[CES] Niveus to Show Dual-Tuner CableCard Receiver (OCUR) for Vista Media Center

Hurrah, another year of more CableCard/HTPC announcements! Another year of companies saying you will have to buy an OEM PC to get proper Cable HD support on your HTPC. Yup, call me bitter. Do you think it just might piss off one or two consumers who have spent months tweaking their DIY PC's only to be snubbed by the most important hardware in HTPC's small history? 

Ranting aside, at least the technology is making it out there and hopefully the next step is to bring it to the DIY crowd.

From the article:

Little did the world know at the time just how difficult it would be to
implement OCUR. Only certain Microsoft partners would have access to the
enabling technology and licensing, and it's been unclear exactly what
would need to be certified–just the OCUR box (or internal card) or the entire
solution from the CableCard to the PC to connected devices? Would OCUR devices
be backward-compatible with the XP version of MCE or just new Vista computers?
The latter, for the most part. Could you buy an OCUR box at Best Buy, plug it
into your Vista PC, get the CableCard from the cable company, and enjoy HD
content through any MCE? Not initially. The compatibility chain, it seems, is
still being worked out