On Mon, Mar 1, 2010 at 14:38, Gary Mack <[email protected]> wrote: > I have a M cable card installed in my dual input hd tivo. Works fine! fyi, > A comcast tech told me that they will be coming > out with a new on demand cable card soon.
That Comcast tech is smoking something funny. There is no such thing as an 'on demand cable card' - not now, not ever. All CableCARDs are capable of supporting two-way systems, always have been. What determines if it works is the host platform - ie the TiVo. No TiVo sold to date is two-way - they're all UDCPs, Uni-directional Digital Cable Products. They don't have a transmitter to send signals back to the head end. (Not really TiVo's choice, it comes down to standards, etc - I'll not get into that.) Now, the Comcast tech could have his wires crossed, because there are two possible solutions: 1. He was talking about a new TiVo box which is coming soon, the widely rumored Series4 aka TiVo Premier, which may support tru2way and thus enable VOD services. 2. Tuning adapters add the missing transmitter to the S3/TiVo HD to support SDV. Right now that's *only* SDV, but there is no reason TiVo couldn't work with a cable provider to add support in the software to handle that providers VOD signalling. A while back TiVo announced they were working with Seachange, a major provider of cable VOD head end systems, to support their VOD content in the TiVo platform. Then TiVo announced that RCN would be switching to TiVo for their DVRs for all cable customers, including VOD support. If the code exists, then perhaps that means Comcast will also be enabling VOD for their TiVo customers through one of the two above means. Well, there is a third possibility - VOD could be supported in a non-standard way by using the Internet as the back channel for signalling, but that'd require a lot more work from the cable provider. Now, as for the original subject of the thread, I've had a TiVo with CableCARDs since before the S3 shipped to the public and I've only had a couple of issues in those 3.5+ years. I've had to RMA the box, which required re-pairing the cards. And I've had a couple of issues with my Tuning Adapters wedging and needing to be power cycled to re-enabled tuning. (Charter rolled out SDV in my area a bit over a year ago.) Basically it is as stable as I think it is going to get. The old S3 needs two cards - S-Card or M-Card. The TiVo HD can use two S-Cards or one M-Card - since they often charge by the card, the latter is better. I happen to be in Seattle for the next five weeks - I just started a new job with F5 Networks and I'm in town for training. -- [email protected] / [email protected] Geek, Gweep, Technophile, me. www.GizmoLovers.com / www.MegaZone.org / www.Eyrie-Productions.com Hail Eris Twitter.com/megazone / Facebook.com/megazone / www.LinkedIn.com/in/megazone "A little nonsense now and then, is relished by the wisest men" 432-363-4296 [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
