There are now more than 200,000 CableCARDs deployed by cable operators serving over 89 percent of the cable subscribers in the country, according to the latest quarterly report on the subject the NCTA filed with the FCC, on behalf of its members.
Cisco/Scientific Atlanta has joined Motorola as a source for multistream cards – cards that can work with so-called multistream devices, such as those running OCAP 2.0. MSOs should begin offering multistream CableCARDs in the next few months, the NCTA reported.
As of September 19, 2006, 26 consumer electronics (CE) manufacturers have had over 524 product models (such as digital cable-ready DTV sets) certified or verified for use with CableCARDs.
Therein lies a problem. Some consumer products supposedly compatible with CableCARDs still are not. Cablevision reported that 63 percent of the problems its subscribers experienced could be traced positively to host systems. Charter reports that almost 100 percent of the problems it has with CableCARDs are problems with CE equipment.
Comcast, Cox, and Time Warner Cable do not offer similar breakdowns, but they are compelled to provide representative samples of the problems they’ve experienced, and many of them are likewise attributable to problems with CE equipment.
CableCARD distribution
Company
# installed
Problems/Host-related
Cablevision
10,120
63%
Charter
14,879
100%
Comcast
96,419
(not available)
Cox
17,323
(not available)
Time Warner Cable
38,492
(not available).