CableCARD: a primer

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject:        CableCARD: a primer
Date:   Thu, 9 Feb 2006 02:34:55 -0500
From:   Monty Solomon <monty () roscom com>
To:     undisclosed-recipient:;



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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