Background

• A telecommunications law passed in 1996 required the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to allow consumers to receive multichannel television programming without requiring the use of equipment from the programming provider. This mandate led to the creation of the CableCARD.
  
  

Consumer Use

• A CableCARD allows consumers to purchase their own hardware to receive and view television programming. Cable television subscribers are no longer forced into using the hardware their cable provider chooses.
  
  

Advantages

• A CableCARD eliminates the need for an additional set-top cable box. Consumers typically pay less to rent CableCARDs than cable boxes.
  
  

Specifications

• Consumers can rent two types of CableCARDs: a single-stream CableCARD (S-Card) and a multistream CableCARD (M-Card). An S-Card can decode only one channel at a time. An M-Card can simultaneously decode up to six streams.
  
  

CableCARD 2.0

• In addition to decoding television programming, the next generation of CableCARDs are designed to have access to onscreen program guides, pay-per-view and on-demand programming. Second-generation CableCARDs were predicted to be widely available in late 2010.