Did I waste my money??

[GeneralChaos]

I recently finished building my masterpiece PVR for my girlfriend. After TONS of money, tweaking, and testing it was finally at a state at which I was happy. It contains 2 Hauppauge cards: PVR-500 and a PVR-150, so it can record up to 3 shows at once.

Now it is time for me to install the PVR in her apartment and I am running into snags. She has Comcast Digital Cable, so there is a set-top-box. Am I going to be able to take advantage of my 3 simultaneous inputs if I run out of the STB, into a splitter, and into my two cards?

Or did I waste my money on getting too much hardware that will only work with analog cable. Finally, if I did go overboard on the hardware...are there any recommendations on what I could do to resolve the issue? I really would like to be able to record more than one show at a time (or else I am never going to be able to get to watch what I want to...lol)

Thanks in advance!

[wtg]

Tipster has good advice, but it's true that you only get one digital channel output from your stb. Only one card will be able to capture your digital channels, but by splitting your coax you can have all 3 of your cards able to record the non-digital channels.

You can add another STB to record more than one digital channel at a time, but of course that's not without an additional monthly fee from your cable company.

[nightwalker]

and having to figure out how you're going to get GBpvr to send the approbate commands to more than one STB and keep it all straight.

[GeneralChaos]

Thanks for the quick replies guys

Unfortunately the analog channels in the area are really crappy (pretty much local access channels) so it is unlikely that I would be recording those. I figured that I would only be able to record one channel off of the STB...and that will probably be consumed by live TV.

Tipstir, are you recording only one digital channel at a time as wtg has mentioned or do you have some other hardware (or voodoo magic) that is allowing you to record multiple digital channels? I already have the 24k splitter, and I work at Best Buy so I can get the digital cables pretty cheap if they will get me to where I want to be.

I really don't want to give Comcast any more money each month as the rates are already probably more than I can afford, and extra STBs will add a crazy amount of complexity to an already complex system. :-P

I suppose I am just looking for a potential workaround if physical limitations will even allow. Is there any way around this other than getting more STBs? (Remember, my analog cable sucks)

[sub]

Multiple set top boxes is your only option if you dont want to use analog cable.

[GeneralChaos]

Damn, that is what I was afraid of. Heh, with the amount of money I put into this thing it would have been cheaper to get a TiVo with a lifetime subscription...but what fun would that have been!

Thanks for the help everyone!

[GeneralChaos]

The PC is directly under the cable box (in a Silverstone low profile case) so distance isn't too big of a deal. The DVD recorder does sound like a lot of work...perhaps more than it is worth (especially for the significant other, hehe).

Perhaps I will consider upgrading my service or also looking into why our analog channels suck so bad (read: are not worth watching). I didn't actually set up that part of the service so I don't even know what plan we are on.

This might be sort of a long shot, but are there any digital/HD cards out there that would allow the bypassing of the STB, or is there some kind of "encryption" in the signal that has to be decoded by the STB? Sorry for all the possible redundant questions...I really have no idea how digital cable works.