“The CableCard is essentially dead”
Interesting article in the New York Times over the holiday, arguing that CableCard Hasn’t Been Able to Kill the Set-Top Box. One analyst even says, “The CableCard is essentially dead.”
I’ve argued before that cable operators have a powerful incentive to delay and stall and put up technological roadblocks to make CableCard technology much less attractive than the “simple” option of just getting the set-top box. Looks like that playbook has worked perfectly.
PC-based CableCard devices are due to appear next year; we’ll see if they can buck this trend.
without a solution for HDTV MCE is dead in the water as the living room DVR. Its a shame MS would allow this to happen by putting all their eggs in the cable card basket with the upcoming Vista release. Lose the unrequired DRM and add Firewire HD or clear QAM and i might give it another shot.
the writting has been on the wall for cable card for quite sometime. I don’t think anyone is truely surprised it hasn’t caught on.
My personal opinion is that its not dead but 1 way cablecard is limited. people like their ondemand and ppv. dvr users can’t use them yet so sure, dvrs and stbs are better than cablecard right now.
I think this story 2 years from now will be “remember set top boxes?” And 10 year years it will be like telling a child about an audio cassette and low quality tv.
The local cable company in OKC tells customers that their cable card technology is not perfected as of yet and although available the set-top box is a better alternative. Rather sef-serving IMHO.
Additionaly – I feel the cable card is too inconvenient for the local cable companies to distribute. They are then unable to dump the stock of STBs they have on hand.