CableCARD
Encyclopedia
CableCARD is a special-use PCMCIA (PC) card
that allows consumers in the United States to view and record digital cable
television channels on digital video recorders, personal computers and television set
s without the use of other equipment such as a set top box (STB) provided by a cable television
company. The card may be provided by the local cable provider; usually for a nominal monthly fee. Another name for a CableCARD is an M-CARD on some cable boxes
In technical contexts, "CableCARD" refers more broadly to a set of technologies created by the United States cable television
industry in response to requirements by federal government's Telecommunications Act of 1996
that cable companies allow non cable company provided devices to access their networks.
Use of the term CableCARD can be confusing, because some technologies refer not to the physical card, but to a device ("Host") that uses the card. Some CableCARD technologies can be used with devices that have no physical CableCARDs.
(FCC) to:
Multichannel video programming refers to cable or satellite television. A driving motivation of this passage was to foster the kind of consumer choices that resulted after the Federal government landmark Carterfone
ruling requiring telephone companies to allow consumers to purchase third party telephones for attachment to the phone company network. The thought was that consumers would benefit from wider choices due to competition between consumer electronics
(CE) manufacturers unaffiliated with cable companies.
The FCC was charged with working with industry to carry out the directives of the 1996 law. On June 11, 1998, after securing proposals and recommendations from interested parties, the FCC ordered that cable companies would provide a separable security access device by July 1, 2000 which could be used by third-party devices to access digital cable networks. One important issue was the concern that cable companies might not be motivated to provide efficient security access mechanisms for competitor companies to use. To address this, the FCC directed that the cable companies would by January 1, 2005 also have to use a separable access device that was also available to third parties. The cable company would be banned from providing devices that relied on a security access mechanism integrated with the device after the 2005 deadline. This rule is usually referred to as the "integration ban", and has been unsuccessfully challenged in the courts and in FCC petitions by the cable companies. The deadline was shifted forward twice and went into effect July 1, 2007.
The separable security device was referred to in FCC regulations as a "Point of Deployment" (POD) module. After many requests for delay from the cable industry, the first CableCARD devices became available from third party manufacturers in August 2004.
CableCARDs may be used to access both standard definition
and high definition
channels (as long as they are not part of a switched video
system [this applies to one-way devices only, two-way devices are capable of receiving and viewing switched video]. The ability for one-way devices to receive and view switched video has changed with the addition of the Tuning Resolver Interface Specification. Tuning adaptors and tuning adaptor interfaces have been added to provide communication back to the headend needed for switched video). CableCARDs are not necessary for viewing unscrambled digital cable channels if the user has a QAM tuner
— a feature in some televisions and DVR
s. CableCARD support is most common on higher end televisions that include a special slot for the CableCARD and a built-in cable tuner. The card acts like a unique "key" to unlock the channels and services to which the cable customer has subscribed, and the television's remote-control will also control the cable channels. Televisions that support CableCARD should be labeled by the manufacturer as "digital cable ready
", or DCR.
, a research group run by a consortium of cable companies. Devices that use CableCARDs are known as "Hosts" and must be certified as compliant with the specification by CableLabs. The certification process can take significant amounts of time and is performed in batches on a regular cycle every 3 months.
The first test tool to verify compliance of OpenCable hosts with the CableCARD one-way single stream specifications, HPNX, was released by SCM and Digital Keystone
in 2003. Subsequently the HPNX Pro version, supporting two-way and M-card specifications, was released by Digital Keystone
in 2006. The "M-UDCP Device Acceptance Test Plan" published by CableLabs defines how to use the HPNX Pro test tool to validate the OpenCable host devices.
The first test tool to verify compliance of the CableCARD devices with the OpenCable specifications, Host Emulator Tool, and produced by Margi Systems, was first utilized by CableLabs to validate the Scientific Atlanta (Cisco) and Motorola POD (later renamed to CableCard) devices in 2003.
Cable companies in the United States are required to provide CableCARDs conforming to this specification, and must correct incompatibilities between their networks and certified CableCARD devices.
The current CableCARD standard was born out of an adversarial process between two main groups: cable companies represented by the National Cable & Telecommunications Association
(NCTA) and consumer electronics companies represented by the Consumer Electronics Association
(CEA). The portion of the CableCARD specs that could be agreed on describe how one-way services work, and so only the portion known as UDCP (Unidirectional Digital Cable Product) was required by the FCC. As it was the only thing required, most of the early devices were only one-way capable; however all the actual CableCARDs produced were always two-way capable. Many enhancements to the CableCARD standard including the optional Multi-Stream support became known as CableCARD 2.0.
Although an optical cable
service, Verizon FiOS
is classified as a cable service and must by FCC rules also support the CableCARD standard. No cable providers in Canada currently support CableCARD. Video providers in Europe must conform to the DVB standard which is a more comprehensive open standard governed by independent standards bodies.
CableCARD also supports non-television functions. It can also act as a cable modem
controller, again with the host providing modulation and demodulation functions, and the card providing decoding and IP
routing
functionality; however this feature is rarely used, and depends on the cable provider.
type II card which handles decryption of video, and making sure that only people that have paid for the channel may view it. This is also known as "conditional access module
" function.
There are two kinds of physical CableCARDs:
No actual M-Cards were released before CableCARD 2.0 was released which combined and enhanced the CableCARD 1.0 and Multi-Stream standards. M-Cards are backward compatible
with current CableCARD devices. To older CableCARD devices that do not support multiple streams, the card appears to be a single stream card. CE companies have long wanted M-Cards for their CableCARD 1.0 host devices in order to compete with Cable company devices that use multiple tuners. This is important for products such as Moxi
& TiVo
CableCARD DVR
s, televisions with picture-in-picture
and CableCARD-equipped personal computers, which need to be able to record one show while the user is watching another. To enable this without an M-Card, these products would be required to use multiple S-CARDs.
A common misconception is that there is a CableCARD 2.0 physical card that will provide two way services which is not compatible with a UDCP (one-way) certified devices. This is not the case. OpenCable Host Devices (two-way) are able to use either S-CARDs or M-Cards. And older UDCP certified devices can also use either card (but unless they are M-UDCP won't be able to take advantage of multiple streams).
Interactive features such as Video on Demand
rely on the CableCARD Host device being an OpenCable Host Device and have nothing to do with the physical card. This makes the common use of the phrase "CableCARD 2.0" as a requirement for video on demand misleading, since two way services have been provided with the actual cards from the very beginning.
, Cisco
(formerly Scientific Atlanta), NDS Group
, and Evolution Broadband.
There are still many in the cable industry who are advocating that physical CableCARDs be dropped entirely. These cable companies prefer to move away from physical cards, and have proposed that a downloadable security component known as Downloadable Conditional Access System
(DCAS) be used instead. The FCC has not yet approved it.
CE companies advocate their proposal for more unfettered access to cable company networks, with CableLabs' role reduced to addressing only cable company interests of maintaining network stability and security.
ed by CableLabs
for the Point of Deployment (POD) module defined by standards including SCTE
28, SCTE 41, CEA
-679 and others. The CableCARD is physically a PCMCIA type II PC card
, supplied by the cable company, which is inserted into a slot in the host (typically a digital television
set or a set-top box) in order to identify and authorize the customer, and to provide proprietary decoding of the encrypted
digital cable
signal without the need for a set-top box
. The cable tuner and QAM
demodulator
themselves are part of the host device, as is the MPEG decoder. The role of the card is to perform any conditional access and decryption functions. This results in an MPEG-2 transport stream, which is decoded by the host. The card also receives messages sent over the out-of-band signaling channel by the cable company's Head end
servers and forwards them to the host.
Cards from major providers such as Comcast
, Cox Communications
, RCN
and Time Warner Cable
in some regions currently require on-site installation by a technician, who reports the unique ID numbers pre-assigned to both the CableCARD and the digital television to the company headquarters, where they are updated to the customer's account. Because of this, CableCARDs cannot be moved from one device to another without a visit from a cable company installer. Some regions (such as Comcast Houston) do allow customer installs, and actually provide special phone support for CableCARDs. The card is inserted as users do for laptop PCMCIA cards. The CableCARD identification numbers are given to the operator who then sends the CableCARD an out of band Entitlement Management Message (EMM), which remotely programs the CableCARD, authorizing it to decode for the specific host only those shows and services which the user is authorized to view.
http://www.comcast.com/customers/faq/FaqDetails.ashx?ID=2658
http://www.cox.com/support/sandiego/cable/faq.asp
http://www.timewarnercable.com/albany/products/CableCARD.html
CableCARDs with personal computers:
Existing integrated cable set-top boxes perform four basic functions:
New digital television
s and other devices that are labeled DCR (Digital cable ready
) contain:
The CableCARD 2.0 specification includes support for #1-4, interactive two-way communications; however it is unknown exactly when CableCARD 2.0 hosts and compatible servers will become available. Future devices which support CableCARD 2.0 are expected to be labeled iDCR "Interactive digital cable ready". Among other requirements, CableCARD 2.0 hosts will be required to provide the OpenCable Application Platform
(OCAP), also known as Tru2Way
, to run programs downloaded from the cable company. Some analysts predict that wide availability of tru2way will not be seen until late 2010.
An alternative to CableCARD 2.0, most recently advocated by the U.S. cable television industry, uses Downloadable Conditional Access System
(DCAS) in place of physical CableCARDs. In this proposal, a custom security chip must be soldered into every compliant host; if a security scheme is compromised, a new security program can be downloaded to the host device.
Because the conditional access system is in software, it can be sent with the video as a form of Digital Rights Management
(DRM). The CableCARD Host Licensing Agreement (CHILA) and the DCAS agreement restrict the technologies that CE companies may use for distributing video from host devices. CE companies object to this expanding the notion of CableCARD network security issues to also include content protection issues. They prefer to deal with content owners directly with their standards and regard cable company protocols and formats as a transport only. CE companies wish to communicate video inside the home network using their own protected protocols and formats.
The OpenCable Application Platform (OCAP) is a Java-based platform intended for use either with any security access scheme — whether it is CableCARD 2.0 devices or future downloadable security schemes. OCAP was tied to CableCARDs because, as it was imagined by CableLabs, the additional processing necessary for managing the communication with the cable company server would be performed, not on the cable company provided equipment (the CableCARD), but on the consumer electronics device — known as the CableCARD "Host". CE companies objected that OCAP is unnecessary for the simple task of managing two-way communications on the cable networks. The CEA perspective is that Java
is not efficient for CE devices, and that cable companies are passing to CE manufacturers the costs of a software platform which they didn't need, and which won't run on their existing hardware architectures.
The consumer electronics industry proposed in November 2006 that the CableCARD 2.0 specification be upgraded to include the provision for modified MCards that would support the communications necessary for VOD, PPV, and Switched Video. This card would be backward compatible with older cards, and support would be required for them on cable company servers by January 2008. These modified MCards would not allow two-way communication using current OCURs, which, by definition, are unidirectional. This so-called "OCAP-less" proposal was rejected by the NCTA
for a variety of reasons elaborated on in the issues segment of this article. The technical advantage is that much less is assumed about the computing capability of the host, allowing the manufacturing cost to be significantly reduced. The disadvantage is that the MCard will be slightly more expensive, but the host will not necessarily be able to support the envisioned ecommerce and banking applications. CE companies argue that such a card fulfills the 1996 law's requirement that cable companies allow two-way communication on their networks, and that OCAP fulfills technical goals far in excess of those necessary for such two-way communications.
.
PC card
In computing, PC Card is the form factor of a peripheral interface designed for laptop computers. The PC Card standard was defined and developed by the Personal Computer Memory Card International Association which itself was created by a number of computer industry companies in the United States...
that allows consumers in the United States to view and record digital cable
Digital cable
Digital cable is a generic term for any type of cable television distribution using digital video compression or distribution. The technology was originally developed by Motorola.-Background:...
television channels on digital video recorders, personal computers and television set
Television set
A television set is a device that combines a tuner, display, and speakers for the purpose of viewing television. Television sets became a popular consumer product after the Second World War, using vacuum tubes and cathode ray tube displays...
s without the use of other equipment such as a set top box (STB) provided by a cable television
Cable television
Cable television is a system of providing television programs to consumers via radio frequency signals transmitted to televisions through coaxial cables or digital light pulses through fixed optical fibers located on the subscriber's property, much like the over-the-air method used in traditional...
company. The card may be provided by the local cable provider; usually for a nominal monthly fee. Another name for a CableCARD is an M-CARD on some cable boxes
In technical contexts, "CableCARD" refers more broadly to a set of technologies created by the United States cable television
Cable television in the United States
Cable television in the United States is a common form of television delivery, generally by subscription. Cable television first became available in the United States in 1948, with subscription services in 1949. Data by SNL Kagan shows that as of 2006 about 58.4% of all American homes subscribe to...
industry in response to requirements by federal government's Telecommunications Act of 1996
Telecommunications Act of 1996
The Telecommunications Act of 1996 was the first major overhaul of United States telecommunications law in nearly 62 years, amending the Communications Act of 1934. This Act, signed by President Bill Clinton, was a major stepping stone towards the future of telecommunications, since this was the...
that cable companies allow non cable company provided devices to access their networks.
Use of the term CableCARD can be confusing, because some technologies refer not to the physical card, but to a device ("Host") that uses the card. Some CableCARD technologies can be used with devices that have no physical CableCARDs.
Background Info
The portion of the 1996 Telecom law which resulted in the creation of CableCARDs is known as Section 629, instructing the Federal Communications CommissionFederal Communications Commission
The Federal Communications Commission is an independent agency of the United States government, created, Congressional statute , and with the majority of its commissioners appointed by the current President. The FCC works towards six goals in the areas of broadband, competition, the spectrum, the...
(FCC) to:
"...assure the commercial availability to consumers of multichannel video programming and other services offered over multichannel video programming systems, of converter boxes, interactive communications equipment, and other equipment used by consumers to access multichannel video programming and other services offered over multichannel video programming systems, from manufacturers, retailers, and other vendors not affiliated with any multichannel video programming distributor."
Multichannel video programming refers to cable or satellite television. A driving motivation of this passage was to foster the kind of consumer choices that resulted after the Federal government landmark Carterfone
Carterfone
The Carterfone is a device invented by Thomas Carter. It manually connects a two-way mobile radio system to the public switched telephone network , making it a direct predecessor to today's autopatch....
ruling requiring telephone companies to allow consumers to purchase third party telephones for attachment to the phone company network. The thought was that consumers would benefit from wider choices due to competition between consumer electronics
Consumer electronics
Consumer electronics are electronic equipment intended for everyday use, most often in entertainment, communications and office productivity. Radio broadcasting in the early 20th century brought the first major consumer product, the broadcast receiver...
(CE) manufacturers unaffiliated with cable companies.
The FCC was charged with working with industry to carry out the directives of the 1996 law. On June 11, 1998, after securing proposals and recommendations from interested parties, the FCC ordered that cable companies would provide a separable security access device by July 1, 2000 which could be used by third-party devices to access digital cable networks. One important issue was the concern that cable companies might not be motivated to provide efficient security access mechanisms for competitor companies to use. To address this, the FCC directed that the cable companies would by January 1, 2005 also have to use a separable access device that was also available to third parties. The cable company would be banned from providing devices that relied on a security access mechanism integrated with the device after the 2005 deadline. This rule is usually referred to as the "integration ban", and has been unsuccessfully challenged in the courts and in FCC petitions by the cable companies. The deadline was shifted forward twice and went into effect July 1, 2007.
The separable security device was referred to in FCC regulations as a "Point of Deployment" (POD) module. After many requests for delay from the cable industry, the first CableCARD devices became available from third party manufacturers in August 2004.
CableCARDs may be used to access both standard definition
Standard-definition television
Sorete-definition television is a television system that uses a resolution that is not considered to be either enhanced-definition television or high-definition television . The term is usually used in reference to digital television, in particular when broadcasting at the same resolution as...
and high definition
High-definition television
High-definition television is video that has resolution substantially higher than that of traditional television systems . HDTV has one or two million pixels per frame, roughly five times that of SD...
channels (as long as they are not part of a switched video
Switched video
Switched video, also called switched digital video or SDV , is a telecommunications industry term for a network scheme for distributing digital video via a cable. Switched video sends the digital video in a more efficient manner so that additional uses may be made of the freed up bandwidth...
system [this applies to one-way devices only, two-way devices are capable of receiving and viewing switched video]. The ability for one-way devices to receive and view switched video has changed with the addition of the Tuning Resolver Interface Specification. Tuning adaptors and tuning adaptor interfaces have been added to provide communication back to the headend needed for switched video). CableCARDs are not necessary for viewing unscrambled digital cable channels if the user has a QAM tuner
QAM tuner
QAM stands for quadrature amplitude modulation, the format by which digital cable channels are encoded and transmitted via cable television providers...
— a feature in some televisions and DVR
Digital video recorder
A digital video recorder , sometimes referred to by the merchandising term personal video recorder , is a consumer electronics device or application software that records video in a digital format to a disk drive, USB flash drive, SD memory card or other local or networked mass storage device...
s. CableCARD support is most common on higher end televisions that include a special slot for the CableCARD and a built-in cable tuner. The card acts like a unique "key" to unlock the channels and services to which the cable customer has subscribed, and the television's remote-control will also control the cable channels. Televisions that support CableCARD should be labeled by the manufacturer as "digital cable ready
Digital cable ready
Cable-ready is a designation which indicates that a TV set or other television-receiving device is capable of receiving cable TV without a set-top box....
", or DCR.
Existing standard and certification procedures
Cable providers in the United States are required by the FCC to support the CableCARD 2.0 standard. The specification was developed by CableLabsCableLabs
Founded in 1988 by cable television operating companies, Cable Television Laboratories, Inc. is a not-for-profit research and development consortium that has cable operators as its members. System operators from around the world are eligible to be members. Members dues are based on revenue...
, a research group run by a consortium of cable companies. Devices that use CableCARDs are known as "Hosts" and must be certified as compliant with the specification by CableLabs. The certification process can take significant amounts of time and is performed in batches on a regular cycle every 3 months.
The first test tool to verify compliance of OpenCable hosts with the CableCARD one-way single stream specifications, HPNX, was released by SCM and Digital Keystone
Digital Keystone
Digital Keystone, Inc. develops digital entertainment technologies that bridge Pay TV with the new digital home. DK solutions include security and navigation software. Digital Keystone also develops industry-standard validation tools for development, certification, and manufacturing...
in 2003. Subsequently the HPNX Pro version, supporting two-way and M-card specifications, was released by Digital Keystone
Digital Keystone
Digital Keystone, Inc. develops digital entertainment technologies that bridge Pay TV with the new digital home. DK solutions include security and navigation software. Digital Keystone also develops industry-standard validation tools for development, certification, and manufacturing...
in 2006. The "M-UDCP Device Acceptance Test Plan" published by CableLabs defines how to use the HPNX Pro test tool to validate the OpenCable host devices.
The first test tool to verify compliance of the CableCARD devices with the OpenCable specifications, Host Emulator Tool, and produced by Margi Systems, was first utilized by CableLabs to validate the Scientific Atlanta (Cisco) and Motorola POD (later renamed to CableCard) devices in 2003.
Cable companies in the United States are required to provide CableCARDs conforming to this specification, and must correct incompatibilities between their networks and certified CableCARD devices.
The current CableCARD standard was born out of an adversarial process between two main groups: cable companies represented by the National Cable & Telecommunications Association
National Cable & Telecommunications Association
The National Cable & Telecommunications Association is the principal trade association for the U.S. cable TV industry, representing cable operators serving more than 90 percent of the nation’s cable households and more than 200 cable program networks, as well as equipment suppliers and providers...
(NCTA) and consumer electronics companies represented by the Consumer Electronics Association
Consumer Electronics Association
The Consumer Electronics Association is a standards and trade organization for the consumer electronics industry in the United States. The Consumer Electronics Association is the preeminent trade association promoting growth in the $173 billion U.S...
(CEA). The portion of the CableCARD specs that could be agreed on describe how one-way services work, and so only the portion known as UDCP (Unidirectional Digital Cable Product) was required by the FCC. As it was the only thing required, most of the early devices were only one-way capable; however all the actual CableCARDs produced were always two-way capable. Many enhancements to the CableCARD standard including the optional Multi-Stream support became known as CableCARD 2.0.
Although an optical cable
Fiber-optic communication
Fiber-optic communication is a method of transmitting information from one place to another by sending pulses of light through an optical fiber. The light forms an electromagnetic carrier wave that is modulated to carry information...
service, Verizon FiOS
Verizon FiOS
Verizon FiOS is a bundled Internet access, telephone, and television service which operates over a fiber-optic communications network. It is offered in some areas of the United States by Verizon Communications. Verizon was one of the first major U.S...
is classified as a cable service and must by FCC rules also support the CableCARD standard. No cable providers in Canada currently support CableCARD. Video providers in Europe must conform to the DVB standard which is a more comprehensive open standard governed by independent standards bodies.
CableCARD also supports non-television functions. It can also act as a cable modem
Cable modem
A cable modem is a type of network bridge and modem that provides bi-directional data communication via radio frequency channels on a HFC and RFoG infrastructure. Cable modems are primarily used to deliver broadband Internet access in the form of cable Internet, taking advantage of the high...
controller, again with the host providing modulation and demodulation functions, and the card providing decoding and IP
Internet Protocol
The Internet Protocol is the principal communications protocol used for relaying datagrams across an internetwork using the Internet Protocol Suite...
routing
Routing
Routing is the process of selecting paths in a network along which to send network traffic. Routing is performed for many kinds of networks, including the telephone network , electronic data networks , and transportation networks...
functionality; however this feature is rarely used, and depends on the cable provider.
Physical CableCARDs
The physical CableCARD that is inserted into the host device is a PCMCIAPC card
In computing, PC Card is the form factor of a peripheral interface designed for laptop computers. The PC Card standard was defined and developed by the Personal Computer Memory Card International Association which itself was created by a number of computer industry companies in the United States...
type II card which handles decryption of video, and making sure that only people that have paid for the channel may view it. This is also known as "conditional access module
Conditional access module
A conditional access module is an electronic device, usually incorporating a slot for a smart card, which equips an Integrated Digital Television or set-top box with the appropriate hardware facility to view conditional access content that has been encrypted using a conditional access system...
" function.
There are two kinds of physical CableCARDs:
- A "Single-stream" CableCARD (S-CARD) can decode a single channel at a time. The S-CARD specification was initially specified in the Host-POD Interface (SCTE 28) and POD Copy Protection System (SCTE 41) standards (often referred to as CableCARD 1.0) set of specifications.
- A "Multi-Stream" CableCARD (M-Card) can decode up to six channels simultaneously. Multi-Stream cards were specified in a separate document in 2003.
No actual M-Cards were released before CableCARD 2.0 was released which combined and enhanced the CableCARD 1.0 and Multi-Stream standards. M-Cards are backward compatible
Backward compatibility
In the context of telecommunications and computing, a device or technology is said to be backward or downward compatible if it can work with input generated by an older device...
with current CableCARD devices. To older CableCARD devices that do not support multiple streams, the card appears to be a single stream card. CE companies have long wanted M-Cards for their CableCARD 1.0 host devices in order to compete with Cable company devices that use multiple tuners. This is important for products such as Moxi
Moxi
Moxi is a line of high definition Digital Video Recorders produced by ARRIS Group, Inc. Moxi was originally released only to cable operators but in December 2008 was released as a retail product to the general public. The current retail product, the Moxi HD DVR, provides a high definition user...
& TiVo
TiVo
TiVo is a digital video recorder developed and marketed by TiVo, Inc. and introduced in 1999. TiVo provides an on-screen guide of scheduled broadcast programming television programs, whose features include "Season Pass" schedules which record every new episode of a series, and "WishList"...
CableCARD DVR
Digital video recorder
A digital video recorder , sometimes referred to by the merchandising term personal video recorder , is a consumer electronics device or application software that records video in a digital format to a disk drive, USB flash drive, SD memory card or other local or networked mass storage device...
s, televisions with picture-in-picture
Picture-in-picture
Picture in Picture is a feature of some television receivers and similar devices. One program is displayed on the full TV screen at the same time as one or more other programs are displayed in inset windows. Sound is usually from the main program only.Picture in Picture requires two independent...
and CableCARD-equipped personal computers, which need to be able to record one show while the user is watching another. To enable this without an M-Card, these products would be required to use multiple S-CARDs.
A common misconception is that there is a CableCARD 2.0 physical card that will provide two way services which is not compatible with a UDCP (one-way) certified devices. This is not the case. OpenCable Host Devices (two-way) are able to use either S-CARDs or M-Cards. And older UDCP certified devices can also use either card (but unless they are M-UDCP won't be able to take advantage of multiple streams).
Interactive features such as Video on Demand
Video on demand
Video on Demand or Audio and Video On Demand are systems which allow users to select and watch/listen to video or audio content on demand...
rely on the CableCARD Host device being an OpenCable Host Device and have nothing to do with the physical card. This makes the common use of the phrase "CableCARD 2.0" as a requirement for video on demand misleading, since two way services have been provided with the actual cards from the very beginning.
Manufacturers
, four manufacturers have multi-stream CableCARDs (M-CARDS) qualified by CableLabs: MotorolaMotorola
Motorola, Inc. was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, which was eventually divided into two independent public companies, Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions on January 4, 2011, after losing $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009...
, Cisco
Cisco
Cisco may refer to:Companies:*Cisco Systems, a computer networking company* Certis CISCO, corporatised entity of the former Commercial and Industrial Security Corporation in Singapore...
(formerly Scientific Atlanta), NDS Group
NDS Group
NDS Group Plc. is a developer of pay TV technology. NDS was established in 1988 as an Israeli start up company. It was acquired by News Corporation in 1992. The company is currently headquartered in Staines, United Kingdom...
, and Evolution Broadband.
Adoption
There has been much resistance from the cable companies to CableCARD rollout across the United States with the cable companies preferring to support their own set-top boxes. This has changed somewhat with the July 2007 FCC integration ban, which required all new set-top boxes to use CableCARDs as their decryption mechanism. Prior to this, adoption had proceeded slowly with 141,000 units by February 2006. By June 2009, there were over 14,000,000 CableCARDs deployed including 437,800 of which went into retail equipment. Currently almost all the retail equipment is not capable of two way communications.There are still many in the cable industry who are advocating that physical CableCARDs be dropped entirely. These cable companies prefer to move away from physical cards, and have proposed that a downloadable security component known as Downloadable Conditional Access System
Downloadable Conditional Access System
Downloadable Conditional Access System or DCAS is a proposal advanced by CableLabs for secure software download of a specific Conditional Access client which controls digital rights management into an OCAP-compliant host consumer media device...
(DCAS) be used instead. The FCC has not yet approved it.
CE companies advocate their proposal for more unfettered access to cable company networks, with CableLabs' role reduced to addressing only cable company interests of maintaining network stability and security.
Technical overview
CableCARD is a term trademarkTrademark
A trademark, trade mark, or trade-mark is a distinctive sign or indicator used by an individual, business organization, or other legal entity to identify that the products or services to consumers with which the trademark appears originate from a unique source, and to distinguish its products or...
ed by CableLabs
CableLabs
Founded in 1988 by cable television operating companies, Cable Television Laboratories, Inc. is a not-for-profit research and development consortium that has cable operators as its members. System operators from around the world are eligible to be members. Members dues are based on revenue...
for the Point of Deployment (POD) module defined by standards including SCTE
SCTE
The Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers or SCTE is a non-profit professional association for the advancement of technology related to cable telecommunications engineering. Founded in 1969, SCTE has a current membership of over 12,000 individuals.- Publications :SCTE offers several...
28, SCTE 41, CEA
Consumer Electronics Association
The Consumer Electronics Association is a standards and trade organization for the consumer electronics industry in the United States. The Consumer Electronics Association is the preeminent trade association promoting growth in the $173 billion U.S...
-679 and others. The CableCARD is physically a PCMCIA type II PC card
PC card
In computing, PC Card is the form factor of a peripheral interface designed for laptop computers. The PC Card standard was defined and developed by the Personal Computer Memory Card International Association which itself was created by a number of computer industry companies in the United States...
, supplied by the cable company, which is inserted into a slot in the host (typically a digital television
Digital television
Digital television is the transmission of audio and video by digital signals, in contrast to the analog signals used by analog TV...
set or a set-top box) in order to identify and authorize the customer, and to provide proprietary decoding of the encrypted
Encryption
In cryptography, encryption is the process of transforming information using an algorithm to make it unreadable to anyone except those possessing special knowledge, usually referred to as a key. The result of the process is encrypted information...
digital cable
Digital cable
Digital cable is a generic term for any type of cable television distribution using digital video compression or distribution. The technology was originally developed by Motorola.-Background:...
signal without the need for a set-top box
Set-top box
A set-top box or set-top unit is an information appliance device that generally contains a tuner and connects to a television set and an external source of signal, turning the signal into content which is then displayed on the television screen or other display device.-History:Before the...
. The cable tuner and QAM
Quadrature amplitude modulation
Quadrature amplitude modulation is both an analog and a digital modulation scheme. It conveys two analog message signals, or two digital bit streams, by changing the amplitudes of two carrier waves, using the amplitude-shift keying digital modulation scheme or amplitude modulation analog...
demodulator
Modulation
In electronics and telecommunications, modulation is the process of varying one or more properties of a high-frequency periodic waveform, called the carrier signal, with a modulating signal which typically contains information to be transmitted...
themselves are part of the host device, as is the MPEG decoder. The role of the card is to perform any conditional access and decryption functions. This results in an MPEG-2 transport stream, which is decoded by the host. The card also receives messages sent over the out-of-band signaling channel by the cable company's Head end
Cable television headend
A cable television headend is a master facility for receiving television signals for processing and distribution over a cable television system. The headend facility is normally unstaffed and surrounded by some type of security fencing and is typically a building or large shed housing electronic...
servers and forwards them to the host.
Cards from major providers such as Comcast
Comcast
Comcast Corporation is the largest cable operator, home Internet service provider, and fourth largest home telephone service provider in the United States, providing cable television, broadband Internet, and telephone service to both residential and commercial customers in 39 states and the...
, Cox Communications
Cox Communications
Cox Communications is a privately owned subsidiary of Cox Enterprises providing digital cable television, telecommunications and wireless services in the United States...
, RCN
RCN Corporation
RCN Corporation, founded in 1993 and based in Herndon, Virginia, is the first American facilities-based competitive provider of bundled telephone, cable television and high-speed internet service delivered over its own fiber-optic local network to consumers in the Boston, New York, Eastern...
and Time Warner Cable
Time Warner Cable
Time Warner Cable is an American cable television company that operates in 28 states and has 31 operating divisions...
in some regions currently require on-site installation by a technician, who reports the unique ID numbers pre-assigned to both the CableCARD and the digital television to the company headquarters, where they are updated to the customer's account. Because of this, CableCARDs cannot be moved from one device to another without a visit from a cable company installer. Some regions (such as Comcast Houston) do allow customer installs, and actually provide special phone support for CableCARDs. The card is inserted as users do for laptop PCMCIA cards. The CableCARD identification numbers are given to the operator who then sends the CableCARD an out of band Entitlement Management Message (EMM), which remotely programs the CableCARD, authorizing it to decode for the specific host only those shows and services which the user is authorized to view.
http://www.comcast.com/customers/faq/FaqDetails.ashx?ID=2658
http://www.cox.com/support/sandiego/cable/faq.asp
http://www.timewarnercable.com/albany/products/CableCARD.html
CableCARDs with personal computers:
Existing integrated cable set-top boxes perform four basic functions:
- Enable receiving and selecting digital and analog cable channels
- Uniquely identify the customer and authorize the features to which they have subscribed
- Decode scrambled digital channels and premium programming such as movie channels
- Provide interactive two-way communications for:
- Interactive programming guidesElectronic program guideElectronic program guides and interactive program guides provide users of television, radio, and other media applications with continuously updated menus displaying broadcast programming or scheduling information for current and upcoming programming...
- Pay-per-viewPay-per-viewPay-per-view provides a service by which a television audience can purchase events to view via private telecast. The broadcaster shows the event at the same time to everyone ordering it...
- Video on DemandVideo on demandVideo on Demand or Audio and Video On Demand are systems which allow users to select and watch/listen to video or audio content on demand...
- Switched video streamsSwitched videoSwitched video, also called switched digital video or SDV , is a telecommunications industry term for a network scheme for distributing digital video via a cable. Switched video sends the digital video in a more efficient manner so that additional uses may be made of the freed up bandwidth...
- Interactive programming guides
New digital television
Digital television
Digital television is the transmission of audio and video by digital signals, in contrast to the analog signals used by analog TV...
s and other devices that are labeled DCR (Digital cable ready
Digital cable ready
Cable-ready is a designation which indicates that a TV set or other television-receiving device is capable of receiving cable TV without a set-top box....
) contain:
- built-in support for receiving digital cable channels (via an internal QAM tunerQAM tunerQAM stands for quadrature amplitude modulation, the format by which digital cable channels are encoded and transmitted via cable television providers...
) - a slot for the current version of CableCARD (see photo here), which allows decryption of encrypted digital channels.
The CableCARD 2.0 specification includes support for #1-4, interactive two-way communications; however it is unknown exactly when CableCARD 2.0 hosts and compatible servers will become available. Future devices which support CableCARD 2.0 are expected to be labeled iDCR "Interactive digital cable ready". Among other requirements, CableCARD 2.0 hosts will be required to provide the OpenCable Application Platform
OpenCable Application Platform
The OpenCable Application Platform, or OCAP, is an operating system layer designed for consumer electronics that connect to a cable television system, the Java-based middleware portion of the platform. Unlike operating systems on a personal computer, the cable company controls what OCAP programs...
(OCAP), also known as Tru2Way
Tru2Way
Tru2way is a brand name for interactive digital cable services delivered over the cable video network, for example interactive program guides, interactive ads, games, chat, web browsing, and t-commerce. The brand also appears as “'” and is used to market cable services, applications, and devices...
, to run programs downloaded from the cable company. Some analysts predict that wide availability of tru2way will not be seen until late 2010.
An alternative to CableCARD 2.0, most recently advocated by the U.S. cable television industry, uses Downloadable Conditional Access System
Downloadable Conditional Access System
Downloadable Conditional Access System or DCAS is a proposal advanced by CableLabs for secure software download of a specific Conditional Access client which controls digital rights management into an OCAP-compliant host consumer media device...
(DCAS) in place of physical CableCARDs. In this proposal, a custom security chip must be soldered into every compliant host; if a security scheme is compromised, a new security program can be downloaded to the host device.
Because the conditional access system is in software, it can be sent with the video as a form of Digital Rights Management
Digital rights management
Digital rights management is a class of access control technologies that are used by hardware manufacturers, publishers, copyright holders and individuals with the intent to limit the use of digital content and devices after sale. DRM is any technology that inhibits uses of digital content that...
(DRM). The CableCARD Host Licensing Agreement (CHILA) and the DCAS agreement restrict the technologies that CE companies may use for distributing video from host devices. CE companies object to this expanding the notion of CableCARD network security issues to also include content protection issues. They prefer to deal with content owners directly with their standards and regard cable company protocols and formats as a transport only. CE companies wish to communicate video inside the home network using their own protected protocols and formats.
The OpenCable Application Platform (OCAP) is a Java-based platform intended for use either with any security access scheme — whether it is CableCARD 2.0 devices or future downloadable security schemes. OCAP was tied to CableCARDs because, as it was imagined by CableLabs, the additional processing necessary for managing the communication with the cable company server would be performed, not on the cable company provided equipment (the CableCARD), but on the consumer electronics device — known as the CableCARD "Host". CE companies objected that OCAP is unnecessary for the simple task of managing two-way communications on the cable networks. The CEA perspective is that Java
Java (programming language)
Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities...
is not efficient for CE devices, and that cable companies are passing to CE manufacturers the costs of a software platform which they didn't need, and which won't run on their existing hardware architectures.
The consumer electronics industry proposed in November 2006 that the CableCARD 2.0 specification be upgraded to include the provision for modified MCards that would support the communications necessary for VOD, PPV, and Switched Video. This card would be backward compatible with older cards, and support would be required for them on cable company servers by January 2008. These modified MCards would not allow two-way communication using current OCURs, which, by definition, are unidirectional. This so-called "OCAP-less" proposal was rejected by the NCTA
National Cable & Telecommunications Association
The National Cable & Telecommunications Association is the principal trade association for the U.S. cable TV industry, representing cable operators serving more than 90 percent of the nation’s cable households and more than 200 cable program networks, as well as equipment suppliers and providers...
for a variety of reasons elaborated on in the issues segment of this article. The technical advantage is that much less is assumed about the computing capability of the host, allowing the manufacturing cost to be significantly reduced. The disadvantage is that the MCard will be slightly more expensive, but the host will not necessarily be able to support the envisioned ecommerce and banking applications. CE companies argue that such a card fulfills the 1996 law's requirement that cable companies allow two-way communication on their networks, and that OCAP fulfills technical goals far in excess of those necessary for such two-way communications.
AllVid
The FCC has proposed that the existing cable card system be replaced by a proposed new digital rights management system called AllVidAllVid
AllVid is a CableCARD replacement proposed by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission . The AllVid hardware would act as a universal adapter for all types of pay TV content, delivered through a wide variety of means, including cable TV, satellite TV, VDSL, IPTV, and Internet TV.-Design:The FCC...
.
See also
- Conditional access moduleConditional access moduleA conditional access module is an electronic device, usually incorporating a slot for a smart card, which equips an Integrated Digital Television or set-top box with the appropriate hardware facility to view conditional access content that has been encrypted using a conditional access system...
(CAM) - Quadrature phase-shift keying (QPSK)