Greetings. You'll recall a few days ago I reviewed the situation concerning incompatibilities between the new High Definition TiVo ("TiVo HD") and the Switched Digital Video (SDV) systems being rapidly deployed by cable systems.

That was last Wednesday. The following day, that blog item appeared on Slashdot and was as a result very widely referenced and discussed. So much for Thursday.

Now comes word that the next day (yesterday), the cable industry trade association (NCTA - National Cable & Telecommunications Association) made a filing with the FCC offering to develop a workaround for the problem.

As might be expected, NCTA is continuing to push the "OpenCable Application Platform" (OCAP) system that the Consumer Electronics Association has found to be unacceptable.

However, NCTA reportedly says in their new FCC filing that they are now willing to develop a "tuning resolver" to work around the problem for existing devices like the new TiVo. This device would be a USB "dongle" to handle SDV tuning (the second of the probable options that I mentioned in my original blog item, as it happens).

While this is obviously a welcome development, two obvious questions are "When?" and "How much will it cost?"

Certainly cost is important. And if the device takes too long to appear, the associated host devices might already be obsolete!

Still, a busy three days, and no doubt the timing of the NCTA filing vs. all of the Slashdot attention to the issue was just an amusing coincidence.

--Lauren--