What's Up with Cable Tuners on PCs?

Well, it turns out that this technology has gone through some major hiccups during the past 10 months, as everyone has discovered that the problem is related to Digital Rights Management and is tightly controlled by Microsoft and Cable Labs, who license only certain manufacturers to use the CableCARD.

I know that ATI has updated the firmware on the Digital Cable tuners several times over the past year.

There are several TV tuners on the market that allow reception of HDTV, but these are only for Over-The-Air broadcasting, not cable.

After trying 6 Motorola CableCARDS, it was finally decided that there must be a problem with the ATI tuner, so Dell shipped me another one.

After the new tuner arrived, the same two Comcast techs came out again, and we hooked up with the same Dell technician so he could watch the process.

In the meantime, both the Comcast and Dell techs were going to research the problem.

I got Dell Tech Support on the phone, and [the rep] connected to my computer to watch the process.

I had the benefit of having a Velocity Micro technician and Verizon FIOS techs on hand for my review, and even then it took the better part of two days for them to get it working right.

I've since popped my CableCARDs into a TiVo HD, since I knew from talking to the Verizon FIOS Techs that they've never had a problem with TiVo Series 3 HD DVRs, or HDTVs with integrated CableCARD readers.

Now I see that Dell has replaced the XPS 410 with the XPS 420, which does not even offer a HDTV Cable Tuner.