CableCARD Takes First (Unofficial) Step to DIY PCs
A fair amount of headroom has recently been made for
CableCARD support on non-OEM machines.
CableLabs regulations have limited only Microsoft approved OEMs to build
and sell CableCARD machines using well outlined stipulations including a
special BIOS and additional product key.
Smart thinking guy’s at The Green Button cracked open the
public CableLabs specs to find out more.
As I’ve talked about before, the BIOS is actually a OSFR table which in
theory can be put in any motherboard BIOS.
Turns out Asus might have shipped a revision of their P5K with the table
present and populated. Two fun threads
to follow for more are here and here.
Now, getting the BIOS "hacked" doesn’t mean too much. The hard part of this equation is the OCUR PID
that will be much harder to hack. Right
now people are recycling their Dell XPS 420’s PIDs to home build a custom
CableCARD mahine.
I will caution everyone, Microsoft and CableLabs are
supposed to have a method to remotely disable this stuff and your PC is also
supposed to check every so often to ensure everything is cool. If you spend a lot time and money getting
into something like this and one day it just breaks don’t get too mad.