HP Drops CableCARD Again Due to "Problems with Current Configuration”
As I have talked about several times now, HP has had
a hard time getting CableCARD right on their PCs. For whatever reason, they have been going in
and out of stock since the launched. I
figured the Digital Cable Tuners were just out of stock and instead of pilling
up back orders they just decided to pull them from the configuration options.
Well, that might not be the exact reason. According to commenter Tony,
he purchased an HP m8010y and had various problems with the machine
overall. So he wanted to exchange it for
a new one and hope for better luck.
While in the process of trying to figure this out with HP, Tony was apparently
presented with HP saying they are no longer selling Digital Cable Tuners due to
"problems with current configuration.”
So it appears HP wasn’t really ready to launch CableCARD and
I hope they will return soon with a better offering (like maybe dual CableCARD
tuners as an option?!). While then, Velocity Micro is your next best bet
for a low cost machine ($1,595 for a single tuner) and S1Digital will be shipping slightly more
expensive machines in a little bit. On
the high end side, Niveus Media and Vidabox are also shipping. Sony
also has a CableCARD offering, through it’s a single tuner. I guess it’s a good thing that Dell has been holding out of shipping
CableCARD. Might as well do your best to
get it right on the first run.
