[opendtv] CableCARD: a primer
- From: Monty Solomon <monty@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: undisclosed-recipient: ;
- Date: Thu, 9 Feb 2006 02:34:55 -0500
CableCARD: a primer
By Nate Anderson
Monday, February 06, 2006
Introduction
We know that you'd like nothing better than to get rid of that
set-top box sitting on your DVD player. It's ugly, it's clunky, and
it has its own remote. Extra cables snake about the back of your
entertainment center, providing ideal conditions for some type of
electrical fire, and the matte black box clashes with your brushed
silver aesthetic. To top it all off, you have to pay for the
privilege of using this thing-if you want digital cable, it's the
only way to go.
The collective groans of anguish from cable box users across the
country have at last reached the ears of the cable industry, which
has a (federally mandated) plan to ease your pain. It's called
CableCARD, and it promises to do away with set-top boxes forever. And
though CableCARD has tremendous promise, it is still a mysterious
technology even to most of the technorati. If you're a regular Ars
reader, you've probably heard the term, you know what it means, but
you're the tiniest bit confused about exactly how it works, how you
can get one, and exactly why you might want one.
That's why we've prepared this handy guide to CableCARD. Once you're
done reading it, you will know more about CableCARDs than anyone in
the country, save the engineers who developed them.* You will learn
what to tell your Uncle Wilbur when he asks if his new TV really
needs to have a CableCARD slot, you'll know what new hardware to buy
if you want to use a CableCARD with Vista, and you'll learn why your
mother was right when she told you that patience is a virtue.
...
http://arstechnica.com/guides/other/cablecard.ars
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