SlashGear Japan
Have you ever been lied to and ignored by cable service provider when asked to gather CableCARD installation on your HTDV or Set-Top box? They sure have interesting ways and unheard of excuses to avoid the topic. If you are new to CableCARD and insist of its service, they’ll probably throw you the technicality or excuse of system incompatibility, and then push the company’s HDTV tuner instead. What they hardly explain to customers is the current CableCards’ inabilities only miss the costly and no good subscription of VOD premium movie services. You are more than fine unless you live in a few unfortunate cities that employing SDV on HD channels. All these hassles with CardCARDS will soon to change with tru2Way.
With tru2way, your display is not longer required an outboard set-top box from cable provider. It’s built from the ground up to support interactive and full duplex contents like Switched digital video, video-on-demand and pay-per-view channels.
CableLabs has quietly stamped the seal of approval on two tru2way HDTVs from Panasonic. The company has not revealed the model of the displays but has officially acknowledged the certification and will roll out a 42-inch and 50-inch tru2way HDTVs coming this holiday season. It’s more likely the same 50-inch Viera PZ80Q displayed at CEDIA 2008, and it will be the first tru2way enabled display in the retail.
One Response to “CableCards approved Panasonic, tru2way HDTVs coming for holiday”
CableTechTalk October 4, 2008
I would never offer a broad, blanket-wide argument that the cable industry has done a flawless job of supporting CableCARD deployment. I talk to lots of people who are working hard on this issue, but some people may have offered work that is less than stellar.
But you offer a pretty aggressive charge, without any evidence.
It’s also been true from the moment that the one-way Plug & Play negotiations were completed in late 2002, that the initial CableCARD devices weren’t going to offer the full functionality of set-top boxes. You say that the only downside is that subscribers “miss the costly and no good subscription of VOD premium movie services.” The big miss is that the devices (not the CableCARDs) are one-way. No two-way services work. That means no VOD (which is much larger than just premium VOD). It means switched digital video doesn’t work.
And after all that complaining, you seem to miss the fact that tru2way devices will also require CableCARDs.
You finish by reporting that CableLabs “quietly stamped the seal of approval” on Panasonic’s products. The announcement received pretty broad coverage in the trade press that I read.
+1