What's Needed For CableCARD with Media Center?

Xbox 360 Zephyr rumors - HDMI port

Peter Near's Blog — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 00:51:45 GMT

Engadget has some leaked pictures of what is being called the XBox 360 Zephyr, which has an HDMI port...

TheNears » Xbox 360 Zephyr rumors - HDMI port

TheNears » Xbox 360 Zephyr rumors - HDMI port — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 18:03:50 GMT

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TheNears » Xbox 360 Zephyr rumors - HDMI port

TheNears » Xbox 360 Zephyr rumors - HDMI port — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 18:03:50 GMT

PingBack from http://www.thenears.com/archives/238

re: What's Needed For CableCARD with Media Center?

chrisl — Sun, 04 Dec 2005 05:31:00 GMT

This is probably more detail than you have right now, but would the monitor's connection also affect streamed video? That is, if I record in HD, and stream it to an Xbox 360, will it still down-res it just because my computer's monitor is non-HDCP compliant?

(And what about HDCP support on the Xbox 360? It's only got component cables now...)

re: What's Needed For CableCARD with Media Center?

chrisl — Fri, 02 Dec 2005 19:47:00 GMT

I actually went over the two-way vs. one-way CableCARD issue in a post at http://msmvps.com/chrisl/archive/2005/11/16/75804.aspx.

Based on the value of what one-way CableCARD adds to Media Center, and then based on what Media Center already has (Guide) or has alterative methods of obtaining (VOD content), I don't see it a big problem that only one-way support was announced. Two-way would be nice, but any VOB content through CableCARD would be set so you can't record it, and the EPG is already there. Nice, but not needed.

re: What's Needed For CableCARD with Media Center?

chrisl — Fri, 02 Dec 2005 19:43:00 GMT

This article seems to make a pretty big deal out of the lack of "two-way" CableCARD support. But if the main "two-way" features are the IPG and VOD/Pay-per-view, then why would Microsoft care?

It already has it's own IPG, and at least one goal of Online Spotlight would seem to be downloading content to Media Center, you know, on demand. Am I missing something here? Is there some other reason the "two-way" CableCARD would be useful in Media Center?

re: What's Needed For CableCARD with Media Center?

chrisl — Thu, 01 Dec 2005 22:33:00 GMT

Excellent discussion of the issues surrounding Cable Card. It suggests other questions though, such as:
What new hardware will be required?
Will new HD _cable_ tuner cards as opposed to OTA HD tuner cards be needed?
Will new sound and graphics cards (and drivers) be needed that convert cable encrypted video to HDCP signals.
Will unencrypted data be DMA'd over PCI, PCI Express, or AGP busses?
Will Media Center support CableCard content decoding/playback via DirectShow filter graphs?
If so, how does that mesh with a Protected decode environment in the kernel? Will there be user-mode DS stubs for kernel mode agents?
Is it true that encrypted HD content will be decrypted once via Cable Card, then re-encrypted to be sent over PCI-Express, then decrypted by the GPU and re-encrypted for HDCP? And similar decryption, re-encryption for Audio?

This link seems to depict what the architecture was planned to be at one point:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/9/8/f/98f3fe47-dfc3-4e74-92a3-088782200fe7/TWEN05005_WinHEC05.ppt#287,6,PMP Overview

Some interesting discussion of PMP here: http://p2pnet.net/story/5591