John Ludwig dashes a little cold water on my eagerness to bypass the cable company’s set-top box with a Media Center PC and a CableCard:
… it is a PITA to get these cards and to make them work. I have one TV limping with a card from Comcast — but the overall experience (ordering, install, daily use) is awful because comcast does not want you to use this product.
This is not surprising, unfortunately. Whoever owns the box, owns the customer, so it’s in the cable company’s interests to make any alternative to their box needlessly difficult. Of course, there’s no reason for this to be true, and perhaps in 6 or 12 or 18 months, when CableCards actually become widely available and usable in third-party DVRs, they’ll work properly.
CableCARD seriously erodes the cable cos control over their distribution network. They’ll fight it tooth and nail, regulatory pressure or no.