By Claude Baggett, Cable Television Laboratories, Inc.
In part 17 of the Cable Act of 1992, thecongress made provisions for the specificationof those features of television sets, VCRs, andcable converters which would determinewhether they could truly be considered"cableready" or not. The primary performanceshortfall experienced by most consumer hardwarewhich made them unsuitable as acableready unit involved their susceptibility todirect pickup interference (DPU). However, inaddition to DPU, there were a number of othertuner performance factors which were importantin this definition. CableLabs performed certainwork to size the DPU problem, to measure theactual performance of a number of types ofconsumer premises equipment related thereto,and to determine a threshold level for the perceptibilityof such interference. In addition,Cable Labs devised test procedures for measuringboth DPU and the other tuner performancefactors, and tested an additional number ofconsumer and cable units to develop a state ofthe industry in these performance areas. Thisreport subsums these efforts and their results.