A CableCARD Quote For Thomas...
Be sure to watch this Channel 9 video with Jeff Henshaw and David Alles. A notable quote that might please a few of you is as follows.
David Alles (Microsoft): “So right now if you're in North America you can get ATSC High Definition television, which is the Over the Air, free signals. Coming up soon, we will have cable. So, if you are a cable subscriber and you have OpenCable, there will be an OpenCable CableCARD in the PC, so you get your little smart card and plug it in and you will be able to get all of your High Definition television that way...”
And to back up the point I have had for a while about Windows XP not being ready to get certified by CableLabs, open up your Registry Editor after installing Update Rollup 2 and do a search for “UDCR” and notice what you get. UDCR is Uni-Directional Cable Receiver, or what we all call CableCARD. Support for CableCARD has been being built for some time now, it just can’t happen until Windows Vista and the fact that Update Rollup 2 has bits related to UDCR just backs up this point even more. Microsoft does care about HD, they just don't have the platform that will enable it to happen yet. Vista will be (yet again) a turning point for Media Center and more!