Another MCE CableCard Shortcoming: No Streaming to Other PCs (CE Pro) | Julie is out with an article about CableCARD in Vista and how streaming to other PC’s isn’t supported.

Very true, just as with current CGMS-A protected content it can only be played back on the Media Center PC it was recorded on (inside of Media Center only, not in Windows Media Player) or a Media Center Extender.

As Julie points out the only Extender that supports Vista is the Xbox 360 right now.  v2 Extenders are on the way and will support connecting to Vista and will also support playback of HDTV recordings.

Julie says not to blame Microsoft, however I respectfully disagree.  Yes, the reason you can’t stream to other Windows PC’s is because of CableLabs, however if Microsoft had ever developed “SoftSled” or a software Media Center Extender this wouldn’t not be an issue.  Microsoft has decided to skip that side of the market (with some Microsoft employees not even knowing it’s been a wanted feature for the past four years) it doesn’t look very hopeful that it will be an addition to the platform anytime soon.

Another bit that you can not do with CableCARD recordings is convert them to go on portable devices (Zune, Portable Media Center’s, iPod’s, etc).

Windows Media Connect (or whatever they renamed it to with Windows Media Player 11) also need not apply to networked playback.

Be sure to check out Julie's full write up here.