Digital cable / HD tuner card

[joeinbend]

Hi all,
I am putting together my client/server live TV setup, currently using a PVR-150 to capture video audio from my set-top box. This works, however the video quality is not perfect, and the channel changing time is slow.

With the US converting to digital TV, the old method of just running your cable TV coax into the tuner cards' coax and having it doe the actual video render and channel changing/tuning, are quickly about to disappear, then the only method (that i know of) is what i described above, with the capture card managing your cable providers' set-top box, which sucks.

My question is, are there options for PCI cards now, where I can still run my coax cable directly into the card, and have it read my cable providers' signal, change channels etc, without the need for a set top?? Also, is there a card that will do all of this, as well as read my HD channels (in my case, the 600 - 780 channels)?

Such a magical card would definately greatly increase my video quality and frame-rate, as well as speed up the time for channel changing. I equate my current set up to "screen scraping", which is never an ideal method in any environment.

[teookie]

I've not heard of any cable providers going to any kind of all proprietary signal that would necessitate a STB on every TV. You should still be able to use a standard analog tuner for many channels, and a clear QAM capable tuner for unencrypted digital channels. Thats what I'm doing with my Haupauge HVR-1600.

[cgilson33]

yeah, you can get all the channels of basic cable through any analog tuner
but to get the digital cable channels (600-780) you need either a STB or a cable card
some tvs can handle cable cards but for a computer there's huge issues with cable cards being compatible with computers (and even some tvs)
It was a big issue last year i think, and i believe it went to congress
Anyways, the cable card company(s) are only making cards compatible with certain OEM's HTPCs
Companies like HP sell computers that are compatible but you cannot build your own and have it be compatible (at least not without using the compatible companies parts)

Don't know if that all made sense but thats what i remember
Pretty stupid that they won't make everything compatible

[joeinbend]

Thanks guys, that's good info. My only real concern with using the internal tuner on say my PVR-150 is, what happens when our country's "All digital" conversion is complete... will it still work?

The other question, as I narrow this all down... is, what is the best bang-for-my-buck PCI card that will allow me to tune to/decode my cable providers' HD channels? example: Discovery HD, I get on our cable box which is a "HD" box, however my son's TV we have the cheapy box, which is a Motorola DT700, and he cannot tune to those channels, because they are HD.

[cgilson33]

from what i can tell the 150 is only an analog tuner, right?

well even after the switch basic cable will be still provided on an analog signal
to get the cable companies digital signal you need their STB or CC
and because the cable companies encrypt their digital signal you cannot pick up their HD channels, at least in my area.

You can however get a tuner with NTSC/ATSC/QAM (analog/digital OTA/unecrypted digital cable) or a combo of the 3.
you will probably want one with the QAM tuner this allows most people to get their local network tv in HD through their cable hookup
my cable provider does not broadcast these QAM channels it is done by the networks, but i believe some cable companies do broadcast some or all of their cable channels on QAM when you purchase their basic cable package. this may include your Discovery HD. This way you would not need a box to get these channels, but i cannot verify this by experience only what i have heard

[joeinbend]

Thanks for the clarification, this is all starting to make sense now. Can you make a recommendation for an inexpensive QAM PCI card? I'd like to pick up a card for testing, to see if this is the route I want to go.

My goal at this point before I can even consider introducing using GB-PVR in the living room, is significantly cutting down the channel changing delay, and increasing the resolution (on my PVR-150, i have noticed that in fast-action sequences on a TV program, I get a lot of screen fragments).

[cgilson33]

well that could be the decoder you are using, you can change it under the playback tab and you can search the forum for good codecs to use
i don't know much about them all but i know many people use VRM9 i think its called and ffdshow
if u look under your playback tab and try out a few of the video codecs this might solve that problem (you might have to download some new ones to try)

as far as tuner cards, from what i've seen ati and hauppauge are good cards and i think there are some options from $50 and up
i think for QAM you need to have one that does hardware encoding for QAM to work with GBPVR, but maybe there is software that can get around this

Can anyone tell me if this is correct?

I have the hvr-2250 it has two hybrid tuners, each tuner can tune NTSC/ATSC/QAM
so I can record 2 shows at once or watch one and record one
much like the set top boxes the cable company provides
it cost me 109 on newegg.com
i just saw it for 99 the other day though

[whurlston]

as far as tuner cards, from what i've seen ati and hauppauge are good cards and i think there are some options from $50 and up
i think for QAM you need to have one that does hardware encoding for QAM to work with GBPVR, but maybe there is software that can get around this

Can anyone tell me if this is correct?

You don't need to worry about hardware encoders for digital cards (ATSC, QAM, DVB-x). The signal is already digitally encoded and the card just tunes and passes the signal. Hardware encoders are only needed for analog.

joeinbend: Enter your zip/postal code at http://www.silicondust.com/hdhomerun/channels_us to get an idea of the channels you will receive with any QAM tuner. All other digital stations will be encrypted and you would need a cable card or an STB. The cable card would require a new PC and Windows Media Center. With the STB, you could use the Hauppauge HD-PVR and GBPVR.

[cgilson33]

thanks whurlston, i knew that sounded funny, makes much more sense to have to encode the signal that's not already a mpg file