Chris Lanier's Blog

I think this is an awesome development, and I hope that we see it actually make it to the market.

-- As you note, this would provide dual-tuners on a single card.  Today, dual-tuners will cost you $600, so I am very hopeful that this product will represent a significant price drop.

-- This is a PCI card, and not a USB solution like the current ATI Digital Cable Tuner.  (Some people might not be aware that even the internal ATI DCT uses a USB connection.)

-- However, without changes to Vista Media Center, I don't think we can actually achieve BOCR.  So if this is a BOCR card...  Does this suggest that Microsoft might be further along with bi-directional support than we have thought?  Or does it mean that this manufacturer is offering hardware support for something where the required software support might never appear?

--Don

I wanted to add:  If you have an OCUR-capable PC from a licensed OEM, you should be able to just plug this new card in (and load drivers).  You should not have to buy a new OEM PC with this card.

So if this card comes out soon, I should be able a single one of these to my existing dual-DCT Velocity Micro HTPC, (using the registry hack) to get 4 tuners.

(And I'm going to need to change my terminology.  I've been using "DCT" as shorthand for "ATI TV Wonder Digital Cable Tuner [Internal/External]".)

--Don

re: USB vs. PCI.  As a user, I might prefer USB because I think an unstable USB device has lower odds of hanging my entire PC.  I would think that a PCI device costs less to manufacture than a USB device, but I might be wrong (there are pleny of examples of very low cost USB devices).

I would guess that the reason the internal version of the ATI TV Wonder Digital Cable Tuner is a USB device, is because ATI probably started with it as an external USB device, and then when they were asked "what about an internal version?" they wanted to minimize their development costs, so they just came up with different packaging for the exact same board.  Licensing / certification costs with CableLabs might have been a factor.

I was wondering where Ceton came from.  They appear to be located in Kirkland, WA (less than 10 min from Microsoft).  All of their products (listed on their website) are related to CableCard.  Someone posting as "Ceton" was soliciting HD-DVR-related opinions on the AVSForum starting Jan'07, and "Ceton Corp" is listed as under "OpenCable Applications Platform license and CHILA signators include CE manufacturers, software, silicon, and support companies." as of Aug'06 (72.14.253.104/search).

Maybe this is why Sony is selling DCTs on their own.  They need to clear out their inventory of external tuners before they are obsolete.  I cannot fidn DCTS at dell.com either.  Maybe this is why.  Maybe everyone knows the next gen is right around the corner.

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Would it be possible to design an "All-In-Wonder" DCT that could simply record cableco-encrypted content to a PC hard drive and only decrypt and decompress it on play back through the tuner's own video out?  Given the original encryption is good enough for broadcast over cable it ought to be good enough for for storage on an disk drive without CableLabs worrying about unauthorized decryption.  I would think this would not require a special OS or BIOS for the host PC. Only the tuner/video card hardware and firmware would have to be hardened against attack by hackers. Or is there some technical reason the original encryption has to be replaced by PC-specific encryption?

(OK, I'm a low-end kind of guy and would rather get a TiVo HD to supplement my El-Cheapo HTPC than buy an OEM VMC PC with CC DCT.)

THis is a dual cablecard . Bi Directional cards and specs do not exist. This will not allow Cable to provide their own OCAP Guide or services but will offer dual tuners.

Even the "PCI form factor" cards use USB and the PCI slot is just mechanical.

"If you have a CableCARD, you have a bidirectional card.  There is no such thing as a unidirectional CableCARD.  S-Cards and M-Cards are both bidirectional."

How can this be?  One of the major limitations always listed for the CableCard architecture was uni-directional. I assumed this meant that the OCUR was uni-directional also, since the architecture for bi-directional didn't even exist.  What have I missed?  Are Mcards actually going to exist soon (ones we can rent from the cable provider)?

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