A fair amount of headroom has recently been made for
CableCARD support on non-OEM machines.
CableLabs regulations have limited only Microsoft approved OEMs to build
and sell CableCARD machines using well outlined stipulations including a
special BIOS and additional product key.
Smart thinking guy’s at The Green Button cracked open the
public CableLabs specs to find out more.
As I’ve talked about before, the BIOS is actually a OSFR table which in
theory can be put in any motherboard BIOS.
Turns out Asus might have shipped a revision of their P5K with the table
present and populated. Two fun threads
to follow for more are here and here.
Now, getting the BIOS “hacked” doesn’t mean too much. The hard part of this equation is the OCUR PID
that will be much harder to hack. Right
now people are recycling their Dell XPS 420’s PIDs to home build a custom
CableCARD mahine.
I will caution everyone, Microsoft and CableLabs are
supposed to have a method to remotely disable this stuff and your PC is also
supposed to check every so often to ensure everything is cool. If you spend a lot time and money getting
into something like this and one day it just breaks don’t get too mad.
Unfortunately, CableCARD is dead technology. The future is streaming and VOD. The cable industry is only hurting itself with their “control” nonsense.
I agree Richard. They don’t understand that it’s all related. If I can’t have a cable card in my DIY HTPC, I just won’t have cable. I’d rather download movies and TV shows anyway I can(legal or otherwise).
Is it even legal for a company to remotely disable your PC? That seems like a pretty interesting topic for discussion.
It is easier to just download the torrents then to deal with all this.
@POMCEUSER
so true.. this whole messed up CableCard situation really irked me.
i was a full HTPC user prior to HD adn cablecards; sagetv still can do things mce can’t come close to or the cable companies’ dvr boxes.
if i could build my own HD HTPC i’d do it and keep my cable; however i’ve resorted to just basic since it saves me $3 overall on my highspeed and cable package.
i’m pure streaming/vod now; i still do OTA dvring but sometimes its inconsistent if say my cat knocks over my antenna, etc.
and why are you killing off the enthusiast?? we are your most passionate supporters/backers/voices in the community.
oh well, just another old industry failing to adapt.
If it was not for these people with the cable cards to capture the content, there would be no one to upload them to you..