Important Warning Regarding New HD TiVo and Cable System Incompatibilities

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren () vortex com>
Date: August 23, 2007 1:39:22 AM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Cc: lauren () vortex com
Subject: Important Warning Regarding New HD TiVo and Cable System  
Incompatibilities



  Important Warning Regarding New HD TiVo and Cable System  
Incompatibilities

               http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000273.html


Greetings. You may have seen much (deserved) hoopla regarding the
new relatively low-priced HD TiVo, that uses CableCARD technology to
allow a direct interface between digital cable systems and the TiVo
unit.

While it is generally understood that the current generation of
these devices (this may well change within a year or two) cannot
access two-way cable services such as Pay Per View (PPV) or Video On
Demand (VOD), many potential buyers of this TiVo product may not be
aware of concerns regarding the use of Switched Digital Video (SDV)
on an increasing number of cable systems.

Briefly, SDV technology -- which is being aggressively deployed by
Time Warner Cable and also by many other large and small systems --
requires two-way communications with the cable company servers to
allow the customer to access all available channels.

Since current CableCARD host devices don't support two-way
operations, this means that users of these devices (including the
new TiVo) could find themselves unable to watch or record channels
of interest (the exact set of which will vary from system to system
over time).

While there are continuing statements that the cable companies and
TiVo are working on some sort of solution to this problem (keep in
mind that CableCARD compatibility is an FCC mandate), no specifics
on any possible "fix" or time frame for such a fix have been
forthcoming.

There indeed are ways that the problem could be worked around. For
example, signaling over the Internet could be used (newer TiVos are
Internet compatible). Or, some sort of external device associated
with one of the TiVo's various interfaces could be employed to
communicate back to the cable system servers.

However, until there are more details available, such workarounds
appear to be rather speculative right now. On the other hand,
deployment of SDV and the problems it could cause for CableCARD TiVo
users are very real and in some cases immediate.

I'm definitely not saying that you absolutely shouldn't buy the new
HD TiVo -- it's a very nice box. But be warned that these
potentially serious issues do exist at this time.

--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
lauren () vortex com or lauren () pfir org
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800
http://www.pfir.org/lauren
Co-Founder, PFIR
   - People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org
Founder, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com
Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com




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