Comments on: CableCARD Conspiracy?

By: Bob Gale

Bob Gale — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 13:53:12 +0000

Ted,
Try Samsung. My 52″ has a cable card slot, and their 57″ does, too. Btw - you know that Sony doesn’t even make their lcd tvs anymore, right? They just put their brand on someone else’s. The high end Sonys use Samsung lcd panels, and the cheap-o one uses an LG panel.
As for QAM - yup, it works for me on TW cable also, but no TVGuide feature is available, so my Cable Card equipped Sony HD DVR (that I bought before Tivo forced all the manufacturers to stop selling DVRs weith no monthly fee) wouldn’t work without one. I love Cable Cards, and mine onlt cost me $1.50 per month (for 2 of them).

By: Dean

Dean — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 22:50:23 +0000

I never like the idea of a cablecard. It’s not needed. Most HD TVs have or will have ATSC and QAM tuners built in. With Time-Warner, all you have to do is go direct from wall to TV bypassing the set-top box to receive all the basic HD channels. I believe you must be subscribed to digital (what will happen when it’s all digital? A lower price? Ha, doubt it!) but you don’t have to buy their HD tier unless you want a bunch more redundant and otherwise HD channels.
Hey Ted, IMO I’d look at the new 120mz Samsung LCD’s. Samsung makes the panels for Sony anyway, and you save major bucks over Sony.

By: gopher

gopher — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 20:04:25 +0000

With Elgato’s EyeTV programming capability only working on standard coax, I’m not switching to a cable box anytime soon. If they can’t make it broadcast over my standard coax, I’m not bothering with it. More intriguingly Mac OS X 10.5.2 doesn’t work with the latest EyeTV, but 10.4.11 does. It simply won’t pickup the Tuner over the Coax at all. Thank goodness I left behind a 10.4.11 partition on my hard drive.

Naturally when I pickup a 50+” TV in December I may still want to see what getting HD stations is like. With a 30″ HDTV it doesn’t make that big a difference.

By: Dave

Dave — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 18:30:31 +0000

Here’s a thought, turn the TV off, or sell it, and read some books about the current state of your country and how the real problem with America, is Americans who are more concerned about a feature on their TV than what life is really all about.

…Says the man reading articles about TV cards.

By: Guest

Guest — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 18:01:13 +0000

There had been talk of a CableCARD 2.0 technology coming soon, that would allow CableCARDs to work with all cable features, including On Demand â€” but that now seems dead in the water.

all cablecards ( including 1.0 version ) were capable of two way communication to work with VOD and PPV services from the cable companies. it was the tv manufactures that requested only a one-way standard.

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

By: Dogzilla

Dogzilla — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 17:39:51 +0000

BTW - talk about serendipity - I just came across this CableCard-related article making the rounds today:
http://hdguru.com/how-the-cable-industry-plans-to-cheat-10-million-hdtv-owners/233/

By: Dogzilla

Dogzilla — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 17:34:30 +0000

“Just a thought, is it possible that the slots are being dropped off the TVs because the need for a tuner in TVs is going away?”

Not sure this is the case. While this is all speculation at this point, the Federally-mandated switch to terrestial HDTV coming up soon may actually *increase* the need/demand for tuners in televisions, albeit HDTV-capable ones. Theoretically, you won’t see snow and you will see the broadcast in crystal-clear hi-def. The reality will likely be that you’ll see frozen images, hitching, and pixellization/decoding artifacts instead of snow, and the “crystal-clear” will be dependent on broadcasters having HD equipment all the way through their production stream - something that seems less and less likely for any but the highest-budget broadcasts (Superbowl? definitely. Small local-market news? Not so much).

By: Andy

Andy — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 17:34:28 +0000

I really wish the cable cards were better supported by cable companies. I have a new TiVo HD, which can use CableCards (either two single stream or one multi-stream). I called Charter Communicaitons to set up an appointment to instal CableCards, and they never showed up. I have since been just using my TiVo for analog channels (mostly what I watch anyway).

Read the TiVo Community fourm for all the stories about how many cable companies just don’t want to support CableCards and the lengths they will go to to avoid support. The CSR I talked to did not even know what I was asking for, after talking to a manager she finally found out what a cable card was/is and set up the appointment which was then promptly ignored by the installer. They really freak out when you ask for a CableCard for a TiVo, they just do not want to support TiVo at all!

The problem with CableCards runs deep. I also wish something could be done. I want to continue to use my TiVo but I wonder what is going to happen next year or so when the digital standard is more fully implemented. The cable co may continue the analog broadcast, but who knows.

By: RPV

RPV — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 17:20:10 +0000

Here’s a thought, turn the TV off, or sell it, and read some books about the current state of your country and how the real problem with America, is Americans who are more concerned about a feature on their TV than what life is really all about.

By: Michael

Michael — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 16:47:31 +0000

Just a thought, is it possible that the slots are being dropped off the TVs because the need for a tuner in TVs is going away?

Pretty much everyone is going to plug a TV into some kind of programming source, TIVO, DVD, DVR, PS3, etc.

The assumption by the manufacturers may be that a high end set is alway used as a monitor to a programming source, not as a source itself, needing a tuner. Only a smaller set, like a bedroom TV might need it’s own cable card slot.