Digital Home Thoughts: Only 200,000 CableCARDs in Service

"The recent release of TiVo's Series 3 dual-CableCARD machine has rekindled interest in CableCARD technology and resurrected old questions about how well these devices work and when multistream and two-way models will become available. Fortunately, the National Cable & Telecommunications Association can provide some answers. Its most recent FCC filing gathers up the CableCARD-related activity of the six largest cable operators into a tidy package with a bow on top in order to make a point that most people already understand: CableCARDs are not exciting. Plus, they have problems. This is not how the report phrases things; in fact, it suggests an enthusiastic market for the technology and claims that there is a "significant deployment" of CableCARDs in the US. When you look at the numbers, though, this "significant deployment" looks more like a trial rollout."

I am not surprised by the extremely few cable cards in service. This goes back to some of the questions in the thread about Fox Thwarting DVR Fast-Forwarding. Plus, when you walk into a store these days and ask for details about TVs that support cablecards, it is very hard to get clear answers. What I was quite surprised by was the number of cablecards that have problems. For example - Cablevision reports having 10,120 cablecards in service, and it experienced 2,332 problems. Scary! Do any of you use a cablecard? What has your experience been?