What's with the gloomy talk? Your colleague Ben Drawbaugh from Engadget HD reported on the tuning adapter from The Cable Show in New Orleans. CableLabs just certified the Cisco STA1520 & Motorola MTR700 switched digital video tuning adapters in late July. What's your reason for doubting that the TiVo solution isn't coming?

I live in Laurel, MD and we've got Redbox in all the local grocery stores.

"I don't know about tru2way because it failed as the Cable Card standard, snd it's not that much different."

Jeepers. How many times does this have to be said? Tru2way and CableCARD are not the same thing. Those tu2way devices will have CableCARDs in them.

Well, yeah. But the selfish way to look at it that the cable industry has spent more than a decade coming up with a set of specifications that would enable interactive applications to be written once and work on any cable system in the country. I know it doesn't make everyone happy, but you have to consider how many different companies and industries are involved in this development. So, now, in 2008, tru2way is heading into development, and CableLabs has said that they think that the telcos can use it too, and Verizon wants the process to start all over from scratch. And what exactly have the telcos developed on their side for this challenge?

Not to nag on this, but as I wrote yesterday, but there's no CableCARD 1.0 or 2.0. And truway will require CableCARDs (at least until DCAS), but they're the same CableCARDs.

Just to clarify, in addition to Panasonic, Samsung and Thomson are participating in the tru2way conference. In addition, there are other devices with might utilize tru2way. For example, Cisco, which makes set-top boxes, is a participant.

There will also be some tru2way demos at CableNET during The Cable Show, include Samsung, Sigma Designs, and Zodiac Interactive.