US Cable Support > OptimumOnline > [iO] Purchasing my own cable box?

[iO] Purchasing my own cable box?

You cannot buy your own cable box

The only thing you could buy is a TiVo
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Romney - Ryan 2012

I'm buying SnapStream »www.snapstream.com/ and building my own DVR from a PC. No need to pay monthly fees for Tivo.

reply to Anagio3
You can't buy a cable box. The ones on ebay are either stolen or ones people lost and paid for then found them. Cablevision won't activate, don't waste your money. The access card in them is not the same as the cablecard that they charge $2 for, you can't rent the access card without renting a box and the card isn't what activates the box.

You can buy a tivo hd/premiere and use a cablecard, but you have to pay a monthly fee to tivo or buy lifetime. You can also get a cablecard tuner for a computer and use xbox 360s as extenders. Those are the only choices besides renting the cable box.

reply to Anagio3

reply to xirian
Thanks will be picking up a cablebox tomorrow.

reply to Anagio3
that solution looks to be more costly than just buying a cablecard tuner and using media center.

Yes i'm looking at the tuners now that you brought it up. Didn't think about them. Any recommendations on cards?

Theres a few choices. Theres a two tuner ATI, a 3 tuner HDHomerun Prime that runs over your network over ethernet, as well as 4 tuner cards from ceton that comes in a pcie form or a usb form. I've not used any but I'm sure someone will chime in with their experience with them.

With them you'll need to rent a cablecard from cablevision @ $2 per month. You only need one per tuner card, so if you got the 4 tuner one it would tune 4 channels at once with a single cablecard. You can use an xbox 360 on spare tvs to watch live or recorded shows, and ceton is releasing an extender soon as well which is a small box that can do the same.

Thanks again, looking around on ebay and will read up on reviews before buying but that's going to save me quite a bit between the card and building my own DVR.

Hauppauge also has this »www.hauppauge.com/site/products/···650.html
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reply to Anagio3
I have 2 Tivos, and a 3 tuner HDHomerun Prime feeding some xbox 360s in my house.

Both work well, but if you aren't a technical person, the Tivo is a much more simple solution. Granted, you have to pay $12.99-$14.99/month to tivo + cablecard rental fee to make that work, vs just the cablecard for Windows Media Center + Xbox 360s as media extenders.

I'm building a DVR. I setup servers on Amazon AWS and am quite technical. This is definitely the way to go to save $ every month a tuner card and cable card is it.

Are there any other ways to extend the cable other than xbox 360's?

reply to Anagio3

I suspect you can get a computer for under $300, I got one last year around this time for $280 which worked well with OOL. The Silicondust HDHomerun prime is $149 at newegg. A remote is cheap. Adding an extender would add costs but eliminate a Box. My final cost last year was around $510 and the tuner is about $60 cheaper.
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I feel like a dummy. I bought two of those HDHomeRun Primes when they first came out for $250 a piece.

I'm glad I got them though. Nothing like the HTPC experience instead of the CV iO and remote DVR crap, not to mention not paying close to $20 per month on rental and iO service fees.

reply to TheWiseGuy

reply to Network Guy
Come on, you had to know the price was going to come down, it always does with these things. You were just an early adopter who wanted what you wanted.
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reply to RickNY