As reported by Multichannel News, cable MSOs have deployed 4.18 million CableCARD-enabled STBs in the last nine months. 1.9 million of those have been deployed since the last industry report on December 26th. However, as of March 19th, only approximately 347,000 CableCARDs had been distributed for use in third party devices, such as TiVo and CableCARD-enabled HDTVs. The majority of the cards have been installed in cable company set top boxes, since the FCC ban on integrated-security STBs went into effect last July 1st.
Still, that’s something of a good thing. I’d bet a majority of those 347,000 devices are TiVo Series3 or TiVo HD boxes, since they’re the leading CableCARD devices on the market. And being forced to deal with CableCARD in their own STBs should force the cable MSOs to wring out lingering issues in their systems, since they have to ‘eat their own dog food’ as it were.
