Media Center CableCARDs freed from OEM requirement
By Steven Kim 
posted September 9th 2009 7:26PM
posted September 9th 2009 7:26PM
posted September 9th 2009 7:26PM
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Comcast charges no monthly cablecard rental fee in my market when used in an htpc as opposed to a TiVo.
"And last I heard rental rates and availability of a cable card was up to the cable company."
This is not true. If it were up to the cable company they would never provide you with that cable card. I have cox in northern virginia with a tivo hd and an SDV adapter. If not for legal action filed by enthusiasts through the FCC I don't believe i would even be able to use my tivo hd. Cable companies do not have the discretion to not provide you with a cable card. They are required (by the FCC) even if a little reluctant at first to provide you with them. Honestly though i have found my current cable provider to be very on top of the Cable Card / SDV issues. As for rental rates i have never been charged more than a buck or two a month for the cards themselves. What sucks is getting hit with another 10 dollar a month "HD" fee to get the HD tiers on another tv.
@normychas
I believe smaller regional cable companies (< a certain # of subscribers) are exempt from the FCC regulation regarding cable card.
@Nate
Wow that smacks of monopolistic behavior, only charge a fee for the cards when they are going into the primary DVR competitor of the company? Very shady.
WRONG! The availabiltiy of cable cards is REQUIRED BY LAW for any cable provider in the US and the price can be no more than $1.99 a month per card!
I for one hope that opening up the platform to DIY convinces Happgauge (sp) to see a big enough market to get a Cablecard tuner certified by Cablelabs (because that is probably still a requirement). Silicon Dust is another possibility but they may be a little too small to take on that expense but who knows.
I am also looking forward to being able to use a server / workstation class motherboard and CPU for the increased I/O support (which is the most important consideration for a Media Center versus raw CPU power). I also wonder with the elimination of that special BIOS key, if this makes virtualization any easier? I could definately go for running Windows Media Center and Windows Home Server on a single quad-core Xeon with 8-12GB of RAM in a big case with lots of drives.
I would imagine that the requirements for Media Center are the same as Blu-Ray playback. HDMI/HDCP on the video card. Hardly a big expense these days since even the low end cards have this and you don't need a powerful gamer card if you are just watching TV.
Wonder when this goes into effect? I just tried to set up a new MC running W7RC and it would not allow the DCT to function...
@Chris M - You asked "Is there a better whole house HD DVR solution than a WMC/MCX config?"
Yes - a WHS PC running SageTV with a couple of HD-PVRs and cable boxes combined with Sage HD-200 extenders. Far fewer restrictions than WMC and more streaming capabilities - i.e. H.264, BluRay, etc.
What if I want HD cable TV beyond clear QAM?
Don't tell my wife that they dropped the OEM requirement. I'm looking to get a new big gaming rig to act as the WMC. :-D
Does this mean anything for SageTV, or is this just for Windows Media Center, which sucks compared to Sage?
Sage will still need to have their software certified in order to support CableCard.
This would not have happened without the work done by those who hacked the w/o. I think that Microsoft and CableLabs saw this as a hack that would have become mainstream after 2 to 3 years and decided to jump out in front of it.
Just found out before post, Upgraded my win7 MCE rc over micosoft update and now my digital/ clear qam is detecting secured locked out channels as well