Or anyone’s Moxi? I specifically mean the Digeo Moxi 3012 which was supposed to be be distributed to consumers by Charter by the end of 3Q08. Here we are in the fourth quarter and as best I can determine Charter is not yet shipping the Moxi 3012 to consumers and no further announcement has been made. At best it seems it may be in the hands of a handful of Charter employees. Anyone out there have one of these mythical beasts yet? Someone who doesn’t work for Digeo or Charter? For a company so fond of announcements and releases I can’t believe they started shipping without telling anyone about it.

(No, I didn’t really expect them to ship, but I was kind of hoping they would because I’d like to see them deliver on a promise someday. And yes, I was feeling snarky.)

In a filing yesterday with the FCC on the current status on CableCARD deployments the NCTA revealed that there have been a total of over 374,000 CableCARDs deployed for use in Unidirectional Digital Cable Products (UDCPs), such as the TiVo HD, by the ten largest cable MSOs, which cover roughly 90% of US cable subscribers. That may sound like a lot, but in their last filing 90 days ago in June, they reported over 372,000 CableCARDs for the same ten MSOs and 90% subscriber base. That implies that only 2,000 CableCARDs have been deployed to UDCPs in the past three months by the top 10 cable MSOs - combined. That’s nothing. It would also make me wonder a bit about the sales of the TiVo HD, since I’d expect nearly all of those to have at least one M-Card CableCARD.

That is, of course, if the numbers are true - and they may not be. See the table below and especially the first footnote¹. Comcast’s numbers for September are estimated to be 10-15% lower than actual due to an internal error. We could be looking at an increase of more than 34,000 users instead of only 2,000!

While 34,000 would certainly be better than 2,000, it still isn’t really setting the world on fire. Maybe the M-Card is a ray of hope in those numbers - if customers who previously used two S-Cards are trading them in for a single M-Card on devices like the TiVo HD, it would result in a lower cumulative number. Still, I don’t expect that’s a huge number either.

This is not to say that the total number of CableCARDs in use is that small, not at all. Since the FCC’s ‘integration ban’ went into effect on July 1, 2007, forcing cable MSOs to begin using CableCARDs in their own STBs, those same ten MSOs have deployed over 7,800,000 CableCARDs in their STBs. So in less than fifteen months they’ve deployed more than twenty times the number of CableCARDs as have been issued for 3rd party UDCPs in the four years they’ve been available.

The integration ban was supposed to force cable MSOs to ‘eat their own dog food’ and thereby improve support for CableCARDs. The idea was that this would help foster the overall CableCARD market. Better support from MSOs would lead to more products, which would mean more 3rd party UDCPs in the field. For the most part, this hasn’t happened.

Why not? Well, I think I can sum it up in one brand name: tru2way. Starting late last year, and getting an official launch at CES in January, OCAP became tru2way and marked a push to get consumer electronics companies on board. Then starting with Samsung in May, followed by a larger push by Sony later that month, CE vendors started jumping on the tru2way bandwagon.

What does this have to do with slow CableCARD adoption? Well, these same CE vendors have held off on releasing UDCPs while they work on tru2way-enabled devices. Why invest in developing and marketing a unidirectional product when you’re going to obsolete it with a two-way product in a year? The first tru2way products are starting to trickle out, and there will probably be a bunch of them on display at CES in January. So I think the push for tru2way was a major contributor to lax CableCARD pick up. Vendors just haven’t been releasing CableCARD-enabled products so there aren’t many options for consumers, which naturally means not many cards are being deployed. Really the only major CableCARD product out there right now is TiVo. CableCARD TVs are thin on the ground. CableCARD-enabled Media Center PCs have had anemic sales. And Digeo outright canceled their Moxi CableCARD HD DVR.

CableCARD was slow out of the gate, and by the time MSOs had the infrastructure worked out vendors were already looking toward round two with tru2way and they just decided to sit round one with UDCPs out entirely. The deployment of SDV and the need to develop a Tuning Adapter, and to support it, was very likely a factor in that as well. I don’t expect to see any real pick-up in CableCARD utilization until a sufficient number of tru2way devices are available to consumers, and then I do expect to see a real uptick.

The filing also has information from several MSOs on their CableCARD pricing and install practices. To compare June to September:

¹Comcast states that their September number may by low by 10-15% due to internal reporting errors.

The count for this reporting period of CableCARDs installed in one way retail devices in active customer homes is estimated to be 10-15% lower than the actual number due to internal Comcast reporting errors that are the result of an internal Division reorganization during the reporting period. The next quarterly report will more accurately reflect the actual count.

Since Comcast has such a large installed base this could be the reason for the seemingly small total uptick. The other four combined yield an increase of 3,429. Comcast’s apparent drop of 1,383 drags it down. But if they’re short just 10% they would actually have an increase of 20,334 users. And 15% would mean an increase of 31,192! So we’d be looking at a total increase of 23,763 to 34,621 - rather more than around 2,000. And that’s just from these five MSOs.

²Comcast allows self-installs in at least some areas - 68% used truck rolls, 32% were self-installs.

³First card is free, fee for additional cards.

⁴$10.43 if install is included with other services, $25.14 if purpose visit.

⁵0.2% of Time Warner installs are self-install, which is negligible.

⁶The average is $2.26, but they report most divisions are $1.75 - which must mean the remaining divisions are rather higher to bring the average up.

According to TWICE, Digeo is working on two Moxi cable DVRs. The first will be distributed through Charter later this month, to also be followed by ‘a second MSO’. It’s only four months after they announced this the first time. Back in May at The Cable Show Digeo announced that Charter would carry the Moxi 3012 HD DVR by the end of 3Q08. So they have less than two weeks to meet that goal.

Of course, back in January Digeo’s then COO, now President, Greg Gudorf told me that their cable DVR would ship by the end of 1Q08. So we’ll see how this roll out goes.

The other Moxi DVR will be a CableCARD consumer product sold at retail and expected to ship in January. That will be a year after Digeo suddenly canceled all of their planned consumer products, just days after showing them at CES and talking up the launch plans.

Details on the consumer product are thin, I’m presuming they’ll have something to say about it at CES in January. Of course, they did last year too. Unsurprisingly it will be a CableCARD-enabled DVR, and it will not be tru2way-enabled. It sounds like they’re pitching all the same features they were on the canceled products - music and photo access, content partners, home control integration, etc. For music content Digeo has lined up FineTune, Rhapsody and Sirius and they have Flickr for photos.

The one new item that I found interesting is that they’re implementing DLNA support. I’d like to see more products supporting DLNA, standards are good and DLNA has growing support across a number of products such as the Xbox 360, PS3, HP Media Smart TVs, Blu-ray players, etc.

Digeo is also apparently still working on their Moxi TV for PC software, which I was told was in beta and close to release at CES 2008 in January. Though according to TWICE they have it running on XP, Vista, and Media Center versions of Windows now, and not just XP as at CES. No word on when it might be available to consumers.

Gudorf told TWICE that Digeo is working on future products for post-July 2009 which will support tru2way. Digeo signed the tru2way accord in June. But I’m not even going to devote any mental energy to that until Digeo manages to ship something to consumers.

Digeo started talking about launching new consumer products two years ago, in September 2006. (Which I picked up, amusingly enough, from an article in TWICE.) I talked to them at CES 2007 where they were showing mock ups and no real products with the promise of shipping later in the year.

They insisted they’d ship in time for the 2007 holidays up through September. (Oddly enough, another article from TWICE. Is covering Digeo a September tradition for them?) Then in November they admitted they weren’t going to ship in 2007.

Then I talked to them again at CES 2008, and they were showing off some of the same mock-ups they’d had at CES 2007, as well as some actual products. Just a week later they canceled the products and laid off nearly half of their staff. Digeo’s Gary Gudorf talked to me the next day to offer clarifications, including that their cable MSO product would ship by the end of 1Q08, which it didn’t.

We didn’t hear anything else until April when details on the cable product emerged. And then in May they exhibited at The Cable Show and issued a press release announcing Charter’s intention to carry it. In June Digeo signed the tru2way accord.

And now here we are in September again, two years after they first announced their intention to enter the consumer DVR market, and they’re promising a box ‘expected to ship in January’. You’ll pardon me if I don’t hold my breath. Assuming they do exhibit at CES in January, I’ll check out their offerings, again. As I said when I covered them this year, I think they have some good design points. But none of it matters until they manage to get a box on retail shelves.

I hear it’ll come bundled with Duke Nukem Forever.

Tipped off by EngadgetHD.

EDIT: This got some attention in AVS Forum, including from a Charter rep, who wasn’t encouraging:

Ironically yesterday I got whispers from a contact in St Louis who works with someone who’s got a beta 3012 (Don’t get hopes up, so far it seems only a few elite managers and tech ops people in St Louis have gotten to beta this unit)

Apparently it’s still got quite a few bugs, which I think is very odd, given really all they needed to do was improve on the existing hardware and leave the software alone.

At any rate I don’t expect to see them in 2 weeks, heck at the rate things are going, I’d consider us lucky if we see them before Q3 2009

I’d say I’m surprised or that this is unusual so close to a planned release - but frankly this is what I’ve come to expect from Digeo. They’ve had one product actually make it to market, the BMC9000 STB series from Motorola running the Moxi software. But that launched back in 2004 and has been out of production for a long time now. At its peak it only reached around 400,000 users, and the number of Moxi uses is believed to be much smaller now as units have been replaced with newer, non-Moxi DVR models. Unsurprisingly the main MSO to use Moxi was Charter, which, like Digeo, is controlled by Paul Allen. But even with it being ‘in the family’ Charter’s use of Moxi was minor.

Moxi’s history since they were acquired by Digeo has been one of failed execution. Early on Moxi was on their way to being a competitor in the consumer DVR space and they had some cutting edge plans, then Digeo acquired them and refocused them on cable MSOs instead of retail. Digeo acquired Moxi way back in 2002 - and in six years what have they done? One product which never achieved more than minor market penetration, and is now well out of date and discontinued. Aside from that they have a history of press releases and announced partnerships, awards won for products announced but never shipped, staff layoffs, and repeated product delays and cancellations. If they didn’t have Paul Allen backing them I don’t see how they’d still be in business. Digeo needs to ship a product, a good product, to significant numbers of users, if they want to earn consumer trust again.

I posted this morning about LG Electronics signing the cable MOU on tru2way. Well, it looks like Funai Electric has also signed it. You may not be familiar with the Funai name, but Funai markets their products under the Philips, Magnavox, Sylvania, and Emerson brand names and also provides ’store brand’ units such as Insignia for Best Buy and Pye for Circuit City.

Picked up from TWICE.

Originally announced as an agreement between Sony and the cable industry, and then signed by additional CE vendors, the tru2way MOU has now been signed by LG Electronics. They’re planning to release tru2way-enabled HDTVs starting in 2009.

Press release below:
Read the rest of this entry »

Reader Glenn pointed out in a comment that the details of the Memorandum Of Understanding (MOU) first signed by Sony, and then additional CE vendors, have been revealed in an FCC filing. Both Multichannel News and Light Reading’s Cable Digital News have taken a look at the MOU, and now it is my turn. So, let’s look through the MOU for any interesting tidbits.

The MOU refers to the ‘Founders’ repeatedly - these are the cable MSOs: Comcast Cable, Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications, Bright House Networks, Charter Communications, and Cablevision. New two-way devices are referred to as Interactive Digital Cable Products (IDCP), in contrast to the one-way Unidirectional Digital Cable Products (UDCP). Under the terms of the MOU, the Founders agree to support tru2way on all of their digital cable networks by July 1, 2009 - except for Charter which has until July 1, 2010 to complete their roll-out. The MOU also codifies that the tru2way specifications will be the sole means for IDCPs to access interactive cable services.

While consumer electronics adopters must adhere to the tru2way specifications and license, innovative features that are not specified but that are consistent with the specs and license ‘are allowed and encouraged’. That seems to leave room for innovation, but it remains to be seen how narrowly ‘consistent’ is evaluated. To help ensure solid support for tru2way the cable MSOs have to eat their own dog food, as it were. After July 1, 2009 (again, July 1, 2010 for Charter) the Founders agree that at least 20% of their STBs will support tru2way. That holds until they’ve deployed at least ten million tru2way-enabled STBs. This is to ensure a sufficient install base that the Founders will have a vested interest in ensuring solid support.

Since tru2way is largely a firmware specification, and specifications can evolve, the Founders agree to support any given version of the tru2way Middleware used by an Adopter’s product for five years from the date of that version’s first certification. So, in effect, that should guarantee a minimum product life of five years. Of course, it could easily be longer as Adopter’s products could receive firmware updates, and the Founders could support a Middleware version for longer than five years. Clearly it would be up to the Adopter, the CE vendor, to provide updates to newer tru2way Middleware versions, which is only fair. And to help ensure that is possible, there is an equal access provision in the MOU. Any given tru2way Middleware revision will be available to Adopters at the same time it is available to Founders. So the MSO’s won’t have any unfair advantage in being able to bring newer features to market first.

As for guide data, which was long a bone of contention over OCAP, any Founder’s digital cable system which carriers a CBS broadcast signal (which is pretty much all of them) which contains the Gemstar-TV Guide EPG data and where that Founder has an agreement covering the Gemstar data, must not block or remove said data from the CBS signal. In English? Well, Gemstar-TV Guide has an agreement with CBS to carry their EPG data. This data is used by a number of TVs, VCRs, DVRs, DVD Recorders, etc, to provide a simple on-screen EPG. The data is carried in the VBI, the vertical blanking interval, and are not part of the video itself. This has been an issue in the past as some cable MSOs have stripped out this data from the broadcast when processing the network feed for redistribution, hence making it inaccessible to CE devices that rely on it for their EPG.

So this agreement means that the Founder agree to not block or strip the data, when it is carried by the local CBS affiliate and they can legally do so, of course. This provides CE vendors with a data source for a ‘native’ EPG, as opposed to relying on the tru2way MSO-provided EPG, or a out-of-band EPG downloaded separately, as in a TiVo. The broadcast EPG does generally lack the full level of detail found in a downloaded EPG, or even the MSOs EPG, but it has the advantage of being readily available in the received signal and gives the CE vendor the ability to process and use the data as they wish, unlike the tru2way guide which comes as-is.

While the agreement seems to treat tru2way as the primary means of navigation, Adopters are free to overlay their own ‘native’ navigation with four prerequisites: 1. It must be initiated by the user each time (such as through a remote action), 2. it must be only for navigation (no ads, etc), 3. It must be transitory (sounds like once the action is complete it should return to tru2way-mode), and 4. it must appear the same on all channels. So no special ABC navigation screen that isn’t used on NBC, etc.

There is a ’sunset’, or exit clause for the MOU. Starting July 1, 2009, if fewer than 500,000 new retail IDCPs are connected to the Founders’ networks within any given 24 month period then the Founders are no longer bound by the MOU. Basically, if the Adopters, the CE vendors, don’t hold up their end of the bargin and produce enough IDCP devices, then the cable MSOs are no longer bound to spend their money supporting tru2way on their networks and they’re free to stop, try something else, etc. Considering the number of TVs, DVRs, etc, sold at retail in this country each year, this shouldn’t be a problem - if and only if the CE vendors step up and start tru2way-enabling a sufficient number of device models. So the ball is in their court.

Licensing for the IDCPs will be under the existing CableLabs licenses, with some amendments. Certification of devices will be through CableLabs IDCP testing. Once a vendor has had five mutually agreed upon devices certified by CableLabs, then they are eligible to self-certify future devices. This is one of the compromises in the agreement. CE vendors didn’t want the expense and hassle of going through CableLabs for each new product, while the cable industry didn’t want the potential havoc caused by bad devices being connected to their networks. So now once a vendor has proven their competence level through CableLabs certification, they can be free of that requirement.

Under the MOU CableLabs will establish a Founders Advisory Board (FAB) which will apparently serve as a kind of arbitration group when changes to the tru2way hardware specification are proposed. As the board is currently specified there are nine votes - one for each of the Founders, and one for the CE Adopters as a block, one for the IT Adopters as a block, and one for the content providers as a block. That means that, should they vote in unison, the cable MSOs would always carry a majority. And you’d actually need two MSOs to break ranks and vote with the other blocks to swing the majority. But the vote is also only advisory and non-binding, so I’m not sure what it is in aid of other than as an opinion poll for the parties involved. And, of course, the FCC still has final say in the end.

CableLabs also agrees to approve or disapprove any new digital output system or content protection system within 180 days of the proposal being submitted by an Adopter, on a ‘reasonable and nondiscriminatory basis’. This will probably come into play with technologies akin to TiVo’s TiVoGuard, which protects TiVoToGo transfers. As CE vendors look to innovate and develop whole home distribution systems, etc, there may be new technologies developed to satisfy the rights holders that their content is being protected. And if CableLabs disapproves the technology, or simply fails to act within 180 days, then the Adopter can appeal to the FCC which is expected to handle the appeal in a 90-day process. Remember that a while back the NFL and MPAA tried to block TiVoGuard and TivoToGo, but the FCC approved it.

But there’s another way to get a new technology approved. If four members of the MPAA agree that the new system provides adequate content protection, then that technology will be automatically approved by CableLabs.

If tru2way is sunset and CableLabs defines a successor to CableCARD or tru2way (such as DCAS) then Adopters who are party to the MOU may participate in the development of the successor.

The definitions have some interesting tidbits. Under the MOU, ‘Digital Cable System’ only covers systems with one or more QAM channels, operating with a capacity of 750MHz or higher and with a minimum of 5,000 basic cable subscribers.

Not a lot of information, really, but it is clearly a compromise with some give and take by both the cable MSOs and the consumer electronics vendors, which is what we needed to un-roadblock two-way cable development. It is interesting that Charter gets an extra year to complete their tru2way roll-out, compared to the other five Founder MSOs. I guess Charter must be further behind in their progress than the others. Of course, I just happen to currently reside in Charter territory. Note though that the dates are for completion of deployment, some areas already have tru2way support and many more will before the year is out.