Light Reading Mobile – Telecom News, Analysis, Events, and Research
LR Cable News Analysis  

Ceton Boosts CableCARDs

May 14, 2013 | Mari Silbey |
There hasn't been much good news on the retail CableCARD front lately, or in fact much news of any kind. But Ceton Corp. may be upping the technology's profile again with its new InfiniTV 6 product line of CableCARD devices.

Ceton has launched two new products that build on its TV-tuning hardware for Windows Media Center PCs. The InfiniTV 6 ETH connects to a consumer home network via Ethernet, while the InfiniTV 6 PCIe plugs directly into a user's computer through the PCI Express slot. Both products include six QAM tuners for watching and recording up to six TV shows at once.

The consumer audience for Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Media Center application is limited. Plus, it's unclear how long the company will continue to support the software given its other TV priorities. (See Microsoft Eyes OTT Set-Top.)

However, Ceton has made the most of the platform with its hardware options for streaming and recording TV shows not only to PCs, but also to TVs via media extenders. (See Ceton Pitches Cable Set-Top Alternative and TiVo Stays on a Tier 2 Tear.)

Through the use of CableCARDs, Ceton is offering some of the very few retail products that give consumers a degree of independent, multi-screen control over cable TV viewing and video recording. Most multi-screen video streaming options that feature cable content today are delivered over the Web, and are driven by the cable operators themselves or by the programming networks.

TiVo Inc.'s retail products continue to be the primary exception to that rule.

Ceton had planned to launch a full-fledged retail DVR in 2012. But those plans were put on hold in the light of Media Center's uncertain future.

The new InfiniTV 6 ETH is available online now for a suggested retail price of US$299. The InfiniTV 6 PCIe is expected to go on sale in June for the same amount.

— Mari Silbey, Special to Light Reading Cable



Currently we allow the following HTML tags in comments:

Single tags

These tags can be used alone and don't need an ending tag.

<br> Defines a single line break

<hr> Defines a horizontal line

Matching tags

These require an ending tag - e.g. <i>italic text</i>

<a> Defines an anchor

<b> Defines bold text

<big> Defines big text

<blockquote> Defines a long quotation

<caption> Defines a table caption

<cite> Defines a citation

<code> Defines computer code text

<em> Defines emphasized text

<fieldset> Defines a border around elements in a form

<h1> This is heading 1

<h2> This is heading 2

<h3> This is heading 3

<h4> This is heading 4

<h5> This is heading 5

<h6> This is heading 6

<i> Defines italic text

<p> Defines a paragraph

<pre> Defines preformatted text

<q> Defines a short quotation

<samp> Defines sample computer code text

<small> Defines small text

<span> Defines a section in a document

<s> Defines strikethrough text

<strike> Defines strikethrough text

<strong> Defines strong text

<sub> Defines subscripted text

<sup> Defines superscripted text

<u> Defines underlined text

Network Computing encourages readers to engage in spirited, healthy debate, including taking us to task. However, Network Computing moderates all comments posted to our site, and reserves the right to modify or remove any content that it determines to be derogatory, offensive, inflammatory, vulgar, irrelevant/off-topic, racist or obvious marketing/SPAM. Network Computing further reserves the right to disable the profile of any commenter participating in said activities.

 
Disqus Tips To upload an avatar photo, first complete your Disqus profile. | View the list of supported HTML tags you can use to style comments. | Please read our commenting policy.
 
Related Content
Most Popular
Read
White Papers SPONSORED CONTENT
Featured
Resource Library SPONSORED CONTENT
Spanning Tree
An Ethernet protocol that checks a network for loops