CableCard hopes dashed for now
It's been over a week since I reported that we got CableCard working on a Velocity Micro CineMagix Grand Theater PC, and I promised that I'd take requests for things to try out. I wish I could deliver. Sadly, 12 hours after we got it working, we lost the signal completely. I haven't reported since then because I wanted to know what the problem was before setting off a wild string of speculation. About all I can confirm is that it still doesn't work.
CableCard or no, we still like Velocity Micro's CineMagix Grand Theater.
(Credit: CNET)I hoped yesterday I'd either get it working or have an answer as to why it won't stick. Time Warner Cable came out and boosted the cable signal to my apartment. My Internet speed went up, so they definitely did something, but still no CableCard reception. Velocity Micro's Chris Morley then connected remotely into the system and ran through all kinds of trouble shooting steps. No dice. The card diagnostic screens reported that the card and the tuners are paired together properly, but all of the other readings indicating signal strength and such gave us nothing but zeroes.
Our best guess is that somehow between the initial signal loss and ensuing troubleshooting, our pair of CableCards either went bad (which would make them the second off batch), or some setting unknown to either TWC or Velocity Micro (possibly at a firmware level, which would explain why they might not know) is preventing the PC and the cards from seeing each other. I could have TWC come out with yet another set of CableCards, but I'm not confident that would solve the problem, and frankly, I think it's clear CableCard on the PC isn't ready yet. As further evidence, I submit almost every other preview system out there and the installation troubles they've run into.
Regardless of the technical reasons why CableCard is so troublesome, I don't believe that the technology has any insurmountable problems that can't be sorted out. We're mostly frustrated about the timing. Dell and Velocity Micro got everyone's hopes up by showing off these preview systems too early (although Velocity Micro has actually sold a few to a handful of intrepid early adopters). And AMD gets a special share of the blame for letting its TV Wonder OCUR cards out the door before they were fully cooked (which we reported back on March 29th, for the record).
I can't really shame Microsoft or Time Warner Cable, because neither of them have claimed PC-based CableCard is ready yet. I still have hopes that all of the core technology providers will get things together before the end of this year, in time for Microsoft's "official" CableCard launch. Time Warner also told me that, on Microsoft's recommendation (which hopefully means that this will apply to other providers as well) it's likely going to authorize self-installs of CableCard, regardless of the receiving hardware. You'll simply need to get the card(s) and call your provider to authorize them remotely. That means a) you won't have to waste four hours waiting for a tech to show up and b) hopefully the customer service rep will know what you're talking about when you call.
So that's where we're at. I'll revisit CableCard when things are a little more robust. I did manage to record a few shows in HD in the 12 hours it did work (Lennie Briscoe never looked better), so I'll see about answering your questions from the last post as best as I can. I also still have this fairly powerful HTPC sitting in the middle of my living room, along with a handful of input devices, an Xbox 360, and a multiplatform home network. I've held off on all that stuff in the interest of keeping the PC as pristine as possible for troubleshooting purposes. Now that I've put CableCard on the back burner, I think there's still some interesting things to check out here. Anything non-CableCard related you'd like me to check out, hit me up.
Thanks for the update Rich. I hope you get everything straightened out quick.
CableCard has been unreliable all over. Hopefully these problems will get worked out as more of us dare to dive into them.
Looking forword to more information (regarding simultaneous use through multiple MCE's--including the Xbox 360) when you are able to find those things out. I want to see how close you can get to the "Windows Vista, CableCard, and you" diagram from November.
I've got the money, and I've got my Velocity Micro PC picked out ... I'm just waiting to see that someone has actually got it working.
There are other problems with cablecard technology. A cablecard is actually a little tiny set top box running linux. Everytime you boot the cablecard needs to load it's stack then figure out what it's host is and load that stack then if there were no problems load all the guide data and applications and figure out what part of the RF network it belongs too. Although cablecards have been around for awhile none of the cable TV companies head end people have much experience with them. Everytime there is a code update there is also day long conference calls and engineers flying around trying to figure out why the new code doesn't load in the wild.
Things are getting better the closer we get to 7/7/2007 but unless you are willing to be without your digital cable for awhile sometimes and don't mind paying the same amount for less services I would hold off buying anything with a cablecard in it.
reliable service on my TiVO S3. Enough is enough, so I've gone OTA-only.
HOWEVER....now it is apparent that local Albuquerque network outlets are still
buried under the learning curve, as dropouts and miscues are the order of the
day. Jack Bauer fights nukes while I struggle to keep him onscreen. It's truly the
best of times and the worst of times for the early adopter.
Signal strength (like any digital signal) is certainly a factor and I had to re-***** both installations. The cable boxes seem to be a lot more tolerant of weaker or stronger digital signals.
The TV Wonder Digital Cable Tuners you have seem to handle only one stream of data ... They're each acting as single tuners. I figured that this meant that they were only capable of acting as single tuners; but now that M-cards are showing up in the real world, I have to ask:
Does the TV Wonder Digital Cable Tuner support M-cards, and is it capable of handling multiple streams if it has an M-card? Is your dual-device setup a result of limitations of the TV Wonder Digital Cable Tuner? Or just due to a limitation in the CableCards you were issued?