Audio Video News

Major cable operators are now cutting off program options to viewers who opted to dump their cable boxes for CableCARDS.

The latest atrocity is from Cablevision, which now demands subscribers rent boxes to see a bevy of HD channels. Engadget HD reproduced the notice mailed to users. It lists 15 channels now denied to CableCARD households.

Subscribers to Time Warner and Bright House have had similar problems recently. The cable operators are using their transition to switched digital video as an excuse--the six-year-old CableCARD standard does not support SDV.

Cable operators have long complained that the unidirectional CableCARD standard does not support video on demand, a lucrative service. Some have failed to support the standard even when subscribers request the cards. The TV makers have responded to the cable industry's halfhearted (or non-) support by marketing fewer card-compatible sets. Technology for a bidirectional version does exist, and will even be supported in future Panasonic TVs. Another option on the horizon is encryption downloaded onto a chip.

In the meantime, the unidirectional CableCARD is the only standardized method of allowing subscribers to go box-free, under an FCC-brokered agreement signed in 2002 by all the major cable ops and TV makers. Now they're pretending those John Hancocks don't exist, which begs a question: Why is the Federal Communications Commission letting the cable industry get away with it?