The cable and consumer-electronics industries have agreed on marketing terms
to help consumers when they buy digital-TV sets that work without set-top
boxes.
Digital-TV sets capable of displaying one-way programming services, including
premium channels, will be called "Digital Cable Ready."
The ATM-like cards that insert into digital-TV sets and unscramble premium
programming will no longer be called PODs (for point of deployment). Instead,
the NCTA and the CEA have renamed them "CableCARDs."
The two trade groups disclosed their marketing agreement in a July 24 letter
to the Federal Communications Commission, which also detailed progress on their
talks on the adoption of compatibility standards for digital-TV sets that work
with interactive cable services.
The NCTA and the CEA said that when a two-way digital-TV-set agreement is
reached, sets with interactive functionality will be labeled "Interactive
Digital Cable Ready."
In their four-page letter, the trade groups urged the FCC to adopt as soon as
possible the one-way digital-TV-set agreement reached last December between
leading cable and consumer-electronics firms.
