# TiVo Series 3 in Jeopardy Because of Cable Companies?



## jb007 (Mar 17, 2001)

This article appears in USA Today. Basically, it states cable companies (Time Warner, COX, etc.) may be going to a "switched digital" system that would make cable cards obsolete. So much for the mandate from Congress and the FCC.


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## Sapphire (Sep 10, 2002)

The solution really is to get rid of the analog channels.


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## JohnTivo (Dec 2, 2002)

Whether or not it is meant to "get rid of analog channels" results in problems for the series3 if implemented on a national level. Hopefully the Cablecard 2.0 spec will get certified and TIVO can get cracking on a box that will allow for two way communication...


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## dt_dc (Jul 31, 2003)

JohnTivo said:


> Hopefully the Cablecard 2.0 spec will get certified and TIVO can get cracking on a box that will allow for two way communication...


Under the current specs, switched broadcast channels would still not be recordable by software provided from Tivo directly to the consumer. Tivo could sell software to your cable company which they could provide to you on an OCAP box that would record switched broadcasts ... but Tivo couldn't provide that software directly to the consumer. They'd have to provide it through the cable company.


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## HiDefGator (Oct 12, 2004)

CC 2.0 will not solve this problem. There is no standard for shared digital video hardware. It is not just analog channels this affects. SDV can be used on digital channels too. This has been discussed here before. Until it is resolved I would not spend my $800 on an S3.


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## slocko (Mar 5, 2004)

I suggest you do research on your cable company to not only see if they are using switched technology but if they are planning to introduce it in the near future. Of course, this kind of research is probably not easy to do and a cable company can do an about face in a manner of minutes on any given issue.


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## HiDefGator (Oct 12, 2004)

slocko said:


> I suggest you do research on your cable company to not only see if they are using switched technology but if they are planning to introduce it in the near future. Of course, this kind of research is probably not easy to do and a cable company can do an about face in a manner of minutes on any given issue.


It sounds like a nice idea, but the cable company CSR's wouldn't have a clue what you were talking about if you called. They certainly wouldn't know of any future deployment plans.


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## mgar (Feb 14, 2005)

Raj said:


> The solution really is to get rid of the analog channels.


Raj ... I actually agree with you!

Why would cable want to do something that is going to render obsolete so much HD equipment. They should stop broadcasting analog over their networks.

The cable boxes that we already have take the digital signal and output to analog for use on old TV's, etc.

This would force people with analog equipment to use a cable box, just like what is happening with the OTA signal. Eventually (decades?) analog equipment will go away.


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## hiker (Nov 29, 2001)

This part of the USA Today article is laughable:
"Some cable operators, trying to come up with a solution to their bandwidth pinch, have asked other networks "to please wait on launching new (HD channels) until 2007," Pali Capital's Richard Greenfield writes."


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## JohnTivo (Dec 2, 2002)

mgar said:


> Raj ... I actually agree with you!
> 
> Why would cable want to do something that is going to render obsolete so much HD equipment.


Because they do not want to lose the monthly income from STB rentals.


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## cforrest (Jan 19, 2003)

slocko said:


> I suggest you do research on your cable company to not only see if they are using switched technology but if they are planning to introduce it in the near future. Of course, this kind of research is probably not easy to do and a cable company can do an about face in a manner of minutes on any given issue.


Great place to get this information is during the webcasts of quarterly earnings. COX being an exception since it was taken private. Cablevision is going to use Switched Video but it will only be for a spanish channels package they are going to rollout throughout the CV systems. I think Rutledge said sometime in July to expect it.


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## ebonovic (Jul 24, 2001)

It is an intresting read...

I was wondering when the little black cable, was going to start filling up.

If it does play out that Cable-Cards are not going to work, or be availalbe, or what ever.
That would be extremely bad for TiVo


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## DTSDude (May 24, 2006)

JohnTivo said:


> Because they do not want to lose the monthly income from STB rentals.


Most boxes cost your cable provider in excess of $300 dollars so at $5 a month they don't pay off the box for 5 years. Cable Co's have wanted to get away from boxes for years just for this reason.

The USA Today article was a good read though. Nice find!


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## dt_dc (Jul 31, 2003)

cforrest said:


> COX being an exception since it was taken private.


Cox has said publically several times that they plan on deploying switched broadcast in two (un-named) markets later this year. They had one of the early trials in Tyler Texas a couple years ago.


cforrest said:


> Cablevision is going to use Switched Video but it will only be for a spanish channels package they are going to rollout throughout the CV systems. I think Rutledge said sometime in July to expect it.


In his May 9 conference call, Rutledge said that they are getting ready to roll out switched broadcast for about 60 channels ... primarily comprised of foreign language channels ... of which about 30 will be Spanish language channels. He never said it would _only_ be used for Spanish channels.


> With regard to switched broadcast, yes, we did do an experiment in Paterson. We are now ready to roll that out in terms of a product launch over the next several months, and through the remainder of the year we will be providing a 60-channel switched broadcast service, which will be primarily comprised of foreign language programming.
> 
> (...)
> 
> So we are going to launch these products throughout our service area through the remainder of the year. That will offer 30 channels of Spanish language programming, for instance, for $4.95 a month if you are an existing expanded basic subscriber and $14.95 a month for adding it on to basic service.


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## TyroneShoes (Sep 6, 2004)

hiker said:


> This part of the USA Today article is laughable:
> "Some cable operators, trying to come up with a solution to their bandwidth pinch, have asked other networks "to please wait on launching new (HD channels) until 2007," Pali Capital's Richard Greenfield writes."


I found the entire article laughable, not to mention typically half-assed, unfortunately the norm for this rag. They seem to imply that cable is behind the 8-ball compared to satellite, when actually the exact opposite is probably the case. They even provided one of their patended "McPaper" graphics to explain this, which shows 70 analog channels in 496 MHz of bandwidth. If you do the math, there are 83 channels and change in that bandwidth. They also overestimate that there are 200 digital channels in digital cable, while in reality most systems are lucky to provide a quarter of that total. The other 150 never launched, on cable or satellite, and never will.

They also did not touch on VOD, DVRs, compression, or any of the other things that impact bandwidth usage either positively or negatively, and they did not spell out the one huge advantage cable has over satellite, which is a constant 2-way connection, which is at the heart of implementing things like VOD and switched channels. As is stands, satellite can't do that efficiently if at all. Broadband over satellite is slow due to a built-in 46,000 mile (1/3 second) delay, and expensive because it must also establish an uplink from the sub (or tie up a dial-up line).

And they did nothing to explain how 3 HD channels fit into one analog channel, or how 10 digital SD channels can be fit into one analog channel. They mentioned it, but imagine a reader completely green about the technology trying to make sense of those statements. And that is probably the problem here, technology writers writing about technology who understand nothing about technology. Typical of them.

Sat does have more bandwidth. Cable has 750 to 1000 MHz, while DTV has three sats each with 500 MHz of bandwidth. But DBS has to use much of that capacity, even including spot-beam frequency reuse, for 1500 locals and a lot of niche or foreign-language channels.

If you assume the scenario they posit, where a cable MSO moves all but 30 of their analog channels to digital, that opens up room for 160 HD channels. Since there will be little or negative growth in SD channels, plus there will be new technologies such as switching, statmux, and quasi-VOD to local HDDs, that gives cable a good 10 years to run out of bandwidth, and if they start to use MPEG-4 AVC or something even better, they could have 300-400 HD channels up until the last analog service ceases to exist, whereupon they get the rest of that bandwidth back for hundreds more.

I think the future looks bright for cable, and they don't appear to have painted themselves into any corners. DBS is in a corner right now, and it will take the MPEG4/Ka conversion to get them back on par with cable, assuming they can also solve the 2-way issues that they so desperately need to for VOD and other interactive services (which is where everything will migrate to eventually).

That being said, I woke up at 5 AM, read the Biz section of USATODAY, and assumed I was having a dream or was in the bizzaro world, so I threw the paper back out on the porch and went back to bed. Later, I got up and retrieved it, but the same ridiculous story was still in there, word for word.


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## jb007 (Mar 17, 2001)

TyroneShoes, your points about cable vs. satellite are well taken, but the issue is will the TiVo Series 3 be the answer to cable subscribers that want to record HD programming utilizing TiVo software?


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## smark (Nov 20, 2002)

Raj said:


> The solution really is to get rid of the analog channels.


There are ways around it from a box on the outside of the house the downconverts to little ones that go between the set and the wall.

Best part is that it makes the whole house addressable.


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## slocko (Mar 5, 2004)

Can Verizon also employ switching with FIOS?


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## dt_dc (Jul 31, 2003)

slocko said:


> Can Verizon also employ switching with FIOS?


Short Answer:
Yes

Longer Answer:
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=3934784&&#post3934784


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## DTSDude (May 24, 2006)

smark said:


> There are ways around it from a box on the outside of the house the downconverts to little ones that go between the set and the wall.
> 
> Best part is that it makes the whole house addressable.


Lol, never hard to spot a person who's been in the cable industry. Comcaster?


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## super dave (Oct 1, 2002)

DTSDude said:


> Lol, never hard to spot a person who's been in the cable industry. Comcaster?


You must be new, smark is our resident CC rep from up in the hizzies. He has never hidden it.


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## TyroneShoes (Sep 6, 2004)

jb007 said:


> TyroneShoes, your points about cable vs. satellite are well taken, but the issue is will the TiVo Series 3 be the answer to cable subscribers that want to record HD programming utilizing TiVo software?


Sorry, but others mentioning the article was just the one little in I needed to rant about the first thing to piss me off yesterday morning. I think you can get better answers in this thread than you can in that article, at least.

And you're right, the thread is about how does this impact the S3. The reason we haven't seen the S3 yet is centered around the same issue touched on in the article, which is CC2, or the lack of standards written in stone yet that fix all of the burning issues surrounding it. The S3 is basically ready to ship (probably has been for some time, since it is basically an HR10 with different tuners), except for that one niggling issue. It's difficult for Tivo to ship something so dependent on a moving target.

If CC2 is done right, and if the S3 ships before CC2 is completely put to bed but it is futured to handle whatever flavor of CC2 emerges, the S3 will be just fine. The worst-case scenario is that the S3 ships prematurely and CC2 does something incompatible, which would mean Tivo would be doing a swap to the "S4", ironically similar to what DTV will be doing from HR10 to NDS.

So Tivo is being squeezed. They want their product out, but they don't want it to lay an egg due to circumstances outside their control. Time is quickly becoming something NOT on their side. Time IS on the side of those who can wait to the last second to buy an S3, however.

This entire mess is why I bet everything on a pair of upgraded HR10's and DTV for the next 3 years or so, even in the face of wholesale changes coming for DTV. Being primarily an OTA guy (that and DTV HD being 95% of what I care to watch) this is giving me pretty much what I want for now, even in spite of HD-lite for a few shows and otherwise meager HD choices. I'm hoping I won't be on the outside looking in before the HR10s shelf life expires. Once the dust settles, I'll be ready for a new strategy.


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## DTSDude (May 24, 2006)

super dave said:


> You must be new, smark is our resident CC rep from up in the hizzies. He has never hidden it.


Lol, and why should he?  I'm just glad I'm not the only one on here.

And sadly this whole thread has me questioning if it'll be worth my time and money to buy an S3 when it comes out. Though I just got my S2DT last week and now I completely understand why my friends have been praising TiVo for so long. It's a shame I waited this long to get one.


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