Challenges abound in improving the reliability, ease of use and s...

filing at the Commission. Executives from CEA, Hitachi, Pioneer, Sharp Labs, Sony and TTE were sent by the Cable Working Group of the CEA’s Video Div. board to emphasize the importance of CableCARDs in the “competitive availability” of digital cable products and in the DTV transition, the ex parte said. Despite “the good-faith efforts and cooperation extended by a number of cable operators and their vendors,” achieving “systematic and predictable support” among the “large variety of local cable systems” remains an unfulfilled goal, the CE delegates told the Commission, the filing said: “They emphasized the urgency of achieving high levels of consistency and reliability at this time, especially in light of the importance of the CableCARD as a potentially attractive feature for mid-size and smaller TV receivers bearing DTV tuners. Based on experience to date, they made the point that the most efficient way to assure systematic, reliable support for competitive devices is through common reliance by both cable operators’ set-top boxes and competitive devices on the same conditional access technologies.” Last March, the FCC extended the integration ban on digital cable set-tops by a year to July 2007 to give Comcast, Microsoft and Time Warner Cable time to develop a software-based conditional access system for navigation devices and a timetable for deploying it. The FCC has set a Dec. 1 deadline for a cable industry progress report. By Oct. 1 and then every 90 days, the 6 largest cable operators also must file status reports at the Commission on CableCARD deployment and a timetable for deployment of multistream CableCARDs.