Just a Quickie

I'm gonna make this quick, just because I don't want to get into too much trouble .

Today at CES, AMD announced the ATI TV Wonder™ Digital Cable Tuner. This is the OCUR device I wrote about earlier. I'm going to skip the fact that I'd rather the ATI name just disappear, as opposed to figuring out which company's name goes on what. I'd like to make a quick talk about DRM.

While I don't understand why exactly a product like the ATI TV Wonder™ Digital Cable Tuner cannot be sold to the general public (a very blatant disregard of "Fair Use" IMHO), I really don't understand the leaps and bounds that OEMs have to go through to carry the product.

For me to sell this product, I will have to do several things. First, I need to get an answer from the email I sent AMD about how to go about carrying this thing. Cablelabs already answered me, and sent me to a PDF describing the requirements on their end. Basically, Microsoft is supposed to certify a machine to run Windows Vista Home Media Server. Upon completion of that, I send a letter to CableLabs. They setup my invoice and upon payment of an undisclosed sum of money, they send me a CD. Then there's something called Test Wave that costs some money. Sign this, sign that, then pay some MORE MONEY. Then, it looks like there will be royalty fees on every machine I ship that AMD couldn't have taken care of on their end.

And that's just to get to where I can start begging AMD for the device.

It boils down to the fact that since I'm such a worthless little guy that only one company seems to want to help (thanks Tracy!), I will be a little late delivering Home Media PC's with CableCard support. It's atleast 5 or 6 weeks away, but I will do everything in my power to get them out the door as soon as possible.

I'm off to cool down a bit by killing some aliens...