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Cable giants being sued for VOD patent infringement
If nothing else, you've got to admire the tenacity of a Connecticut-based firm called USA Video Interactive, which just days after losing what seems to be a final appeal in its lawsuit against Movielink, decided to go after almost all of the country's major cable operators for supposedly infringing on the same patent. Comcast, Cox, Charter, and Time Warner (disclosure: Time Warner owns the company that owns the network that includes Engadget) are all named in a suit filed Tuesday in a U.S. District Court in Texas by USA Video (maybe Cablevision got spared because of all its other legal woes), which claims that like Movielink, the cable giants are violating its so-called Store-and-Forward Video-on-Demand patent (#5,130,792, filed in 1990) by using protected technology in their own VOD services. Besides making patents, the company also offers various products revolving around email, web tools, digital video watermarking, and content delivery infrastructure, so it's probably not appropriate to bunch it in with other lawsuit-happy -- but seemingly less legitimate -- claimants such as NTP and Visto.[Via TechWeb and Digital Media Thoughts]
HD shortages: They're not just for Europe anymore
We've heard quite a bit about how shortages may prevent European soccer football (whatever) fans from checking out the World Cup in high definition, but what about HDTV owners in the good ol' U.S. of A? This article from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch details the problems some are having getting hold of high definition cable boxes, and according to cable company representatives, such shortages are common across the country.Tis a shame that in this land of plenty, some are still being forced to go without. As you enjoy your 1080i, 720p or otherwise this Good Friday remember those who are forced to get by on 480i, the children who are being (bit)starved and the ignorant (up)converted masses. Something must be done.
Does Charter do DVI?
HD Beat reader Chris wrote us about a problem he is having trying to connect his cable box via DVI, and found that it was not enabled."Just thought i would send a little experience your way tonight. I just spent half an hour on the phone with charter cable. I have all my services through them and through the 8 months we have had service with them, they have been great. Until today. I just ordered a DVI cable and received it. My wife and I get home to hook it up, snuggle and bask in the DVI HD glory in our home. But wait, it isn't working. What??!?!? that isn't right it wouldn't work. I contacted charter for a little assistance and they tell me that the DVI option is locked out on all the boxes because no one uses them. How the hell do they know that? They don't give anyone a chance to try it out! I spoke with several folks about this because i was ticked. I love HD. with the component cable hooked up, but I was just plain excited with the idea of hooking it up with DVI and now Charter has shot it down. Charter claims they have to pay a third party to unlock that feature on the box. what a crock! After searching the web, it turns out other folks have run into this also!"Chris is in the St. Louis area and has a Motorola BMC9012 Moxi DVR. This review of the box noted that several featues (including DVI) are disabled, but an update provided that capability if your provider chooses to enable it. This thread on AVS Forums provides some more insight, hopefully the update will be rolled out soon. Any other HD Beat readers run into a similar situation with their cable provider or know of a way to get that perfectly good digital output working?
CES: Cable industry shows support for OCAP
The cable TV industry held a press conference at CES to show off the OpenCable Application Platform (OCAP) and their progress. In case you weren't paying attention, this is what will allow manufacturers of TV's and set-top boxes to make and sell devices directly to consumers that have the same capabilities (or maybe additional capabilities) as the boxes you can lease from your cable operator.Comcast, Charter and Advance all announced plans for limited rollouts in 2006, with other providers like Cox and Cablevision having similar plans, it will probably be over the next couple years we see this rolled out everywhere, hopefully by which time we'll have some sort of bidirectional support for HDTV tuners on the PC. LG Panasonic and Samsung are all down with OCAP with LG also recently signing a deal to include the new downloadable content protection (DCAS) in their products.So yeah, more DRM'd through and through devices for your home, but potentially much more choice over how you want to view the content you're paying for from your cable company.
