Cable Co's, Media Center and HD

[coolVariable]

Just set up an appointment with Time Warner Cable to have my set top box replaced with one that supports firewire.
Of course the new box is an HD box and now they are sticking it to me from behind with another $4.77+taxes for the HD box.
God I hate cable companies - I wish my apartment was facing north (West Los Angeles), so that I could get OTA HD.

Now, I guess, I will have to get a nice 1394 controller card for the desktop.
(Anyone have this working and now of a good controller card that they can recommend?)

Cross my fingers that the 1394 trick works ...

 

[Matthias99]

Of course the new box is an HD box and now they are sticking it to me from behind with another $4.77+taxes for the HD box.

You don't need the HD box if you have a TV that supports Cablecard. Or a new HTPC with Vista and a Cablecard tuner, but AFAIK they're only being sold to OEMs.

Pretty much any FW controller should work... the limiting factor is generally if they have Firewire enabled and the channels you want aren't flagged to prevent recording (or, rather, transmission to non-HDCP devices).

 

[Bluestealth]

Originally posted by: Matthias99
You don't need the HD box if you have a TV that supports Cablecard. Or a new HTPC with Vista and a Cablecard tuner, but AFAIK they're only being sold to OEMs.

From Dailytech Article:

Microsoft has already made it abundantly clear that CableCARD support is only for OEMs and system builders -- do not expect AMD OCUR cards to show up on eBay in the near future. Even with the hardware, systems require BIOS-level support and authentication; CableCARD PCs constantly ping CableLabs for authentication.

I hate CableLabs.... may they burn in hell.

 

[coolVariable]

I hate CableLabs.... may they burn in hell.

Amen!

 

[The Boston Dangler]

CableLabs is responsible for the amazing DOCSIS standards, enabling the masses to get advanced communication services. i think your beef is with DRM, for that we can thank the studios and publishers, not engineering organizations. op, nobody is forcing you to pay for anything.

 

[Bluestealth]

Originally posted by: The Boston Dangler
CableLabs is responsible for the amazing DOCSIS standards, enabling the masses to get advanced communication services. i think your beef is with DRM, for that we can thank the studios and publishers, not engineering organizations. op, nobody is forcing you to pay for anything.

I continue to fault them for their choice of DRM since the competition from the disk formats isn't anywhere as close to as bad. I believe that they don't want anything to inter-operate outside of their platform, and since they were forced to "allow" this kind of support they made it as terrible as possible. Cablecard 1.0 came out already obsolete, so will Cablecard 2.0. They mandated control of the platform, there is nothing wrong with mandating drm.... however the level of control they want is too much.