# CableCARD is not that great



## Mike Richardson (Jun 12, 2003)

According to my local Time Warner cable webpage:










No EPG? No PPV? No interactive? No sports packages? You get your higher numbered channels, but nothing else. If you want the full experience, you still have to shell out $7/mo for a cable box.


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## ibglowin (Sep 10, 2002)

Why do you think they call it "cable" !!!


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## Bill R (Dec 20, 2002)

The local cable company does "everything" to discourage the use of the cable card. In one case I know of the cable company allowed a customer who wanted a cable card to "rent" a digital cable box for six months for the same price that they would pay for a cable card (which is currently $1.99 a month; digital cable receiver normally is $7.95 a month). 

I know a person that works for the cable company and he said that they one reason that they want the customers to use their boxes is that they are two way and they can tell what the customer watches. He also mentioned that they are now selling the collected data from their boxes to marketing companies.


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## Paul Secic (Dec 16, 2003)

Mike Richardson said:


> According to my local Time Warner cable webpage:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


$7? OUCH!


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## olgeezer (Dec 5, 2003)

Those listed as no on Time Warner are yes on local Cox. I think the cable companies may be trying to get more into the STB business. In Topeka, if you want a DVR, your only choice is the HD DVR, even if you don't subscribe to HD


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## rid0617 (Dec 27, 2004)

Cable companies are getting greedier


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## Bill R (Dec 20, 2002)

rid0617 said:


> Cable companies are getting greedier


In my area the cable company charges $12.95 a month for their HD DVR (plus the cost of the programming) and they are STILL losing money.

I don't know if its pure greed but I do know that the stock holders are demanding more of a return on their investment. The cable companies are just trying to meet that demand (as are the DBS companies who are raising rates too).


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## Cyclone (Jul 1, 2002)

This the first release of the Cable Card. There is a new CableCard 2.0 standard which will be released which will support two way and enable all of the features listed as exclusive to the Cable STB.


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## HappyGoLucky (Jan 11, 2004)

Mike Richardson said:


> According to my local Time Warner cable webpage:
> 
> No EPG? No PPV? No interactive? No sports packages? You get your higher numbered channels, but nothing else. If you want the full experience, you still have to shell out $7/mo for a cable box.


As someone who is about to lose access to my DirecTV and DirecTivo and only have Comcast cable available, what is this "CableCARD"? Here Comcast is advertising like mad how much cheaper they are than satellite and how much more advanced their system is, however after going to their own website, the price for the same channels is MUCH higher on cable, and their DVR costs $9.95 per month and only has one tuner, you can't watch one thing record another, for instance. What use is that? In essense, their advertising is a big load of horse manure.

Unfortunately, I have no other choice, though. The apartment building I'll be in has no balconies or any other means to mount a dish, and I'd be on the wrong side anyway, facing north.


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## Bill R (Dec 20, 2002)

HappyGoLucky said:


> What is this "CableCARD"?


"Cable cards" are security access cards that are inserted into your "cable card ready" TV and they allow you to directly tune all the analog and digital cable channels that you subscribe to WITHOUT having a cable box. As noted, there is a lot of downside to the current version but just about all the TV makers are coming out with models that incorporate them. You MUST "rent" the card from your cable company and the card will only work in the TV it is authorized for.


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## NThomas76207 (Jul 30, 2004)

Will Dish or Direct ever get to see a "Sat-Card?"


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## Mike Richardson (Jun 12, 2003)

That's what I was thinking, they should make their systems compatible with Cable Card somehow. Unfortunately cable and DBS don't work the same way technically so it wouldn't just work when you plugged in, unless maybe if you converted the DBS signal to something that looked more like cable.


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## SimpleSimon (Jan 15, 2004)

Yeah, unfortunately, a satellite receiver will ALWAYS be needed.

Of course, it's certainly possible to build boxes that converted to "cable mode", but that's been tried before with only mixed success. Sorry, I don't know much more than that about it.


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## kb7oeb (Jun 16, 2004)

I read that the cable card is or is like a PCMCIA card. Since its so big do they have the decryption hardware on the card? My understanding of SAT is the decryption hardware is in the receiver and the smart card only generates decryption keys.


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