[waldojim]

Ok, First off, for those who have paid some attention, I was at one point having some issues with tv tuners. Most importantly was getting them to work in a media center environment. Well, I am at it again, this time with a new question/concern.

I am now a semi-proud user of Fios internet and TV. 35Mbit internet is sweet! 350+ channels of crap on TV is kind of... meh.
The $40/mo in equipment rental for two TV's, THAT is a pisser. THAT aggravates me. I cannot stand my $80 in service, being over $110/mo because of the equipment!

I found out that Cable Card tuners DO exist. Apparently, there is quite the history behind cable card tuners. Anandtech has an article on the ATI TV Wonder Digital Cable tuner card (yes that is a mouth full, and a bit of an older article). It seems that special editions of Vista were needed to even consider these cards, and those special editions only shipped with PC's licensed to have the tuner, and a BIOS that was locked the fark down (or so it seems).

SO... As I understand it, the special editions of Windows is no longer needed. Does anyone here have a reliable source that says YES Windows 7 WILL WORK!?

IF the Windows version is no longer a requirement (as in special CableCard versions), is the special BIOS, by extension, also not a requirement?

And who all actually MAKES these cards?! Where can you buy one? One that is NEW - not a used ATI TV Wonder card, or the Infinitv 4 which has yet to ship.

One last question. It appears Windows Media Center has issues with Mpeg 4 content, is this true, and is there a way to convince it to choke down that content and be happy with it?

I would be much happier with a $4/mo cable card rental over the equipment rental I am paying. Please guys help if you can... Thanks.

[SnyperTodd]

I could have sworn the Ceton InfiniTV 4 was out- I seriously considered buying one somewhere, but I don't see them available now. It was just over $400 when I saw sometime in the middle of last year. If it wasn't the InfiniTV 4 (I'm positive it was...), it was another 4-tuner single cablecard device (I'm not sure if there even is another one). I was reading about it on AVS Forum, if I remember correctly. I also bid on several ATI Digital Cable tuners on eBay, but they all went for more than I wanted to spend. Either way, my wife eventually scoffed at the cost of a cablecard tuner and I ended up going with two DTA boxes and a Gyration Media Center remote (which is pretty sweet- works like a Wii remote except it's RF) with a two channel IR blaster, and that setup has worked absolutely flawlessly for us. I'm glad I didn't go with the cablecard tuner, because we only pay $4/month for the extra two DTA boxes (Comcast allows 2 free, and we have one in our bedroom, one in the rec room, and two on the HTPC in addition to the main cable box. Media Center controls the DTA boxes perfectly through the IR blaster, and it's completely transparent. The boxes sit behind the TV stand, and it works just as it did when our cable was all analog. I don't know what trouble you were having with them, but it ended up being the best solution for me.

[waldojim]

SnyperTodd, on 26 January 2011 - 06:59 PM, said:

I could have sworn the Ceton InfiniTV 4 was out- I seriously considered buying one somewhere, but I don't see them available now. It was just over $400 when I saw sometime in the middle of last year. If it wasn't the InfiniTV 4 (I'm positive it was...), it was another 4-tuner single cablecard device (I'm not sure if there even is another one). I was reading about it on AVS Forum, if I remember correctly. I also bid on several ATI Digital Cable tuners on eBay, but they all went for more than I wanted to spend. Either way, my wife eventually scoffed at the cost of a cablecard tuner and I ended up going with two DTA boxes and a Gyration Media Center remote (which is pretty sweet- works like a Wii remote except it's RF) with a two channel IR blaster, and that setup has worked absolutely flawlessly for us. I'm glad I didn't go with the cablecard tuner, because we only pay $4/month for the extra two DTA boxes (Comcast allows 2 free, and we have one in our bedroom, one in the rec room, and two on the HTPC in addition to the main cable box. Media Center controls the DTA boxes perfectly through the IR blaster, and it's completely transparent. The boxes sit behind the TV stand, and it works just as it did when our cable was all analog. I don't know what trouble you were having with them, but it ended up being the best solution for me.

I was having trouble getting media center to transition from analog cable to digital cable (as I was trying to tune ClearQAM at the time). I couldn't get a tuner to handle BOTH smoothly. With the newer boxes, I want the HD content, and HD tuners seem to be HD Clear QAM or ATSC only.

[SnyperTodd]

Okay, I see what you were doing. I never tried that. I have two ATI TV Wonder 650 PCIe tuners with separate analog and digital tuners, and I've only ever gone into the analog side of them. When we made the switch to digital, the DTA boxes still go in to the analog tuner, so I never had a need for the digital side. I have thought about using at least one of the digital tuners to tune OTA HD channels, but my TV does that just fine and I haven't wanted to record anything off of there that I couldn't get on cable (albeit non-HD). I don't pay for HD programming, Comcast is expensive enough.

[waldojim]

SnyperTodd, on 26 January 2011 - 08:14 PM, said:

Okay, I see what you were doing. I never tried that. I have two ATI TV Wonder 650 PCIe tuners with separate analog and digital tuners, and I've only ever gone into the analog side of them. When we made the switch to digital, the DTA boxes still go in to the analog tuner, so I never had a need for the digital side. I have thought about using at least one of the digital tuners to tune OTA HD channels, but my TV does that just fine and I haven't wanted to record anything off of there that I couldn't get on cable (albeit non-HD). I don't pay for HD programming, Comcast is expensive enough.

Well, the only way I get my discount is to get the "extreme" package, including 300 channels of SD crap, and 50 channels of HD crap. It turns out, that in that 50 channels of HD crap, I have 2 that I care about. SyFy, and BBC America. SO I figure, why not try to record it? I am stuck paying for HD, so dang it, I want HD.

[coastie65]

I have has FiOS since '06 ( 25.5 mbps down the last time I checked & a slightly smaller TV package + Freedom Phone thing ). I have XP MCE 2005 on one rig and Vista Home Premium & Windows 7 Home premium on this one. Haven't really ventured over to the media side of things as yet, at least as far as using them to provide TV. I use a DVD Recorder for recording stuff, but that hasn't gone as well as I would have liked as I got the wrong one. It has NO tuner and you can only record if the TV is on and on the channel you want to record ( hooked to TV by way of HDMI ). I don't know , but analog may have just about gone the way of the dinosaur for the most part ( I know VGA is still alive in the PC world for a lot of folks ). It would seem that ATSC tuning is what would be called for these days. As to recording, hard to say as I am beginning to think that they may have some kind of DRM built in somewhere to prevent recording except on a DVR for later viewing.

[techie4fun]

You can buy a cheap Hauppauge on Newegg or go for their most expensive one. I read that the TV-HVR models had the best success rate with being detected in Windows 7 Media Center edition. It's actually plug and play with Windows 7 MC according to the reviews I've read. I would have still had mine had it not been for the fact that my machine wasn't powerful enough

You'll need a super fast computer, but you've already got one, so.


What ever you decide, steer away from this one.




T4F

[mjd420nova]

This has become a real sticking point for those who wish to get cable programs unto their PCs directly from the cable without the box. It can not be done... Why??, the cable companies are encrypting their content and without the box you can't decode it. This is one of the most closely guarded secrets ever held by any company. They refuse to release any details about their encryption schemes or allow any company access to their hardware details to make it possible for the manufacture of tuner cards for their cable content. Many users are frustrated by this and have tried many things in an effort to work around this, with no success. Many say they make a tuner card that will accept a KEY card to allow them to decode the cable content but if has proved to be totally false.

[SnyperTodd]

mjd420nova, on 27 January 2011 - 09:00 AM, said:

Many say they make a tuner card that will accept a KEY card to allow them to decode the cable content but if has proved to be totally false.

That's exactly what a cablecard does. There are cablecard tuners out there, but they're hard to find and apparently harder to use...

[mjd420nova]

My experiences with cable tuner cards has been that the KEY card that gets inserted into the tuner card acts as a decryption key BUT only worked for local channels and a few of the most popular cable networks. The cable companies are deathly afraid that their hardware and key cards would be reverse-engineered and marketed by pirates and nationally backed (China) groups that would then flood the market with cheaper models that would allow users to steal their content. Being that the cable on the poles was put there by the cable companies and they control what gets "transmitted" over that cable, they can actually do what they want and charge any price they want. Unlike the real broadcasters that radiate an RF signal into the air, they are controled and regulated by the FCC. The cable companies fight tooth and nail to maintain that the FCC has no control over them as the actually transmit nothing into the air. Whether this is going to remain their private domain or the rules will be expanded to include them will revolutionize the information industry as we know it.

[SnyperTodd]

With Comcast, the local channels aren't encrypted. Actually, I read somewhere that it was illegal for cable companies to encrypt them, but I don't know for sure if it is or not. If what you're saying is true, there'd be no reason to have a cablecard. Either way, according to Comcast, with a cablecard you get all of your subscribed channels with the exception of pay-per-view and (obviously) on demand. Whether that's true or not, I don't know, because I've never used a cablecard, but I did some serious looking into them before I settled on DTA boxes with IR blasters. From reading on other forums, guys with cablecard tuners are getting all of their subscribed channels.

[waldojim]

coastie65, on 27 January 2011 - 07:43 AM, said:

I have has FiOS since '06 ( 25.5 mbps down the last time I checked & a slightly smaller TV package + Freedom Phone thing ). I have XP MCE 2005 on one rig and Vista Home Premium & Windows 7 Home premium on this one. Haven't really ventured over to the media side of things as yet, at least as far as using them to provide TV. I use a DVD Recorder for recording stuff, but that hasn't gone as well as I would have liked as I got the wrong one. It has NO tuner and you can only record if the TV is on and on the channel you want to record ( hooked to TV by way of HDMI ). I don't know , but analog may have just about gone the way of the dinosaur for the most part ( I know VGA is still alive in the PC world for a lot of folks ). It would seem that ATSC tuning is what would be called for these days. As to recording, hard to say as I am beginning to think that they may have some kind of DRM built in somewhere to prevent recording except on a DVR for later viewing.

Yes there is DRM in the signal, and that is fine. But it does have a record once flag set on it, to allow people to use DVR's to record the show.

techie4fun, on 27 January 2011 - 08:08 AM, said:

You can buy a cheap Hauppauge on Newegg or go for their most expensive one. I read that the TV-HVR models had the best success rate with being detected in Windows 7 Media Center edition. It's actually plug and play with Windows 7 MC according to the reviews I've read. I would have still had mine had it not been for the fact that my machine wasn't powerful enough

You'll need a super fast computer, but you've already got one, so.


What ever you decide, steer away from this one.




T4F

Problem: Hauppage does not make a CableCard ready tuner... at least not one I have come across.

[waldojim]

mjd420nova, on 27 January 2011 - 09:00 AM, said:

This has become a real sticking point for those who wish to get cable programs unto their PCs directly from the cable without the box. It can not be done... Why??, the cable companies are encrypting their content and without the box you can't decode it. This is one of the most closely guarded secrets ever held by any company. They refuse to release any details about their encryption schemes or allow any company access to their hardware details to make it possible for the manufacture of tuner cards for their cable content. Many users are frustrated by this and have tried many things in an effort to work around this, with no success. Many say they make a tuner card that will accept a KEY card to allow them to decode the cable content but if has proved to be totally false.

Well, there are tuners out there that will decode the content with a CableCard. Example 1 - ATI, Example 2: Ceton Infinitv.

Supposedly they do work. In ATI's case, this is after a couple firmware updates, and several hours fighting the local cable provider (or so it seems).

[waldojim]

mjd420nova, on 27 January 2011 - 01:21 PM, said:

My experiences with cable tuner cards has been that the KEY card that gets inserted into the tuner card acts as a decryption key BUT only worked for local channels and a few of the most popular cable networks. The cable companies are deathly afraid that their hardware and key cards would be reverse-engineered and marketed by pirates and nationally backed (China) groups that would then flood the market with cheaper models that would allow users to steal their content. Being that the cable on the poles was put there by the cable companies and they control what gets "transmitted" over that cable, they can actually do what they want and charge any price they want. Unlike the real broadcasters that radiate an RF signal into the air, they are controled and regulated by the FCC. The cable companies fight tooth and nail to maintain that the FCC has no control over them as the actually transmit nothing into the air. Whether this is going to remain their private domain or the rules will be expanded to include them will revolutionize the information industry as we know it.

The sad part is that there are LAWS in place designed to prevent them from limiting you. LAWS that state you have the right to use your own equipment. The problem is finding equipment licensed for that.

[waldojim]

SnyperTodd, on 27 January 2011 - 01:44 PM, said:

With Comcast, the local channels aren't encrypted. Actually, I read somewhere that it was illegal for cable companies to encrypt them, but I don't know for sure if it is or not. If what you're saying is true, there'd be no reason to have a cablecard. Either way, according to Comcast, with a cablecard you get all of your subscribed channels with the exception of pay-per-view and (obviously) on demand. Whether that's true or not, I don't know, because I've never used a cablecard, but I did some serious looking into them before I settled on DTA boxes with IR blasters. From reading on other forums, guys with cablecard tuners are getting all of their subscribed channels.

That is what I have been seeing as well. But I am unsure of what the better tuners are. The ATI tuner seems to have quite a few issues... and Mpeg 4 in Media Center is still a problem. What other tuners are worth looking into, and how do I force Media Center to be happy with ANYTHING that Verizon throws at it?

[coastie65]

waldojim, on 27 January 2011 - 03:04 PM, said:

SnyperTodd, on 27 January 2011 - 01:44 PM, said:

With Comcast, the local channels aren't encrypted. Actually, I read somewhere that it was illegal for cable companies to encrypt them, but I don't know for sure if it is or not. If what you're saying is true, there'd be no reason to have a cablecard. Either way, according to Comcast, with a cablecard you get all of your subscribed channels with the exception of pay-per-view and (obviously) on demand. Whether that's true or not, I don't know, because I've never used a cablecard, but I did some serious looking into them before I settled on DTA boxes with IR blasters. From reading on other forums, guys with cablecard tuners are getting all of their subscribed channels.

That is what I have been seeing as well. But I am unsure of what the better tuners are. The ATI tuner seems to have quite a few issues... and Mpeg 4 in Media Center is still a problem. What other tuners are worth looking into, and how do I force Media Center to be happy with ANYTHING that Verizon throws at it?

My Camera records in Mpeg 4 and it has worked well in Media center.

[waldojim]

coastie65, on 27 January 2011 - 06:37 PM, said:

waldojim, on 27 January 2011 - 03:04 PM, said:

SnyperTodd, on 27 January 2011 - 01:44 PM, said:

With Comcast, the local channels aren't encrypted. Actually, I read somewhere that it was illegal for cable companies to encrypt them, but I don't know for sure if it is or not. If what you're saying is true, there'd be no reason to have a cablecard. Either way, according to Comcast, with a cablecard you get all of your subscribed channels with the exception of pay-per-view and (obviously) on demand. Whether that's true or not, I don't know, because I've never used a cablecard, but I did some serious looking into them before I settled on DTA boxes with IR blasters. From reading on other forums, guys with cablecard tuners are getting all of their subscribed channels.

That is what I have been seeing as well. But I am unsure of what the better tuners are. The ATI tuner seems to have quite a few issues... and Mpeg 4 in Media Center is still a problem. What other tuners are worth looking into, and how do I force Media Center to be happy with ANYTHING that Verizon throws at it?

My Camera records in Mpeg 4 and it has worked well in Media center.

Ok then... I guess those reports were incorrect.

Now to find a card.

[SnyperTodd]

No problem with mpeg 4 content in Media Center for me, either. I haven't had any issue with my tuners in Media Center at all. My dad has two of the same tuner cards as I do; he uses only the digital side of his and he's been trouble-free as well. The InfiniTV 4 is available for order at the three links at the top of this page. According to the guys on AVS Forum, it works well with FIOS.

This post has been edited by SnyperTodd: 27 January 2011 - 08:25 PM
Reason for edit: added info

[waldojim]

SnyperTodd, on 27 January 2011 - 08:08 PM, said:

No problem with mpeg 4 content in Media Center for me, either. I haven't had any issue with my tuners in Media Center at all. My dad has two of the same tuner cards as I do; he uses only the digital side of his and he's been trouble-free as well. The InfiniTV 4 is available for order at the three links at the top of this page. According to the guys on AVS Forum, it works well with FIOS.

Right now I am picking up a few days OT, and trying to convince the wife to let me use that money on that card... Telling her that the $400 now can save $400/yr only got so far....

[SnyperTodd]

waldojim, on 28 January 2011 - 12:58 AM, said:

Right now I am picking up a few days OT, and trying to convince the wife to let me use that money on that card... Telling her that the $400 now can save $400/yr only got so far....

Explain to her the convenience of being able to record three shows and watch one more at the same time, or record four shows at once. That's how I was able to get the okay, except my okay was revoked after we found out it would be a couple months before it shipped. That's the tuner I was looking at, I'm certain. It's the only cablecard-based quad-tuner card out there.