When will we see Digital Cable Ready PVR cards?

[jeff_d]

So with the rumors of Comcast switching to all digital soon, it would seem that our current cards will be obsolete unless we get a cable box for each tuner. It seems that now is the perfect time to develope a digital cable ready tuner card. Is there some kind of politcal/DRM issue that will stop this from happening? I don't really see how it should because "digital" cable isn't really digital, but an analog source over a digital signal.

[dbfresh23]

Probably not very soon. Even if they do switch to "all digital" you'll most likely be able to plug that digital cable receiver right into the analog tuner card like people do now.

[mikesm]

Never. If you read the Cablelabs licensing agreement, which needs to be signed and approved by cablelabs before their cards will recognize your host adaptor (there is a cryptographic handshake between the card and the host adaptor), you'll see that any device with an "open data path" like a PCI bus or anything general purpose PC's are made of would fail to qualify for a license.

This means you can only receieve "open" programming, which isn't much, and is already supported today with QAM capable HD cards. You won't be able to recieve encrypted programming at all.

So, you'll end up with a STB and controlling it via serial port of IR, and then re-encoding the analog version with your tuner card like you do today, minus the STB. Of course this doesn't work for HD.

Thanks,
Mike

[stanger89]

Probably with the Longhorn update of MCE, but probably not before.

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by mikesm

So, you'll end up with a STB and controlling it via serial port of IR, and then re-encoding the analog version with your tuner card like you do today, minus the STB. Of course this doesn't work for HD.

Maybe I'll just seriously curtail my TV viewing and find a life? I can't envision, nor afforod to be renting a minimum of a half dozen cable boxes. Nevermind trying to get them all under control via IR or Serial from a central server.

[mikesm]

Originally Posted by stanger89

Probably with the Longhorn update of MCE, but probably not before.

Even with that, the PHILA prohibits licensing to the hardware that has things like unencrypted data flowing over a PCI or memory bus. Presumably Microsoft is working with Intel on specfic platforms that will have hardware encryption through the full datapath in the machine, but I can't see this happening with commodity hardware. Heck, you can't find a video card with HDCP output.

The cable guys are under a lot of pressure from hollywood to hold the line here, and they have no interest in people using other boxes that they don't make or control.

If you want, I can point you to the cable labs specs and you can see for yourself.

Thanks,
mike

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by mikesm

Even with that, the PHILA prohibits licensing to the hardware that has things like unencrypted data flowing over a PCI or memory bus. Presumably Microsoft is working with Intel on specfic platforms that will have hardware encryption through the full datapath in the machine, but I can't see this happening with commodity hardware.

Here's a possibility I see. If you can build decryption into video cards (should be relatively easy with the programability now). You could record, in encrypted form (this is possible now) then pass the encrypted video directly to the video card. This way unencrypted data would never pass over a user bus. Also remember that the data is encrypted so passing it off the the TV card it would still be encrypted (I don't see "commodity hardware" decrypting it.) Then with PVP-OPM coming in Longhorn (if not sooner) there will be a protected path for video to follow.

Heck, you can't find a video card with HDCP output.

The question has been raised before as to what exactly it means, but ATI has listed "HDCP Ready" in cards since at least the 9800. And if nothing else I believe HDMI cards are supposed to be imminent.

If you want, I can point you to the cable labs specs and you can see for yourself.

Thanks,
mike

I've glanced throught the CableLabs specs (along with the ATSC and DVB ones) and 6-12 months ago, I'd have agreed with you that encrypted digital cable wouldn't make it to the PC. But everything I've seen coming form people in the know, even Chris Lanier (who is not terribly bullish on digital cable) indicates that it will happen the only question is when. There was a lot of hope CableCard would make it into the next update, but indications are it will require PVP-OPM which I believe will first see light in Vista.