 SpatchStugotsPremium
join:2001-06-29
Savannah, GA | Does anyone use these? I have recently switched back to Comcast after a couple of years of satellite. I have a media center pc that does not receive all channels. I see it installed into a pc in the pic. Would this allow reception of all the channels on my media center pc? I have never heard of this. |
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 aaronwtPremium
join:2004-11-07
Woodbridge, VA
 ·Verizon FiOS
2 edits | said by Spatch:I have recently switched back to Comcast after a couple of years of satellite. I have a media center pc that does not receive all channels. I see it installed into a pc in the pic. Would this allow reception of all the channels on my media center pc? I have never heard of this. I use eight cable cards with FIOS. When I had Comcast I was using six cable cards with them.
For the PC you need to get this.
»gizmodo.com/5357722/cetons-cable···one-slot
It can handle up to six tuners with one multistream cable card. They will be out early next year and will be in high demand. |
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b10010011Whats a Posting tag?
join:2004-09-07
Bellingham, WA Reviews:
 ·Comcast Formerl..
| reply to Spatch
Yeah, there are PC tuner cards that can use a cable card and they would allow your PC to receive every channel a set top box does.
Bu they are only single tuner cards, so like in the picture you would need multiple cards to record multiple channels at the same time
So in reality a lifetime subscribed Tivo-HD is a more cost effective solution than a media center PC for a DVR. |
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aaronwtPremium
join:2004-11-07
Woodbridge, VA Reviews:
·Verizon FiOS
1 edit | said by b10010011:Yeah, there are PC tuner cards that can use a cable card and they would allow your PC to receive every channel a set top box does. Bu they are only single tuner cards, so like in the picture you would need multiple cards to record multiple channels at the same time So in reality a lifetime subscribed TiVo-HD is a more cost effective solution than a media center PC for a DVR. I personally prefer TiVo, but with the Ceton card, it will have two, four or six tuners. It will only need one multi stream cable card and will have one cable input that will split internally to all the tuners.
It's a better solution than what is in the picture at the top, that shows a cable connected to each card with a cable card in it and probably only one tuner.
One ceton card will replace up to six of those. I only wish they were available eight years ago when I first started recording HD. |
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| reply to aaronwt
However, Windows MCE only supports 4 streams. Special OEM versions of Windows will support 6 streams. |
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 SLDPremium
join:2002-04-17
San Francisco, CA | reply to Spatch
The problem is that they are *only* sold with a new "certified" PC that has DRM-galore. You can't just buy one or two and put them into your PC. |
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 N3OGHYo Soy Col. "Bat" GuanoPremium
join:2003-11-11
Philly burbs
kudos:1 | reply to aaronwt
From the article
"The official launch is 2010, so we won't be seeing these cards for a little while yet, so there's time for the networks to collaborate to make and air six shows that are worth recording in the same time slot."
Cool gadget, but I honestly can't think of any instance where there is 6 programs simultaneously on air that I just HAVE to watch.
Quite frankly, I often have trouble finding one program worth watching, let alone 6!
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Petty people are disproportionably corrupted by petty power… |
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| reply to b10010011
said by b10010011:Yeah, there are PC tuner cards that can use a cable card and they would allow your PC to receive every channel a set top box does. Bu they are only single tuner cards, so like in the picture you would need multiple cards to record multiple channels at the same time So in reality a lifetime subscribed Tivo-HD is a more cost effective solution than a media center PC for a DVR. That's changing. It used to be that you could only get a Cablecard tuner as part of a whole new PC from HP and others. Now Cablelabs loosened the restrictions so that you can pop a cablecard tuner into any old PC. |
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b10010011Whats a Posting tag?
join:2004-09-07
Bellingham, WA Reviews:
·Comcast Formerl..
1 edit | said by fifty nine:That's changing. It used to be that you could only get a Cablecard tuner as part of a whole new PC from HP and others. Now Cablelabs loosened the restrictions so that you can pop a cablecard tuner into any old PC. Sure but do the math.
four-tuner version of the card somewhere between $300 and $600. (so lets say $200-$300 for a two tuner version)
A PC powerful enough to record two HD streams while playing back an HD recording is going to be in the $1000+ range as none of these cards have hardware encoders for HD recording.
A Tivo-HD with lifetime subscription is about $700 and even less if you catch a sale. |
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| reply to Spatch
I have three. One each in two TivoHDs. One in a Toshiba DLP.
They work fine. TWC charges me 5.25 per month for all three. Sure beats the pants off cable boxes.
[NG]Owner
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It is impossible to create an idiot-proof product. Humanity is simply too adept at churning out better idiots. |
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Reviews:
·Comcast
| reply to b10010011
said by b10010011:said by fifty nine:That's changing. It used to be that you could only get a Cablecard tuner as part of a whole new PC from HP and others. Now Cablelabs loosened the restrictions so that you can pop a cablecard tuner into any old PC. Sure but do the math. four-tuner version of the card somewhere between $300 and $600. (so lets say $200-$300 for a two tuner version) A PC powerful enough to record two HD streams while playing back an HD recording is going to be in the $1000+ range as none of these cards have hardware encoders for HD recording. A Tivo-HD with lifetime subscription is about $700 and even less if you catch a sale. A PC powerful enough to support the Ceton requires nothing more than a quad-core from Intel or AMD (and not even a recent one; even a Phenom X4 (first-generation) or Q6600 (no longer manufactured by Intel) will do quite nicely). Or, if you want something from the current generation, Phenom II X4 or i5-750. Such PCs (the current-generation ones) are not even $800.
However, most cable companies (and Comcast in particular) have no interest (and less desire) to deploy as finicky and persnickety a technology as CableCARD; worse, fewer and fewer TVs nowadays support them! (Looking for one in a big-box retailer? You won't find one at Best Buy, or Wal-Mart, either. If you find one, it will likely be not only a closeout but one of those slow-selling-as-molasses-in-Antarctica rear-projection TVs, and at a specialty-retailer or e-tailer like overstock.com or buy,com.)
Head over to AVSForum (»www.avsforum.com) sometime and check out the problems folks are running into to get CableCARD supporting TVs (in fact, any CableCARD-supporting device outside of Tivo). The reality is that Tivo (alone of all the companies in the CEA) went the extra mile to support CableCARD, while the majority of the CEA membership didn't even go the first mile. |
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 alchav
join:2002-05-17
Palm Desert, CA | reply to Spatch
I have Time Warner, and I started using a Cable Card before getting the TWC DVR. I still have the Cable Card as a back-up, and it comes in handy when I have to reboot the DVR, and that happens once in a while. The picture quality is okay through the Cable Card, but it's much better from the DVR because of the HDMI connection. |
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aaronwtPremium
join:2004-11-07
Woodbridge, VA Reviews:
·Verizon FiOS
2 edits | reply to N3OGH
said by N3OGH:From the article "The official launch is 2010, so we won't be seeing these cards for a little while yet, so there's time for the networks to collaborate to make and air six shows that are worth recording in the same time slot." Cool gadget, but I honestly can't think of any instance where there is 6 programs simultaneously on air that I just HAVE to watch. Quite frankly, I often have trouble finding one program worth watching, let alone 6! I sometimes have ten to twelve recordings going on from HD channels. IT doesn't happen too often but the norm for me is 3 to 6 HD recordings at once.
Even back in 2001 I sometimes had a couple of shows on in HD that needed to be recorded. But back then only 40% to 45% of what I watched was HD. |
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aaronwtPremium
join:2004-11-07
Woodbridge, VA Reviews:
·Verizon FiOS
4 edits | reply to b10010011
said by b10010011:said by fifty nine:That's changing. It used to be that you could only get a Cablecard tuner as part of a whole new PC from HP and others. Now Cablelabs loosened the restrictions so that you can pop a cablecard tuner into any old PC. Sure but do the math. four-tuner version of the card somewhere between $300 and $600. (so lets say $200-$300 for a two tuner version) A PC powerful enough to record two HD streams while playing back an HD recording is going to be in the $1000+ range as none of these cards have hardware encoders for HD recording. A TiVo-HD with lifetime subscription is about $700 and even less if you catch a sale. No encoding is necessary. the HD stream is just recorded as is. You only need to decode it when watching. A very cheap dual core has no problem recording multiple streams. An HD stream is very slow. at most 19mbs and a USB 5400 rpm drive can do that.
I was recording and watching HD programing in 2001 with a P3 . A few years ago I had a cheap dual core with two USB tuners and a USB storage drive. It had zero problems recording two HD programs, watching a program on that PC and sending two programs to two other PCs on my gigabit network. All concurrently.
And this is with all the content being read and written to/from the same USB drive and this was a few years ago. A current cheap PC should have no problems if my cheap PC from a few years ago could do it. |
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krichek
join:2004-02-15
Roseville, CA | reply to b10010011
said by b10010011:said by fifty nine:That's changing. It used to be that you could only get a Cablecard tuner as part of a whole new PC from HP and others. Now Cablelabs loosened the restrictions so that you can pop a cablecard tuner into any old PC. Sure but do the math. four-tuner version of the card somewhere between $300 and $600. (so lets say $200-$300 for a two tuner version) A PC powerful enough to record two HD streams while playing back an HD recording is going to be in the $1000+ range as none of these cards have hardware encoders for HD recording. A Tivo-HD with lifetime subscription is about $700 and even less if you catch a sale. The specs listed on the Ceton website are well below a PC in the $1000+ range and frankly I think they are just being cautious. The system doesn't need to be powerful at all and the cards don't need hardware encoders either. Why?
Because the card is simply recording the stream presented by your cable provider. Your hard drive choice is arguably more important then how powerful a CPU you have, provided said CPU was made sometime with in the past 2 years or so. |
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aaronwtPremium
join:2004-11-07
Woodbridge, VA Reviews:
·Verizon FiOS
1 edit | said by krichek:said by b10010011:said by fifty nine:That's changing. It used to be that you could only get a Cablecard tuner as part of a whole new PC from HP and others. Now Cablelabs loosened the restrictions so that you can pop a cablecard tuner into any old PC. Sure but do the math. four-tuner version of the card somewhere between $300 and $600. (so lets say $200-$300 for a two tuner version) A PC powerful enough to record two HD streams while playing back an HD recording is going to be in the $1000+ range as none of these cards have hardware encoders for HD recording. A Tivo-HD with lifetime subscription is about $700 and even less if you catch a sale. The specs listed on the Ceton website are well below a PC in the $1000+ range and frankly I think they are just being cautious. The system doesn't need to be powerful at all and the cards don't need hardware encoders either. Why? Because the card is simply recording the stream presented by your cable provider. Your hard drive choice is arguably more important then how powerful a CPU you have, provided said CPU was made sometime with in the past 2 years or so. Even one made several years ago would not have a problem. The HD streams are very slow. 19mbs at most. even an old 5400 rpm drive can handle multiple HD streams being read and written concurrently without any hiccups. |
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krichek
join:2004-02-15
Roseville, CA
1 edit | said by aaronwt:Even one made several years ago would not have a problem. The HD streams are very slow. 19mbs at most. even an old 5400 rpm drive can handle multiple HD streams being read and written concurrently without any hiccups. I chose "within the last 2 years or so" simply because the card will require a PCI-e slot when it first arrives. They have stated a USB version may appear but for now, a board with a PCI-e slot is going to give you a CPU made within the past 2-3 years.
I know the actual requirements are much less. Heck, I remember recording OTA HD on a 700MHz Duron processor, (It did have a HW decoding card tho)  |
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 itsbry
join:2001-02-22
Fernandina Beach, FL
·AT&T U-Verse
| reply to Spatch
I would love to use one... I called Comcast (northeast Florida) and was told that I just had to drop the set top off at the office and pick up the CableCard. No tech, no nada...
But the wife says that she can't do without the "guide" that makes it so easy to find the show she wants to watch.
So I suppose I'm going to live with the extra remote just so she can have her "guide" button... sigh.
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The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not. Thomas Jefferson
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| reply to PGHammer
said by PGHammer:However, most cable companies (and Comcast in particular) have no interest (and less desire) to deploy as finicky and persnickety a technology as CableCARD; worse, fewer and fewer TVs nowadays support them! (Looking for one in a big-box retailer? You won't find one at Best Buy, or Wal-Mart, either. If you find one, it will likely be not only a closeout but one of those slow-selling-as-molasses-in-Antarctica rear-projection TVs, and at a specialty-retailer or e-tailer like overstock.com or buy,com.) Head over to AVSForum (» www.avsforum.com) sometime and check out the problems folks are running into to get CableCARD supporting TVs (in fact, any CableCARD-supporting device outside of Tivo). The reality is that Tivo (alone of all the companies in the CEA) went the extra mile to support CableCARD, while the majority of the CEA membership didn't even go the first mile. The reality is that problems notwithstanding, CableCARD is all we have right now to escape from cable box hell.
After using a S3 TiVo I will never go back to a cable box, ever. In fact being able to use a TiVo is the only reason I tolerate cable in the first place. I would be using satellite which has more HD channels in better quality if it weren't for CableCARD.
So I view CableCARD as a necessary evil, and I am glad that the FCC is requiring it. Until some better solution comes along, that is. |
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krichek
join:2004-02-15
Roseville, CA | reply to fifty nine
said by fifty nine:said by b10010011:Yeah, there are PC tuner cards that can use a cable card and they would allow your PC to receive every channel a set top box does. Bu they are only single tuner cards, so like in the picture you would need multiple cards to record multiple channels at the same time So in reality a lifetime subscribed Tivo-HD is a more cost effective solution than a media center PC for a DVR. That's changing. It used to be that you could only get a Cablecard tuner as part of a whole new PC from HP and others. Now Cablelabs loosened the restrictions so that you can pop a cablecard tuner into any old PC. Provided it's running Windows 7. |
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