Open market for CableCards ?

I purchased a Sony Bravia LCD Digital Color TV, model KDL-V40XBR1 which
has a built in CableCard device. My cable tv service provider, Charter
Cable is asking $7 monthly to rent a CableCard. Can these cards be
bought on the internet to get around renting from Charter Cable who
already charges enough for their service.

wrote:
I purchased a Sony Bravia LCD Digital Color TV, model KDL-V40XBR1 which
has a built in CableCard device. My cable tv service provider, Charter
Cable is asking $7 monthly to rent a CableCard. Can these cards be
bought on the internet to get around renting from Charter Cable who
already charges enough for their service.

No. The cable card provides the decryption codes for the scrambled
digital channels and channel mapping for all the channels provided by
your cable company. This is the primary purpose of the cable card. The
card has to be loaded by the cable company before you put into the TV or
STB.

However, the local broadcast channels should be in the clear - that is
unscrambled - on the digital basic tier. If you are signed up for that,
your TV should be able to receive the digital locals, including those in
HD. The QAM tuner is used to receive digital cable, ATSC = over the air
digital. Your cable company channel listing may provide information on
what channels are in clear and what are on the premium/scrambled tier.
If I were you, I would hook up the cable line to the TV QAM RF input and
run a channel scan to see what turns up.

$7 is a silly rental price for a cable card. But many cable companies
are charging the same or close to monthly fee for a cable card as they
do for a set top box. If this is your primary TV, you should ask how
much extra it is for a HD-DVR. If it is not that much more than the
cablecard, I would get the HD-DVR, but you have to decide how much you
want to spend per month.

Alan F

"Alan Figgatt" wrote in message
...
wrote:
I purchased a Sony Bravia LCD Digital Color TV, model KDL-V40XBR1 which
has a built in CableCard device. My cable tv service provider, Charter
Cable is asking $7 monthly to rent a CableCard. Can these cards be
bought on the internet to get around renting from Charter Cable who
already charges enough for their service.

No. The cable card provides the decryption codes for the scrambled
digital channels and channel mapping for all the channels provided by your
cable company. This is the primary purpose of the cable card. The card has
to be loaded by the cable company before you put into the TV or STB.

However, the local broadcast channels should be in the clear - that is
unscrambled - on the digital basic tier. If you are signed up for that,
your TV should be able to receive the digital locals, including those in
HD. The QAM tuner is used to receive digital cable, ATSC = over the air
digital. Your cable company channel listing may provide information on
what channels are in clear and what are on the premium/scrambled tier. If
I were you, I would hook up the cable line to the TV QAM RF input and run
a channel scan to see what turns up.

$7 is a silly rental price for a cable card. But many cable companies are
charging the same or close to monthly fee for a cable card as they do for
a set top box. If this is your primary TV, you should ask how much extra
it is for a HD-DVR. If it is not that much more than the cablecard, I
would get the HD-DVR, but you have to decide how much you want to spend
per month.

Alan F

Don't feel cheated about not being able to buy a CableCard. The longest any
one lasted here was 3 months. $7 does not sound good for a CC. I finally
opted for a DVR (You want dual tuner). For $3 more a month you get the DVR,
On Sreen Guide, On Demand, Pay Per View, and no more locked up CableCards.

Tam

On Wed, 19 Jul 2006 16:47:27 -0400, "Tam/WB2TT"
wrote:


"Alan Figgatt" wrote in message
m...
wrote:
I purchased a Sony Bravia LCD Digital Color TV, model KDL-V40XBR1 which
has a built in CableCard device. My cable tv service provider, Charter
Cable is asking $7 monthly to rent a CableCard. Can these cards be
bought on the internet to get around renting from Charter Cable who
already charges enough for their service.

No. The cable card provides the decryption codes for the scrambled
digital channels and channel mapping for all the channels provided by your
cable company. This is the primary purpose of the cable card. The card has
to be loaded by the cable company before you put into the TV or STB.

However, the local broadcast channels should be in the clear - that is
unscrambled - on the digital basic tier. If you are signed up for that,
your TV should be able to receive the digital locals, including those in
HD. The QAM tuner is used to receive digital cable, ATSC = over the air
digital. Your cable company channel listing may provide information on
what channels are in clear and what are on the premium/scrambled tier. If
I were you, I would hook up the cable line to the TV QAM RF input and run
a channel scan to see what turns up.

$7 is a silly rental price for a cable card. But many cable companies are
charging the same or close to monthly fee for a cable card as they do for
a set top box. If this is your primary TV, you should ask how much extra
it is for a HD-DVR. If it is not that much more than the cablecard, I
would get the HD-DVR, but you have to decide how much you want to spend
per month.

Alan F

Don't feel cheated about not being able to buy a CableCard. The longest any
one lasted here was 3 months. $7 does not sound good for a CC. I finally
opted for a DVR (You want dual tuner). For $3 more a month you get the DVR,
On Sreen Guide, On Demand, Pay Per View, and no more locked up CableCards.


Or go satellite where you get more for less money. Get the local
stations OTA as you will probably find each channel has at least 3
digital channels as well. Cable will most likely carry only one
channel for each local, at least that is the way it is here and they
charge extra for the digital and extra for HD. Satellite also only
carries one of each local channel.

I have basic cable but it's for the Internet and not TV. If we lost
the 4 major networks it'd probably be months before I'd discover they
were gone.

We had to do some basement work and due to bad weather it took over
three months from start to finish. I had all of the cables pulled out
(1 for cable, 2 OTA, 2 satellite, and 13 for ham station plus computer
network) I hooked up the satellite temporarily and I still have not
gotten around to hooking the local stations back up.

As far as DVRs and the cable company, the one from Charter isn't worth
the effort even if they gave it to you. DISH has a very nice dual
tuner DVR (622) that records in HD and I'd assume Direct TV will soon,
(so far TVio has only been SD)

Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com
Tam

Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com

$2 per month Cox cable for the card.

Tom


wrote in message
ups.com...
I purchased a Sony Bravia LCD Digital Color TV, model KDL-V40XBR1 which
has a built in CableCard device. My cable tv service provider, Charter
Cable is asking $7 monthly to rent a CableCard. Can these cards be
bought on the internet to get around renting from Charter Cable who
already charges enough for their service.

Roger wrote:
On Wed, 19 Jul 2006 16:47:27 -0400, "Tam/WB2TT"
wrote:

Or go satellite where you get more for less money. Get the local
stations OTA as you will probably find each channel has at least 3
digital channels as well. Cable will most likely carry only one
channel for each local, at least that is the way it is here and they
charge extra for the digital and extra for HD. Satellite also only
carries one of each local channel.

If he goes with Dish, yes, Dish now offers a nice line-up of HD
channels but some sat channels are still more compressed than cable.
DirecTV offers HD-Lite with fewer HD channels and is trailing way behind
Dish in HD at this point. But if one goes with satellite, he may lose
any bundled discounts for broadband hookup from cable, if he/she is not
using DSL from the phone company. The total cost has to be compared,
including the upfront cost and the lock-in contracts for satellite.

But the OP did not say where he lives. Don't know if he can get the
locals OTA or whether all the major network locals offer HD. The cable
company may not offer all the locals in HD. His cable company may
provide a lot of HD channels or it may not. My Adelphia system does not
offer the WB, UPN (soon to be CW, My Network) on the HD tier, despite
local stations that do broadcast HD. So a Over The Air capability is
generally useful regardless of whether you have cable or satellite, but
no one can make a recommendation that works for everybody across the US.
The OP may be in a spot where he can't get DBS satellites, for example.

As for the digital sub-channels, it is better if the local broadcast
station has no more than 1 SD sub-channel along with the HD sub-channel.
Add any more SD sub-channels and the picture quality of the HD
sub-channel degrades. But there is little we can do about that as the
trend is for local stations to squeeze in more SD sub-channels for more
revenue. Of the 13 digital stations with HD that I get OTA, 4 have no SD
sub-channels, 2 are PBS which switch between 4 SD sub-channels daytime
and 1 HD & 1 SD at night, 6 have 1 SD sub-channel (usually weather), and
only 1 has 2 SD-channels. But this won't last.

I have basic cable but it's for the Internet and not TV. If we lost
the 4 major networks it'd probably be months before I'd discover they
were gone.

We had to do some basement work and due to bad weather it took over
three months from start to finish. I had all of the cables pulled out
(1 for cable, 2 OTA, 2 satellite, and 13 for ham station plus computer
network) I hooked up the satellite temporarily and I still have not
gotten around to hooking the local stations back up.

As far as DVRs and the cable company, the one from Charter isn't worth
the effort even if they gave it to you. DISH has a very nice dual
tuner DVR (622) that records in HD and I'd assume Direct TV will soon,
(so far TVio has only been SD)
Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com

The DVR from the cable company should be a two tuner DVR which records
in HD. The Motorola and Scientific Atlanta HD-DVR are no TiVos, but they
do work. DirecTV has offered a HD Tivo for years, but it is now limited
because it can't handle the new MPEG-4 encoded satellite channels.
DirecTV has a new HD-DVR model with MPEG-4 capability on the way, but it
is yet to be released.

Alan F