ATI OCUR – CableCard and HDTV Support for Windows Media Center

By | January 5th, 2006 comments icon (5) Comments


ati ocur reference designWell folks… I think Windows Media Center is finally going to kick some DVR ass! When I first saw the review of ATI’s OCUR Digital Cable HDTV Tuner over at Anandtech, I went into ganster talk mode, bursting out loud… “Ooooooh, $h*t!” and “damn Gina!”, even “take that MSFT playa haters” came out. This is major news, sure, it’s still a preproduction device, but it’s working, beeyatches! Microsoft is officially saying it should be available “Holiday Season 2006″. For a full review and write up, check out the post at Anandtech – do it now!

UPDATE: Here’s ATI’s official press release on OCUR.





Filed in: Peripherals

  • DarrylS

    Very cool to see the first tuner card with Cable Card support. Unidirectional kinda sucks though and cable companies are not gonna be too happy with that (can’t purchase PPV or VOD). I wonder why bi-directional support is not supported/planned?
    I am not a ‘MSFT playa hater’ but am I the only one that fears that all this Vista /’protected path’ DRM reqs/infrasturure is only going to reduce competition in this space? I want to see BTV/Sage/Myth be able to offer the same capbilities and be able to expand the market with open competition. At minimum I hope the protected path DRM stuff is standardized so other OSes and applications can implement/use it without being at the mercy of one company.
    Also, just curious, but what does this mean for OCAP & and the Open Cable standards. With Cable Card support could some of the OC standards be ported/implemented on the OS?
    Lastly, a year from now (when Vista and OCUR and planned to be released) IPTV is supposed to be taking off. Wonder just how relevant this will be then.

  • http://www.alexandergrundner.com Alexander Grundner

    DarrylS said: Very cool to see the first tuner card with Cable Card support. Unidirectional kinda sucks though and cable companies are not gonna be too happy with that (can’t purchase PPV or VOD). I wonder why bi-directional support is not supported/planned?

    It will be in CableCARD 2.0, which is still under development.

  • brianworkman

    Are we going to have to have multi cable cards (like now having to have multiple cable boxes) or will one cable card be cable of giving us dual tuner capabilities like my DirecTV Tivo box?

  • Visuaguy

    As cblecard standards are US only, european readers will be satisfied to hear that “ze germans” have created a driver and tool that enables MCe users with technotrend DVB S/C/T cards can now use these inside mediacenter and be able to use all pvr functions for digital tv too.

    I hear you guys think: “what’s the big deal, i’ve been recording digital tv al along”. Well my friends. not in europe you’re not. while most of the tv channels are encrypted you need a Common intrface and smart card here. and that was not supported.
    well it is now. look here: http://www.technotrend.de

  • http://www.alexandergrundner.com Alexander Grundner

    I just added ATI’s official press release on OCUR to the parent post.