It's been a busy week for
CableCARD HTPCs. First we caught the
Dell XPS 410 preview prior to spotting an unofficial announcement in the AVS Forum that
Velocity Micro would be shipping their CableCARD HTPC this week. Now we struck gold (we think) with the first official CableCard-
ready Vista HTPCs now shipping from
Niveus. As of today, both the Niveus Summit Series ($3,199
Rainier and $7,999
Denali) and Pro Series ($7,999 n7 and $15,999
n9) ship with HD DVD options and hot-blooded HD CableCARD-support. Keyword: "support," meaning you still have to spring an additional $1,499 to get the separate Digital Cable Receiver box with 2x CableCARD receivers like
we saw at CES. You'll also have to track down a local dealer to bring home the Pro or Denali models but at least the Rainier is available online and shipping in 2-3 weeks. As always with CableCARD, there's still a piece that's unclear: the CableCARD receiver still shows a "mid-March" ship date. Pffff.
[Via
Chris Lanier's Blog]
Read -- Niveus Rainier
Read -- Niveus Digital Cable Receiver
posted Mar 22nd 2007 at 11:13AM
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Griffon @ Mar 22nd 2007 2:59PM
Those are some seriously fucking expensive boxes. I thought the velocity micro ones where high (they also don't say if it's one or two card slot model tuner :( ), but these are just over the top and then some cost wise. What pisses me off is this retailers get to total close out smaller box builders and tinkers because of the free monopoly MS and cable labs has given them by requiring final box certification and special unlock codes for the reader.
For god sake somebody hurry up and hack that shit so we can buy a reader and get cable card goodness into our home without needing to sell are car.