The Trouble with Premium HDTV (CableCARD) and Microsoft
Ed Bott and Thomas Hawk have been going back and forth about CableCARD support (among other things) in Media Center again. This all started with Ed posting about some new products with two-way CableCARD support. Ed’s main argument is that “proprietary solutions” are able to get CableLabs to approve their products for use with CableCARDs, but products like Windows XP Media Center Edition are not able to do the same. Part of Ed’s take on this is that none of the PC TV Tuner manufactures have released CableCARD certified hardware into the market, or possibility not even submitted them to CableLabs for certification testing. To Ed, this is holding back getting CableCARD support in Media Center.
I think Ed is off a bit, for a few reasons. One of the first reasons is that AnandTech reported that Shuttle’s Sonoma Media Center XPC (CES 2005) would ship with a CableCARD slot. Then at Computex 2005, AnandTech reported that “The CableCARD reference design is complete and is ready to go into the next version of Media Center Edition, however it seems that concerns over DRM are preventing it from coming to market.” That is something that I have been saying for a while, and this points more to the fact that the problem has little to do with hardware at this point, but rather with the software interface with the hardware.
Now I will cut-too Thomas who thinks that Ed might be making excuses for Microsoft not having something like CableCARD support in Media Center already. As I see myself as a king of making excuses for Microsoft in terms of HDTV, I have to disagree with him on Ed making excuses for Microsoft. ;-)
Thomas’ argument is based around Microsoft having other products that can time-shift HDTV and if TiVo can get CableCARD certification, then so can Microsoft. Ed and Thomas have brought up a number of points in the comments of their two posts, however many of the concepts that have been presented are flawed.
Thomas is correct that Microsoft has other technologies that can record HDTV currently. The product is called Microsoft TV: Foundation Edition and you can get one through Comcast in Washington State. Collectively, Foundation Edition is based on Windows CE if I remember correctly. Currently, Foundation Edition will run on several of Motorola’s set-top clients. With a set-top box running Foundation Edition, you have a closed box. The content is not allowed out unless it’s going through authorized outputs. In addition, you can’t run GraphEdit on the box and strip out the video or transcode it, nor is the content considered to be transferred over any User Accessible Bus where it could be intercepted and manipulated.
Thomas says that if Microsoft actually wanted to capitalize on HDTV in Media Center they could “create a closed box inside of an open box”. Thomas has a great idea there, but his mind looks at that statement completely different then mine. The basic idea would be to get the closed box that is a set-top running Foundation Edition and mix it with the Media Center. Thomas brings up that it would be technically possible, but a very undesirable solution. Doing this would completely kill that Media Center is supposed to be able to provide, a single (easy to use) interface to access all of your media. Even though a solution like this wouldn’t be the best, Thomas sees HDTV as much an issue that is worth spending the money to make an undesirable solution actually happen, as it would be better then what we have now.
I don’t exactly agree with that since it not only would not be able to play nice with Media Center. No matter how Microsoft engineered such a solution, that content still can’t get near the PC since it will not be protected. If the content can’t be accessed by the PC, Media Center might as well not be in the picture.
Another idea that came up between Thomas and Ed is Microsoft partnering with Cable/Satellite companies to make Microsoft powered (??) closed boxes more accessible to the public and in turn, would solve Thomas’ issue with Microsoft and HDTV. Microsoft has no luck of cutting a deal with all the cable operators, and why should they? This is why we have CableLabs, this is what CableCARDs can fix. DirecTV and Dish would not be great partners, any solution built now would cost too much at the start assuming the boxes were to support MPEG-4 and MPEG-2. This is Microsoft we are talking about, so throw in VC-1 (WMV9) support too. Not going to happen, and still it doesn’t bring the content close to Media Center. Plus, they are already developing solutions of their own to record and move content around.
Thomas’ idea of the “closed box inside of an open box” is what PVP-OPM (Protected Media Path) is all about. You have an open box that is your PC, and with the framework in Vista and hardware that will take advantage of it, you have your closed box. The reason it looks like Microsoft might not care about HDTV, is because Media Center is of course built on-top of Windows XP. Windows XP doesn’t provide the framework to enable these solutions to work. In fact, the changes are so drastic in the framework that it’s doubtful Microsoft could apply them in XP at all. Windows Vista will change all of this!
Windows Vista, as I keep saying, will bring a world of new opportunities to the PC and hopefully will provide Thomas (and everyone else) with the platform he wants with the features he wants. If you look at some of the functionality that Vista will be able provide it easy to see that Microsoft does care about HD, and they are working towards solutions for Media Center and the PC in general.
PVP-OPM and related technologies should bring CableCARD support. HD-DVD will provide Managed Copies to your hard drive. You will be able to stream DVD’s (the ones you own now!) around your home network to other devices. You might even be able to rip them to your hard drive (legally) too. Media Center will provide the central location to manage and explore all of your content using a remote and a polished interface. Media Center Extenders and the Xbox 360 will bring the ability to move the content to other rooms in your home without needing a PC in each room. There will be even more that can happen once Vista is released too!
It stinks that we can’t have this functionality now, but wait until Windows Vista ships and I can bet some of the current issues will be addressed!
