P2P Bill of Rights Deep-Sixed
After about three weeks, Comcast has abandoned their proposed P2P Bill of Rights in favor of collaboratively developing best practice guidelines within the Distributed Computing Industry Association. As I’ve said before, I’m glad to see them openly discussing these issues. Though, I’m not sure Comcast’s Net non-Neutrality stance has changed… Actions speak louder than words and it appears they’re still throttling BitTorrent traffic.

Pondering Bandwidth Caps
According to DSL Reports, Comcast is contemplating a monthly bandwidth cap of 250GB for residential broadband customers. Exceed the limit, and pay an overage fee, with periodical “slip up” forgiveness. Frankly, I think this would be a good policy change… when compared to their current opaque black ops methods. Though, I say that having no idea how much data I move in a given month and just prior to launching a several day ~40GB Mozy online backup. Supposedly a 250GB threshold would only impact 0.1% of Comcast customers.

SDV Shenanigans
Less clear than Cablevision’s SDV customer outreach, Comcast appears to be going down a similar path in southwest Florida. I haven’t confirmed this notice and it’s rather brief but, if accurate, probably indicates regional adoption of switched digital video (SDV):

Our records indicate that you have a Motorola Cable Card(s) that will no longer be compatible with our upgraded cable network as of May 31, 2008. Exchange your Motorola Cable Card(s) into an office today and we’ll give you HBO free and a converter free for 3 months.

No mention which specific portions of the channel lineup may impact this TiVo owner and no mention of the forthcoming tuning resolver… Just trade in your CableCARDs or else (FUD). I’ll wait for confirmation before providing additional commentary.

After probably feeling some heat online in the last week or so (here and here for example), the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA) rounded up a bunch of journalists (mainstream press and bloggers) for a conference call today. They presented a bit of CableCARD history in how we got here (SDV) and where we’re going with tru2way, followed by a Q&A session. Obviously, the perspective presented is their own and may not line up exactly with the how the CEA, FCC, or an educated consumer might present it.

No new details on the SDV Tuning Resolver were provided, though TiVo was mentioned quite a few times as being involved in the process. And they’re still shooting for Q2 delivery… though, we shall see. I suspect at least three manufacturers will provide the adapter later this year, and we already know Motorola’s solution will be on display with TiVo next month at The Cable Show:

Motorola will demonstrate its MTR700 Tuning Adapter which connects unidirectional UDCPs (including a TiVo device, in specific) to a cable network, accessing multimedia content in the cable network’s switched digital video (SDV) tier. Seamless tuning of the TiVo device across both broadcast and SDV tiers will be shown.

More of my recent SDV/CableCARD thoughts can be found here and Megazone’s take is also worth checking out.

Interesting call factoid: 380,000 CableCARD deployments. I wonder what (large) percent are TiVo owners… And if we assume most Series3 and THD customers use at least one CableCARDs, perhaps we can extrapolate the number of units out there.

If you follow the DVR market, you likely remember Digeo’s spectacular failure-to-launch earlier this year. After hyping a line of retail DVR products through the Consumer Electronics Show, the company suddenly pulled the launch and cut half its staff in mid-January. We got word that Digeo would continue to focus on one retail DVR product with details to be announced later in the year, but in general the news was pretty bad.

Now, Jeff Baumgartner has made the savvy discovery that at least in the cable world, Digeo is still on track with new hardware. CableLabs leaked the news in a press announcement about products that will be on display at the Cable Show next month. Digeo’s new product, the Moxi HD DVR 3012, will include CableCARD support (a first, I believe), dual tuning, a larger hard drive, and the lawsuit-free-thanks-to-a-Gemstar-licensing-deal Moxi interface.

Still no word on a retail Digeo box. Maybe next CES?

Full Disclosure: I work with Motorola, which is both a technology partner and sometime-competitor of Digeo’s.

A periodic roundup of relevant news… that Dave hasn’t had time to cover while attending CTIA:

• XM now available on Blackberry: Orbitcast
• PlayStation Store 2.0 coming soon: PC World
• HP introduces 500GB $300 Linux NAS: Gizmodo
• Is Comcast increasing HD video compression: The Consumerist
• Roxio Toast update fixes TiVoToGo audio/video sync: Mac Observer
• Nokia N810 Hava placeshifting client preview: Internet Tablet Talk
• Brighthouse returns HD channels to CableCARD: Gizmo Lovers

Comcast and BitTorrent have announced they’re cozying up…

Comcast Corporation and BitTorrent, Inc. announced today that they will undertake a collaborative effort with one another and with the broader Internet and ISP community to more effectively address issues associated with rich media content and network capacity management. While BitTorrent and Comcast are talking directly, they are also in discussions with other parties to help facilitate a broader dialogue and cooperation across industries. Both BitTorrent and Comcast expressed the view that these technical issues can be worked out through private business discussions without the need for government intervention.

In the release, Comcast also mentions they’ll move to a “protocol agnostic” network management system by the end of the year, though I didn’t see anything regarding “source” or “destination” agnostic. So, it’s yet to be seen if this is really net neutral and how the FCC will respond. Regardless, it’s significant and appreciated that Comcast made the progressive choice to initiate an open dialog. (more…)

How do you educate your customers to the perils of switched digital video (SDV) with the current generation of retail CableCARD products? In Cablevision’s case, they’ve started notifying folks that over 15 channels (including Kung Fu HD!) are unavailable via CableCARD - without actually mentioning why. But, hey, who needs a TiVo when you they’ll loan you a HD DVR - free for the first year.

What’s the point of mandated separable security if only a subset of channels are being made available to retail products? Bah! Fortunately, a tuning resolver is on the way… However, consumer education will continue to be a challenge. And have I mentioned recently that I’m not interested in more boxes?

Looks like we’ll really see a resurgence of CableCARD televisions later this year. Unlike the first generation of one-way communication and single tuning sets, the new generation will employ OCAP tru2way. According to Home Theater Magazine:

all Panasonic PDP and LCD sets incorporate ATSC tuners and some will soon incorporate OCAP two-way cable cards allowing for on-demand services without a set-top cable box.

Being a minimalist, the clutter-free aspect of TVs like these appeal to me. Though, I’m not sure if I’m willing to forgo DVR functionality for the sake of neatness. But I bet my mom is.

Yet to be addressed: How will these televisions deal with SDV… Built-in switching capabilities or will they also need a tuning resolver accessory?

We’ve discussed this unit a few times in the comments, and I finally managed to get my hands on the Gefen HD DVR ($999). It was announced last summer, and Gefen intended to ship prior to the end of 2007. I’m not actually sure if they made their target, but they’re definitely shipping now in 2008.

The first things you need to know are that Gefen doesn’t provide an EPG (that I could find) and there’s no network connectivity. Recording is initiated while viewing live content or via scheduling. No pausing of live television either. Really, this is nothing more than a glorified VCR. But where things get interesting is the advertised ability to record high definition content via HDMI. To the best of my knowledge, HDMI and HDCP licensing specifically prohibits recording… Which is why we haven’t seen any other devices like this.

HTPC guru “AVeNVy” and I confirmed the Gefen DVR records (HBO via CableCARD!) from a Motorola HDCP set-top box over HDMI in 720p and 1080i. The unit has both an internal hard drive and a SD card reader. Until we dropped STB output to 480i, we couldn’t record onto my SD card. Therefore, it appears HD content is restricted to the unit’s hard drive. However, we removed four screws and voided the warranty to determine that recordings (H.264 MPEG-4) are unprotected on the DVR’s 2.5″ drive (and play fine in Windows).

What’s going on here… Licensing loophole, software bug, ignorance, arrogance, my own limited understanding? Hm.

Click on thumbnails for a larger view: