CableCARD: sure, one day it might take the world by storm, but right now, the only place it's being deployed en masse is in cable operators' set-top box offerings. Ironically, the card was designed to eliminate the set-top box by plugging directly into TVs and DVRs to provide access to digital cable, but the long list of CableCARD drawbacks (including no access to two-way programming like pay-per-view and switched digital video) has meant that consumers never embraced CableCARD-ready devices.

Today, the National Cable & Telecommunications Association provided the data that shows just how abysmal CableCARD uptake rates have been. In a letter submitted to the FCC (PDF), the NCTA says that the ten largest cable companies in the US have deployed a mere 372,000 CableCARDs. And that's not just in the last year—that's ever.

What happened, though, was that the cable operators had little incentive to support CableCARD and especially the development of two-way functionality. Instead, they offered customers the choice between unidirectional products with a CableCARD or a cable-provided set-top box that needed no card, had fewer install hassles, and worked with two-way content. Which would you choose?

Everyone chose the set-top box, of course, so the FCC decided to boost CableCARD adoption by requiring cable to eat its own dog food. After July 1, 2007, an "integration ban" went into effect that required new set-top boxes to use CableCARD technology. The thinking was that cable would be forced to better support a tech that it had to use, and that the pace of innovation would accelerate.

That may turn out to be the end result; the industry is now pushing tru2way, its combination CableCARD/middleware platform that can be built right into devices like TVs and offers, as the name suggests, full two-way functionality. But as of right now, tru2way devices aren't available, and CableCARD is being used almost exclusively in set-top boxes.

The NCTA, which always opposed the integration ban, points out that the ban has done little to boost CableCARD uptake outside of the set-top box market. "By contrast, since the 'integration ban' went into effect on July 1, 2007, those 10 companies have already deployed more than 6,232,800 operator-supplied set-top boxes with CableCARDs," says the letter. "Therefore, in less than one year, cable operators have deployed more than sixteen times as many CableCARD-enabled devices than the total number of CableCARDs requested by customers for use in [one-way CableCARD devices] in the last four years."