Editing CableCARD (section)

==Technical overview==
''CableCARD'' is a term [[trademark]]ed by [[CableLabs]] for the Point of Deployment (POD) module defined by standards including [[SCTE]] 28, SCTE 41, [[Consumer Electronics Association|CEA]]-679 and others. The physical CableCARD is inserted into a slot in the host (typically a [[digital television]] set or a set-top box) in order to identify and authorize the customer, and to provide proprietary decoding of the [[encryption|encrypted]] [[digital cable]] signal without the need for a proprietary [[set-top box]]. The cable tuner, [[Quadrature Amplitude Modulation|QAM]] [[modulation|demodulator]], and [[MPEG]] decoder are part of the host equipment. The card performs any conditional access and decryption functions, and provides a MPEG-2 transport stream to the host. The card also receives messages sent over the out-of-band signaling channel by the cable company's [[Cable television headend|headend]] servers and forwards them to the host.

CableCARDs may be used to access both [[Standard-definition television|standard definition]] and [[High-definition television|high definition]] channels as long as they are not part of a [[switched video]] system. (This applies to one-way devices only; two-way devices are capable of receiving and viewing switched video. The ability for one-way devices to receive and view switched video has changed with the addition of the Tuning Resolver Interface Specification. Tuning adaptors and tuning adaptor interfaces have been added to provide communication back to the headend needed for switched video.) CableCARDs are not necessary for viewing unscrambled digital cable channels if the user has a [[QAM tuner]]—a feature in some televisions and [[Digital video recorder|DVR]]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 ready]]" (DCR).

Interactive features such as [[video 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.<ref name="opencable1" />

===Physical CableCARDs===
{{Multiple image
| direction = vertical
| image1    = Cable-card-cropped.jpg
| caption1  = A [[Scientific Atlanta]] (now [[Cisco Systems|Cisco]]) multi-stream CableCARD or "M-card"
| image2    = Cable-card-cropped-rear.jpg
| caption2  = The backside of the same card
}}

The physical CableCARD inserted into the host device is a [[PC Card]] type II that handles [[decryption]] of video and ensures that only authorized subscribers may view it. This is also known as a "[[conditional-access module]]" function.

There are two kinds of physical CableCARDs:
* A "single-stream" CableCARD (S-CARD) can 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 the introduction of CableCARD 2.0, which combined and enhanced the CableCARD 1.0 and Multi-Stream standards.<ref name="opencable1">{{cite web |url=http://www.opencable.com/primer/cablecard_primer.html |title=CableCARD Primer |publisher=OpenCable |access-date=2009-09-16 |archive-date=2009-09-29 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090929090609/http://www.opencable.com/primer/cablecard_primer.html |url-status=dead }}</ref>  M-Cards are [[backward compatibility|backward compatible]] with current CableCARD devices. In 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 devices that use multiple tuners. This is important for products such as [[Moxi (DVR)|Moxi]] and [[TiVo]] CableCARD [[Digital video recorder|DVR]]s, televisions with [[picture-in-picture]] and CableCARD-equipped [[personal computers]], which need to record one show while a user is watching another. To enable this without an M-Card, these products would be required to use multiple S-CARDs.

===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 to which they have subscribed
* Decode scrambled digital channels and premium programming such as movie channels
* Provide interactive two-way communications for [[electronic program guide]]s, [[pay-per-view]], video on demand, or [[switched video]] streams

New [[digital television]]s and other devices that are labeled ''DCR'' ([[Digital cable ready]]) contain:
* Built-in support for receiving digital cable channels (via an internal [[QAM tuner]])
* A slot for the current version of CableCARD, 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. 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 Platform]] (OCAP), also known as [[Tru2way]], to run programs downloaded from the cable company.

Because the conditional access system is in software, it can be sent with the video as a form of [[digital rights management]]. The CableCARD Host Licensing Agreement 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 (programming language)|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 Java 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 [[National Cable & Telecommunications Association|NCTA]] 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.