CableCARD is a special-use PC Card device that allows consumers in the United States to view and record digital cable television channels on digital video recorders , personal computers and television sets on equipment such as a set-top box not provided by a cable television company. The card is usually provided by the local cable operator, typically for a nominal monthly fee.
101-472: In a broader context, CableCARD refers to a set of technologies created by the United States cable television industry to allow devices from non-cable companies to access content on the cable networks. Some technologies not only refer to the physical card, but also to a device ("Host") that uses the card. Some CableCARD technologies can be used with devices that have no physical CableCARD. The CableCARD
202-590: 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
303-511: A "Point of Deployment" (POD) module. After many requests for delay from the cable industry, the first CableCARD devices became available from third-party manufacturers in August 2004. A major concern was that cable operators were not motivated to provide efficient security access mechanisms to equipment competitors. To address this, the FCC directed that by January 1, 2005, that cable operators must use
404-610: A VHS tape (although some on demand services, generally those offered by broadcast networks, restrict the ability to fast forward through a program). Some of the offerings have a cost similar to renting a movie at a video store while others are free. On-demand content has slowly been replacing traditional pay-per-view for pre-recorded content; pay-per-view remains popular for live combat sports events (boxing, mixed martial arts and professional wrestling). Additional subscription fees are also usually required to receive digital cable channels. Many cable systems operate as de facto monopolies in
505-517: A broadcasters' convention. In the spring of 1948, Parsons learned that radio station KRSC (now KKNW ) in Seattle – 125 miles away – was going to launch a television station that fall. He found that with a large antenna he could receive KRSC's signal on the roof of the Hotel Astoria and from there he ran coaxial cable across the street to his apartment. When the station (now KING-TV ) went on
606-631: 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. Cable providers in the United States are required by the FCC to support the CableCARD 2.0 standard. The specification was developed by CableLabs , a research group run by a consortium of cable companies. Devices that use CableCARDs are known as "Hosts" and must be certified as compliant with
707-597: A downloadable security component known as Downloadable Conditional Access System (DCAS) be used instead of a physical CableCARD. In this proposal, a custom security chip must be soldered into every compliant host; if a security scheme is compromised, a new security program can be downloaded to the host device. The FCC has not yet approved it. Consumer electronic companies advocate their proposal for more unfettered access to cable company networks, with CableLabs' role reduced to addressing only cable company interests of maintaining network stability and security. In September 2020,
808-536: A few years, only to fail due to the inability to compete against established premium services that had broader distribution and higher subscriber totals. Since cable television channels are not broadcast on public spectrum, they are not subject to FCC regulations on indecent material. Premium networks generally offer broader portrayal of profanity, sex and violence; some premium services–such as Cinemax and The Movie Channel (which have carried such programs as part of their late-night schedules) as well as Playboy TV , one of
909-479: A focus on more "mature" and creator-driven series to help attract critical acclaim and key demographic viewership. Turner Classic Movies has aired uncut and commercial-free prints of theatrical films that have featured nudity, sexual content, violence and profanity, as had the now-ad-supported SundanceTV and IFC , the former of which began as a premium service, spun off from Showtime. Commercial-free basic channels have tended to rate their film presentations using
1010-615: A group of fellow television set retailers in Lansford, Pennsylvania , a town in the same region as Mahanoy City, to offer television signals from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania broadcast stations to homes in Lansford for a fee. The system was featured in stories in The New York Times , Newsweek and The Wall Street Journal . The publicity of this successful early system set off a wave of cable system construction throughout
1111-451: A higher quality picture than their analog counterparts. This is often true, with a dramatic improvement in chroma resolution (120 lines for NTSC versus 270 for digital). However, digital compression has a tendency to soften the quality of the television picture, particularly of channels that are more heavily compressed. Pixelation and other artifacts are often visible. Subscribers wishing to have access to digital cable channels must have
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#17328007586341212-562: A less expensive entry point into the cable marketplace. Some cable/satellite providers might wish to sell channels à la carte, but their contracts with programmers often require the more standardized approach. Starting in the late 1990s, advances in digital signal processing (primarily Motorola's DigiCipher 2 video compression technology in North America) gave rise to wider implementation of digital cable services. Digital cable television provides many more television channels over
1313-401: A local station if the duplication is shown either 15 days before or after its local airing. This 1965 report reasoning is as follows: 1) CATV should carry local stations because CATV supplements, not replaces, local stations; and, the non-carriage of local stations gives distant stations an advantage since people will not change from the cable to the antenna to see a local station; 2) non-carriage
1414-562: A mix of per-subscriber carriage fees paid by the provider, and revenue from advertising sold on the service, as their sources of revenue. One of the first "basic cable" networks was TBS —which was initially established as a satellite uplink of an independent television station (the present-day WPCH-TV ) in Atlanta, Georgia. TBS would serve as the starting point for other major basic cable ventures by its owner, Ted Turner , including CNN —the first 24-hour news channel . Another early network
1515-430: A monthly fee depending on the number and perceived quality of the channels offered. Cable television subscribers are offered various packages of channels one can subscribe to. The cost of each package depends on the type of channels offered (basic vs. premium) and the quantity. These fees cover the fees paid to individual cable channels for the right to carry their programming, as well as the cost of operating and maintaining
1616-442: A premium service to sample its programming, in an effort for subscribers to the participant provider to consider obtaining a subscription to the offered service to continue viewing it following the preview period. HBO was the first true premium cable (or "pay-cable") network as well as the first television network intended for cable distribution on a regional or national basis; however, there were notable precursors to premium cable in
1717-400: A scheduled time (this is generally the main place where pornographic content airs on American cable). Some cable systems have begun to offer on-demand programming , where customers can select programs from a list of offerings including recent releases of movies, concerts, sports, first-run television shows and specials and start the program whenever they wish, as if they were watching a DVD or
1818-568: A second signal to two of the towns and add two signals to a previously unserved town. A television station in one town opposed this and protested to the FCC on the grounds of economic damage. A hearing examiner supported Carter Mountain, but the Commission supported the television station. The case was taken to appeal, and the Federal Communications Commission won. "The fact that no broadcaster has actually gone off
1919-541: A secretary of the Federal Communications Commission, sent a letter to Parsons requesting that he "furnish [to] the Commission full information with respect to the nature of the system you may have developed and may be operating." This is the first known involvement of the FCC in CATV. An FCC lawyer, E. Stratford Smith, determined the Commission could exercise common carrier jurisdiction over CATV. The FCC did not act on this opinion, and Smith later changed his mind after working in
2020-431: A significant reduction in subscription fees and advertising revenue, and potentially be driven out of business. Many cable/satellite providers are therefore reluctant to introduce an à la carte business model. They fear it will reduce the overall choice of viewing content, making their service less appealing to customers. Some believe the à la carte option could actually increase overall sales by allowing potential subscribers
2121-453: A small number of national cable networks in their basic lineups. Most systems differentiate between basic cable, which has locals, home shopping channels and local-access television channels, and expanded basic (or "standard"), which carries most of the better-known national cable networks. Most basic cable lineups have approximately 20 channels overall, while expanded basic has channel capacity for as many as 70 channels. Under U.S. regulations,
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#17328007586342222-503: A special cable converter box , (or, more recently, a "Digital Cable Ready" television) and a CableCARD to receive them. AllVid is a CableCARD replacement proposed by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC), U.S.A Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), intended to provide bidirectional compatibilities such as interactive programming guides, video-on-demand and pay-per-view, since retail CableCARD-ready devices are unable to access such systems. Cable television systems impose
2323-403: 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 -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,
2424-523: Is "inherently contrary to the public interest"; and, 3) CATV duplication of local programming via distant signals is unfair since broadcasters and CATV do not compete for programs on an equal footing; the FCC recommended "a reasonable measure of exclusivity". The 1966 Second Report and Order made some minor changes in the First Report and Order and added a major regulation. This was designed to protect UHF stations in large cities. The new rule disallowed
2525-513: Is a television system that uses a resolution that is not considered to be either high or enhanced definition . Standard refers to offering a similar resolution to the analog broadcast systems used when it was introduced. SDTV originated from the need for a standard to digitize analog TV (defined in BT.601 ) and is now used for digital TV broadcasts and home appliances such as game consoles and DVD disc players. Digital SDTV broadcast eliminates
2626-454: Is a term trademarked by CableLabs for the Point of Deployment (POD) module defined by standards including SCTE 28, SCTE 41, 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 encrypted digital cable signal without
2727-679: Is not clear how this might affect subscription costs over all, but it would allow a parent to censor their child's viewing habits by removing any channel they deem objectionable from their subscription. Offering such individualized subscriptions would have been relatively complicated and labor-intensive using analog cable, but the widespread adoption of digital cable & IPTV technologies have now made it more feasible. Analog technology allowed cable providers to offer standardized subscription packages using low-pass filters and notch filters . A low-pass filter lets lower frequency signals pass while removing higher frequency signals. Using such filtering,
2828-801: 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
2929-492: 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
3030-536: The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued a notice of inquiry for a successor system, called AllVid . Unlike CableCARD, AllVid intended to enable two-way services such as electronic program guides , pay-per-view , and video on demand . There are still many in the cable industry who are advocating that physical CableCARDs be dropped entirely. These cable companies prefer to move away from physical cards, and have proposed that
3131-633: The MDU market, in which relationships are established with landlords, sometimes with contracts and exclusivity agreements for the buildings, sometimes to the anger of tenants. The rise of direct broadcast satellite systems providing the same type of programming using small satellite receivers, and of Verizon FiOS and other recent ventures by incumbent local exchange carriers such as U-verse , have also provided competition to incumbent cable television systems. Many cable channels charge cable providers "subscriber fees," in order to carry their content. The fee that
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3232-514: The National Cable Television Association have recognized Walson as having invented cable television in the spring of 1948. A CATV system was developed in the late 1940s by James F. Reynolds in his town of Maple Dale, Pennsylvania, which grew to include Sandy Lake , Stoneboro , Polk , Cochranton , and Meadville . Even though Eastern Pennsylvania, particularly the counties of Schuylkill and Carbon in
3333-590: The TV Parental Guidelines , instead of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) ratings system . Since the early 21st century, some have advocated for laws that would require cable providers to offer their subscribers their own " à la carte " choice of channels. Unlike the standardized subscription packages being offered currently, an à la carte model requires the customer to subscribe to each channel individually. It
3434-837: The Telecommunications Act of 1996 which resulted in the creation of CableCARDs is known as Section 629, instructing the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to: ...assure the commercial availability to consumers of multichannel video programming and other services offered over multichannel video programming systems, of converter boxes, interactive communications equipment, and other equipment used by consumers to access multichannel video programming and other services offered over multichannel video programming systems, from manufacturers, retailers, and other vendors not affiliated with any multichannel video programming distributor. Multichannel video programming refers to cable or satellite television. A driving motivation of this passage
3535-751: The ghosting and noisy images associated with analog systems. However, if the reception has interference or is poor, where the error correction cannot compensate one will encounter various other artifacts such as image freezing, stuttering, or dropouts from missing intra-frames or blockiness from missing macroblocks . The audio encoding is the last to suffer a loss due to the lower bandwidth requirements. Standards that support digital SDTV broadcast include DVB , ATSC , and ISDB . The last two were originally developed for HDTV , but are also used for their ability to deliver multiple SD video and audio streams via multiplexing . The two SDTV signal types are 576i (with 576 interlaced lines of resolution, derived from
3636-491: The CableCARD failed to achieve the goal of a competitive retail market for set-top boxes. Outside the United States, CableCARDs were adopted only in South Korea, in pair with Nagravision and VideoGuard conditional access (CA) systems. U.S. adoptions of CableCARD were mostly paired with Cisco's PowerKEY (originally developed by Scientific Atlanta ) and Motorola 's (now Arris ) MediaCipher CA systems. In 2010,
3737-507: The CableCARD standard. In Canada, cable providers Cogeco and Shaw offer CableCARD-enabled DVRs. Video providers in Europe must conform to the DVB standard which is a more comprehensive open standard governed by independent standards bodies. CableCARDs can also support non-television functions and can act as a cable modem controller with the host providing modulation and demodulation functions and
3838-566: The European-developed PAL and SECAM systems), and 480i (with 480 interlaced lines of resolution, based on the American NTSC system). SDTV refresh rates are 25, 29.97 and 30 frames per second , again based on the analog systems mentioned. In North America, digital SDTV is broadcast in the same 4:3 fullscreen aspect ratio as NTSC signals, with widescreen content often being center cut . In other parts of
3939-582: The FCC eliminated CableCARD support and reporting requirements by cable operators, recognizing that cable industry deployment and use of CableCARDs have been “disappointing”, and noting that competition has provided other options for consumer flexibility via streaming media over the Internet . Comcast will stop activating CableCARDs on October 24, 2024. Cable television in the United States Cable television first became available in
4040-590: The FCC to exercise common carrier authority over 288 CATV systems in 36 states. The broadcasters maintained that CATV went against the FCC's Sixth Report and Order, which advocated at least one television station in every community. In 1958, the FCC decided that CATV was not really a common carrier since the subscriber did not determine the programming. Carter Mountain Transmission Corp., a common carrier that already transmitted television signals by microwave to CATV systems in several Wyoming towns, wanted to add
4141-776: The HPNX Pro test tool to validate the OpenCable host devices. The first test tool to verify compliance of the CableCARD devices with the OpenCable specifications, Host Emulator Tool, and produced by Margi Systems, was first utilized by CableLabs to validate the Scientific Atlanta (Cisco) and Motorola POD devices in 2003 (POD was later renamed to CableCard). Cable companies in the United States are required to provide CableCARDs conforming to this specification, and must correct incompatibilities between their networks and certified CableCARD devices. The current CableCARD standard
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4242-631: The US peaked around the year 2000, at 68.5 million total subscriptions. Since then, cable subscriptions have been in slow decline, dropping to 54.4 million subscribers by December 2013. Some telephone service providers have started offering television, reaching to 11.3 million video subscribers as of December 2013. It is claimed that the first cable television system in the United States was created in 1948 in Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania by John Walson to provide television signals to people whose reception
4343-448: The United States in 1948. By 1989, 53 million U.S. households received cable television subscriptions, with 60 percent of all U.S. households doing so in 1992. Most cable viewers in the U.S. reside in the suburbs and tend to be middle class ; cable television is less common in low income , urban , and rural areas. According to reports released by the Federal Communications Commission , traditional cable television subscriptions in
4444-451: The United States in its first 24 years was used almost exclusively to relay terrestrial commercial television stations to remote and inaccessible areas. It also became popular in other areas in which mountainous terrain caused poor reception over the air. Original programming over cable came in 1972 with deregulation of the industry. During the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)'s freeze on television licenses from 1948 to 1952 ,
4545-483: The United States that would have determined the role of the FCC in CATV policy. Chief architect of some of these bills was attorney Yolanda G. Barco . She was one of the first female executives in cable, described as the "principal attorney for cable television interests during the industry's formative years". The 1959 bill, which made it to the floor of the Senate, would have limited FCC jurisdiction to CATV systems within
4646-489: The United States, and Tarlton himself became a highly sought-after consultant. Tarlton used equipment manufactured by a new company, Jerrold Electronics . After seeing the success of the Tarlton system in 1950, Jerrold president (and future Pennsylvania governor) Milton Shapp reorganized his company to build equipment for the now-growing cable industry. In 1952, Tarlton went to work for Jerrold, helping to construct most of
4747-438: The United States. While exclusive franchises are currently prohibited by federal law, and relatively few franchises were ever expressly exclusive, frequently only one cable company offers cable service in a given community. Overbuilders in the U.S., other than telephone companies with existing infrastructure, have traditionally had severe difficulty in financial and market penetration numbers. Overbuilders have had some success in
4848-517: The actual image and 16 pixels are reserved for horizontal blanking, though a number of broadcasters fill the whole 720 frames. The display ratio for broadcast widescreen is commonly 16:9 (pixel aspect ratio of 40:33 for anamorphic ); the display ratio for a traditional or letterboxed broadcast is 4:3 (pixel aspect ratio of 10:11). An SDTV image outside the constraints of the SMPTE standards requires no non-proportional scaling with 640 pixels (defined by
4949-462: 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
5050-572: The air due to CATV competition at the time the government moved to expand its authority (nor have any since) did not stay the momentum for the expansion of regulatory authority. That some economic impact was merely plausible sufficed as the basis for government concern and government action". The FCC overruled a hearing examiner in favor of broadcasters again in the "San Diego Case". The CATV systems in San Diego, California wanted to import stations from Los Angeles, some of which could be seen in San Diego;
5151-400: The air in November 1948, Parsons was the only one in town able to see television. According to MSNBC 's Bob Sullivan, Parsons charged a $ 125 one-time set-up fee and a $ 3 a month service fee. In May 1968, Parsons was acknowledged as the father of community antenna television. In 1950, Robert Tarlton developed the first commercial cable television system in the United States. Tarlton organized
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#17328007586345252-414: The anthracite coal region, had several of the earliest CATV systems, there were other CATV entrepreneurs scattered throughout the United States. One was James Y. Davidson of Tuckerman, Arkansas . Davidson was the local movie theater manager and ran a radio repair business on the side. In 1949, he set up a cable system to bring the signal of a newly launched Memphis, Tennessee station to his community, which
5353-682: The cable industry for some time. Further, Smith's decision was influenced by his experiences testifying several times in United States Senate committee hearings. Senator, and future FCC commissioner, Kenneth A. Cox attended and participated in these hearings. He prepared a report for the Senate Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce against CATV and supporting the FCC policy of a television station in every community. In 1959 and 1961, bills were introduced in Congress of
5454-440: The cable provider offered "economy basic" subscriptions (local channels only; these appear at the lowest frequency signals, denoted by the lowest channel numbers) and "basic" subscriptions (local channels plus a handful of national channels with frequencies just higher than the local stations). Notch filters were used to filter out a "notch" of channels from an analog cable signal (for example, channels 45-50 could be "notched" out and
5555-465: The cable service provider must pay to a cable television channel can vary depending on whether it is a basic or premium channel and the perceived popularity of that channel. Because cable service providers are not required to carry all cable channels, they may negotiate the fee they will pay for carrying a channel. Typically, more popular cable channels command higher fees. For example, ESPN typically charges $ 10 per month for its suite of networks ($ 7 for
5656-420: The cable television system so that their signals can reach subscribers' homes. Additional cable television franchise fees and taxes are often tacked on by local, state, and federal governments. Most cable systems divide their channel lineups ("tiers") into three or four basic channel packages. A must-carry rule requires all cable television systems to carry all full-power local commercial broadcast stations in
5757-774: 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 and TiVo CableCARD DVRs , 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. Existing integrated cable set-top boxes perform four basic functions: New digital televisions and other devices that are labeled DCR ( Digital cable ready ) contain: The CableCARD 2.0 specification includes support for #1-4, interactive two-way communications; however it
5858-598: The card providing decoding and IP routing functionality; however this feature is rarely used and depends on the cable provider. There was much resistance from cable operators to the CableCARD rollout across the United States, preferring to support their own set-top boxes. The adoption proceeded slowly with 141,000 units by February 2006. The resistance softened somewhat with the July 2007 FCC ban on integrated security in set-top boxes, which required all new set-top boxes to use CableCARDs as their decryption mechanism. By June 2009,
5959-516: The common practice of regularly paying to see films. The possibility of turning free television viewers into paid television viewers was discussed early on. For example, after 25 million American televisions tuned to a musical version of Cinderella in 1957, executives calculated that had the network received 25¢ for each television tuned to the show, it would have earned more than $ 6 million without distribution costs. However, due to many legal, regulatory and technological obstacles, cable television in
6060-573: 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
6161-632: The contours (or the broadcast range) of a single station; however, the bill was defeated. The 1961 bill proposed by the FCC would have given the Commission authority over CATV as CATV, and not as a common carrier or broadcaster. The Commission could then adopt rules and regulations "in the public interest" to govern CATV in any area covered both by CATV and broadcast television. No action was ever taken on this bill. More important than Congressional action in determining Federal Communications Commission CATV policy were court cases and FCC hearings. In Frontier Broadcasting Co. v. Collier , broadcasters tried to compel
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#17328007586346262-685: The customer their choice of channels à la carte has become more cost-effective with the advent of digital cable, because a digital set-top converter box can be programmed remotely. IPTV (i.e., delivering TV channels over an internet or IP-based network) is even less labor-intensive, delivering channels to the consumer automatically. Currently, digital cable and satellite delivery systems with standardized subscriptions are providing an opportunity for networks that service niche and minority audiences to reach millions of households, and potentially, millions of viewers. Since à la carte could force each channel to be sold individually, such networks worry they could face
6363-544: The date was later suspended. In 1972, Dean Burch steered the FCC into a new area of regulation. It lifted its restrictions on CATV in large cities, but now put the burden of more local programming on CATV operators. In 1976, the FCC used its rule-making power to require that new systems now had to have 20 channels, and that cable providers with systems of 3,500 subscribers or more had to provide Public, educational, and government access (PEG) services with facilities and equipment necessary to use this channel capacity . During
6464-402: The demand for television increased. Since new television station licenses were not being issued, the only way the demand was met, even in communities with one or more operating broadcast stations, was by Community Antenna Television (CATV) , as early cable was known (so named because of the literal sharing of a very large receiving antenna by an entire community). On August 1, 1949, T.J. Slowie,
6565-412: The designated television market on their lineups, unless those stations opt to invoke retransmission consent and demand compensation, in which case the cable provider can decline to carry the channel (especially if the provider feels that the rate of carrying an existing service would result in an increase of the average price of a tier to levels to which it could result in a subscriber possibly dropping
6666-553: The early 1980s, various live local programs with local interests were rapidly being created all over the United States in most major television markets . Before there was public access TV , one of Time Inc.'s pioneering stations was in Columbus, Ohio , where Richard Sillman became the nation's youngest cable television director at age 16. Cable television programming is often divided between basic and premium television. Basic cable networks are generally those with wide carriage on
6767-661: The first adult-oriented premium cable services–have even offered softcore pornography as part of their programming inventory. While there are no FCC rules that apply to content on basic cable networks, many self-regulate their program content due to demographic targeting, or because of viewer and advertiser expectations, particularly with regard to profane language and nudity. In recent years, however, some networks have become more lenient towards content aired during late-primetime and late-night hours. In addition, some channels, such as FX , have positioned themselves with an original programming direction more akin to premium services, with
6868-640: The first cable network to be delivered nationwide by satellite transmission. Although such conversions are rare, some present-day basic cable channels have originated as premium services, including the Disney Channel (from 1983 to 1997), AMC (from 1984 to 1988), and Bravo (from 1982 to 1994); some of these services eventually switched to an advertiser-supported model after transitioning to an unencrypted structure. Other fledgling premium services (such as early HBO spin-off efforts Take 2 and Festival , Home Theater Network and Spotlight ) have lasted for
6969-523: 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: 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. M-Cards are backward compatible with current CableCARD devices. In older CableCARD devices that do not support multiple streams,
7070-408: The image. Nominal analog blanking should not be confused with overscan , as overscan areas are part of the actual 4:3 or 16:9 image. For SMPTE 259M-C compliance, an SDTV broadcast image is scaled to 720 pixels wide for every 480 NTSC (or 576 PAL) lines of the image with the amount of non-proportional line scaling dependent on either the display or pixel aspect ratio . Only 704 center pixels contain
7171-479: The importation of distant signals into the top 100 markets, thus making CATV at that time profitable only in cities with poor reception. In 1968, the Supreme Court upheld the FCC's right to make rules and regulations concerning CATV. In its decision on United States v. Southwestern Cable , the "San Diego Case", it said "the Commission's authority over 'all interstate ... communications by wire or radio' permits
7272-404: The lowest service tiers of multichannel television providers. In the era of analog cable television, these channels were typically transmitted without any encryption or other scrambling methods. These networks can vary in format, ranging from those targeting mainstream audiences, to specialty networks that are focused on specific genres , demographics , or niches. Basic cable networks depend on
7373-480: The main channel alone), by far the highest of any non-premium American cable channel, comparable to the premium channels, and rising rapidly. Other widely viewed cable channels have been able to command fees of over 50 cents per subscriber per month; channels can vary widely in fees depending on if they are included in package deals with other channels. Standard-definition television Standard-definition television ( SDTV ; also standard definition or SD )
7474-582: The major systems built by that company in the 1950s. Tarlton was also responsible for training many of the major operators of cable systems in the 1950s. In 2003, Tarlton was inducted in the Cable Television Hall of Fame for his work building the first widely publicized cable television company in America. The rise of free broadcast television during the 1950s greatly threatened the established entertainment industry by offering an alternative to
7575-508: 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. The physical CableCARD inserted into
7676-522: The need for a proprietary set-top box . The cable tuner, QAM 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 headend servers and forwards them to the host. CableCARDs may be used to access both standard definition and high definition channels as long as they are not part of
7777-798: The pay-television industry that operated during the 1950s and 1960s (with a few systems lingering until 1980), as well as some attempts by free-to-air broadcasters during the 1970s and 1980s that ultimately folded as their subscriber bases declined amid viewer shifts to receiving premium television content delivered by cable providers that had begun operating in metropolitan areas throughout that period. In its infancy, following its launch over Service Electric Cable 's Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania , system on November 8, 1972, HBO had been quietly providing pay programming to CATV systems in Pennsylvania and New York , using microwave technology to transmit its programming to cable and MMDS providers. In 1975, HBO became
7878-461: The power to regulate CATV. This Report and Order was designed to protect television stations in small towns. It did this by imposing two rules, which slightly altered form: one requires that a CATV system carry all local stations in which the CATV system is in the A- (best reception) contour of the station. The second prohibits the importation of programs from a non-local station that duplicates programming on
7979-591: The price of basic cable can be regulated by local authorities as part of their franchise agreements . Standard, or expanded basic, cable is not subject to price controls. In addition to the basic cable packages, all systems offer premium channel add-on packages offering either just one premium network (for example, HBO) or several premium networks for one price (for example, HBO and Showtime together). Finally, most cable systems offer pay-per-view channels where users can watch individual movies, live events, sports and other programs for an additional fee for single viewing at
8080-543: The regulation of CATV systems." Carriage refers to the agreement under which a cable provider rebroadcasts a television channel on its network. The Federal Communications Commission puts various requirements on these agreements, which may include channels cable providers are required to carry, and moderates disputes over the fees and conditions of any particular agreement. In 1969, the FCC issued rules requiring all CATV systems with over 3,500 subscribers to have facilities for local origination of programming by April 1, 1971;
8181-407: The same available bandwidth , by converting cable channels to a digital signal and then compressing the signal. Currently, most systems offer a hybrid analog/digital cable system. This means they offer a certain number of analog channels via their basic cable service with additional channels being made available via their digital cable service. Digital cable channels are touted as being able to offer
8282-513: The same separable access device available to third-parties and they were banned from providing equipment with an integrated security access mechanism. This rule is usually referred to as the "integration ban", and was unsuccessfully challenged in the courts and petitions to the FCC by the cable operators. The deadline was shifted forward twice until it went into effect on July 1, 2007. The ban on integrated security ended in December 2015. CableCARD
8383-762: The service). Cable television systems are also required to offer a subscription package that provides these broadcast channels at a lower rate than the standard subscription rate. The basic programming package offered by cable television systems is usually known as "basic cable" and provides access to a large number of cable television channels, as well as broadcast television networks (e.g., ABC , CBS , NBC , Fox , The CW , MyNetworkTV , Telemundo , Univision , UniMás , PBS ), public, educational, and government access channels, free or low-cost public service channels such as C-SPAN and NASA TV , and several channels devoted to infomercials , brokered televangelism and home shopping to defray costs. Some providers may provide
8484-525: The specification by CableLabs. The certification process can be lengthy and is performed in batches on a regular cycle every three months. The first test tool to verify compliance of OpenCable hosts with the CableCARD one-way single stream specifications, HPNX, was released by SCM and Digital Keystone in 2003. Subsequently, the HPNX Pro version, supporting two-way and M-card specifications, was released by Digital Keystone in 2006. The "M-UDCP Device Acceptance Test Plan" published by CableLabs defines how to use
8585-647: The subscriber still receives channels below 45 and above 50). This allowed cable providers to open standardized ranges of premium channels to the subscriber, but notch filtering was not a feasible way to offer each subscriber their own individual choice of channels. To offer "à la carte" service using an analog signal, a cable provider would most likely have to scramble every channel and send a technician to each subscriber's home to unscramble their choice of channels on their set-top box. Each change an analog cable customer made in their subscription would then require an additional home visit to reprogram their set-top box. Offering
8686-417: The television stations in San Diego did not want the signals to be imported. The television stations won, not allowing the signals on future cable lines in San Diego and its environs. The FCC's reasoning was to protect existing and future UHF stations in San Diego. (One of the pioneers of cable TV was KSA-TV ) In the First Report and Order by the Federal Communications Commission on CATV, the FCC gave itself
8787-504: The top 10 "incumbent" U.S. cable operators had deployed more than 14 million operator-supplied set-tops with CableCARDs and 437,800 CableCARD modules for use in retail devices. The National Cable Television Association reported in April 2016 that only 621,400 CableCARDs were deployed for use in retail devices by the nine largest incumbent cable operators, compared to 55 million operator-supplied set-top boxes with CableCARDs. This indicates that
8888-408: The use of a converter box ). Because their programming is commercial-free (except for promotions in-between shows for the networks' own content), these networks command much higher fees from cable systems. Premium services have the discretion to offer the service unencrypted to a certain number of participating cable providers during a short-term free preview period to allow those who do not receive
8989-445: The user has a QAM tuner —a feature in some televisions and DVRs . 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
9090-528: The video into a pillarbox . The pixel aspect ratio is the same for 720- and 704-pixel resolutions because the visible image (be it 4:3 or 16:9) is contained in the center 704 horizontal pixels of the digital frame. In the case of a digital video line having 720 horizontal pixels (including horizontal blanking), only the center 704 pixels contain the actual 4:3 or 16:9 image, and the 8-pixel-wide stripes on either side are called nominal analog blanking or horizontal blanking and should be discarded when displaying
9191-468: The world that used the PAL or SECAM color systems, digital standard-definition television is now usually shown with a 16:9 aspect ratio , with the transition occurring between the mid-1990s and late-2000s depending on the region. Older programs with a 4:3 aspect ratio are broadcast with a flag that switches the display to 4:3. Some broadcasters prefer to reduce the horizontal resolution by anamorphically scaling
9292-576: Was borne out of an adversarial process between two main groups: cable companies represented by the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA) and consumer electronics companies represented by the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA). The portion of the CableCARD specs that could be agreed upon describe how one-way services work, so only the portion known as UDCP (Unidirectional Digital Cable Product)
9393-423: Was charged with working with the industry to carry out the directives of the 1996 law. On June 11, 1998, after securing proposals and recommendations from interested parties, the FCC ordered that cable companies would provide a separable security access device by July 1, 2000, which could be used by third-party devices to access digital cable networks. The separable security device was referred to in FCC regulations as
9494-521: Was located too far away to receive the signal with set-top antennas alone. Leroy E. "Ed" Parsons built the first cable television system in the United States that used coaxial cable , amplifiers, and a community antenna to deliver television signals to an area that otherwise would not have been able to receive broadcast television signals. In 1948, Parsons owned a radio station in Astoria, Oregon . A year earlier he and his wife had first seen television at
9595-468: Was poor because of tall mountains and buildings blocking TV signals. Mahanoy City was ideally suited for CATV services, since broadcast television signals could easily be received via mountaintop antennas and retransmitted by "twin-lead" or "ladder-lead" cable to the valley community below (where broadcast reception was very poor). Walson's "first" claim has long been questioned and his claimed starting date can not be verified. The United States Congress and
9696-565: Was rejected by the 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
9797-410: Was required by the FCC. As it was the only thing required, most of the early devices were one-way capable; however all the actual CableCARDs produced were two-way capable. Many enhancements to the CableCARD standard including the optional Multi-Stream support became known as CableCARD 2.0. Optical cable services (e.g. Verizon Fios ) are classified as cable services and must, by FCC rules, also support
9898-829: Was subsequently renamed Fox Family in 1998 after it was acquired by a partnership between Fox Entertainment Group and Saban Entertainment , then ABC Family after its 2001 sale to ABC parent The Walt Disney Company , and finally to its current name, Freeform in 2016. The origins of premium cable lie in two areas: early pay television systems of the 1950s and 1960s and early cable (CATV) operators' small efforts to add extra channels to their systems that were not derived from free-to-air signals. In more recent years, premium cable refers to networks–such as Home Box Office (HBO) , Cinemax , Showtime , The Movie Channel , Flix , Starz , MoviePlex , and Epix –that scramble or encrypt their signals so that only those paying additional monthly fees to their cable system can legally view them (via
9999-745: Was the CBN Satellite Service, a Christian television service launched by televangelist Pat Robertson in April 1977 as the television ministry of his Christian Broadcasting Network , that was delivered by satellite as a more efficient way to distribute the programming. For years, the CBN Satellite Service (later renamed CBN Cable Network in 1984) mixed religious programming with reruns of classic television series to fill out its 24-hour schedule. The network changed its name to The CBN Family Channel in 1988 (revised to The Family Channel in 1990 once CBN spun it out to an indirectly owned for-profit company, International Family Entertainment ). It
10100-530: Was the outcome of a U.S. federal government objective, directed in the Telecommunications Act of 1996 , to provide a robust competitive retail market for set-top boxes so consumers did not have to use proprietary equipment from the cable operators. It was believed that this would provide consumers with more choices and lower costs. A 2020 FCC decision removed the requirement for cable companies to provide CableCARDs, but they are still required to provide consumer access options via "separable security". The portion of
10201-478: Was to foster the kind of consumer choices that resulted after the Federal government landmark Carterfone ruling requiring telephone companies to allow consumers to purchase third-party telephones for attachment to the phone company network. The thought was that consumers would benefit from wider choices due to competition between consumer electronics (CE) manufacturers unaffiliated with cable companies. The FCC
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