YMMV - Your Mileage May Vary (It means your experience may not match mine)
OTOH - On The Other Hand

CableCard is a device which is capable of decoding encrypted cable signals so that they can be tuned to by devices other than cable boxes. There are only a few types of devices which support them. HD Tivo, certain televisions, very specific computers with Windows Media Center installed, and some others. The v1 incarnation of CableCard is one-way, which means it can only receive broadcast signals, but can't make request for things like video-on-demand and pay-per-view.

Here is a link that might be useful: Forum Acronyms

Thanks bwaibel: for clearing some of my questions up - really enjoying and glued to this forum -