If you are considering a cablecard vs. a box, read this from the NY Times (12/30/04):
" First, you no longer receive the cable company's onscreen TV guide. Of course, most CableCard TV sets (marketed as ''Digital Cable Ready'') have their own built-in channel guides, and so do hard-drive recorders like the TiVo.
Second, you lose the ability to order pay-per-view movies with your remote control. You have to order them using your cable company's Web site or by calling its toll-free number.
Third, today's CableCard can't handle video-on-demand services. (They're like pay-per-view movies, except that you can start a movie whenever you like, and even pause it while it plays.)
Now, you may not particularly care about losing these features. Plenty of people, perfectly content with sources like HBO, Blockbuster and Netflix, have never ordered a movie through the cable box and never will.
But there are people who care deeply about pay-per-view and video-on-demand services: the cable companies. They've spent years and millions of dollars cultivating these services, some of which satellite services can't match. To the cable companies, the one-way CableCard represents not only a huge new headache (involving billing, inventory, business development, customer service, installer training and so on), but also a potential kick in the spreadsheet.
So if you're interested in the CableCard at this early stage, you may have to take on a relentless ''60 Minutes'' persona. All cable companies offer the CableCard, but few promote it, and the front-line operators may not even know what you're talking about. Last week, for example, Cablevision mailed a brochure to its customers listing the price increases for 2005 and describing its latest services, with nary a word about the CableCard.
In fact, you may get the distinct impression that the cable companies are trying to talk you out of a CableCard. At a Web site for Time Warner Cable, a Frequently Asked Question about CableCard televisions (also called Digital Cable Ready sets) reads; ''Q: Why should I get one? What are its advantages over a set-top box? A: A Digital Cable Ready television may not be for you. If you want to take advantage of Time Warner Cable's interactive services, such as iControl or our Interactive Program Guide, then you want the expanded features of a digital set-top box.'' (Um -- those are advantages?)
Eventually, all this caginess will evaporate, as soon as the industry settles on a standard for two-way CableCards. By most estimates, however, two-way CableCards are at least two years away. Meanwhile -- listen up, pay-per-view patrons -- the two-way CableCard won't work in today's CableCard-equipped TV sets.
Before kissing your cable box goodbye forever, there's one final consideration: TV-set compatibility. At this early stage, different TV makers have designed their CableCard slots with different degrees of gracefulness.
If you use, or think you might someday use, video-on-demand and similar interactive features, don't invest in the CableCard until the two-way version arrives in 2006 or whenever.
But otherwise, if Santa brought you a Digital Cable Ready set -- meaning one with a CableCard slot -- becoming an early adopter of this promising technology means lower monthly fees, fewer wires and remotes, and maybe even a slightly sharper picture. Those are gifts of an especially rare sort: the kind that simplifies your technological life instead of complicating it.
