Will we ever see IPTV tuners for PCs?

[wayner]

Here in Canada the phone companies have been rolling out IPTV services to be able to compete with the cable companies in having a TV offering - I imagine the US is similar in this regard.

Will we ever see IPTV tuning devices for PCs, not unlike CableCard tuning devices? If so would we be able to use them with Sage or would there be the same DRM issues that we have with CableCard?

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by wayner

Will we ever see IPTV tuning devices for PCs, not unlike CableCard tuning devices?

I doubt it, there's no sort of standard decryption mechanism that I'm aware of (smart cards, or the like).

If so would we be able to use them with Sage or would there be the same DRM issues that we have with CableCard?

I'm sure it would (same issues), I see no reason to expect anything will be better.

[PLUCKYHD]

I believe this is the hope of AllVid but it is a ways of it it ever even comes to fruitation.

[reggie14]

I'd be surprised to see anything. There were long rumors of a DirecTV tuner for Media Center, but that never came to be, probably because the market is too small. I suspect the same is true for IPTV solutions.

If I understand the FCC's intentions correctly, AllVid would apply to all types of video programming providers, including cable, satellite and IPTV. However, the FCC has already said DRM would be a part of AllVid, so I don't see how that makes anything better for Sage users. Plus you're Canadian, and I doubt they'll jump on the AllVid bandwagon.

I suspect AllVid will never come to fruition, but I do think its probably just a matter of time before we get rid of a separate pipe for TV and everything is simply sent over a fat Internet pipe. That's probably when there will be a bigger opening for TV on computers. But I think its relatively clear that we're going to continue on with the streaming model a la Hulu and Netflix, rather than the purchasing model of iTunes. In my opinion, that means DRM will live on, and there will probably be some difficult interoperability issues for authentication and access control mechanisms.