Connecting TiVos and PCs is not essential to basic TiVo functionality. I could loose my TiVo Desktop and not miss it for months. And unless TiVo stops supporting Ethernet, using DOCSIS will not prevent TiVo PC communication.

DOCSIS is simply a spec for an OSI layer 1 and layer 2 implementation. TiVo should be theoretically able to connect to a DOCSIS adapter (or put one in its box) stick a protocol stack or stacks of its choice on it and go. Technical issues are not the real issue. Profit, usage and ownership issues are.

So what is tru2way? a level 7 application? Just to do Tru2Way, the TiVo will need an address assigned by the cable company. This will probably be a private network address (or IPV6 if they are forward thinking). To allow access to the Internet, the cable company will merely need to NAT that address. And the cable companies are already throttling bittorrent, so throttling TiVo traffic should be a cinch. And I am sure that the cable industry can figure out a way to charge somebody for a pathway for TiVo downloads, making it a profit center.

Tru2Way is a cable industry solution, so ya, they would spec it out to be closed. The cable industry got away with another one. So all my pissing and groaning will probably make no difference. But closed solutions alienate customers. So if the cable industry has any future other than protecting its shrinking market, they do need to start opening things up.

Also, I don’t know that supporting MoCA, if it didn’t add a lot of cost, would be such a bad idea for Tivo. A lot of homes aren’t wired for Ethernet, and wifi still doesn’t work that well for video, especially HD. Having an option to use MoCA to communicate between Tivos or from the Tivo to the internet (via a gateway device) wouldn’t be so bad. Probably a better idea to just build in 802.11n I’d guess, but if it was cheap enough…

Megazone/Dave – I’m not clear on why anybody thinks that tru2way capable STBs will constrain the MSOs from moving on to something else. These boxes aren’t much different from the current ones except for having a little more memory or a little more CPU power. They’re still just pretty general purpose CPUs with cable communication chips inside. If they decided to move on to something else, and it was possible with the majority of those cable boxes, they’d do it happily, shutting out the tru2way devices in the process. The cable STBs will be capable of doing things that aren’t tru2way. Tru2way may last for a while, but not necessarily because of the installed base of STBs that support it.

As far as MPEG-2 and h.264… obviously virtually all of the STBs the MSOs have deployed only support MPEG-2. Only recently have NGA boxes with h.264 decoders become available, and I don’t even know if any of them are installed anywhere yet. It will be quite some time before any non-niche channels are deployed using h.264. VOD or PPV could be done partially in h.264, i.e. if your STB supports it, which might help some over time.

Personally I think cable companies are still going to be in a world of hurt over bandwidth. They want more channels for DOCSIS bonding to offer higher internet speeds for businesses and to compete with Verizon’s FiOS rollout. They want to add LOTS more HD channels, each up to four times the bandwidth of an SD channel in MPEG-2, to compete with the Satellite providers. And services like StartOver (limited network DVR) mean more people are watching unicast/individualized streams. Etc. Moving to 1GHz plants only gets them a little. SDV is certainly a big win, at least for the niche channels. They can maybe 50% more with stat mux QAMs by spending a lot of money.

Its going to get interesting…

tru2way isn’t a new infrastructure, it is a growth of the existing cable infrastructure used for communication with their set top boxes. It isn’t an open network, it is strictly a link between the device and the cable plant head end. It isn’t suitable for other uses.

Disclaimer: Regulated Prices quoted above may not apply in all markets. Please call 1-800-COMCAST to learn more about Regulated Prices for your area.

I’ve heard of prices all over the map, and in addition to the CableCARD fees as you’ve discovered they may also charge outlet fees on top of that. They also may charge you nothing. I’ve never paid a monthly for a Comcast CableCARD. Depends on the local franchise and who modifies your account. They really need to move to a more transparent and nationwide pricing scheme.

As far as installs go, I’ve had both good and bad. Plus a missed appointment – when I called in, they couldn’t locate the driver. Huh? And I did complain to my local licensing authority (Montgomery County, MD) that Comcast requires a truckroll for install unlike some of their other regions.

Comcast advertises cards as $1.50 each, as long as they are in the same device (i.e. single outlet). If they think you have multiple outlets (e.g. two card enables TV’s) then they charge $5.00 per card, although that’s not stated anywhere in their pricing guide. I gather that’s the billing model for STBs they’ve used for years, since that’s Comcast’s basic STB rental fee.

If you’re being charged more than $1.50 for your second card in the TiVo, call and complain. I ended up getting a sizeable refund.

BTW, Comcast states the first cableCARD is free. But that’s only if you have no STB. Again, that’s not clearly stated anywhere.

Doubt it will be expensive. Cable-co will most likely be picking up the bulk of the tab.

“Any chance that tru2way will allow these theoretical nextgen TiVos to do their daily calls and/or transfer programs between one another? My guess is no, Tru2Way is for the cable companies’ convenience, and will probably be prohibited “because of concerns over potential interference with the cable system.””

A tru2way TiVo would have two interfaces… The TiVo interface and then whatever the cable-co serves up for PPV, OnDemand, etc. As far as a third-party retail box/service using the cable-co infrastructure for guide data and such, no way. It would be nice to see TiVo use coax for MRV though as Digeo was planning with the retail Moxi DVRs or have built-in Powerline networking as the newer Dish DVRs do.

Any chance that tru2way will allow these theoretical nextgen TiVos to do their daily calls and/or transfer programs between one another? My guess is no, Tru2Way is for the cable companies’ convenience, and will probably be prohibited “because of concerns over potential interference with the cable system.” But it would be great for the average consumer just to be able to use the existing CATV infrastructure, reducing the number of connections and avoiding the telephone and/or Ethernet hassle. But I hope this is allowed. After all, in the call they mentioned that the feds said they did not want things to be construed in such a way as to stifle innovation.

1. No, it can’t be done in software. You need the transceiver hardware to transmit to the head end, and you need to support multiple standards for that communication, such as DSG (DOCSIS Set-top Gateway). The UDCPs in the field, TiVos included, lack the required hardware for two-way communication. And that’s a complex issue – part of the UDCP standard forbids including that hardware. Basically if you want to be certified as a UDCP you can’t had the hardware because of concerns over potential interference with the cable system. If you want to have the hardware you have to be a two-way device, and the standards for that weren’t settled when UDCPs were created.

2. See #1. You need the transceiver hardware, and that’s what the Tuning Resolver is. USB was selected as the interface because that’s the only interface shared by most UDCPs that can handle it. CableCARD is *NOT* PCMCIA. It may look like it physically, but electrically and electronically it is not. CableCARD slots cannot be used for I/O devices. It is not a switch from PCMCIA to USB, it is adding a USB tranceiver device, the Tuning Resolver, to the UDCP with CableCARD. Which brings us to #3.

3. No. The Tuning Resolver – which isn’g a ‘tru2way’ dongle at all really, it is just for SDV support – works *with* CableCARD in a UDCP. The CableCARD is an authentication and authorization token. It allows the UDCP to access the cable content – providing channel mapping and decryption of encrypted channels. But it is limited to linear content. The Tuning Resolver provides the hardware needed for bi-directional communication to handle tuning SDV channels. In theory this could be extended to other content that requires two-way communication, such as PPV and VOD, but that is not planned at this time. It is strictly for SDV.

4. Both the Motorola and Cisco Tuning Resolvers that have been shown are fairly sizable boxes – the same size as their smaller digital cable boxes. So they have enough mass to handle any pull on their own. But USB isn’t so weak anyway, unless you had the weight of several feet of coax hanging from it, I wouldn’t worry. I have a small 4-port USB hub handing off the side of my laptop with four USB cables hanging from it, and I regularly catch the cables on things as I move the laptop and I’ve never had it pull free. USB is actually fairly well designed in that regard. And yes, the boxes show have a coax in and coax out, so you put them in series with the UDCP (aka TiVo). And yes, it is going to be another box which connects to the TiVo via USB and requires its own power connection, as well as coax in and out. So it is going to add to the hassle, and that’s unavoidable. But you only need the Tuning Resolver if your cable company uses SDV and you want access to the SDV channels.

1. Towards the beginning of the teleconference, it was mentioned that a cablecard is two-way, but that the (CE) devices that they are installed in (e.g, TiVo S3/HDs) may not be. So why can’t a TiVo be a 2-way device? Couldn’t this be don through a softwware upgrade?

2. Why do we need a USB device? Why switch from PCMCIA to USB? In doing this you instantly obsolete cablecard devices that don’t have USB ports.

3. Will a Tru2way usb dongle replace the cable cards? Or will they work in conjunction with each other?

4. a couple of practical concerns: If we will we be screwing a CATV cable into a USB dongle, how will that not unplug the USB? And will there be a cable-out on the tru2way dongle to plug into the back of the TiVo? My fear is that this tru2way thingy will be a separate box that connects to the TiVo via a USB cable and add significantly to the rats’ nest of cords and cables, lower signal strength, contribute to the overheating and self space issues, and generally be a Major Pain.

Cablecards are, by themselves, a kludge that resulted from a failure of the involved industries & government to develop the right standards. And that the consumer pays for by the inconvenience, impracticality, and sometimes impossibility of installation. (which is exactly why there are only 300,000+ cable cards in use by consumers). Tru2Way will just pile complexity and consumer pain on this kludge. The next big thing will be when the consumers find something obviously better that eliminates the cable companies from the picture and they revolt. The only reason I stay with CATV is because that is where TiVo provides the most support.

Is it really worth the time after this writeup? Was it much more informative/open than a newscast in China?

I think it’s too hard and costly for the cable-cos to go all digital now in most areas because of all the existing cable boxes or homes without boxes that would suddenly need them. About two years ago, it seemed like Comcast was trying to get everyone on digital boxes (gave me and a buddy one for free) but I’m not sure if that’s still an active initiative.

I don’t know how quickly cable will need mpeg4 when they have SDV and can lop off the occassional analog channel at least. Probably quite a while. The impact may be minimal, with devices like TiVoes and HTPCs having mpeg4 capability already built in. This is all about the TiVoes and (maybe) HTPCs anyway, not the TVs, from a practical viewpoint.

I wrote yesterday about digital transition for cable, and brought up those commitments related to the integration ban waivers for going all digital. Whatever happened with all that and what’s the potential effect?

I hope there is an internet link to the recording ’cause I ain’t listenin’ from Europe.

As a consumer, I’d be happy dropping pay TV. There’s enough good stuff out there between ATSC OTA and Netflix. However, I don’t live alone. And we’re on special for $60/mo which is about what I’d be paying them for an Internet-only account anyway. So the cable TV is actually a free perk. However, I’m probably replacing one of my CableCARD TiVo’s with an OTA-only HTPC.

Indeed not. Like most industries, it’s several large competing conspiracies.