OTHER TECH

Along with a deluge of bigger, flatter HDTVs of various technological stripes, a hot TV news item at CES 2005 was the arrival of digital cable-ready TVs with slots for a CableCARD. This credit-card-size device was designed to eliminate set-top cable decoders - those ugly black boxes that have squatted, like parasites, on or below our TVs for the past two decades. The pros and cons of CableCARD have been well documented in recent issues of Sound & Vision (see "Wild Card" ??? and ??? issues -->). In brief, putting a digital cable decoder in the TV is a great idea, but the limitations of the current CableCARD technology - a unidirectional system that doesn't let you browse TV listings using an interactive onscreen guide or order video-on-demand movies - make it a less desirable feature. And then there's the issue of cable companies actively discouraging their subscribers from using CableCARD . . . Samsung's prototype Open Cable HDTV, a 55-inch DLP rear-projection set with a two-way CableCARD -type slot, was intended to spur development of the next-generation CableCARD.

But whatever the drawbacks, many of the HDTVs announced at CES 2005, including full lines of new plasma sets from Panasonic and Pioneer, are digital cable-ready and feature CableCARD slots. Personally, I plan to hold onto my set-top box - I'm too accustomed to surfing program listings via an onscreen guide to give up that feature, and my cable company just introduced a new high-def model with a built-in hard disk for recording.

However, some of the new digital cable-ready sets I've seen at the show could make me change my mind. For example, LG's 60-inch 60PY2DR and 50-inch 50PY2DR (prices and availability to be determined). Both feature a built-in 160-GB hard disk for recording up to 14 hours of high-def cable programs, or 62 hours of standard-def. Each one is like an entire video system - big-screen TV, cable decoder, and hard-disk recorder - rolled up into one elegant package. Just plug in your cable, slip a CableCARD into the slot, and you're ready to enjoy HDTV.

It seems I'm not the only one put off by the technical limitations of one-way CableCARD - TV makers are eager for a bidirectional version, too. Apparently Samsung got tired of waiting for Cable Labs - the industry organization responsible for developing the "OpenCable" standard that allows for CableCARDs - to make the two-way version a reality. Samsung announced at a press conference early in the show that it would partner with Time Warner Cable to test and develop two-way Open Cable-compliant HDTVs. According to Samsung, the results of the research will be shared with the rest of the industry. Samsung reps at CES said the company was "hungrier" than other manufacturers to make two-way OpenCable a done deal and was prepared to start "acting like a leader" to spearhead its development. < < Back to the International CES 2005 index