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Windows Operating Systems Software Media Television Hardware

Vista Media Center Plus CableCard Equals No TV 262

Posted by Zonk from the that's-some-bad-math dept.
notthatwillsmith writes "ATI's internal CableCard readers are finally available, and Maximum PC got hands-on time with a couple of Vista-powered systems built using the FCC-mandated technology. The short version? It doesn't work. From the article: 'The tech told me he'd receive training direct from Microsoft, but none of it covered internal tuners. We both agreed that the process should be the same, since the only difference is that the slots are inside the case, versus in an external box. The tech then proceeds to install the CableCards, connect the tuners to coax line, fire up the PC, and begin the software configuration. This step involves activating the TV Wonder with a product-activation code, and calling the Comcast office to exchange some information. We should have had a picture at this point, but we didn't.'"
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Vista Media Center Plus CableCard Equals No TV More

Vista Media Center Plus CableCard Equals No TV

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  • summing it all up.... (Score:4, Funny)

    by WwWonka ( 545303 ) on Friday June 08, 2007 @06:32PM (#19445351)
    The short version? It doesn't work. The long version? It still doesn't work.

    • Re:summing it all up.... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by HTH NE1 ( 675604 ) on Friday June 08, 2007 @08:30PM (#19446401)
      Actually, by testing the cards before taking them to the field, they got married to the test hardware and could no longer be married to the device in the field. Either they needed to divorce the cards (through some deep secret kung fu no customer should ever know how to do) or get new cards that are still bachelors.

      So this product test was invalid and says nothing about the machines being tested, only the cable company tech who screwed it up before driving out.

      Hilarious!

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Original Replica ( 908688 )
        (through some deep secret kung fu no customer should ever know how to do)

        I was under the impression that the tech "had received his training direct from Microsoft" and then should have this kung fu that no customer should know how to do. of course should doesn't mean that he did, the test could still be faulty. On a different note, I find it interesting that you feel there is product knowledge that should be forbidden to the customer.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by NevermindPhreak ( 568683 )
        i thought the same thing, and i install cable for a living. cablecards are a PITA, and they tpically have to be fully reset by our warehouse to work on another television. (don't know what they do exactly, unfortunately.) i've had to swap out pairs of cablecards at a time because they were provisioned wrong, at which point they are un-savable in the field.

  • Computer Industry is held hostage by the Cable Com (Score:5, Interesting)

    by evanreiser ( 1113257 ) on Friday June 08, 2007 @06:38PM (#19445429)
    Article detailing how the cable companies are using a device called Cable-CARD to prevent you from recording HD TV shows to your computer. http://www.microsoftisawesome.com/2007/05/rouges-d o-it-from-behind.html [microsoftisawesome.com]
    • I am confused on what this article is about, but I think it (and your comment) touches on my questions... what is prevented, and what is still possible?

      I currently have analog cable and a digitizer card in a homebrew linux-based PVR box. Obviously it would be better to get digital cable or satellite and directly record the digital signal instead of re-compressing it, but I am confused as to whether this is possible. Never? Only for over-the-airways digital broadcasts? Only when using a cable-company-p

      • Re:Computer Industry is held hostage by the Cable (Score:5, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 08, 2007 @07:28PM (#19445885)
        They have gone to great lengths to prevent direct digital stream ripping of "premium" content. There are a number of ways to get a direct stream of non-premium content.

        You could get an HDHomeRun. These are very nice little boxes that output a direct stream via ethernet. They can recieve both digital cable, and over-the-air digital broadcasts. They cannot decrypt premium content.

        Another avenue of getting a direct stream is firewire. Your cable company can give you (FCC mandated!) a cable box that outputs the digital stream to your pc via firewire. You can normally even use this interface to change channels. Of course, when watching any premium content, firewire is disabled.

        There are CableCard TV tuners for PC's as mentioned in this article. They can both receive AND decrypt digital cable. They will not work in anything but Vista (if at all), and the software is designed to allow you to view, but not record premium digital content.

        So, you can upgrade to a digital tuner, and rip the streams directly to your HD, but you are not going to be able to record much that makes it worthwhile (Unless you're a sports fan). The best bet for getting ALL channels on your PC is still the analog hole. Yes, you're stuck re-encoding the video, but most capture cards do a great job of this. HD can be a bit tough to do, but it can be done.

        As far as changing channels on your cable box, google up "IR blaster". Allows your PC to be a universal remote control.
        • Thanks for your informative answer. It sounds like investing in digital TV is pretty much useless, since I'd never be able to use my own software to digitally timeshift "premium content" (which is an arbitrarily defined designation that could change at any time).

          I guess I'll stick with analog.

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by CodeBuster ( 516420 )
          The best bet for getting ALL channels on your PC is still the analog hole.

          The analog hole (at least for the premium channels) is going the way of the dodo in the not to distant future when they cut off analog broadcasts and begin transitioning people to HDTV with all of those set top boxes (for those who don't know or care what HDTV is or just want to keep their coax television and have it work). Once the transition has begun the cable monopolies will move rapidly to reduce the number of channels that t
          • Yeah, well, that will reduce the viewership and eventually someone will realize that there are millions of people out there who are not watching TV at all, recognize the market and serve them, making the DRM pendulum swing back.
        • Now can someone name one (1) show that it's worth going to all this trouble to record?

          I can't think of a show in the last 5 years that I have been the slightest bit bummed out about missing.

        • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

          by Daedone ( 981031 )
          Ah, you poor bastards in the US...

          I have cogeco cable here in canada, and NONE of the channels, regular, HD or PPV/Premium have the Record-blocking Flag enabled. Also, for the record the Motorola DCT-6412 I have has 2 firewire ports and I assure you i can use both to record to 2 different computers at the same time.
      • Yes, it seems you are somewhat missing what is happening.
        So, right now, you have analog cable with an analog tuner feeding your Media Center. Great.
        Now, what is happening is that the HD revolution is coming. So, instead of your crappy, noisy analog cable, you can access digital channels on the same cable. Those channels can have higher resolution or at least better signal. They are encoded in mpeg2 and wrapped in a QAM signal (different than the ATSC standard for over the air HDTV). Today, you can access th

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dosius ( 230542 )
          What about the regular digital channels, is there a way to dump them without the analog hole? I mean Toon Disney, VH1 Classic, etc.

          -uso.
          • What about the regular digital channels, is there a way to dump them without the analog hole? I mean Toon Disney, VH1 Classic, etc.
            Anything beyond basic cable is premium and hence encrypted (as you are not supposed to have it without paying).

        • In short, if you want to use a homebrew PVR, you are srewed and limited to over the air HD or non-encrypted QAM channels...

          Is the encryption for the premium channels on a per subscriber basis, each subscriber has a different key and separate digital cable data stream sent to their house with the channels they paid for encrypted with their key OR are the encrypted channels broadcast in common with a common key for all of the subscribers in the neighborhood who paid for the premium stuff? If it is the lat
          • Cable is a shared media. The data is basically broadcast to the whole neighborhood at the same time, so I would think that the key is shared too.

            So far, even the Pay Per View, which could benefit of unique keys, does not use it. They just use common unused channels and broadcast in the clear. The others in your neighborhood just dont know know when and what (and set top boxes cant tune automatically on those channels), but with a QAM tuner, you can see those streams in clear (although the person paying for

  • Way too expensive (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Evets ( 629327 ) *
    I realize that there's a lot more to a media center pc than Tivo, but come on now.

    You can pick up a TV for a couple of hundred bucks, or build a Myth system that works for less than half the cost of an equivalent media center pc, without getting so locked into a single vendor for any service.

    Having a cable card inside your system is nice, but is it really worth all that extra money? I don't think so.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Bomarc ( 306716 )
      Not the point. The point is - the cable companies will be able to say "Look you can buy it, we don't set the price". The fact that it doesn't work, ties your hands, is VERY espensive - isn't their problem (anymore). It's 'your problem' now.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fm6 ( 162816 )
      RTFA, dude. This is not about reproducing the functionality of a TV or PVR. This is about reproducing the functionality of the set top box. Without which, you can't receive (or record) encrypted content.

      Say you're going away for the weekend, so you want to record the Sopranos finale, then record the latest episode of Dexter. These are on different pay-cable networks, so you can't record them both without changing the channel on your STB. Your PVR can't do this without some kind of control mechanism. Up unti
  • Why doesn't it work? DRM? Unimplemented (Vista is still a young OS)? User stupidity?

    Assuming it's the first, then maybe we have something to talk about here (though not something too interesting, considering that between Youtube and Joost the writing is on the wall for cable TV).

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by garbletext ( 669861 )
      RTFA. The comcast tech couldn't figure out what was wrong, neither could his home base, and neither could the relevant people at microsoft who should have been able to. If the cable industry makes it this difficult to watch tv on your computer, I'd be inclined to agree with you about the writing being on the wall. However, this is still very nichey stuff. once their revenue stream truly becomes endangered, I'd wager that things will mysteriously become easier.

  • Cue Nelson (Score:3, Funny)

    by jhines ( 82154 ) <john@jhines.org> on Friday June 08, 2007 @06:43PM (#19445483) Homepage
    "Ha Ha"
  • [With deepest apologies to the Black Eyed Peas for the parody of "Lets get Retarded"]

    Vista Retarded is here Sung by the V.C.P.s
    [voiceover] The Vista Content Protection specification could very well constitute the longest suicide note in history [auckland.ac.nz].

    Vista "Retarded", is here...

    And content not playin' playin', not playin' playin',not playin' playin',not playin' playin', not
    playin' playin', not playin' playin',not playin' playin',not playin' playin', not...

    In this context,Vista disrespects, so when I click to play, the display disconnects.
    We got find methods for us to reconnect to new codecs by the network effect.
    Bout to lose your fair use. Microsoft's institution. Infect your computer with D.R.M. pollution.
    Cause when we click on, the sound is gonna be down. You won't believe how we ow shout out.
    Burn can't cause we locked out, Sample can't cause we locked out, act up from north,west, east south.

    [Chorus:]
    Everybody (ye-a!), everybody (ye-a!), let's get into it (Yea!).
    Get stoopid (click on!).
    Vista retarded (click on!), Vista retarded (click on!), get retarded.
    Vista retarded (ha), Vista retarded is here.
    Vista retarded (ha), Vista retarded is here.
    Vista retarded (ha), Vista retarded is here.
    Yeah.

    Lose control, of privacy and goals.
    Won't run too fast cause, bloat makes it slow.
    Won't get away, your locked into it.
    Y'all hear about it, Gutmann'll do it.
    Get Vista, be stoopid.
    Don't worry 'bout it, Ballmer'll walk you though it,
    Step by step, you'll be restricted
    Patch by patch with the new solution.
    Transmit bits, with D.R.M. pollution
    Claim the contents irresistible and that's how they move it.

    [Chorus:]
    Everybody (ye-a!), everybody (ye-a!), let's get into it (Yea!).
    Get stoopid (click on!).
    Vista retarded (click on!), Vista retarded (click on!), get retarded.
    Vista retarded (ha), Vista retarded is here.
    Vista retarded (ha), Vista retarded is here.
    Vista retarded (ha), Vista retarded is here.
    Yeah.

    Playin' playin', not playin' playin',not playin' playin',not playin' playin', not...

    C'mon y'all, let's get Do-do! (uh huh) -- Let's get Do-do! (in here)
    Right now get Do-do! (uh huh) -- Let's get Do-do! (in here)
    Right now get Do-do! (uh huh) -- Let's get Do-do! (in here) Ow, ow, ow!
    Ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya...

    Let's get ill, that's the deal
    At the gate, Microsoft restricts your will. (Just)
    Lose your mind this is the time,
    Y'all test this will, Just and download still. (Just)
    Rob the resolution, from your monitor or to your speakers.
    Get pixel-ated and suck.
    Yo' movies past slow-mo' in another head trip.(So)
    Locked in now cannot correct it, so be ig'nant and left apoplectic .

    [Chorus:]
    (yeah)Everybody, (yeah) everybody, (yeah) get locked into it.
    (yeah) Get stupid.
    (click on) Get retarded,(click on) get retarded (yeah), get retarded.
    Vista retarded (ha), Vista retarded is here.
    Vista retarded (ha), Vista retarded is here.
    Vista retarded (ha), Vista retarded is here.
    Vista retarded (ha), Vista retarded is here.
    Whoaoa
    Yeah.

    You Cukoo! (A-ha!) -- It's Po-Po! (is here)
    Be a Fool! (A-ha!) -- M.S. Tool! (be their)
    Like Voodoo! (A-ha!) -- You cukoo! (out here)
    Ow, ow!
    Ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya...

    Playin' playin', not playin' playin',not playin' playin',not playin' playin'
    [fade]

  • Digital Cable on MCE - HDHomeRun (Score:5, Informative)

    by tivojafa ( 564606 ) on Friday June 08, 2007 @06:49PM (#19445539)
    With the HDHomeRun you can watch/record the unencrypted channels on digital cable:
    http://www.silicondust.com/wiki/products/hdhomerun [silicondust.com]

    Two tuners and plugs into your Ethernet network. You can watch content from any computer on your network.

    Works with MCE 2005 and Vista MCE - both 32 and 64-bit versions.
    Works with SageTV, BeyondTV, etc.
    Works with MythTV under Linux.
    Mac support is rumored to be coming soon.

    Linux review:
    http://servers.linux.com/servers/07/04/18/1531247. shtml?tid=117&tid=39 [linux.com]
    • It's a great little box - it's almost like a slingbox, but it works better for me. But then there's Discovery HD, ESPN HD, and all the premium movie channels in HD that you can't get because you need that damned CableCARD. Whatever happened to antitrust laws? IANAL, but they apply to the CableCARD consortium and should be enforced.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ivan256 ( 17499 )
      Too bad all the non-broadcast HD signals are encrypted.

  • Forgot to pay my cable bill..... (Score:5, Funny)

    by DesertBlade ( 741219 ) on Friday June 08, 2007 @06:49PM (#19445543)
    It works fine now, sorry

  • Product-activation code? (Score:3, Funny)

    by nurb432 ( 527695 ) on Friday June 08, 2007 @07:00PM (#19445635) Homepage Journal
    Just so i can watch tv? Ya, isnt technology grand.
  • The problems with these systems have nothing to do with the consumer-experience-enhancing DRM software installed in Vista. We will sue anybody who says otherwise.

    • Do you know why the 2nd M$ guy would not allow this command to be emailed to the writer, but to the cable guy's account on the writer's computer?

      c:/windows/ehome/ehribjob.exe \OCURNregister

      He complained it was "Microsoft-proprietary information" which makes me laugh. I'll tell you why it's a secret. The sender is a Linux user and does not want his boss to know.

      Chairs are going to fly over this cock-up.

    • The problems with these systems have nothing to do with the consumer-experience-enhancing DRM software installed in Vista. We will sue anybody who says otherwise.
      ... otherwise.... otherwise....

      There! That's thrice I've said it... Now sue me! Or at least throw some chairs in my direction. I could use some firewood, I just ran out of Microsoft® marketing pamphlets.

  • To be fair it's probably the cable card(s) (Score:5, Informative)

    by wilson_c ( 322811 ) on Friday June 08, 2007 @07:13PM (#19445765)
    Cable cards are horribly problematic. They were forced upon the cable companies and if you need one it means you're not renting equipment from the cable company. They really don't give a shit if it's a pain in your ass, because it lets them say "well, our cable-box/DVR/whatever never has these problems".

    In three months, I've had 5 or 6 different cable cards in my Series 3 Tivo. Only one has worked the whole time (it's got a dual-tuner, so it needs two). Some never worked at all; others refused to unlock the premium channels I'm paying for; still others have been fine for a few weeks then suddenly stopped working.

    For once I'm willing to give MS the benefit of the doubt and assume that the problem is Comcast and the crappy cable cards their cartel has concocted.
    • I'm still waiting for someone to crack the piece of shit CableCard system and re-enable fair use rights.

    • For once I'm willing to give MS the benefit of the doubt and assume that the problem is Comcast and the crappy cable cards their cartel has concocted.
      A cartel is a bunch of competing companies working together. Comcast doesn't have any competition. That makes them a monopoly.

      Yeah, I know, you don't care...

  • Cablecards and Tivo S3 Working Fairly Well (Score:3, Informative)

    by highvista63 ( 587404 ) on Friday June 08, 2007 @07:18PM (#19445795)
    I've had very few problems with two Cablecards in my Tivo Series 3. The one time a Tivo upgrade caused a problem, I called Comcast and they sent the appropriate signals down the wire to re-enable the cards again. I'm not a big fan of Comcast, but in my area, they've been handling Cablecards very well.
  • It doesn't work at all.

  • Sounds exactly like my experience with Cable Card (Score:4, Informative)

    by scottv67 ( 731709 ) on Friday June 08, 2007 @07:24PM (#19445851)
    I bought a Cable Card-ready Sony TV a few years ago with the idea that I would rent a Cable Card from Time Warner Cable so I could watch HD channels. Once the Time Warner Cable installation tech got the Cable Card working in my TV, he bolted out the door. About six hours later, the picture turned black and I could no longer receive encrypted channels. When I called Time Warner Cable's support, the support person first sent a "reset" to my TV but that didn't work. Then I was advised to turn the TV off and then unplug the set from the power outlet for ten minutes. That didn't fix the problem.

    I had Time Warner Cables techs come to my house a few more times with replacement Cable Cards but they could never resolve the problem. They gave up and blamed the problem on my TV. They said the TV needed a firmware upgrade (I didn't even know my TV had upgradeable firmware!). I contacted a local home theater company and they sent one of their techs to my house to upgrade my TV's firmware.

    After that upgrade, Time Warner Cable tried again but could not get the Cable Card to work. The TWC person at my house was on the phone with someone at the "head end" trying to get advice on how to fix this problem. Despite digging through some very cool diagnostic screens on my TV and trying every option available, Time Warner Cable never did the Cable Card to work in my TV.

    I gave up and called TWC to let them know I would be bringing their card back.

    For all of its hype, Cable Card definitely sucked donkey balls. I have a very nice Sony HD set that is supposedly "Cable Card ready" but the Cable Card just didn't work reliably. It's too bad. The time that I did get to watch channels like Discovery HD was very cool.

    That was a couple of summers ago. I haven't had the time to see if TWC here in Milwaukee has figured-out the mysteries of the Cable Card.
  • It looks like for not too much money you could make a box that can record 1080i/720p via component cables and solve this whole problem. At least until analog is completely outlawed.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dgatwood ( 11270 )

      You could do the same thing with digital streams over HDMI. (Even encrypted HDMI isn't a big deal; the encryption is pretty weak, or so I've read.) Only problem in either case is that doing MPEG compression in real time isn't something that can be done with existing cheap silicon. 1080i requires 1.3 Gbps, so doing it uncompressed is beyond the hard drive performance limitations of any computers available at anything close to the consumer level. It's almost half again faster than even the sustained throu

      • I was suggesting something that can capture raw signal...it'd have to be compressed.

        One suggested solution was analog -> HD-SDI (via something like the AJA HD10A, the Orca MPEG2 Encoder which will take HD-SDI and output DVB-ASI, and then a DVB-ASI capture card. It would not be cheap or easy but you should be able to build a system for $10K that can do analog HD recording. And then you can tell CableLabs to go screw themselves.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dgatwood ( 11270 )

          Well, you could do it with a $250 HDMI capture card from HDMI as well---even uncompressed---but you'll need some whopping hard drives for temporary storage and mega-fast CPUs to reencode it quickly so you can delete the raw files. It's 585 gigs an hour. Two 750 GB 15000 RPM drives would be sufficient to record even a two hour movie with room to space... as long as you had time to encode before you had to capture again. Based on numbers I dug up in a Google search for 1080i compression times, an eight-way

  • Time for a new kind of PVR (Score:5, Funny)

    by zmollusc ( 763634 ) on Friday June 08, 2007 @07:47PM (#19446027)
    With the recent improvements to graphics cards, computers have now got enough power for the next level of PVR to become possible.
    I refer of course to Personal Video Rendering, ie locally generated real-time TV. Even modest AI can handle the retarded talk shows and formulaic sycophantic interviews.

    Just imagine: you can watch computer generated random pointless drivel such as 'my boyfriend left me for a transexual limbo dancer and now i am marrying his mother' with 5.1 surround whooping and hollering from the audience for as long as you like (with artificial repetitive and annoying 'advertisement' breaks, of course), then decide to watch a blu-ray hd film. The software would automatically flip to rendering 20 minutes of a sports game, followed by 30 minutes of tedious analysis by virtual sports presenters before showing the film. Artificially intelligent filtering would then cut many of the scenes and redub profane dialog no matter what time it was being watched. Monitoring daemons would flag the kind of shows that you like to watch and then 'cancel' them.

    I could go on, but you get the idea.

  • The content lords must be proud! (Score:3, Funny)

    by erroneus ( 253617 ) on Friday June 08, 2007 @07:50PM (#19446047) Homepage
    I'll bet they feel VERY happy with themselves now that their content is so well protected that no one can use it.
  • blame them all. They're all out to give you fewer options.

    1. Microsoft has drunk this DTV Cool-aid in the hope that this legally sanctioned lockout will finally bury any OS competition, well at least in the living room (they're right. No DTV means everyone else is pushed out)

    2. Cable operators want to run your living room like cell carriers want to own your phones. If there's profit to be had, they want it to flow through their pockets or nobody else's. So even if this media PC thing flops, they're not out

  • The CLI is NOT WRONG (Score:2, Informative)

    by man_ls ( 248470 )
    To everyone who complains about the command being in the wrong syntax (C:/ehome/ versus C:\ehome\)

    Go to your command line. Start>Run>CMD

    > cd \

    > cd /windows/system32

    See where you end up.

    Now, try

    > c:/windows/system32/dxdiag.exe

    Windows CLI takes paths in both formats.

  • Hardware Question (Score:3, Insightful)

    by CodeBuster ( 516420 ) on Friday June 08, 2007 @08:06PM (#19446171)
    Perhaps someone out there can answer this for me, but what is to stop some company in China, or Europe, or somewhere else where US laws apply in name only (i.e. there is some trade agreement or treaty on 'intellectual property' but the foreign producers simply ignore it when it is inconvenient) from producing and selling third party hardware which does not recognize a 'broadcast flag' or any other junk that the government and the cable monopoly lobbyists come up with?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hab136 ( 30884 )

      Perhaps someone out there can answer this for me, but what is to stop some company in China, or Europe, or somewhere else where US laws apply in name only (i.e. there is some trade agreement or treaty on 'intellectual property' but the foreign producers simply ignore it when it is inconvenient) from producing and selling third party hardware which does not recognize a 'broadcast flag' or any other junk that the government and the cable monopoly lobbyists come up with?

      Nothing prevents them from producing som

    • Perhaps someone out there can answer this for me...

      The gray market is the penny that sticks to the bubble gum on the heel of your kid's sneakers.

      The big box retailer doesn't order product that will never clear customs. The OEM doesn't produce product that will never clear customs.

  • Or ATI's. It's the cable company. I'd bet quite a large sum of money on that statement.

    Go read some Tivo forums that cover the Series 3 unit. There is story after story after story about the nightmare of getting cablecards installed and configured properly.

    Cablecards are standardized. The device itself (provided it is compliant with the CableLabs standard (which it MUST BE to be certified)) is irrelevant. All the installer needs to do is know how to bring up the cablecard info screen and speak enough E
  • Its probably a combination between how buggy Windows MCE(like all MS products but MCE is at ME level) and that ATI couldn't write stable drivers if there life depended on it(o wait it does and thats why the enthusiast market is all NVIDIA). Once pcHDTV releases a card with CableCard support I bet it will work flawlessly and be very simple to setup.

  • Simple solution (Score:3, Informative)

    by cdrguru ( 88047 ) on Friday June 08, 2007 @09:42PM (#19446985) Homepage
    The problem (that a few people have realized) is that the technician tested the cards first. Because of this operation they were inseperably paired with the device used to test them.

    Without knowing that and resetting this pairing nothing that could be done would force the cards to work in the PC. It has nothing to do with the new hardware, the operating system or anything else. Simple matter is these are complex devices interfacing with even more complex systems. And the supposedly knowledgeable technician didn't understand this restriction.

    Unfortunately, the article makes it appear that the technician was knowlegeable and should have been able to solve the problem. In reality the inexperienced technican created the problem and insured the installation would fail by testing the cards.

    • Don't be silly. (Score:5, Informative)

      by Ayanami Rei ( 621112 ) * <rayanami AT gmail DOT com> on Friday June 08, 2007 @10:12PM (#19447233) Journal
      Technicians can test cards all the want before bringing them to the customer site.
      The bonding actually occurs at the head end, not in the card.
      They have to call up and give the head end reps the device ID and card ID so that the system can start transmitting the correct key stream with which the card will be able to decrypt and use to get at the symmetric content keys.

      The cards themselves can be tested in a sandbox environment where the technician can control the encryption process, registration in the sandbox, and then verify the decryption.
  • Failed business models are dime-a-dozen and taught at business grad schools, specifically course MANU555 (Designing Flexible High-Tech Consumer Product).

    Basic Tenets:

    Rigid product = High Returns.

    Failed Head-Ends = Massive Modem Recall

    DRM = Excessive Customer Support = Loss of Interest

    No kidding. Some COMCAST/MS product research department personnel needs to go back to school. We, Slashdotter, would have design this better.

  • The joys of speakerphone (Score:3, Interesting)

    by frdmfghtr ( 603968 ) on Friday June 08, 2007 @09:57PM (#19447115)
    I especially liked the transcription of the phone calls...

    CT: Both these machines have internal OCUR cards, too; I've never worked with the internal cards before.

    MSG: [Still unaware he's on a speakerphone] Yeah, those are really tricky. But don't tell the guy that, or he'll write it up. You're gonna start seeing Dells like that come through your system like crazy.

    and

    c:/windows/ehome/ehribjob.exe \OCURNregister


    Remember, that's Microsoft-proprietary!
  • c:/windows/ehome/ehribjob.exe \OCURNregister

    When I first read this, I thought someone was making a joke.

    What does that stand for? "E-Home Return on Investment 'bjob?'"

    Is corporate fellatio now a command line process?

    --
    Toro

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