CableCARD is a plug-in card approximately the size of a
credit cardA credit card is part of a system of payments named after the small plastic card issued to users of the system. It is a card entitling its holder to buy goods and services based on the holder's promise to pay for these goods and services...
that allows consumers in the United States to view and record
digital cableDigital cable is a generic term for any type of cable television distribution using digital video compression or distribution. The technology was originally developed by Motorola.-Background:...
television channels on digital video recorders, personal computers and televisions without the use of other equipment such as a set top box (STB) provided by a
cable televisionCable television is a system of providing television to consumers via radio frequency signals transmitted to televisions through fixed optical fibers or coaxial cables as opposed to the over-the-air method used in traditional television broadcasting in which a television antenna is required...
company. The card, provided by the local company for a nominal monthly fee, is a
PCMCIA cardIn computing, PC Card is the form factor of a peripheral interface designed for laptop computers. The PC Card standard was defined and developed by a group of industry-leading companies called the Personal Computer Memory Card International Association...
and looks exactly like those used with laptops.
In technical contexts, "CableCARD" refers more broadly to a set of technologies created by the
United States cable televisionCable television in the United States is a common form of television delivery, generally by subscription. Cable television first became available in the United States in 1948, with subscription services in 1949...
industry in response to requirements by federal government's
Telecommunications Act of 1996The Telecommunications Act of 1996 was the first major overhaul of United States telecommunications law in nearly 62 years, amending the Communications Act of 1934.-Prior regime:...
that cable companies allow non cable company provided devices to access their networks.
Use of the term CableCARD can be confusing, because some technologies refer not to the physical card, but to a device ("Host") that uses the card. Some CableCARD technologies can be used with devices that have no physical CableCARDs.
Background
The portion of the 1996 Telecom law which resulted in the creation of CableCARDs is known as Section 629, instructing the
Federal Communications CommissionThe Federal Communications Commission is an independent agency of the United States government, created, directed, and empowered by Congressional statute , and with the majority of its commissioners appointed by the current President...
(FCC) to:
"...assure the commercial availability to consumers of multichannel video programming and other services offered over multichannel video programming systems, of converter boxes, interactive communications equipment, and other equipment used by consumers to access multichannel video programming and other services offered over multichannel video programming systems, from manufacturers, retailers, and other vendors not affiliated with any multichannel video programming distributor."
Multichannel video programming refers to cable or satellite television. A driving motivation of this passage was to foster the kind of consumer choices that resulted after the Federal government landmark
CarterfoneThe Carterfone is a device invented by Thomas Carter. It manually connects a two-way mobile radio system to the public switched telephone network , making it a direct predecessor to today's autopatch....
ruling requiring telephone companies to allow consumers to purchase third party telephones for attachment to the phone company network. The thought was that consumers would benefit from wider choices due to competition between
consumer electronicsConsumer electronics include electronic equipment intended for everyday use. Consumer electronics are most often used in entertainment, communications and office productivity...
(CE) manufacturers unaffiliated with cable companies.
The FCC was charged with working with industry to carry out the directives of the 1996 law. On June 11, 1998, after securing proposals and recommendations from interested parties, the FCC ordered that cable companies would provide a separable security access device by July 1, 2000 which could be used by third-party devices to access digital cable networks. One important issue was the concern that cable companies might not be motivated to provide efficient security access mechanisms for competitor companies to use. To address this, the FCC directed that the cable companies would by January 1, 2005 also have to use a separable access device that was also available to third parties. The cable company would be banned from providing devices that relied on a security access mechanism integrated with the device after the 2005 deadline. This rule is usually referred to as the "integration ban", and has been unsuccessfully challenged in the courts and in FCC petitions by the cable companies. The deadline has been shifted forward twice and went into effect July 1, 2007.
The separable security device was referred to in FCC regulations as a "Point of Deployment" (POD) module. After many requests for delay from the cable industry, the first CableCARD devices became available from third party manufacturers in August 2004.
CableCARDs may be used to access both
standard definitionStandard-definition television is a television system that has a resolution that meets standards but not considered either Enhanced-definition television or High-definition television . The term is usually used in reference to digital television, in particular when broadcasting at the same ...
and
high definitionHigh-definition television is a digital television broadcasting system with higher resolution than traditional television systems...
channels (as long as they are not part of a
switched videoSwitched video, also called switched digital video or SDV, is a telecommunications industry term for a network scheme for distributing digital video via a cable. Switched video sends the digital video in a more efficient manner so that additional uses may be made of the freed up bandwidth...
system). CableCARDs are not necessary for viewing unscrambled digital cable channels if the user has a
QAM tunerIn North American digital video, a QAM tuner is a device present in some digital televisions and similar devices which enables direct reception of digital cable channels without the use of a set-top box....
— a feature in some televisions and
DVRA digital video recorder or personal video recorder is a device that records video in a digital format to a disk drive or other memory medium within a device. The term includes stand-alone set-top boxes, portable media players and software for personal computers which enables video capture and...
s. CableCARD support is most common on higher end televisions that include a special slot for the CableCARD and a built-in cable tuner. The card acts like a unique "key" to unlock the channels and services to which the cable customer has subscribed, and the television's remote-control will also control the cable channels. Televisions that support CableCARD should be labeled by the manufacturer as "
digital cable readyCable-ready is a designation which indicates that a TV set or other television-receiving device is capable of receiving cable TV without a set-top box....
", or
DCR.
Existing standard and certification procedures
Cable providers in the United States are required by the FCC to support the CableCARD 2.0 standard. The specification was developed by
CableLabsFounded in 1988 by cable television operating companies, Cable Television Laboratories, Inc. is a not-for-profit research and development consortium that has cable operators as its members. System operators from around the world are eligible to be members. Members dues are based on revenue...
, a research group run by a consortium of cable companies. Devices that use CableCARDs are known as "Hosts" and must be certified as compliant with the specification by CableLabs. The certification process can take significant amounts of time and is performed in batches on a regular cycle every 3 months.
Cable companies in the United States are required to provide CableCARDs conforming to this specification, and must correct incompatibilities between their networks and certified CableCARD devices.
The current CableCARD standard was born out of an adversarial process between two main groups: cable companies represented by the
National Cable & Telecommunications AssociationThe National Cable & Telecommunications Association is the principal trade association for the U.S. cable industry, representing cable operators serving more than 90 percent of the nation’s cable households and more than 200 cable program networks, as well as equipment suppliers and providers of...
(NCTA) and consumer electronics companies represented by the
Consumer Electronics AssociationThe Consumer Electronics Association is the trade organization for the consumer electronics industry in the United States. The Consumer Electronics Association is the preeminent trade association promoting growth in the $173 billion U.S...
(CEA). The portion of the CableCARD specs that could be agreed on describe how one-way services work, and so only the portion known as UDCP (Unidirectional Digital Cable Product) was required by the FCC. As it was the only thing required, most of the early devices were only one-way capable; however all the actual CableCARDs produced were always two-way capable. Many enhancements to the CableCARD standard including the optional Multi-Stream support became known as CableCARD 2.0.
Although an
optical cableFiber-optic communication is a method of transmitting information from one place to another by sending pulses of light through an optical fiber. The light forms an electromagnetic carrier wave that is modulated to carry information...
service,
Verizon FiOSVerizon FiOS is a bundled communications service, operating over a fiber-optic communications network, that is presently offered in some areas of the United States by Verizon. Verizon has attracted consumer and media attention in the area of broadband Internet access as the first major U.S....
is classified as a cable service and must by FCC rules also support the CableCARD standard. No cable providers in Canada currently support CableCARD. Video providers in Europe must conform to the DVB standard which is a more comprehensive open standard governed by independent standards bodies.
CableCARD also supports non-television functions. It can also act as a
cable modemA cable modem is a type of network bridge and modem that provides bi-directional data communication via radio frequency channels on a cable television infrastructure. Cable modems are primarily used to deliver broadband Internet access in the form of cable Internet, taking advantage of the high...
controller, again with the host providing modulation and demodulation functions, and the card providing decoding and
IPThe Internet Protocol is a protocol used for communicating data across a packet-switched internetwork using the Internet Protocol Suite, also referred to as TCP/IP....
routingRouting is the process of selecting paths in a network along which to send network traffic. Routing is performed for many kinds of networks, including the telephone network, electronic data networks , and transportation networks...
functionality; however this feature is rarely used, and depends on the cable provider.
Physical CableCARDs
The physical CableCARD that is inserted into the host device is a
PCMCIAIn computing, PC Card is the form factor of a peripheral interface designed for laptop computers. The PC Card standard was defined and developed by a group of industry-leading companies called the Personal Computer Memory Card International Association...
type II card which handles decryption of video, and making sure that only people that have paid for the channel may view it. This is also known as "
conditional access moduleA conditional access module is an electronic device, usually incorporating a slot for a smart card, which equips an Integrated Digital Television or set-top box with the appropriate hardware facility to view conditional access content that has been encrypted using a conditional access system...
" function.
There are two kinds of physical CableCARDs:
- Single stream CableCARD (S-CARD) are able to decode a single channel at a time. The S-CARD specification was initially specified in the Host-POD Interface (SCTE 28) and POD Copy Protection System (SCTE 41) standards (often referred to as CableCARD 1.0) set of specifications.
- A "Multi-Stream CableCARD" (M-Card) can decode up to six channels simultaneously. Multi-Stream cards were specified in a separate document in 2003.
No actual M-Cards were released before CableCARD 2.0 was released which combined and enhanced the CableCARD 1.0 and Multi-Stream standards. M-Cards are
backward compatibleIn technology, for example in telecommunications and computing, a device or technology is said to be backwards compatible if it allows input generated by older devices...
with current CableCARD devices. To older CableCARD devices that do not support multiple streams, the card appears to be a single stream card. CE companies have long wanted M-Cards for their CableCARD 1.0 host devices in order to compete with Cable company devices that use multiple tuners. This is important for products such as Sony &
TiVoTiVo is a pioneer of the digital video recorder . TiVo was introduced in the United States, and is now available in Canada, Mexico, Australia, Taiwan, and the UK...
CableCARD
DVRA digital video recorder or personal video recorder is a device that records video in a digital format to a disk drive or other memory medium within a device. The term includes stand-alone set-top boxes, portable media players and software for personal computers which enables video capture and...
s, televisions with
picture-in-picturePicture in Picture is a feature of some television receivers and similar devices. One program is displayed on the full TV screen at the same time as one or more other programs are displayed in inset windows. Sound is usually from the main program only.Picture in Picture requires two independent...
and CableCARD-equipped personal computers, which need to be able to record one show while the user is watching another. To enable this without an M-Card, these products would be required to use multiple S-CARDs.
A common misconception is that there is a CableCARD 2.0 physical card that will provide two way services which is not compatible with a UDCP (one-way) certified devices. This is not the case. OpenCable Host Devices (two-way) are able to use either S-CARDs or M-Cards. And older UDCP certified devices can also use either card (but unless they are M-UDCP won't be able to take advantage of multiple streams).
Interactive features such as
Video on DemandVideo on Demand or Audio Video on Demand are systems which allow users to select and watch/listen to video or audio content on demand....
rely on the CableCARD Host device being an OpenCable Host Device and have nothing to do with the physical card. This makes the common use of the phrase "CableCARD 2.0" as a requirement for video on demand misleading, since two way services have been provided with the actual cards from the very beginning.
Manufacturers
, four manufacturers have multi-stream CableCARDs (M-CARDS) qualified by CableLabs:
MotorolaMotorola, Inc. is an American, multinational, Fortune 100, telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois. It is a manufacturer of wireless telephone handsets, and also designs and sells wireless network infrastructure equipment such as cellular transmission base stations and signal...
,
CiscoCisco may refer to:Companies:*Cisco Systems, a computer networking company* Certis CISCO, corporatised entity of the former Commercial and Industrial Security Corporation in Singapore* Nissin Cisco Co...
(formerly Scientific Atlanta),
NDS GroupNDS Group is a DRM and conditional access firm. Its major shareholders are Permira, who hold 51%, and News Corporation who hold approximately 49%. The company is headquartered in Staines, United Kingdom. The CEO of NDS is Abe Peled....
, and Evolution Broadband.
Adoption
There has been much resistance from the cable companies to cableCARD rollout across the United States with the cable companies preferring to support their own set-top boxes. This has changed somewhat with the July 2007 FCC integration ban, which required all new set-top boxes to use CableCARDs as their decryption mechanism. Prior to this adoption had proceeded slowly with 141,000 units by February 2006. By June 2009, there were over 14,000,000 cableCARDs deployed including 437,800 of which went into retail equipment. Currently almost all the retail equipment is not capable of two way communications (tru2way).
There are still many in the cable industry who are advocating that physical CableCARDs be dropped entirely. These cable companies prefer to move away from physical cards, and have proposed that a downloadable security component known as [Downloadable Conditional Access System] (DCAS) be used instead. The FCC has not yet approved it.
CE companies advocate their proposal for more unfettered access to cable company networks, with CableLabs' role reduced to addressing only cable company interests of maintaining network stability and security.
Technical overview
CableCARD is a term
trademarkA trademark or trade mark is a distinctive sign or indicator used by an individual, business organization, or other legal entity to identify that the products or services to consumers with which the trademark appears originate from a unique source, and to distinguish its products or services from...
ed by
CableLabsFounded in 1988 by cable television operating companies, Cable Television Laboratories, Inc. is a not-for-profit research and development consortium that has cable operators as its members. System operators from around the world are eligible to be members. Members dues are based on revenue...
for the Point of Deployment (POD) module defined by standards including
SCTEThe Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers or SCTE is a non-profit professional association for the advancement of technology related to cable telecommunications engineering. Founded in 1969, SCTE has a current membership of over 12,000 individuals.- Publications :SCTE offers several...
28, SCTE 41,
CEAThe Consumer Electronics Association is the trade organization for the consumer electronics industry in the United States. The Consumer Electronics Association is the preeminent trade association promoting growth in the $173 billion U.S...
-679 and others. The CableCARD is physically a PCMCIA type II
PC cardIn computing, PC Card is the form factor of a peripheral interface designed for laptop computers. The PC Card standard was defined and developed by a group of industry-leading companies called the Personal Computer Memory Card International Association...
, supplied by the cable company, which is inserted into a slot in the host (typically a
digital televisionDigital television is the sending and receiving of moving images and sound by discrete signals, in contrast to the analog signals used by analog TV.-Timeline:...
set or a set-top box) in order to identify and authorize the customer, and to provide proprietary decoding of the
encryptedIn cryptography, encryption is the process of transforming information using an algorithm to make it unreadable to anyone except those possessing special knowledge, usually referred to as a key. The result of the process is encrypted information...
digital cableDigital cable is a generic term for any type of cable television distribution using digital video compression or distribution. The technology was originally developed by Motorola.-Background:...
signal without the need for a
set-top boxA set-top box or set-top unit is a device that connects to a television and an external source of signal, turning the signal into content which is then displayed on the television screen.- History :...
. The cable tuner and
QAMQuadrature amplitude modulation is both an analog and a digital modulation scheme. It conveys two analog message signals, or two digital bit streams, by changing the amplitudes of two carrier waves, using the amplitude-shift keying digital modulation scheme or amplitude modulation analog...
demodulatorModulation is the process of varying one waveform in relation to another waveform. In telecommunications, modulation is used to convey a message, or a musician may modulate the tone from a musical instrument by varying its volume, timing and pitch. Often a high-frequency sinusoid waveform is used...
themselves are part of the host device, as is the MPEG decoder. The role of the card is to perform any conditional access and decryption functions. This results in an MPEG-2 transport stream, which is decoded by the host. The card also receives messages sent over the out-of-band signaling channel by the cable company's
Head endHead end may refer to:# A central control device required by some networks to provide such centralized functions as remodulation, retiming, message accountability, contention control, diagnostic control, and access to a gateway....
servers and forwards them to the host.
Cards from major providers such as
ComcastComcast Corporation , founded in 1963, is the largest cable operator in the United States, providing cable television, broadband Internet, and telephone service to both residential and commercial customers. Comcast is headquartered in the One Comcast Center in Center City, Philadelphia,...
,
Cox CommunicationsCox Communications, also known as Cox Cable and formerly Cox Broadcasting Corporation is a privately owned subsidiary of Cox Enterprises providing digital cable television and telecommunications services in the United States...
,
RCNRCN may refer to:* RCN Corporation, a cable television, telephone, and Internet service provider in the United States* RCN Radio, a radio network in Colombia* RCN TV, a private television network in Colombia...
and
Time Warner CableTime Warner Cable is an American national cable television company that operates in 27 states and has 31 operating divisions. Its corporate headquarters are located in New York, NY, and has other corporate offices in Charlotte, North Carolina; Herndon, Virginia; and Denver, Colorado...
in some regions currently require on-site installation by a technician, who reports the unique ID numbers pre-assigned to both the CableCARD and the digital television to the company headquarters, where they are updated to the customer's account. Because of this, CableCARDs cannot be moved from one device to another without a visit from a cable company installer. Some regions (such as Comcast Houston) do allow customer installs, and actually provide special phone support for CableCARDs. The card is inserted as users do for laptop PCMCIA cards. The CableCARD identification numbers are given to the operator who then sends the CableCARD an out of band Entitlement Management Message (EMM), which remotely programs the CableCARD, authorizing it to decode for the specific host only those shows and services which the user is authorized to view.
http://www.comcast.com/customers/faq/FaqDetails.ashx?ID=2658
http://www.cox.com/support/sandiego/cable/faq.asp
http://www.timewarnercable.com/albany/products/CableCARD.html
CableCARDs with personal computers:
Existing integrated cable set-top boxes perform four basic functions:
- Enable receiving and selecting digital and analog cable channels
- Uniquely identify the customer and authorize the features they have subscribed to
- Decode scrambled digital channels and premium programming such as movie channels
- Provide interactive two-way communications for:
- interactive programming guides
An electronic program guide or interactive program guide or electronic service guide is a digital guide to scheduled broadcast television or radio programs, typically displayed on-screen with functions allowing a viewer to navigate, select, and discover content by time, title, channel, genre, etc...
- Pay-per-view
Pay-per-view provides a service by which a television audience can purchase events to view via private telecast of that event to their homes. The broadcaster shows the event at the same time to everyone ordering it...
- Video On Demand
Video on Demand or Audio Video on Demand are systems which allow users to select and watch/listen to video or audio content on demand....
- Switched video streams
Switched video, also called switched digital video or SDV, is a telecommunications industry term for a network scheme for distributing digital video via a cable. Switched video sends the digital video in a more efficient manner so that additional uses may be made of the freed up bandwidth...
New
digital televisionDigital television is the sending and receiving of moving images and sound by discrete signals, in contrast to the analog signals used by analog TV.-Timeline:...
s and other devices that are labeled
DCR (
Digital cable readyCable-ready is a designation which indicates that a TV set or other television-receiving device is capable of receiving cable TV without a set-top box....
) contain:
- built-in support for receiving digital cable channels (via an internal QAM tuner
In North American digital video, a QAM tuner is a device present in some digital televisions and similar devices which enables direct reception of digital cable channels without the use of a set-top box....
)
- a slot for the current version of CableCARD (see photo here), which allows decryption of encrypted digital channels.
The CableCARD 2.0 specification includes support for #1-4, interactive two-way communications; however it is unknown exactly when CableCARD 2.0 hosts and compatible servers will become available. Some analysts predict that wide availability of tru2way will not be seen until late 2010. Future devices which support CableCARD 2.0 are expected to be labeled iDCR "Interactive digital cable ready". Among other requirements, CableCARD 2.0 hosts will be required to provide the
OpenCable Application PlatformOpenCable Application Platform, or OCAP, is an operating system layer designed for consumer electronics that connect to a cable television system like Comcast or Cox. Unlike operating systems on a personal computer, the cable company controls what OCAP programs run on the consumer's machine...
(OCAP), also known as
Tru2WayTru2way is the brand name for interactive digital cable services delivered over the cable video network, for example interactive program guides, interactive ads, games, chat, web browsing, and t-commerce. The brand also appears as “” and is used to market cable services, applications, and...
, to run programs downloaded from the cable company.
An alternative to CableCARD 2.0, most recently advocated by the U.S. cable television industry, uses
Downloadable Conditional Access SystemDownloadable Conditional Access System or DCAS is a proposal advanced by CableLabs for secure software download of a specific Conditional Access client which controls digital rights management into a OCAP-compliant host consumer media device...
(DCAS) in place of physical CableCARDs. In this proposal, a custom security chip must be soldered into every compliant host; if a security scheme is compromised, a new security program can be downloaded to the host device.
Because the conditional access system is in software, it can be sent with the video as a form of
Digital Rights ManagementDigital rights management is a generic term for access control technologies that can be used by hardware manufacturers, publishers, copyright holders and individuals to try to impose limitations on the usage of digital content and devices...
(DRM). The CableCARD Host Licensing Agreement (CHILA) and the DCAS agreement restrict the technologies that CE companies may use for distributing video from host devices. CE companies object to this expanding the notion of CableCARD network security issues to also include content protection issues. They prefer to deal with content owners directly with their standards and regard cable company protocols and formats as a transport only. CE companies wish to communicate video inside the home network using their own protected protocols and formats.
The OpenCable Application Platform (OCAP) is a Java-based platform intended for use either with any security access scheme — whether it is CableCARD 2.0 devices or future downloadable security schemes. OCAP was tied to CableCARDs because, as it was imagined by CableLabs, the additional processing necessary for managing the communication with the cable company server would be performed, not on the cable company provided equipment (the CableCARD), but on the consumer electronics device — known as the CableCARD "Host". CE companies objected that OCAP is unnecessary for the simple task of managing two-way communications on the cable networks. The CEA perspective is that
JavaJava is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities...
is not efficient for CE devices, and that cable companies are passing to CE manufacturers the costs of a software platform which they didn't need, and which won't run on their existing hardware architectures.
The consumer electronics industry proposed in November 2006 that the CableCARD 2.0 specification be upgraded to include the provision for modified MCards that would support the communications necessary for VOD, PPV, and Switched Video. This card would be backward compatible with older cards, and support would be required for them on cable company servers by January 2008. These modified MCards would not allow two-way communication using current OCURs, which, by definition, are unidirectional. This so-called "OCAP-less" proposal was rejected by the
NCTAThe National Cable & Telecommunications Association is the principal trade association for the U.S. cable industry, representing cable operators serving more than 90 percent of the nation’s cable households and more than 200 cable program networks, as well as equipment suppliers and providers of...
for a variety of reasons elaborated on in the issues segment of this article. The technical advantage is that much less is assumed about the computing capability of the host, allowing the manufacturing cost to be significantly reduced. The disadvantage is that the MCard will be slightly more expensive, but the host will not necessarily be able to support the envisioned ecommerce and banking applications. CE companies argue that such a card fulfills the 1996 law's requirement that cable companies allow two-way communication on their networks, and that OCAP fulfills technical goals far in excess of those necessary for such two-way communications.
External links
Document may be retrieved by visiting the FCC document search site, and entering "Consumer Electronics Association" in field 4. In field 7, enter 11/07/2006 in the From and To: dates. Appendix A is the 3rd document.