FCC Commissioner (and Jim Clyburn’s daughter) Mignon Clyburn:
Most people outside this building probably don’t know what a CableCARD is
A CableCARD is a device that was supposed to let you plug your TIVO into a digital cable system, so you could have a decent DVR and avoid renting the hunk of junk your cable provider wanted to foist on you. But it shit the bed royally because it was hobbled by a combination of mediocre design and stupid implementation rules. For example, the consumer couldn’t even insert a CableCARD into their own DVR — the cable TV guy had to come out and do it. And cable systems could still charge rental for their devices even you were using your own TIVO.
Perhaps the new rules on the next coming of CableCARD, called AllVid, will be better than CableCARD, but I’m sure the MPAA and cable companies will still try to throw up as many roadblocks as possible.
Odie Hugh Manatee
That’s capitalism baby!
“Mignon Clyburn”? Is her first name Filet?
Ross Hershberger
All your signals are belong to us.
El Cid
You could use them directly with many TV’s, supposedly to not have to use a cable box. I’ve seen people use it, for what it does, if you were opposed to an external cable box, it worked, basically, but the cableco still required that they installed it. Plus, it was not approved for 2-way functions, such as on-demand services, etc. So if you had an anti-box thing, that was the option. And of course for the cableco it was a way to prevent you from tuning channels you weren’t paying for. The cableco’s are trying to move to services which are all centrally located with them, shifting much of the functionality of the box attached to your TV back to their own centers.
Walker
It is too late. The Internet is killing Cable with services like Netflix and Hulu Plus. Unless you need to watch sports (which I know a sizeable population of this board does), Cable no longer provides any real added value.
I cannot tell you the number of people I know who have cut down to Basic (because no Cable makes your Internet cost go through the roof), and are using Netflix/Hulu.
MikeJ
As Cory says, any time somebody puts a lock on something you own and doesn’t give you the key, they are not doing it for your benefit.
Hawes
If anyone can tell me how to make my TiVo work again, I will buy them something nice on Amazon.
Ever since the change over, and the new Cablebox I had to install, my TiVo hasn’t worked. I got the special cable, I followed the fucking directions. And there’s no way Cabletown…sorry, Cablevision will help me.
Aredubya
I’ve been a proud Tivo3 owner with its dual cable cards from Comcast for years now. Did I say proud? I meant immensely frustrated. The cards are hell to provision (after sliding the cards into the slots, calls to the special cablecard provisioning office take at least an hour to complete, plus an hour to program). They die frequently (between July and August alone we had 3 separate cards fail). Worst of all, when they fail, they do so by randomly losing the ability to tune particular channels. So cable’s not dead, but certain channels might (or might not) be, so there’s no advanced warning that a program I set Tivo to record might not be there later. It’s a crapshoot, emphasis on crap.
andrew
I’ve had a M-Card CableCard for about 4 months now, and can’t be more happy with it. Comcast allowed me to do a self install. I went to the office asked for the card, and put it in myself. It’s currently in a Ceton InfiniTV tuner in my Windows Media Center. Once it was in, I ran the setup, called Comcast to activate, and have been trouble free since. I can record 4 channels at once and my bill even went down (I don’t have to rent their crappy DVR anymore).
The early single stream CableCards were flaky, but the new M-Card ones are pretty rock solid. I think the main reason there aren’t more devices that support them out there is that the average person just doesn’t know they exist.
andrew
Hawes,
What series of TiVo do you have? I can probably help.
arguingwithsignposts
Hey folks, don’t worry. Daniel Henninger at the WSJ says you just need to revel in the triumph of free market capitalism! Obviously, you’re just the victims of big govmint intervention in the cable market.
Hawes
Hellifino…
Probably a Series 2. It’s fairly old, six or seven years.
Yellowdog
Th problem in my area is that Comcast uses contractors who only know how to cut cable and call the central offce. The contractor who was to install my Cablecard missed three appointments before he finally showed up. I had to tell him what the Cablecard does and show him where to insert it. He didn’t know how to activate it either. I surmised that ignorance was the reason he kept missing appointments. I next insisted that a Comcast in-house technician come to activate it. It took him five minutes. Since then, the card has worked flawlessly. We will be switching over some of our service to Netflix now that our Apple TV has arrived, but my Tivo (attached to the TV in my office) will still be used to record old movies on TCM (many of which are not available on Netflix), record football, and receive movies on Netflix.
andrew
Hawes
You pretty much out of luck. You can probably record analog simulcasts of the 5 networks (although the cable company isn’t required to send those anymore if they send the HD signals in clear QAM). You can also get any analog signals they send on channels 1-30.
andrew
@Yellowdog
That’s why I just did it myself. I just told them I had a TiVo (I didn’t want to explain Media Center to them) and asked for a CableCard. They didn’t even blink, they just gave it to me and I was on my way. When you insert it and do the setup, you just call the 800 number and read the two number strings off the screen to them, they pair and activate it, and you’re good to go.
Kilgore Trout
We’ve been using a cable card in our Tivo for about a year and have had no problems, and we were able to install it ourselves. It’s true that it does not support on demand type stuff but between what we record on the Tivo and netflix streaming we really don’t need any more options.
Barb (formerly gex)
Yup. And they’ll dither on how exactly to make the televised entertainment industry as hostile as possible towards consumers. Meanwhile more and more people I know are ditching the thing altogether.
Mustang Bobby
I got a TiVo for my birthday in September. On October 3 I had to have Comcast come out and install the CableCARD. Since then, I have had terrible signal service in my house to the point that it is turning into a saga of Melvillian proportions. Coincidence? Hmmm.
Today I am expecting the fifth visit from a Comcast technician. Meanwhile my TiVo has recorded 16 hours of blank screens for my viewing pleasure.
YellowDog
@andrew:
That was my plan, too. I went to the Comcast office (after confirming by telephone that they would give me a Cablecard), but was told that only a “technician” could install it. Add to the three missed appointments and the half-installation one pointless office visit.
Doug
I was definitely irritated when Comcast made the extra push to foist their aggressively crappy cable boxes on us. It rendered my Tivo Series 2 effectively useless. But I’m really pretty happy with the Tivo Premiere and Cable Card combo at the moment; except for the fact that I had to shell out extra money for the Premiere (and Tivo-brand wireless adapter); and the semi-McLiterate technician Comcast sent out to install the card. He apparently got mildly shitty with my wife because he didn’t know what the fuck he was doing. But, when they got a second tech out there, things got taken care of nicely.
BeccaM
Yeah… the Comcast equipment is absolute shite. We’re at the point though where we hardly ever use it, in favor of streaming video. Were watching a lot of PC streaming — then got one of the new Roku boxes and it’s da bomb. Love the Netflix access and the picture is just fine.
Now we gotta see if we can downgrade to no cable TV, but keep the phone and Internet. Maybe even bump the speed on the latter.
As for Tivo, I’ve been intrigued by the cable cards…but we actually have two old Tivos in a box in the closet, because they’re out of date.
ThresherK
For example, the consumer couldn’t even insert a CableCARD into their own DVR —the cable TV guy had to come out and do it.
Doesn’t the WSJ blame this on those unionized cable guys?
Chris
The MPAA and RIAA won’t be happy until the only kind of music and video (counter-respectively) consumers can buy, don’t even play at all.
WaterGirl
@Hawes: I just moved to the Tivo Premiere with the M cablecard because I didn’t want to lose the ability to record 2 cable shows at one time.
I think Tivo said if I had wanted to stick with my one-year old Tivo box, I could have gotten some adapter that would convert digital to analog and that I wouldn’t even have to get the evil cable box.
If only being able to record one regular channel and one cable channel (at the same time) wouldn’t be an issue for you, I would gladly sell the Tivo box I bought just one year ago. I also have the wireless G Tivo adapter, if you wanted that, too. I would happily sell it for less than I could get on eBay, since it would be going to a BJ person and I wouldn’t have to hassle with eBay or amazon. Oh, and because I hate Comcast!
mclaren
A CableCARD is a device that lets you record TV shows. It’s also known as “a laptop connected to bittorrent.” Works great.
TooManyJens
@mclaren: My friends and I sometimes refer to BT as “the global TiVo”.