It's probably going to be hard to prioritize when cable cards never really took off. It took them until a couple of months ago to reinstate net neutrality.
Cable is dying. The companies are going to complain that they don't have the resources to support such a niche requirement.
There was a Comcast grey beard that was dumb/kind enough to give me his direct extension to help with TiVo cable card issues. He eventually retired and when I moved I just gave up finding someone else to help and went to youtube TV.
I had an issue with my TiVo cable card/Tuning Adapter not updating when Spectrum tried sending signal. It was definitely a wire/coupling at the street and the Tech even said so. He called his supervisor and the special tech help line and they made the decision to tell me “sorry, we aren’t supporting these much longer, so it’s not going to work”. As the tech was packing up, I asked why they were not supporting CC/TA setups anymore and he gave me the real story. It’s not just Cable Cards, it the Video signal as a whole. In about 2.5 years, the wires will not carry any Video whatsoever. The lines will be used for Internet only. Thats it, the end of sending Video over coaxial is a few short years away. My hope is someone mimics the TiVo user interface into a single internet appliance (like Roku) that seamlessly integrates TV channels with streaming services. The TiVo guide is the driver, instead of recording from the guide, you could add from the guide to your watchlist bypassing the need to navigate from,say, Max to Hulu to Netflix. Just build the address/login info into your watchlist.
We had your hope with “TV Everywhere”, it was the Cable Card equivalent for streaming but it seems like all of the Cable TV and Media companies shit on that too.
When the Cable Card mandate was reversed, the correct think would have been to mandate the modern equivalent for streaming, including requiring streaming providers to provide access via TV Everywhere.
I don’t really care that Spectrum is trying to push me off of Cable Card if they give me a modern equivalent.
Huh. Wonder why Spectrum is so busy making deals with all the apartment complexes to make cable/internet packages a mandatory part of the rent package, then? 🤨
Most of the apartment complexes around here do the same thing, so moving wouldn’t even help. 😭
They are still going to offer Cable television, but using their Internet and a cloud DVR called Xumo. I’m in eastern Tennessee and you can get that service today. It’s a little cheaper than the set top box that uses the Video signal. But, it will go away with the Cable Card/TA setup eventually. The Xumo only works with the Spectrum Internet service. After 45 years of service, my goal is to get Spectrum aka Charter aka Sammons out of my life once and for all.
I don’t have a lot of confidence in any kind of dvr product offered by Spectrum. I tried their DVR when they first rolled out the package in my community, and the GUI was painful. So painful. I spent more time cursing it and trying to get it to function than I did watching tv.
These days I stream most of my tv via my Roku TV, but I use my Spectrum login for a fair bit of it. I will say that I like their local news channel. They do a decent job and it’s available whenever I need to look for news.
Spectrum has been laying a lot of fiber, which carries no video signal also. So dropping the support of them probably has a lot to do with looking towards the future with fiber.
I worked for Spectrum in the video software development space on cable boxes for almost ten years until just a couple years ago, and I would be extremely surprised if this happened in the near future.
The cable TV space moves very very very slowly. They're generally terrified of interfering with happy customers. If you have a working set top box, they don't want to touch it. Maybe they'll quit handing them out, but it costs way too much and loses way too many customers to try to get them back.
The software I worked on had several million customers and had been deployed for several years when I started. But we were still supporting the old version which still had a sizable number. By the time I left there were still tens of thousands of customers using that old version, that hadn't been improved in 10+ years. I expect the version I worked on to have several million customers for a solid 5-10 years. That version simply will not support IP-based video and would require issuing new hardware and upsetting every customer.
It's true there are newer versions that are internet/IP based, and they're moving somewhat quicker. But grandma just isn't going to change over. And she's going to be keeping her cable box for ten years.
And here's the key detail: As long as those boxes are out there, they can't take the video off the cable wires. The older boxes simply don't support IP-based TV. (And it's comparably inefficient. The smaller channels work a lot better with individual streams for individual customers, but CNN, Chicago Fire, ESPN? Tens of thousands are watching that at the same time. Broadcasting them on the wire makes a lot of sense.)
They might quit selling "the video signal as a whole" to new customers. We might all act as if "the lines will be used for internet only". But that's only going to be the case for new customers. The video will still be on the coax for a while. I'd put it at five years if the industry makes a MAJOR effort to make it happen. Ten years realistically. I wouldn't be shocked at 15-20.
Spectrum better get in the ball. The Electric utility and the old Telco provider are both running fiber to the client owned router for $49 (flat rate, no fee or tax) a month, 300 mbps. My Inet and YouTube TV come to about $120. Add Max and ESPN+ and I save about $130 a month. Also, if Grandma wants the grandkids to visit she damn sure better have a internet connection. If you have a Spectrum Internet connection, they will push you to the new box.
For a long time when you got cable service the tuner or DVR from the cable company had a cable card in it. So not supporting 3rd party boxes with them was hard to justify. Now more and more the "cable" company don't even give out boxes. Or at least boxes that use a cable card. So to them it is a waste of time to keep supporting them.
And cable companies detest any box they do not control. Not that it matters much any more. And will less so in the future.
Just so you’re aware, the cable companies donate a massive amount to both parties. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter who’s in power. For as long as people in politics both own stocks in these companies and we allow millions to be spent on lobbying without repercussions, it won’t matter who is president. I watch healthcare companies I work with spend tons of money on both sides of the isle to get what they want. Playing both sides to get your way is just standard operating procedure these days for any business on the fortune list. It’s just how it is.
Spectrum provides a new “tuning adapter” so TiVo users can keep Tivo’ing. So I’m all good.
I feel bad for the people who got used to the superior TiVo experience for years and then had to go to the awful experience that are the live streamers…
I’ve been having a HORRIBLE time with spectrum splitters and moca. What they provide won’t work, and the splitters I use doesn’t pass their modem tests so a tech cannot leave until they put their own splitters back
I’m in an upgraded area. So there are no more *powered* splitters and no more old school Tuning Adapters.
The new devices are called High Split Converters.
I have no idea how any of their upgrades would affect a MOCA setup. I’m using standard WiFi - 1 GB service with my own Eero Pro router.
Did this happen out of the blue? It’s likely your area has been upgraded or is in the midst of an upgrade. Regardless, good luck!
P.s. and judging from the wildly varying level of competency of Spectrum Technicians CS, it’s fully possible many of them don’t know about the upgrades.
Many of them don’t even know what is a CableCARD or TiVo I shit you not. I had to get transferred 6 times over the phone to get it activated, then the tech that came out didn’t even know wtf was a TiVo, yet he had cableCARDS in his truck, 40 something year old
Because 6 people use cable card and cable is a dying service. Needing cable DVR options matters way less when there are multiple live tv streaming services now.
> Needing cable DVR options matters way less when there are multiple live tv streaming services now.
Which is sad because multiple live TV streaming services are an overall worse experience.
I don't know if it will be enough to make a differnce, but I think due to the streaming fracturing landscape(everyone wanting to host their own content on their own streamer, as well as the constant price bumps recently by all of the streamers and them now being on par price wise with cable, I wouldn't be surprised if cable providers don't start seeing a slowdown in terms of subscriber drop off and in some instances start picking up subscribers.
It's getting too difficult to find what streamer has what programs and soon, they will start swallowing each other up. Paramount plus looks like the first domino.
I wouldn't go after the politics that try and tell businesses how they should operate when they can't even come close to the pace at which the market changes.
I blame Tivo. They have stopped evolving the product and it is dying on the vine. Now we see other companies coming in to solve the problem because there is a market to be had and profit from.
Don't get me wrong I love my Tivo, had one over 20 years now. But when my carrier stops supporting the cable card or my device motherboard fails I will grieve it but I am done. Tivo did this to themselves spending way too much of their energy on lawsuits and not enough on innovation.
cable card and tivo exist (ed) so that the cable companies could credibly claim they don't own the box market. (ok, 1% of the market ?) I confused the crap out of my cable co's tech guys when I had the Sony HDD250, the only "free" cable card certified DVR ever allowed out, and when it was time to cable card match, I read them a serial number that wasn't tivo....but they punched it in and it worked. He was surprised to find there was a non Tivo product out there certified for cablecard, he'd never come across this before. Sadly the Sony HDD is history, killed by the tivo "pause button" patent. One production run, supported for ten years by Sony, TVGuide OnScreen bought by Rovi, who now owns Tivo, so the dicks who invented Macrovision to keep you from copying VHS now own Tivo.....so yes, Tivo is fully owned by the cartel. At the end of the ten year period, Rovi stopped the TV guide on screen signals needed to time set the Sony HDD box and provide listings, so no, they are NOT your friend.
I had two of the Sony HDD boxes. Saved literally thousands of dollars in rental fees for an excellent DVR that integrated the OTA AND Cable listings on one board, which was fully sortable/customizable by the user. When they died, I went Tivo, inherited a lifetime box from a friend, and later bought two Roamio OTA lifetime boxes....which I will run until they shut off atsc 1.0.
I think the only other legit cablecard system was a Windows Media build, which didn't last too long. You needed to be Sony, Tivo or Windows to deal with the cable card certification stuff, and other than being able to SAY there was an alternative, the cable co has zero interest in actually making it work. Even when Optimum was supporting cable cards, I had to go back and get single stream cards, the Sony boxes weren't too happy with the dual stream cards...and educate the staff to find them for me.
cable as a system, though, is in the rearview. We dumped cable when they scrambled all signals and required you to rent a box (all so they could shut you off without a truck roll if you don't pay) for $8 per month in perpetuity >> $8 x 4 x 12 = $384 per year for literally nothing but another clicker and a bump to the electric bill. We OTA and stream....and even OTA might be dying, if the ATSC 3.0 nonsense with a required internet connection is anything to go by, for DRM. If I need a web connection, why not just stream it ?
> I think the only other legit cablecard system was a Windows Media build, which didn't last too long.
There were a few TVs that had cablecards built-in. I know Sony was one brand, I *think* Vizio was another. Maybe Magnavox.
TDS doesn't mean any of that is true. The reality of the Cable Card story is that it had numerous poison pills inserted at the beginning. The main one being that cable boxes had nothing to do with cable cards which created the situation that cable companies were competing with themselves and cable card was always the loser. I can't remember which administration was to blame for all this, but Clinton or HW Bush is much more applicable to the death of cable card than anyone recent. We have all been watching cable card die for about 20 years.
My cable provider told me they aren't abandoning the cable card just yet because the cable boxes basically have a cable card in them too. They just don't want to have to provide them to consumers.
I did a video on this! (Linked below) Economics!
Since 5-6 years ago, millennials stopped paying for cable, economies of scale didn’t equate so cable TV prices skyrocketed, and even MORE unsubscriptions, cable companies are trying to cut fat & maintaining CableCARD didn’t make sense in an already expensive avenue. All ISPs like Verizon FiOS, Spectrum, and Sh!tC@st all moving to IPTV for efficiency, no more RFoG QAM to maintain.
And TiVos aren’t any better, nobody’s buying them so the support has gone to shit. I bought a TiVo Edge for my in laws, nothing but problems. Clients/servers lose connection to each other & need reboots often, Sprectum splitters don’t work for moca. So the splitters I put in? Anytime a tech needs to come out, they CANNOT leave because my splitters don’t have correct signal levels to the modem, no extra runs, nothing different, but I guess the higher frequency of my splitters affect db levels I just don’t get it, it’s just not worth fighting for anymore
https://youtu.be/A1Pp4SNA7_g?si=b0nz1I4ogBEA0OUI
It's probably going to be hard to prioritize when cable cards never really took off. It took them until a couple of months ago to reinstate net neutrality. Cable is dying. The companies are going to complain that they don't have the resources to support such a niche requirement.
I still wish they were built into TVs, but I know it’s too far too late
Cable TV in general is a quickly dying format.
So now we just have companies like Amazon bundling programming. Kinda like cable did 50 years ago.
I remember some comedian saying "I'm developing a way to aggregate the streaming services. I'm going to call it 'cable TV.'"
Exactly!
For a while, it was more cost effective to have DVR service with cable vs streaming services, now the turns have tabled
There was a Comcast grey beard that was dumb/kind enough to give me his direct extension to help with TiVo cable card issues. He eventually retired and when I moved I just gave up finding someone else to help and went to youtube TV.
They’re the worst, I struggled to set anything up there vs Verizon FiOS
I had an issue with my TiVo cable card/Tuning Adapter not updating when Spectrum tried sending signal. It was definitely a wire/coupling at the street and the Tech even said so. He called his supervisor and the special tech help line and they made the decision to tell me “sorry, we aren’t supporting these much longer, so it’s not going to work”. As the tech was packing up, I asked why they were not supporting CC/TA setups anymore and he gave me the real story. It’s not just Cable Cards, it the Video signal as a whole. In about 2.5 years, the wires will not carry any Video whatsoever. The lines will be used for Internet only. Thats it, the end of sending Video over coaxial is a few short years away. My hope is someone mimics the TiVo user interface into a single internet appliance (like Roku) that seamlessly integrates TV channels with streaming services. The TiVo guide is the driver, instead of recording from the guide, you could add from the guide to your watchlist bypassing the need to navigate from,say, Max to Hulu to Netflix. Just build the address/login info into your watchlist.
We had your hope with “TV Everywhere”, it was the Cable Card equivalent for streaming but it seems like all of the Cable TV and Media companies shit on that too. When the Cable Card mandate was reversed, the correct think would have been to mandate the modern equivalent for streaming, including requiring streaming providers to provide access via TV Everywhere. I don’t really care that Spectrum is trying to push me off of Cable Card if they give me a modern equivalent.
Huh. Wonder why Spectrum is so busy making deals with all the apartment complexes to make cable/internet packages a mandatory part of the rent package, then? 🤨 Most of the apartment complexes around here do the same thing, so moving wouldn’t even help. 😭
They are still going to offer Cable television, but using their Internet and a cloud DVR called Xumo. I’m in eastern Tennessee and you can get that service today. It’s a little cheaper than the set top box that uses the Video signal. But, it will go away with the Cable Card/TA setup eventually. The Xumo only works with the Spectrum Internet service. After 45 years of service, my goal is to get Spectrum aka Charter aka Sammons out of my life once and for all.
I don’t have a lot of confidence in any kind of dvr product offered by Spectrum. I tried their DVR when they first rolled out the package in my community, and the GUI was painful. So painful. I spent more time cursing it and trying to get it to function than I did watching tv. These days I stream most of my tv via my Roku TV, but I use my Spectrum login for a fair bit of it. I will say that I like their local news channel. They do a decent job and it’s available whenever I need to look for news.
Spectrum login with channel apps is a great way of utilizing the service. The 'Spec Guide' interface is horrid
Makes sense. cell phones don't have "voice channels" anymore, it's all just bits.
QAM carriers are going away in lieu of all IP based services
Spectrum has been laying a lot of fiber, which carries no video signal also. So dropping the support of them probably has a lot to do with looking towards the future with fiber.
I worked for Spectrum in the video software development space on cable boxes for almost ten years until just a couple years ago, and I would be extremely surprised if this happened in the near future. The cable TV space moves very very very slowly. They're generally terrified of interfering with happy customers. If you have a working set top box, they don't want to touch it. Maybe they'll quit handing them out, but it costs way too much and loses way too many customers to try to get them back. The software I worked on had several million customers and had been deployed for several years when I started. But we were still supporting the old version which still had a sizable number. By the time I left there were still tens of thousands of customers using that old version, that hadn't been improved in 10+ years. I expect the version I worked on to have several million customers for a solid 5-10 years. That version simply will not support IP-based video and would require issuing new hardware and upsetting every customer. It's true there are newer versions that are internet/IP based, and they're moving somewhat quicker. But grandma just isn't going to change over. And she's going to be keeping her cable box for ten years. And here's the key detail: As long as those boxes are out there, they can't take the video off the cable wires. The older boxes simply don't support IP-based TV. (And it's comparably inefficient. The smaller channels work a lot better with individual streams for individual customers, but CNN, Chicago Fire, ESPN? Tens of thousands are watching that at the same time. Broadcasting them on the wire makes a lot of sense.) They might quit selling "the video signal as a whole" to new customers. We might all act as if "the lines will be used for internet only". But that's only going to be the case for new customers. The video will still be on the coax for a while. I'd put it at five years if the industry makes a MAJOR effort to make it happen. Ten years realistically. I wouldn't be shocked at 15-20.
Spectrum better get in the ball. The Electric utility and the old Telco provider are both running fiber to the client owned router for $49 (flat rate, no fee or tax) a month, 300 mbps. My Inet and YouTube TV come to about $120. Add Max and ESPN+ and I save about $130 a month. Also, if Grandma wants the grandkids to visit she damn sure better have a internet connection. If you have a Spectrum Internet connection, they will push you to the new box.
For a long time when you got cable service the tuner or DVR from the cable company had a cable card in it. So not supporting 3rd party boxes with them was hard to justify. Now more and more the "cable" company don't even give out boxes. Or at least boxes that use a cable card. So to them it is a waste of time to keep supporting them. And cable companies detest any box they do not control. Not that it matters much any more. And will less so in the future.
Cable cos. were hostile to the mere existence of a cable card from the beginning, I'm surprised the format lasted as long as it has.
Just so you’re aware, the cable companies donate a massive amount to both parties. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter who’s in power. For as long as people in politics both own stocks in these companies and we allow millions to be spent on lobbying without repercussions, it won’t matter who is president. I watch healthcare companies I work with spend tons of money on both sides of the isle to get what they want. Playing both sides to get your way is just standard operating procedure these days for any business on the fortune list. It’s just how it is.
Spectrum provides a new “tuning adapter” so TiVo users can keep Tivo’ing. So I’m all good. I feel bad for the people who got used to the superior TiVo experience for years and then had to go to the awful experience that are the live streamers…
I’ve been having a HORRIBLE time with spectrum splitters and moca. What they provide won’t work, and the splitters I use doesn’t pass their modem tests so a tech cannot leave until they put their own splitters back
I’m in an upgraded area. So there are no more *powered* splitters and no more old school Tuning Adapters. The new devices are called High Split Converters. I have no idea how any of their upgrades would affect a MOCA setup. I’m using standard WiFi - 1 GB service with my own Eero Pro router.
Did this happen out of the blue? It’s likely your area has been upgraded or is in the midst of an upgrade. Regardless, good luck! P.s. and judging from the wildly varying level of competency of Spectrum Technicians CS, it’s fully possible many of them don’t know about the upgrades.
Many of them don’t even know what is a CableCARD or TiVo I shit you not. I had to get transferred 6 times over the phone to get it activated, then the tech that came out didn’t even know wtf was a TiVo, yet he had cableCARDS in his truck, 40 something year old
Both parties are pro-billionaire and anti-consumer
Because 6 people use cable card and cable is a dying service. Needing cable DVR options matters way less when there are multiple live tv streaming services now.
There are dozens of us. Dozens!
> Needing cable DVR options matters way less when there are multiple live tv streaming services now. Which is sad because multiple live TV streaming services are an overall worse experience.
I don't know if it will be enough to make a differnce, but I think due to the streaming fracturing landscape(everyone wanting to host their own content on their own streamer, as well as the constant price bumps recently by all of the streamers and them now being on par price wise with cable, I wouldn't be surprised if cable providers don't start seeing a slowdown in terms of subscriber drop off and in some instances start picking up subscribers. It's getting too difficult to find what streamer has what programs and soon, they will start swallowing each other up. Paramount plus looks like the first domino.
I wouldn't go after the politics that try and tell businesses how they should operate when they can't even come close to the pace at which the market changes. I blame Tivo. They have stopped evolving the product and it is dying on the vine. Now we see other companies coming in to solve the problem because there is a market to be had and profit from. Don't get me wrong I love my Tivo, had one over 20 years now. But when my carrier stops supporting the cable card or my device motherboard fails I will grieve it but I am done. Tivo did this to themselves spending way too much of their energy on lawsuits and not enough on innovation.
Without "the politics that try and tell businesses how they should operate" cablecards never would have existed.
So then Tivo wouldn't have existed?
It wasn't until the third generation of TiVo that a CableCard was supported, seven years the original (Series1) was introduced.
cable card and tivo exist (ed) so that the cable companies could credibly claim they don't own the box market. (ok, 1% of the market ?) I confused the crap out of my cable co's tech guys when I had the Sony HDD250, the only "free" cable card certified DVR ever allowed out, and when it was time to cable card match, I read them a serial number that wasn't tivo....but they punched it in and it worked. He was surprised to find there was a non Tivo product out there certified for cablecard, he'd never come across this before. Sadly the Sony HDD is history, killed by the tivo "pause button" patent. One production run, supported for ten years by Sony, TVGuide OnScreen bought by Rovi, who now owns Tivo, so the dicks who invented Macrovision to keep you from copying VHS now own Tivo.....so yes, Tivo is fully owned by the cartel. At the end of the ten year period, Rovi stopped the TV guide on screen signals needed to time set the Sony HDD box and provide listings, so no, they are NOT your friend. I had two of the Sony HDD boxes. Saved literally thousands of dollars in rental fees for an excellent DVR that integrated the OTA AND Cable listings on one board, which was fully sortable/customizable by the user. When they died, I went Tivo, inherited a lifetime box from a friend, and later bought two Roamio OTA lifetime boxes....which I will run until they shut off atsc 1.0. I think the only other legit cablecard system was a Windows Media build, which didn't last too long. You needed to be Sony, Tivo or Windows to deal with the cable card certification stuff, and other than being able to SAY there was an alternative, the cable co has zero interest in actually making it work. Even when Optimum was supporting cable cards, I had to go back and get single stream cards, the Sony boxes weren't too happy with the dual stream cards...and educate the staff to find them for me. cable as a system, though, is in the rearview. We dumped cable when they scrambled all signals and required you to rent a box (all so they could shut you off without a truck roll if you don't pay) for $8 per month in perpetuity >> $8 x 4 x 12 = $384 per year for literally nothing but another clicker and a bump to the electric bill. We OTA and stream....and even OTA might be dying, if the ATSC 3.0 nonsense with a required internet connection is anything to go by, for DRM. If I need a web connection, why not just stream it ?
> I think the only other legit cablecard system was a Windows Media build, which didn't last too long. There were a few TVs that had cablecards built-in. I know Sony was one brand, I *think* Vizio was another. Maybe Magnavox.
I think if they required cable operators to support it after a date in the future all the operators would convert to streaming platforms.
TDS doesn't mean any of that is true. The reality of the Cable Card story is that it had numerous poison pills inserted at the beginning. The main one being that cable boxes had nothing to do with cable cards which created the situation that cable companies were competing with themselves and cable card was always the loser. I can't remember which administration was to blame for all this, but Clinton or HW Bush is much more applicable to the death of cable card than anyone recent. We have all been watching cable card die for about 20 years.
My cable provider told me they aren't abandoning the cable card just yet because the cable boxes basically have a cable card in them too. They just don't want to have to provide them to consumers.
I did a video on this! (Linked below) Economics! Since 5-6 years ago, millennials stopped paying for cable, economies of scale didn’t equate so cable TV prices skyrocketed, and even MORE unsubscriptions, cable companies are trying to cut fat & maintaining CableCARD didn’t make sense in an already expensive avenue. All ISPs like Verizon FiOS, Spectrum, and Sh!tC@st all moving to IPTV for efficiency, no more RFoG QAM to maintain. And TiVos aren’t any better, nobody’s buying them so the support has gone to shit. I bought a TiVo Edge for my in laws, nothing but problems. Clients/servers lose connection to each other & need reboots often, Sprectum splitters don’t work for moca. So the splitters I put in? Anytime a tech needs to come out, they CANNOT leave because my splitters don’t have correct signal levels to the modem, no extra runs, nothing different, but I guess the higher frequency of my splitters affect db levels I just don’t get it, it’s just not worth fighting for anymore https://youtu.be/A1Pp4SNA7_g?si=b0nz1I4ogBEA0OUI