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CableCard’s Match Game
“We’re sorry. We didn’t find any matches for "cablecard" in All Categories,” was the online response I got from a major electronics retailer’s site a week into the era when consumers are supposed to get to choose whether they have to use a set-top box supplied by a cable operator or not.
July 1 was supposed to be an independence day, of sorts, for set-top box users. The Federal Communications Commission mandate that cable operators must supply set-top boxes with separable security took effect.
Telcos providing TV services managed to get waivers because they are just getting into the digital TV business. But cable operators now must put into new customers’ homes boxes that take that seemingly most unwanted piece of new TV technology: the CableCard. This is the credit-card-sized device that is supposed to slip into slots in not just set top boxes, but TVs and other electronics, controlling access to basic and premium channels, as well as advanced services such as digital recording.
Cable operators had distributed only 259,000 cards to customers who requested them by the middle of March, even though an estimated 8 million HD and other TV sets could make use of them. And there is little evidence of consumer demand. Because, if there was, you could be pretty sure that retailers in the hypercompetitive world of consumer electronics would be responding to palpable signs of interest.
The message that appears at the top of this posting came when I tried to find any TV set that was currently on the market at the nation’s most nimble and ubiquitous big-box electronics retailer, Best Buy. None in its nationwide online inventory could accept a CableCard. Or at least admitted it, in a fashion that could be found by a simple online search.
The in-person search worked no better, at a Best Buy store in Norwalk, CT. The sales manager there hadn’t faced that request in a long time; and said the only way he could figure out whether any of the scores of sets on display took a CableCard was to look at their sides and backs, one by one. None of the sets that were subject to quick visual inspection appeared to be CableCard-ready.
If you want to use a TV set or other device that accepts a CableCard, there’s still only one place to get the CableCard itself: from your cable provider. And like a set-top box, it’ll cost a customer a monthly lease fee, albeit less the cost of a cup of java at Starbucks. In Ohio, a card might set you back $1.75 a month, if you have a TV set or other device that can accept it. In Cablevision territory in Fairfield County, CT, a card costs $1.25 a month.
But unless you’re using a CableCard in a device that supports cable’s two-way OpenCable Platform standard (like one of Samsung’s OpenCable-compliant TVs), the CableCard will simply give you access to the channels you’ve paid to receive. CableCards by don’t do anything to open up consumer electronics devices to cable’s interactive services such as videos on demand, on-screen program guides supplied by the cable system operator or even “switched” digital channels, such as the international programming Cablevision now offers.
For these more advanced features, consumers (and consumer electronics makers) will need to tap into another piece of technology: the OpenCable standard. If TV sets or set-top boxes or other devices operated by OpenCable standards, then, in theory, renters of CableCards can get access and make use of interactive services.
But cable and manufacturers of TV sets and DVRs still don’t see eye to eye on this.
CableLabs has pushed the OpenCable platform for seven years as a means to provide access to those two-way services. The Consumer Electronics Association has balked at OpenCable, claiming it’s too complex just to do simple things like ordering an on-demand movie. Some members, like Intel, have broken ranks, but until OpenCable gets critical mass consumers again will have to wait.
If independence day 2007 is really going to stick, it’s now up to TV and electronics makers to make devices that provide access to the full range of cable system services. And move those CableCard ready boxes into stores where they can be found and bought. TiVo has moved in that direction with an HD version of its digital recorder. Panasonic is selling a 61” LCD Projection HDTV online with a CableCard slot, for about $2,300. Toshiba has sets as low as $700 and small as 27 inches with slots in them, also online.
We’ll check back in a few months to see whether manufacturers can tap into what right now is invisible demand (and supply), when you step into arguably the most mainstream of this country’s electronics retail outlets.
The market will decide if this is a case of a solution in search of a problem. To date, customers who are already plunking down $100 or more for TV services don’t seem to feel fleeced by paying $5 a month or so for a control box that makes the features and services they’ve signed up for work.
And gives them one neck to choke – that of their cable system operator — if something goes wrong.
