For all of you that faced trouble with your cablecard, we have good news for you!! Hope this will be a way for us to save a little money and no longer pay for the rental on our settop cable boxes. Read below:
The Federal Communications Commission has asked for feedback on a new video interface to replace its failed CableCARD policy—an "AllVid" adapter that would, in the FCC’s words, "act as an intermediary" between home theater gear and pay-TV services.
Under the proposal, cable, satellite, or telco video providers would send their signals "to a small adapter on the customer’s premises that would present a standard interface to all consumer devices," explained FCC Chair Julius Genachowski at Wednesday’s Open Commission meeting. "The adapter could be connected to the customer’s TVs, computers, or other devices that can display multichannel video programming and Internet content."
The idea would target four policy objectives with one stone, Genachowski says, allowing device makers to more freely innovate, letting video providers roll out new services without requiring couch potatoes to replace their current equipment, creating more consumer choices, and promoting broadband adoption as TV watchers experiment with Internet video.
more @ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/04/fcc-goodbye-cablecard-hello-allvid.ars