Last week at Cable-Tec, the cable television industry’s technical tradeshow, Panasonic showed off TVs and set-top boxes featuring tru2way support. Introduced last year, tru2way is an add-on to CableCard, a technology which enables the decryption of digital (QAM) signals from US cable television operators.
Unlike basic CableCard technology, which doesn’t work with interactive services like Video On Demand (VOD), tru2way is designed to be a complete replacement for traditional cable company provided digital cable receivers.
There’s been quite a bit of interest from consumer electronics manufacturers, most notably Panasonic. Earlier this year an official from the National Cable Trade Association told the FCC “cooperation and open communication between cable and CE has never been better.”
Unfortunately the date by which most US cable customers were supposed to have access to tru2way compatible service (July 9,2009) has come and gone.
The longer it takes cable companies to bring tru2way to consumers, the more entrenched competition from new internet-based services will be and the more ground they’ll have to make up. Offerings like Netflix Watch Instantly and Xbox Live seem to gain in popularity every day.
Cable company executives are used to thinking of their companies as established incumbents. But the market they’re hoping to capture with tru2way enabled devices is one that’s still being defined. Continued delays mean more time for other companies to establish the kind of dominance cable once enjoyed in the home entertainment landscape.
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Result for: digital cable
Sling Media has announced the availability of the HD model of its popular Slingbox media hub, dubbed Slingbox PRO-HD and has said it will retail for $300 USD.
The company says the PRO-HD will let users stream “HD content from a home television source, including over the air HD digital signals (ATSC), digital cable channels (Clear QAM), HDTV cable set-top boxes, HDTV satellite receivers, or HD DVR’s, to a laptop or desktop computer in and around the house.”
The stream can also be sent online to your laptop as long as you have SlingPlayer software installed on the system.
The new box uses a technology dubbed SlingStream 2.0 which “adaptively stream high quality television content across virtually any network connection.” The technology supposedly improves audio and video quality.
The SlingPlayer software has been updated as well and will work with XP and Vista. The software “features a live video buffer which lets you pause and rewind a live video stream. Also included is an electronic programming guide (EPG) and the incorporation of Sling Accounts, a single sign-on feature that keeps key personal Slingbox information including Finder IDs, favorite channels and programming guide information.”
