 
RIRWIN1983
join:2005-08-30
Columbus, OH
 ·RoadRunner Cable
1 edit | 2 Trips, 4hrs Big surprise there, anyone ever think they were taking this long on purpose just to say "Hey ya know i have one our boxes in the van that will work right now"?
I know in my experience with cable cards from outher cable companies all you need to do is read some numbers from a screen on the device. Thus why its suggested a tech is sent in case the cablecard is defective. | |
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jgkolt
Premium
join:2004-02-21
Lakewood, OH
clubs: | Re: 2 Trips, 4hrs I mean no disrespect but i had trouble understanding half of what you said. But I think I understand the jist of what you are saying.
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www.LakeSemaJ.com | |
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Cabal
Premium
join:2007-01-21
Boston, MA
| Sad, but not surprising quote:
It's a source of endless astonishment to me that in the eight years since the first TiVo box hit the market, the cable companies and the two makers of most of their set-top boxes, Motorola (MOT) and Cisco's (CSCO) Scientific Atlanta, have never come close to matching TiVo's ease of use. TiVo still runs rings around the cable carriers' best boxes with its speedy response to remote-control clicks, its well-organized and easy-to-search program guide, and its really fast fast-forward.
I wonder how many more years it will be, I had the (dis)pleasure of using the latest and greatest Motorola box at one of my parents' places recently and it was a joke.
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Anonymous posts are ignored. If you wish to be heard, speak for yourself.
Interested in open source engine management for your Subaru? | |
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cdru
Go Colts
Premium,MVM
join:2003-05-14
Fort Wayne, IN
| Re: Sad, but not surprising said by Cabal  :I wonder how many more years it will be Until TiVO's patents expire, or other DVR manufacturers cave in an license TiVO's patented software technology. Software patents suck, don't they. 
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Go Colts | |
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| itguy05
join:2005-06-17
Camp Hill, PA | Re: PC tuners? You won't see them for your PC. Why? CableLabs will only license the tech. to OEM's for inclusion in a finished PC.
IOW no cards for your own PC - you'll have to buy a new PC with it built in. | |
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| | bi0tech
join:2003-06-19 | Re: PC tuners? Addition..
'you'll have to buy a new PC with it built in' pre-installed with Vista. | |
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dvd536
as Mr. Pink as they come
Premium
join:2001-04-27
Phoenix, AZ
| Re: PC tuners? said by bi0tech :Addition.. 'you'll have to buy a new PC with it built in' pre-installed with Vista. And dont even THINK of trying to record anything. vista will graciously disable that for you.
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You can never be too rich, too thin or have too much Bandwidth | |
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| | | wierdo
join:2001-02-16
Tulsa, OK
 ·Future Nine Corpor..
·Teliax VOIP
| Re: PC tuners? It requires Vista and a fully pre-built Vista PC that has been certified per Cable Labs' requirement. (Some system builders can self certify, but you and I can't!)
I was pricing one of them and the cheapest I could find a dual tuner box with a decently sized hard disk for was around $1700. | |
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dvd536
as Mr. Pink as they come
Premium
join:2001-04-27
Phoenix, AZ
| Re: PC tuners? said by wierdo :It requires Vista and a fully pre-built Vista PC that has been certified per Cable Labs' requirement. (Some system builders can self certify, but you and I can't!) I was pricing one of them and the cheapest I could find a dual tuner box with a decently sized hard disk for was around $1700. And dont even think of trying to record PPV or the premium movie channels. vista will disable that interface on protected content in effect turning that investment into a brick.
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You can never be too rich, too thin or have too much Bandwidth | |
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| rradina
join:2000-08-08
Chesterfield, MO | My Hauppauge cards have IR blasters that are supposed to be able to mimic an IR remote control. Does your analog card have a similar feature? If so, have you tried it? | |
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itguy05
join:2005-06-17
Camp Hill, PA
| Simple Economics Joe 6-pack sees:
1) Comcast DVR - $11/mo
2) Tivo - $299 + $16/mo + CableCard fees
They're going to pick #1 every time.
That being said, I've had DirecTIVO and now Comcast with a Motorola box. While the Motorola is no Tivo, the $300 - $5/mo I'll deal with it's idiosyncrasies. Not that Tivo didn't have theirs..... | |
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Jason Levine
Premium
join:2001-07-13
USA
| Re: Simple Economics It's even worse for Tivo here in Time Warner territory. Time Warner charges a mere $6.95 for a DVR with one premium channel or their All-The-Best package. ($9.95 with just digital cable.) At that price, Tivo's $299 + $16/month just can't compete. I could have 2 DVRs and still save money over Tivo's one DVR. | |
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en102
Canadian, eh?
join:2001-01-26
Valencia, CA
1 edit | Re: Simple Economics Just another reason I never went DVR... service fee + rental fee.
Instead I purchased a DVD-burner and a stack of DVD-RW's.
Of course, I don't record a whole lot, but I often keep what I burn.
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Canada = Hollywood North | |
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Toadman
How do you like these Apples
join:2001-11-28
Medina, OH
| said by djrobx : quote:
Time Warner charges a mere $6.95 for a DVR with one premium channel or their All-The-Best package. ($9.95 with just digital cable.) At that price, Tivo's $299 + $16/month just can't compete. I could have 2 DVRs and still save money over Tivo's one DVR
Good lord Time Warner's pricing is way different here. I have all three services plus a premium channel. DVR service is $9.99 plus the box rental fee of $4.24. Your 2nd box is $6.95. Here it is right off my bill: Ouch!
I have no room to complain. My HD DVR 6412V3 rental fee is $6.00 a month and that includes the basic HD service as well. For me to get a cable card it is $4.00 a month, so $8.00 for two and then Tivo fee, I will just stick with my crappy Moto box. Atleast when it breaks they take it back and give me another one. | |
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| | | | ncbill
Premium
join:2007-01-23
Winston Salem, NC | Re: Simple Economics Here it is $7.70 for the DVR box PLUS $5.95 DVR fee for each DVR every month.
Tivo's monthly looks just fine compared to the above.
Cablecards here are $1.75/month. | |
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cdru
Go Colts
Premium,MVM
join:2003-05-14
Fort Wayne, IN
| said by itguy05 :Joe 6-pack sees: 1) Comcast DVR - $11/mo 2) Tivo - $299 + $16/mo + CableCard fees They're going to pick #1 every time. That being said, I've had DirecTIVO and now Comcast with a Motorola box. While the Motorola is no Tivo, the $300 - $5/mo I'll deal with it's idiosyncrasies. Not that Tivo didn't have theirs..... The only advantage, to me, is that my Verizon supplied DVR has quite limited storage while the TiVOs are expandable. Hopefully Verizon enables external storage, and if that is the case it would eliminate any advantage TiVO would have, for me. Yes the interface is nice, but so is the extra money in my pocket. Yes predictive recording, wish lists, etc are nice. But I only have X number of hours a week free to watch TV and I already record more then I typically watch, so recording even more won't do me much good.
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Go Colts | |
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Titus Pullo
I came, I saw, I slept
join:2004-06-26 | It won't be long and these rapacious little boxes will start piling up in local offices.
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Show me a zealot and I'll show you a fool | |
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Tim618
join:2003-10-14
Garrettsville, OH
 ·DIRECTV
| long wait I had DirectTV install an HD DVR for me back in march. To do that, they installed a new dish, ran all new lines into my house, drilled etc, moved my old HD box to another room, set that up, setup the new HD DVR box, all in about 4 hours. I love the hd dvr, records 50 hours of HD programming and 250 of non hd. 4 hours for one box is crasy! | |
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Flippant
So Much For Subtlety
Premium,Mod
join:2000-06-04
Katy, TX
Host:
Filesharing Software
Earthlink Cable
Texas Gulf Coast
AT&T U-verse
AT&T Southwest
| Not surprising it took 2 weeks to get their own box setup I got new Motorola box with an internal cable card. Initially everything seemed to work, then it was noticed that one channel required a need to be initialized by Comcast. Soon after we found about 50 such channels. Called phone support, eventually passed to tier 2 in my area and after 2 hours of sending signals down the cable and rebooting had a service call.
The tech had 6 new boxes on his truck, after 2 more hours all 6 boxes were tried and still none of the previously stuck channels would work. Recommended solution, get an older box but he did not have one. Some time later in the week the channels finally started working. No idea why but those cable cards certainly do not quite look ready for prime time yet. | |
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Lumberjack
Premium
join:2003-01-18
Newport News, VA
| And to think I thought getting my DirecTV was complicated. It's so freaking simple with DirecTV now. Once the freaking moron contractors get the dish installed correctly any literate person, even grandma, can plugin DirecTV boxes.
My service plan includes unlimited DVR boxes and I only pay an extra $5/mo per extra receivers OR DVRs. It is more expensive, or so it seems than cable with "lease upgrade fees" for the flashy HD DVR but after a year it pays for itself (over my local Cox prices).
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»www.fairtax.org | |
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magnushsi
join:2002-11-06
Cedar Springs, MI
| Author statement: "The cost to TiVo, anyway. Despite all the talk of CableCARDS, there's only 260,000 currently in use, in part because cable operators aren't eager to cannibalize their DVR rental income by promoting them."
The authors statement of about cable operators DVR rental income is bogus. They don't promote CC rental because no-one is selling a two-way device, yet. The cable operator wants the customer to have the ability to impulse buy VOD, PPV, games, etc. As long as they have a CC in a one way device, they loose "potential" revenue. | |
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| | smcallah
join:2004-08-05
Home
| Re: Author statement: CableCards don't have to be 2-way. CableCards simply decrypt what is encrypted.
What needs to be 2-way is the device in which the CableCard is installed. So far there are Motorola, SciAtl, and Samsung cable boxes that have this 2-way communication with CableCards that cable companies have been using since 7/1/07.
TiVo should probably have waited with their new TiVo HD box until they could have created and sold a 2-way OCAP capable TiVo. | |
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| | | | smcallah
join:2004-08-05
Home | Re: OCAP I don't see why other software can't be overlayed on to OCAP, as long as the OCAP interface is standard, there shouldn't be a reason.
This is what will take time to develop and work around. | |
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myosh
join:2001-05-03
Cupertino, CA
 ·Pacific Bell - SBC
| Re: Author statement: said by smcallah :TiVo should probably have waited with their new TiVo HD box until they could have created and sold a 2-way OCAP capable TiVo. I heard that the user interface on OCAP devices are regulated by the cable industry (CableLabs?) which means the superior TiVo interface would either need a makeover or scrapped entirely to make it OCAP-compliant. | |
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See 6 replies to this post |
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morbo
Complete Your Transaction
join:2002-01-22
00000
clubs: | new tech and no incentive eh. cablecards are new and comcast has no reason to speed this along in the long run. sure, 4 hours to install sucks initially, but think about the $ they are losing every month by that customer not having a stupid cable box. | |
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Hall
Premium,MVM
join:2000-04-28
Dayton, OH | Starting over.... When the local cablecos first started installing CableCards, it normally took more than a few tries, lots of phone calls, different cards, etc, etc. Why is this 2nd go-round anything new ?? | |
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b10010011
Whats a Posting tag?
join:2004-09-07
Bellingham, WA | Doesn't matter anyway Dosen't matter anyway because SDV (Switch Digital Video) will soon make all these devices with QAM tuners cablecard or not obsolite. | |
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| WeKnSmith
join:2001-08-09
Noblesville, IN
·AT&T Midwest
| Re: Doesn't matter anyway said by b10010011 :Dosen't matter anyway because SDV (Switch Digital Video) will soon make all these devices with QAM tuners cablecard or not obsolite. Actually the TiVo devices would work fine with SDV if the OCAP requirement for 2-way communication via CableCard was dropped. | |
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| | magnushsi
join:2002-11-06
Cedar Springs, MI
| Re: Doesn't matter anyway said by WeKnSmith :said by b10010011 :Dosen't matter anyway because SDV (Switch Digital Video) will soon make all these devices with QAM tuners cablecard or not obsolite. Actually the TiVo devices would work fine with SDV if the OCAP requirement for 2-way communication via CableCard was dropped. That doesn't make sense since the whole premise of SDV requires two-way. How could it not be required? | |
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| | | WeKnSmith
join:2001-08-09
Noblesville, IN
·AT&T Midwest
| Re: Doesn't matter anyway What I meant to say it that TiVo and the other third party CE companies would be ready to support "CableCard 2.0" (2-way communication). The issue is that CableLabs is trying to force the CE companies to support the OCAP software requirement.
I think in the end the FCC will make CableLabs back off of the attempt to force OCAP on everyone. | |
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| | | | magnushsi
join:2002-11-06
Cedar Springs, MI
| Re: Doesn't matter anyway Still not sure I follow. CableLabs is not trying to force any CE companies to support OCAP? They only have to support OCAP if they want to have the OCAP certified label. They don't need OCAP to support SDV, they need to support an SDV client app and two-way connectivity. Nothing OCAP specific. They just aren't going to do that because there are several different SDV implementations that it wouldn't make sense to try to support each one. It's easier and more cost effective to support a standards based client that will work everywhere. | |
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kballs
@comcast.net
|  Cablecards should work like SIM cards
Noooooo. Cablecards have to be activated by the cable company, and are locked to the device you put them in until you go through the activation process again with a tech.
Cablecard receivers have to be certified/approved by Cable Labs.
Cablecard host systems that the receivers are installed into have to be certified/approved by Cable Labs. If it's a Vista Media Center PC, it has to be a new OEM system that's approved by Cable Labs and activated by the OEM (with a special BIOS setting). Cablecard host systems must use DRM and can't transfer recordings to other devices (though they can do limited streaming - such as to Media Center extenders). Cablecard host systems can have a maximum of 2 tuners (limits your ability to do centralized whole-home DVR, say with 4+ tuners).
Cablecard is crippleware (with the effort to maximize box/card rental and VoD/PPV service revenue by forcing you to use more boxes and by the easiest box to setup being the one provided by the cable co).
They would get a lot more people to subscribe to a lot more services and watch more PPV if they would just make it easy and economical to use any device and without such harsh restrictions. | |
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| magnushsi
join:2002-11-06
Cedar Springs, MI
| Re: Cablecards should work like SIM cards CableCard hosts systems are not limited to 2 tuners. The M-Card supports 6 tuners. Cost limits hosts to 2 tuners. There is nothing stopping a CE vendor from putting in 6 tuners for each M-Card slot, other than hardly anyone would pay for it.
The reason cablecards have to be bound to a host is to help secure the interface between the host device and the cablecard (decryption device). If a cablecard was not bound to a device there would be more oppurtunity for someone to try to steal high value (or copy protected) content straight from the card. Not that people aren't already trying to hack them.
As far as cablecards existing to maximize box rental, that's just dumb. Cable operators would LOVE to have customers go buy their own device and slap a cablecard in it. (contrary to consumer beliefs, cable companies hate supporting hardware) But only if that device supports all the services they offer and want to sell. As long as the CE manufactures don't make a TV or host box that supports all the services the cable operator wants to sell, they will never "push" them. But they certainly aren't the reason people have problems with cablecards. | |
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kballs
@comcast.net
| Re: Cablecards should work like SIM cards Windows Vista limits cable card tuners to 2. This was a limitation in the spec for CableCard 1.0.
M-Card hasn't been implemented in any hardware (yet) so maybe it will solve that problem.
The "more opportunity for someone to try to steal" issue is simply that your friends could get cable (from you) for the cost of a single cablecard rental (by you sharing your cards)... but oh wait, the cable company can still physically disconnect the cables like they always have... and if they wanted they could bring their STB/TV over to your house to get activated.
Having cablecards work like SIM cards does NOT mean they would have to transfer the data to the host unencrypted, it simply means they wouldn't need to be locked to the host (and setup with an unreliable activation process).
Cablecard is an unfinished/incomplete spec that renders 3rd party boxes unable to view high-revenue services like PPV because the 2-way communication portion is "not part of cablecard" and is mostly undefined - open to the cable company's preference (maybe the SDV spec fixes some of this). Because of this, only the cable co's boxes will really work for the services they want to sell you, plus the extra revenue for box rental, so they have little incentive to make activation in 3rd party boxes a 'just works' process, in fact they have incentive to do the opposite - make 3rd party box activation as painful as possible so customers prefer the cable co boxes.
If the cable cos really didn't care about box rental revenue, why do they charge you per box, charge you extra for DVR boxes, charge you for "DVR service", and charge you for "electronic programming service"? It's like soda at a restaurant - all profit! | |
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| | | magnushsi
join:2002-11-06
Cedar Springs, MI
| Re: Cablecards should work like SIM cards Vista doesn't limit anything to 2 cable card tuners? You didn't read the spec if you think it had anything to do with Vista or tuner limits? CC 1.0 does limit the card to supporting one MPEG stream at a time. You can put as many interfaces in a box as the software is written to support. Most choose two, cause it meets what people want to do at a price balance.
What are you talking about? There are nearly 100,000 CC 2.0 (M-Cards) deployed in peoples homes as of today. They work just fine and each one supports up to 6 tuners per card and of course two way connectivity.
Once again, you don't understand the spec...copy protection (the reason for binding to a host) is to protect the content being passed from the card to the host. Hard to explain, read the spec.
Wholy smokes! Unfinished/imcomplete? If you've ever read the spec (500+ pages) you won't think it's incomplete.
Cable co's charge you per box cause the manufacturer charged them per box! If you pay $15 a month for your DVR box the cable company breaks even 27 months on just the hardware cost. That doesn't include shipping, warehouse, staging, handling, support, etc. If you keep the service for 3 years, then maybe the cable company starts to make $ off the box rental. I'll say it again, cable companies HATE having to have boxes. | |
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| DonLibes
Premium,ExMod 2001
join:2003-01-19
| said by kballs :
They would get a lot more people to subscribe to a lot more services and watch more PPV if they would just make it easy and economical to use any device and without such harsh restrictions.
True. I know a lot of people that are avoiding digital cable (sticking with analog) as long as they possibly can. | |
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rlocone
Honor Our Heros, Our Armed Forces
Premium
join:2002-04-10
Kokomo, IN
1 edit |  thinking about it?
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inteller
Sociopaths always win.
join:2003-12-08
Tulsa, OK | TiVo death knell When Cox, COmcast and other adopt the Tivo guide and allow external storage to be plugged on that eSATA port on the Moto 6416, TiVo will go the way of the dodo bird.
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"WHEN THE LAUGH TRACK STARTS THEN THE FUN STARTS!" | |
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CableCARD Headaches Continue
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