Any FCC requirement to support Tivo HD in MCard mode?

You betcha they have to support third party boxes such as those certified by CableLabs. That was the whole point of the 1996 Telecom Act.

What would the cards be plugged into? There is only one currently capable of Multi stream operation of MCards- the Tivo HD. However the THD will revert the MCards to SCard mode if the network says they aren't supported. I know in principle the cable operators are supposed to treat third party boxes equally. I recall a request that the FCC set a firm date for CableCo's with servers supporting > 750MHZ or thereabouts to support M-UDCP third party devices, but don't know if anything came of it. Certainly, the cableco's will do what they like with their own MCard devices...

Actually, CableCo's can't charge whatever they like for cablecards.

Telecom law Sec 623.3 said:

(3) EQUIPMENT.--The regulations prescribed by the Commission under this subsection shall include standards to establish, on the basis of actual cost, the price or rate for--
... addressable converter box or other equipment as is required to access programming described in paragraph (8); (source)

Click to expand...

Otherwise, the cableco's could very quickly have swept this matter away by charging $300/ per month for CableCards. No doubt we would be treated to reading arguments posted here that such charges are fair in order to cover the support costs of CableCards.

When dealing with lawyers, be extremely careful with the language they use, and take note of any peculiar rewordings or omissions of points they might make when "agreeing" to your position.

For example, in this case, they did not explicitly say they would support the card in multistream mode. That is, it would be literally valid for him to respond as he did if their only intention was to support the MCard in single stream mode. Of course that violates the spirit of your question, but the lawyers job is to get you count on spirits while he counts on words- because the words are what will be considered in court.

Perhaps my understanding is incorrect, but if an M-UDCP host like a Tivo HD showed up on a network with an MCard installed, and the network did not have server support for multistream cards, then the single card would gracefully degrade itself to SCard mode. This information about what mode is allowed on the network is presumably set at install time.

So the lawyer could promise that yes- they will give you a single MCard, and they could still flip the MCard into SCard mode. They could do it purposely or by accident. In my case, I pay an extra $140 per year if they do it purposely, so where there is a profit motive, sometimes cable companies find a way....

Maybe my BS detectors are adjusted to high for our pals in the cable business. I may be swinging at air for all I know. I haven't heard of any cases of this actually happening yet. There is a thread of folks successfully getting single MCards to work. Maybe there should be one for folks who need two. Because that should be correct under only rare circumstances.

My thinking here is that in the post ban world, the only Tivo HDs that don't use a single MCard should be the few cable companies that weren't subject to the ban- right?

Well, there was more to their letter than just my quote above, and the entirety does seem to point to support for multistream mode. Here is a more complete quote:

"In your original email to Mr. Gibson, you requested a multi-stream CableCARD (an "M-Card") for use in your TiVo Series 3 DVR. [...] Unfortunately, your TiVo device has not been certified by CableLabs as an M-Card compliant device. Therefore, at this time, we can only provide you with two one-way CableCARDs. [...] We contacted TiVo regarding your request and their representative confirmed that the TiVo software does not currently support M-Cards. If and when TiVo supports M-Cards, we will be happy to provide you with an M-Card for your device."

Since TiVo does actually support M-Cards today (just in single-stream mode), the "missing support" referred to above can only mean support for multi-stream mode. The attorney seems to be committing to replacing the two CableCARDs that are needed today with one M-Card, once the TiVo supports multistream mode.