Comcast digital & HTPC?

[Big Mike]

Ok so I'm kinda new to this HTPC game, but I'm an old hand at most other PC stuff. Currently I have a psuedo HTPC (repurposed old gaming box essentially) specs are:
Athlon 2400+ t-bred b
1gb ddr400
250 gb 7200 rpm ide
500 gb 7200.10 sata
msi kt6 delta FISR (4 open regular PCI slots)
radeon 9600 pro
ati tv wonder pci (the ANCIENT circa 2000 or earlier non plug n play one, needs replaced due to not being vista compatible)

I think ultimately I'm gonna put an nlited copy of vista x86 ultimate on this and ultimate x64 on my main box upstairs, here's my goals maybe you guys can suggest what parts i need to get there:

1. PVR to record as many channels as possible (mainly im looking for what tuner I need, ATSC or clearQAM or both, or are most of the digital channels not going to be available (encrypted?) anyways, if that's the case maybe something with an IR blaster?) currently the analog tuner still gets the first 70 or so channels that are analog, and my cable box which it is behind has an RF bypass so you can tune when the box is off, what i don't know is if that unscrambles anything or not?
2. stream live tv from this pc to my main pc in real time if possible?
3. play back movies, pictures, music, etc on this "htpc" from the main pc upstairs, ideally id like to have it so that most of the playback features can be controlled with just an MCE remote, i can remote desktop into this box if i need to click settings and what not to stream the video to the other machine

Ideally I'd like to use as few apps as possible to make this work, I think ultimate's media center will do most of this except maybe the TV streaming back and forth type stuff?

suggestions would be appriciated

Oh and in the meantime, is there a way I can stream video from the ancient pci tv wonder and control the channel changing from the other pc? All the apps I tried seem to be just for watching TV locally or don't support this ancient hardware.

[Neuromancer]

VMC is great, you will need TVPack for CLearQA (cable) Or HDHR (not sure what that is)

Limitation of Vista if you get a single tuner card that will do ATSC/NTSC or ClearQAM you will only get one working in MC at a time (just found out about this, there was a good reason for them doing this, but I do not know why).

For streaming, you can check out Webguide, or ORB. Although ORB is picky.

If you are looking to record Encrypted Cable channels you will need to get one of the set top box recorders, not a TV tuner card per se.

I just got my AIWHD up and running with my antenna, and its working great, but I have not tried streaming TV yet.

When I have free time I will get it up and running and let you know how it goes :)

(if changing channels does not work, you can use some type of VNC app to log into the desktop and change the channel)

[Big Mike]

Cool thanks for the info, any idea where I could go or how I could go about finding out what channels are ATSC vs which are clearQAM vs encryped in my area? Most of the channels I'm most interested in have an analog version at the moment, but I'd like to get something semi future proof, but if most of the channels are going to be encrypted that I'd want digital versions of I might be better off with a cheaper tuner (or capture only no tuner) with an IR blaster to control the cable box?

[Evilsizer]

its pretty much any local channels you can get on rabbit ears. you will be able to get on the tuner thru your cable. From what i can gather other channles you need to pay for like HBO or SCIFI will be encrypted.

[Neuromancer]

Not sure how well recording straight from the STB cable box would work, uncompressed you are looking at massive amount s of data. Although not positive if you are looking at analog, like the cable boxes can output.

ATSC is Over the air TV in digital format. They are talking about pushing back the conversion data (mid february right now) however many large networks made the switch on january 1st. (at least in Philadelphia)

NTSC is analog, no real point in building for it now, except that you can get the tuners super cheap on ebay.

Cable is straight up QAM encoded. There will be no ATSC/NTSC encoding on it anymore. ClearQAM will be your local channels and some of the "free ones" maybe nickelodeon, USA, TNT type of stuff, however they are getting sneaky and moving more and more to encrypted format. They moved a bunch of stuff recently to their expanded tiers, so those are pretty much guaranteed to be encrypted.

Homerun and some other STBs will do HD recording, and some are cable card compliant (meaning instead of renting a cable box, you just rent the card, for the same price) ATI has one cable card tuner, but you have to buy it with a complete PC to get the TPM module and than of course you are going to have DRM issues as well as no ability to use on demand or PPV channels. at 500 bucks, and you still have the monthly fees from comcast to rent the card really not worth it. They have been saying they will come out with cablecard 2.0 soon for over a year now (it allows bidi communication so you can use the interactive features)

Not really up to date on cable card and the STB recorders. When I was looking, it was easier to just rent hte DVR. (Also noteworthy, the DVRs comcast rents are motorola boxes, and they have network capabilty so you could essentially network and save the recorded programs to your server, however, comcast clamps them down, might be worth looking into getting a non comcast box and just swapping the card over.... or see if you can hack the firmware, to open the network backup :))

Sorry for the long post, just trying to give you all the information I can.

Best bet if you live near a big city, is get an ATSC tuner and build yourself an antenna :) (http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=577875)

[Mr. Bigs]

does anyone how to encrypted comcast channels

[glorp]

Do you mean view/record encrypted channels? There are several methods, legal and not. The "easist" legal way is to use a CableCARD tuner which only can be used in windows media center on Win7 and also requires that you obtain a rented CC from your cable provider. That card plugs in to the tuner device and then you get the cableco to authenticate the paired unit so that you get the service you pay for. The rented CC actually does the decrypting of the signal.

There are several CC tuners available now. Models from Ceton and Silicon Dust are listed at newegg. They are expensive compared to ATSC/QAM tuners but also have 3-6 onboard tuners per CC unit. The Ceton is a PCIe tuner that fits in a slot in a PC. The SD HDHomeRun CC is a separate tuner device that sits on your network and streams TV to PCs.

[Mr. Bigs]

what im saying is "not" from a box to a digital tv? is my question.Do you mean view/record encrypted channels? There are several methods, legal and not. The "easist" legal way is to use a CableCARD tuner which only can be used in windows media center on Win7 and also requires that you obtain a rented CC from your cable provider. That card plugs in to the tuner device and then you get the cableco to authenticate the paired unit so that you get the service you pay for. The rented CC actually does the decrypting of the signal.

There are several CC tuners available now. Models from Ceton and Silicon Dust are listed at newegg. They are expensive compared to ATSC/QAM tuners but also have 3-6 onboard tuners per CC unit. The Ceton is a PCIe tuner that fits in a slot in a PC. The SD HDHomeRun CC is a separate tuner device that sits on your network and streams TV to PCs.

[glorp]

A CableCARD tuner replaces a set top box and allows you to record encrypted content to a computer or view it on a TV from PC->TV. You hook cable from the wall directly to the CC tuner, no set top box in between. Beyond that I really don't know what you need.

[Mr. Bigs]

by any chance do you know anybody who can help me out with this situation :)A CableCARD tuner replaces a set top box and allows you to record encrypted content to a computer or view it on a TV from PC->TV. You hook cable from the wall directly to the CC tuner, no set top box in between. Beyond that I really don't know what you need.

[Mr. Bigs]

how can i get my hands on a cablecard with complete packages and how much will it cost me.

[TiZakit]

Cable card tuner
http://www.amazon.com/Ceton-Infinitv4-Digital-Cable-Quad-tuner/dp/B003B4VLJQ

You get the cable card from your cable company. They have to show up to your house to install.

[Neuromancer]

Note that not many cable card companies have the "free use" tag on their recorded programs, so some of the stuff (like premium channels) you will not have the ability to archive the recordings. (From what I can understand).

If you have the money to build the ultimate DVR/HTPC. Look at Ceton products. Still the best and if your cable company supports m-Stream you can build a quadchannel HTPC with a single PCIE card. Bear in mind you local office may not know that they cupport m-stream card rentals so do some internet research for your area :)

There are alternatives now however. There still is the "free use" tag to deal with and that is cable company specific as well.

TBH, I have not kept up on it, was more expensive in the long run, but less hassle overall to just use a WEB-DL service to get my favorite shows (not many for me though so...) and I never watch shows on the night they air anyway.

[gsrcrxsi]

i own and use a Ceton InfiniTV4 quad tuner. It uses a M-card.

2 things you need to know first. there are 2 kinds of digital service available from comcast and other Cable providers. SDV (switched digital video) and non-SDV. SDV is a new method which provides reduced bandwidth use. basically instead of having all channels piped ALL the time, only a few are piped at a time, and when you want a channel, your STB sends a signal out to tell the provider to switch that channel on to you. im dumbing this down, but thats the gist of it from what i understand.

how does this affect you? Cable cards do not support 2-way communication. if you are in a non-SDV area, it wont affect much. youll be good to go with the CC tuner and the M-card. if you ARE in an SDV area, you will need a tuning adapter (or 2 depending on the hardware your provider uses) so your computer can output the signals to switch the channel.

also, youll most likely have to start monitoring your signal strength/quality on the coax lines. the Ceton is very picky about low signal strength. you pretty much have to keep your levels to about +/- 10dB. when your signal starts to drop lower than -10dB, expect to see increased pixelation and dropped channels due to low signal strength. STBs arent nearly as picky as the ceton is for whatever reason.

overall im very happy with the ceton product, i bought it when it was first released for the 400 dollar price, and it was worth every penny, the price has since dropped. all the channel numbers stay alligned with what the STB would display. none of that 57.3 nonsense, or having to specify exact MHz for a channel. best part is you get access to premium channels, im able to record any channel and all premium channels that i subscribe to, even HD.

you can record anything you want. and store it to play back later. the only problem you will run into as far as copy flags is if you want to play back copy protected recordings on another PC different than the one that did the recording. if the recording is "Copy Freely" you can watch it on whatever computer you want. but if the recording is more strict you may only be able to rewatch it on the computer that recorded it.

[dfonda]

In keeping with this thread, I installed a Ceton infinit4 last night and paired it with a Motorola M cablecard from comcast. I'm north of Phila.

My problem is sound including captions come through, but no video, did the usual checks that the cards were seated well. Also tried different slots.

Just to check I streamed vid out of a shared folder on another PC in my homegroup...again sound no picture.

So I'm thinking my dvi to hdmi may be the problem. I didn't think having the dvi on the pc end would transmit the sound...but it does . So I am thinking a mini hdmi to hdmi might solve my problem.

Oh, Im using a Asus 460GTX which has mini hdmi and 2 dvi outs. Feeding to a 46" samsung. Searched all over in my parts box for a mini hdmi to hdmi plug but don't have one.

Anyone think I may have some other problem. It doesn't look like its on comcasts end.

Ordered 2 adapters http://www.amazon.com/HDmi-Cable-Adapter-Hdmi-Mini/dp/B002L5QGQ4

[dfonda]

So after working on the setup for a day, I have the live TV from the Ceton equipped PC using 2 tuners(Still with no picture just sound) but a laptop using the other 2 tuners has picture and sound...so I know everything's working.

Very odd. My signal strength is low -18db should be -12 to +12...but since the laptop has a pictuer seems like thats not the problem...maybe that still leaves me with the dvi plug should be hdmi.

EDIT: SOLVED! The first thing I did,before anything was update the PC to the newest 285.56 Nvidia drivers. Just found a very new post that claimed they break a WMC/Ceton install....(No Picture just Sound) Rolled back to the 280.26 Nvidia drivers... Instant fix! Yeah!

Now to check that I have all my channels.

Cable card tuner
http://www.amazon.com/Ceton-Infinitv4-Digital-Cable-Quad-tuner/dp/B003B4VLJQ

You get the cable card from your cable company. They have to show up to your house to install.



As a side note Comcast does not charge for cablecards , I took 2 in case the first one didn't work. Just stopped in at my Sellersville ,PA office You can install them yourself, which is good because many of the problems with an install do not involve Comcast! If you use 2 in one device then the second one is charged $1.50 a month(Says the website)(They didn't ask me) but for different devices on different outlets they are free. I received a lot of misinformation on this.

[Neuromancer]

i own and use a Ceton InfiniTV4 quad tuner. It uses a M-card.

Lots of great informatino thanks!

I thought m-stream was supposed to be replacing cablecard 2.0 and WAS two specific (so you could still order PPRV/OnDemand etc) That is not the case?

That stinks, I guess we will not be getting cablecard 2.0 anytime soon then as m-stream cards are still relatively new.

Would be nice to dump the box completely.

EDIT: TWC implemented CC2.0 last year, I would assume they are an early adopter as I have had both and TWC seems way more relaxed in their "standards" than Comcast, including clearQAM channels

EDIT EDIT: My mistake I cant read dates, TWC did it in 2007 link (http://www.engadget.com/2007/10/17/time-warner-cable-deploys-150k-opencable-stbs-aka-cablecard-2-0/)