14 DAY TRIAL // Somewhat similar to what happened to NVIDIA when they had to withdraw at the very last moment the 8800GTX cards from the market to fix a "simple BOM error, wrong resistor value", AMD caught the same bug with their CableCards. The concept of the CableCard is simple, it's usually a plug-in card, developed by Cable Laboratories, the size of a credit card that allows for users (in the United States) to view and record digital cable television channels on digital video recorders, personal computers and TVs without the use of a Set Top Box (STB).
ATI, in collaboration with Microsoft, planned on bringing the CableCard called ATI TV Wonder Digital Cable Tuner (it supports analog signal as well even if the title says otherwise) to PCs sooner, and even though TV providers didn't agree to the CableCard concept because it "doesn't support the two-way interactivity needed for applications such as video on demand and pay-per-view", another problem caused the delay of PCs with these cards installed on them to be delivered as of yet. Apparently, a problem occurs when switching from a digital cable signal to analog reception and then back again.
By adding this TV tuner to a barebone for instance and by running a specialized OS such as Windows Media Center 2005, you can have HD content delivered to the home user, without having to be restricted to the downscaled content received on the PC through a video connection from a STB. As a solution for this problem, ATI's engineers are working on a firmware upgrade which should fix the bug on previously manufactured PCs that use ATI's Digital Cable Tuner. The firmware upgrade should be available next week, stated an ATI engineer.
