He has more channels, but many of them are extremely niche. So much that I've never heard of them.
> 
> Anyway the following thread at AVS forum has a chart of all the HD channels carried by the various major providers. Note though, that Comcast doesn't offer all the HD channels they carry in all markets, but they have been getting quicker at rolling channels out.
> 
> http://www.avsforum.com/t/1058081/o...-lineups-cable-dbs-fiber-iptv-updated-9-10-12


Yup. I compared my lineup here on TWC with what Comcast Vero has and they are very comparable. The only missing channel that I care about is Smithsonian. I did notice that C&I is only available in the 'Premier' tier while I will likely only go for the 'Preferred' tier.


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## jmbach

LoREvanescence said:


> What a nightmare to get a tuning adapter
> 
> This past week I got a letter in the mail stating that cox will be rolling out SDV on November 7th in in my area. And that I can call to request a tuning adapter to be mailed to me or for pick up at a cox retail location.
> 
> So I call, and get an automatic phone system asking me how may I help you. so I ask: "I would like to request a turning adapter" and it responds with "It sounds like the clock on your cable box is incorrect, is that correct?"
> 
> I hit zero a bunch of times and finally I get a person. Who then transfers me to tech support, who then transfers me to sales, who then transfers me back to tech, then I got transferred back to sales. who then transferred me back to tech. So finally I get a guy who knows about tuning adapters, but he tells me I have to talk to sales, they tech can't mail them out or have them available for pick up, so he finally gets me someone.
> 
> Talking to this person, I get placed on hold for a couple minutes, then he comes back with we have a promotion, if I swap out my cable cards for a cable box they will only charge me $1.99 a month for the cable box. I tell him no chance, I want to keep my tivo. I get placed on hold for 5 minutes, then he comes back with they will have a truck roll between 10:30 and 12:30 tomorrow with a $50 truck roll fee and wanted to know if I was going to be available / home.
> 
> I argued that the letter states that I can have one mailed to me or can pick one up. He had me hold again while he looked into how to do self installs. It took them 15 minutes to figure out how and get one UPS'ed to me.
> 
> I was on the phone for 55 minutes and 35 seconds to get a turning adapter...
> 
> Does tivo have any email address to report how difficult it is to get one of these from the cable companies?


I know this is old but I had a similar issue when Charter first rolled out TA's in my area. The internal communication for charter was terrible. No one even knew about the letter that was sent out to notify the subscribers. Now that it has been a couple of years, its not a problem. I imagine until SDV is common this will be an issue in all areas as it is being rolled out. Just need to be persistent and patient.


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## jak146

I am using a tivoHD with Charter in Pasadena, CA. I realize this is an old thread but the topic is still relevant. My current nightmare has been going on for about a year. Ever since they switched the local network to all digital, my Cisco STA1520 tuning adapter looses sync every 4-6 weeks and I cannot access any of the SDV channels. After numerous tech visits, equipment swaps, and over the phone refreshes I finally got a tech to admit that there is a known problem with the tuning adapter. It needs to reauthorize with the headend (not sure if this is the proper terminology) every month and the bug with the system prevents it from doing this, thus the need to manually have a hit signal sent each time. There is apparently a firmware fix from CISCO in the works. I reached out to TIVO and they admitted they knew about the issue but didnt know when a fix would be available. They offered to cancel my service if that is what I wanted. Obviously this is incredibly frustrating. I wanted to reach out to see if this is still happening to other people and and if anyone had any current reliable information on the status of a possible fix. Does this issue effect ALL tivos (including the Romios)? You would think that TIVO would be working around the clock to solve the issue? Charters answer was that I need to ditch the TIVO and switch to their offerings.


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## Arcady

Put your tuning adapter on a lamp timer and force it to reset once a week or so.


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## JimWall

I had similar problems years ago when the TAs were first rolled out. Then I had no problems for a very long time. After my underground cable was cut by accident and repaired I started to have random failures to reauthorize. I don't know if it was a coincidence or the reauthorize is a weak signal. When I have trouble I directly call the national number (866-606-5889). They quickly reauthorize and showed me where to check for the expiration setting. 
under remote&device settings/tuning adapter/tuning adapter diagnostics. 
Go down to PowerKEY information, hit nextpage twice and check "Sub Expires". 
When it is reauthorized it is set to more than a month in the future. Since the hits are monthly I put a reminder in my calendar to check a few days before the date shown. When I check; if the hit worked then it will have changed to a new future date. I then put a new reminder in my calendar. So far so good. If not then I will call the number. 
I have had failures to get channels and had to reboot two of my Tivos when a show is not recorded due to "no video signal". Not always a SDV channel. I wonder if a Tivo update or TA or cable card update caused a new problem.


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## dlfl

Arcady said:


> Put your tuning adapter on a lamp timer and force it to reset once a week or so.


Before doing that verify that power cycling the TA fixes it. This sounds like the TA isn't receiving its monthly authorization which requires a signal be pushed from the headend. When I used to have this issue, power cycling the TA did not help.

You can see the exact date and time when your TA auth will expire in TA Diagnostics .... PowerKey Information .. third page in .. Sub Expires. The digits before the period are the date and the remaining digits are the time with the last two digits being the seconds. I have watched my TA stop working and start blinking 8-blinks-pause at exactly that time. If you're not getting that blink pattern then TA auth isn't the problem.

My TA has to be power-cycled every month or two even when it hasn't lost auth. so the light timer may be your answer. I usally have to restart the TiVo then too.


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