CableCARD Basics

[Richard]

CableCARD is a new feature that comes with most HDTV displays allowing you to eliminate the cable box from your system (and your bill), saving you some space and a little dough. Most cable cards rent for a few dollars a month. Depending on your cable company, you will be provided the card for you to install, a simple insertion on the back of the product, or they will send out a service rep. Once installed...

[url=http://www.hdtvmagazine.com/articles/2007/01/cablecard_basic.php]Read the Full Article[/url]

[vstone]

CableCARD is a new feature that comes with most HDTV displays allowing you to eliminate the cable box from your system (and your bill), saving you some space and a little dough.
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The first sentence is wrong. Cablecard comes on very few HDTV sets as of this writing, and the majority of those are 40" or larger.

This may or may not change in March, when the next round of FCC tuner requirements results in replacing the product lines of TV's below 27".

Additionally, TV's are starting to show up with OCAP. Cablecard 2 may be DOA.

[Richard]

Hi Vstone,

Thank you for your input and it seems as of todays date you are correct about availability.

OCAP basically does what the Cable Card should have... create standards. The future of any national plug and play cable reception system requires that. Note in the article...

It should be noted that some manufacturers decided to not provide the cable card feature for 2007 in part or all of their line due to the problems. Some have decided it is not worth the hassle.

Can OCAP do what the cable and display manufacturers could not? Waiting to find out...

[Richard]

This article has recived the following edits and additional information

CableCARD is a new feature that comes with most HDTV displays allowing you to eliminate the cable box from your system (and your bill), saving you some space and a little dough.

CableCARD is a new feature that comes with many HDTV displays allowing you to eliminate the cable box from your system (and your bill), saving you some space and a little dough. Most cable cards rent for a few dollars a month

At this time cable cards are one way communication devices, meaning they do not support VOD (video on demand) or PPV (pay per view) services. If you want to receive these types of services, you must use a cable box. Two way cable cards are on the way, but have been delayed due to two reasons;

At this time cable cards have been implemented as one way communication devices only, meaning they do not support VOD (video on demand) or PPV (pay per view) services. If you want to receive these types of services, you must use a cable box. Cable Cards are inherently two way devices, but implementation has been delayed due to two reasons;

NEW LINK: http://www.opencable.com/primer/cablecard_primer.html