QAM decoding encrypted? digital cable issues, HDTV tuners

[ProtonageNet]

I have been searching for days for what I suspect is a common question but I haven't found much information.

What I Want to Do:
Build a HTPC that can take my digital cable and act as a DVR recording HDTV and etc. Right now I have to rent a box to get the digital cable and HD channels. I don't mind keeping this box, but there is a lot more I want to do like setting record times etc.

What I Think I Know:
The signal coming to my cable box is a QAM encrypted signal. Now I think it's illegal to decrypt / decode this via software or whatever and I'm not interested in that but if anyone has any links to more information on this please let me know.

What I Think I Can Do:
Is it possible just to take the outputs on my cable box (dvi, component, (no HDMI)) and stream them to some sort of capture card to my HTPC for recording and run mythTV or MCE to manage it all? If I do this then I will still have to use the cable box to "tune" into different stations and that would make me sad.

What I Don't Want:
I hate over the air transmissions, I just want to set record times to record 24 in HD so I can watch the episodes when I get home from college at night! Also I do not want to spend money on a stupid DVR box provided by COX, I want to build my own HTPC and do crazy cool stuff to it via network and network storage.

I'm in the Northern Virginia area and my provider is COX, I have the digital gateway service with a typical box that has component, coax, svid, dvi outputs.

[TheLongshot]

I can speak for my experience with Cox. I have a MyHD-130 card, which can do QAM, but can't interface with mythTV or MCE. For that, I think you would need a Fusion card.

I have the same service that you do. All I am able to get is Fox, CBS and a music channel. I can't even get all of the locals. So, doing QAM with Cox is disappointing, to say the least.

As far as trying to capture from component, you'd have to ask someone else, but I figure it isn't a trivial thing, if it is possible at all, and probably depends on the quality of the D/A - A/D conversions. Probably not as good as getting the input from an HD card.

Jason

[Gary McCoy]

You could capture from a DVI or HDMI output via one of these:

http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/intensity/

Note that you will need a very ....er.... "robust" HTPC to capture HD:

http://www.blackmagic-design.com/sup....asp?techID=47

Then of course you would want to compress such video into MPEG2 transport streams.

Problems: If you adapt a DVI output for this HDMI card, you get no audio, you must use a cable box with HDMI - and this capture card only captures stereo audio. Capturing uncompressed HD takes in the neighborhood of 70GB/hour of storage. Compressing this bitstream into a transport stream with software takes about 10 hours of processing per hour of video, so a $3000 hardware capture card is generally more practical. However when you are done you would have a result equivalent to capturing the unencrypted transport stream via a $150 QAM tuner board and only requiring 8.6GB per each hour of video. (Except of course the broadcast transport stream could contain 5.1 surround audio.)

Niether solution will work if the HDCP is used. Remarkable - almost as if DRM were actually designed to deliberately prevent you from using the programming you pay for as you want to. Instead you will be permitted use it only in ways determined by the cable company.

Or you could walk away and get your HD programming elsewhere. Like a $200 rooftop antenna if that option is available to you.

Gary

[Gary McCoy]

Come to think of it, antennas have problems of their own. My moronic neighbors have bird feeders and delight in attracting those feathered nuisances which delight in perching on antennas.

I have learned to bump the antenna rotator a few degrees and then back to shake the birds off. Sometimes they are stubborn and come back in a few minutes.

Time to break out the Red Rider carbine-action anti-bird device.

Oh, no. Dead birds on the roof again.

Gary

[ProtonageNet]

Originally Posted by TheLongshot

I can speak for my experience with Cox. I have a MyHD-130 card, which can do QAM, but can't interface with mythTV or MCE. For that, I think you would need a Fusion card.

I have the same service that you do. All I am able to get is Fox, CBS and a music channel. I can't even get all of the locals. So, doing QAM with Cox is disappointing, to say the least.
Jason

So, is it possible that a Fusion card can decode the regular cable channels? please let me know what your HTPC setup is like. I really want to get into this stuff.

THanks,
PaulW

[ProtonageNet]

Originally Posted by Gary McCoy

Problems: If you adapt a DVI output for this HDMI card, you get no audio, you must use a cable box with HDMI - and this capture card only captures stereo audio. Capturing uncompressed HD takes in the neighborhood of 70GB/hour of storage. Compressing this bitstream into a transport stream with software takes about 10 hours of processing per hour of video, so a $3000 hardware capture card is generally more practical. However when you are done you would have a result equivalent to capturing the unencrypted transport stream via a $150 QAM tuner board and only requiring 8.6GB per each hour of video. (Except of course the broadcast transport stream could contain 5.1 surround audio.)

Niether solution will work if the HDCP is used. Remarkable - almost as if DRM were actually designed to deliberately prevent you from using the programming you pay for as you want to. Instead you will be permitted use it only in ways determined by the cable company.

Or you could walk away and get your HD programming elsewhere. Like a $200 rooftop antenna if that option is available to you.

Gary

This sounds like a way too expensive solution. I would rather just hook directly into the coax and use MCE myself. I hope this doesn't mean I have to degrade my service to typical analog cable to get a HTPC working, does it?

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by ProtonageNet

So, is it possible that a Fusion card can decode the regular cable channels? please let me know what your HTPC setup is like. I really want to get into this stuff.

It can, but not very well for your purposes (recording) and not in MCE, you'll need an SD/NTSC tuner card for that.

The best option for recording HD today, is Dish Network and a R5000 modded satellite box. With that setup, you can record anything on DN you subscribe to (including HD) directly (meaning MPEG-2/MPEG-4).

[ProtonageNet]

Originally Posted by stanger89

It can, but not very well for your purposes (recording) and not in MCE, you'll need an SD/NTSC tuner card for that.

The best option for recording HD today, is Dish Network and a R5000 modded satellite box. With that setup, you can record anything on DN you subscribe to (including HD) directly (meaning MPEG-2/MPEG-4).

So I wouldn't be able to record SD/NTSC cable channels if I have it coming in as a digital signal right? I can't just plug my TV into my coax now and have it tune to any channel (no digital tuner on tv). I'll look more into dish network, cable appears to suck for HTPC applications or maybe there is something huge that I'm missing.

[TheLongshot]

Originally Posted by ProtonageNet

So I wouldn't be able to record SD/NTSC cable channels if I have it coming in as a digital signal right? I can't just plug my TV into my coax now and have it tune to any channel (no digital tuner on tv). I'll look more into dish network, cable appears to suck for HTPC applications or maybe there is something huge that I'm missing.

Nope. You'd pretty much just get the channels you get on analog cable. You can only get the digital channels with a box.

It may change if CableCard ever becomes a reality for the PC, but I wouldn't count on being able to add it as an add-on to your computer.

I share your frustration.

Jason

[umdivx]

Originally Posted by ProtonageNet

I have been searching for days for what I suspect is a common question but I haven't found much information.

What I Want to Do:
Build a HTPC that can take my digital cable and act as a DVR recording HDTV and etc. Right now I have to rent a box to get the digital cable and HD channels. I don't mind keeping this box, but there is a lot more I want to do like setting record times etc.

What I Think I Know:
The signal coming to my cable box is a QAM encrypted signal. Now I think it's illegal to decrypt / decode this via software or whatever and I'm not interested in that but if anyone has any links to more information on this please let me know.

yes there are two types of QAM, 64 and 256, then there is either encrypted QAM or non-encrypted QAM.

Non-encrypted QAM are things like your local tv stations like fox, NBC, ABC, CBS, WB, ect..... in HD.

Encrypted is like HBO, skinamax, espn, ect...

There are two prominent QAM tuner cards out right now, the Fusion and MyHD cards. Both are great cards, many ppl recommend the MyHD cards, the only down side is that you won't get a pretty interface like MCE or SageTV becuase the MyHD card can only be used with its proprietary software.

If you can wait a little longer, with the release of Vista you can get cable card tuners for vista, however the only down side is that in order to get cable cards working you need to purchase an "approved" pc from a OEM manufacture like Dell, HP, ect...

What I Think I Can Do:
Is it possible just to take the outputs on my cable box (dvi, component, (no HDMI)) and stream them to some sort of capture card to my HTPC for recording and run mythTV or MCE to manage it all? If I do this then I will still have to use the cable box to "tune" into different stations and that would make me sad.

Currently there are NO capture cards that will take in HD video from a cable box, or sat box and use it like a "set it and forget it" type pvr system.

You can use the HDMI capture card like Gary pointed out, but since most cable box's HDMI is HDCP you won't be able to capture anything from the cable box.

So basically no there is no easy to use, PVR type HD Capture card, other than OTA HDTV tuners.

What I Don't Want:
I hate over the air transmissions, I just want to set record times to record 24 in HD so I can watch the episodes when I get home from college at night! Also I do not want to spend money on a stupid DVR box provided by COX, I want to build my own HTPC and do crazy cool stuff to it via network and network storage.

Why the anamocity towards OTA broadcast HD? Broadcast HD is actually (IMHO) better than cable or satellite as its not compressed. Also Broadcast TV is FREE, no need to sign up for cable tv or satellite to DVR broadcast TV.

Right now Broadcast HD dvring is the only real, reliable way to DVR HD on a PC.

- Josh

[ProtonageNet]

Originally Posted by TheLongshot

Nope. You'd pretty much just get the channels you get on analog cable. You can only get the digital channels with a box.

It may change if CableCard ever becomes a reality for the PC, but I wouldn't count on being able to add it as an add-on to your computer.

I share your frustration.

Jason

Are you saying that even though I have digital cable, I can STILL grab the basic cable channels from the coax with an analog tuner? I thought everything was digitally encoded. If you're not saying that then are you saying that they are digitally encoded but a QAM decoder would be able to pick just those basic analog cable channels up? You are in Burke, VA and I assume you have cox as well. How do you have your HTPC setup with what service?

[ProtonageNet]

Originally Posted by umdivx

Why the anamocity towards OTA broadcast HD? Broadcast HD is actually (IMHO) better than cable or satellite as its not compressed. Also Broadcast TV is FREE, no need to sign up for cable tv or satellite to DVR broadcast TV.

Right now Broadcast HD dvring is the only real, reliable way to DVR HD on a PC.

- Josh

Josh, thanks a lot for your feedback and information about QAM, makes a lot more sense.

Maybe OTA broadcasts aren't that bad. I gave it a try once and didn't enjoy having to deal with the antenna, then I was just suckered into the digital cable when I initialized my inet service from cox.

Paul W

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by ProtonageNet

Are you saying that even though I have digital cable, I can STILL grab the basic cable channels from the coax with an analog tuner?

Yes, typically the channels below 100 (the basic, or expanded basic lineup) are analog. Very few, if any cable systems are fully digital.

[umdivx]

Originally Posted by ProtonageNet

Are you saying that even though I have digital cable, I can STILL grab the basic cable channels from the coax with an analog tuner? I thought everything was digitally encoded. If you're not saying that then are you saying that they are digitally encoded but a QAM decoder would be able to pick just those basic analog cable channels up? You are in Burke, VA and I assume you have cox as well. How do you have your HTPC setup with what service?

Yes cable companies do both Digital and Analog broadcasting at the same time.

Generally channels 2 - 99 are Analog, so if you took your coax straight from the wall and hooked it up to a TV with no cable box you'd get the same thing if you took the coax straight from the wall into a NTSC tuner card.

as far as QAM, QAM is a digital modulation scheme, meaning a QAM tuner WON'T pick up channels 2 - 99, but it will pick up those above 99, a QAM tuner will pick up channels that where a cable box is normaly needed.

However the QAM tuners will ONLY pick up non-encrypted channels. Meaning ones I mentioned already (see previous post).

- Josh

[ProtonageNet]

Originally Posted by umdivx

Yes cable companies do both Digital and Analog broadcasting at the same time.

Generally channels 2 - 99 are Analog, so if you took your coax straight from the wall and hooked it up to a TV with no cable box you'd get the same thing if you took the coax straight from the wall into a NTSC tuner card.

as far as QAM, QAM is a digital modulation scheme, meaning a QAM tuner WON'T pick up channels 2 - 99, but it will pick up those above 99, a QAM tuner will pick up channels that where a cable box is normaly needed.

However the QAM tuners will ONLY pick up non-encrypted channels. Meaning ones I mentioned already (see previous post).

- Josh

Awesome, testing now to see if I get any analog channels. I thought all channels were digitally encoded and encrypted QAM. Maybe there is hope now for my HTPC dream. If I do go this route, I would need NTSC capable tuner, QAM capable tuner and OTA HD capable tuner. Any suggestions on hardware?

thanks,
paulw

EDIT:
Just tested coax directly from wall to TV and got nothing but static (have no digital tuner in my HDTV)... must be all digital.. that's freakin crazy. What does this mean? everything QAM encoded and encrypted maybe? There are loads of people around here that I'm sure have HTPC with COX digital cable, or perhaps they just buy the box from cox, but I would like to know how to find these people and their experiences and since I'm new to this whole field, can anyone help me out?

[umdivx]

Originally Posted by ProtonageNet

Just tested coax directly from wall to TV and got nothing but static (have no digital tuner in my HDTV)... must be all digital.. that's freakin crazy. What does this mean? everything QAM encoded and encrypted maybe? There are loads of people around here that I'm sure have HTPC with COX digital cable, or perhaps they just buy the box from cox, but I would like to know how to find these people and their experiences and since I'm new to this whole field, can anyone help me out?

Make sure your hooking up to the right input. Meaning most newer TV's have two coax inputs on the back.

One is generally labled UHF/VHF, the UHF/VHF input is for an antenna, also known as ATSC tuner for over the air HDTV.

So again make sure your not trying to use the UHF/VHF input.

Then also once you have the coax hooked up you must perform a channel scan to pick up the channels.

- Josh

[white_2kgt]

Do you have a Firewire port on the back of your STB? What kind of STB do you have? I have comcast here and the Motorola tuner we get (well, use to get before they switched to the really little one) had a Firewire out, with that you could pump the signal into your computer and using some software record the video out and actually change the channel! So if you were good you could write a script to tune to a channel using windows schedular and record your shows.

If you don't have firewire out, then you can get a capture card that has A/V inputs and some IR blasters. Use the IR blaster software to tune the channel and whatever recording software you wanted to start recording the shows.

(or you can just download 24 off bit torrent the next day...).

[ProtonageNet]

Originally Posted by umdivx

Make sure your hooking up to the right input. Meaning most newer TV's have two coax inputs on the back.

One is generally labled UHF/VHF, the UHF/VHF input is for an antenna, also known as ATSC tuner for over the air HDTV.

So again make sure your not trying to use the UHF/VHF input.

Then also once you have the coax hooked up you must perform a channel scan to pick up the channels.

- Josh

I'm sorry, it was mis communication with my roommate who was actually plugging in the coax to tv, he said he got channels and I misread it as no channels, please excuse our mistake and thank you for your time. Now that we have channels, back to my orginal question on hardware. I can get NTSC tuner for my HTPC and you say it's possible I can get channels with a QAM decoder and what about OTA HD tuners? is that ATSC? Is there somewhere (thread) I can read more about the different hardware to better understand what's best for my needs?

Thanks,
PaulW

[ProtonageNet]

Originally Posted by white_2kgt

Do you have a Firewire port on the back of your STB? What kind of STB do you have? I have comcast here and the Motorola tuner we get (well, use to get before they switched to the really little one) had a Firewire out, with that you could pump the signal into your computer and using some software record the video out and actually change the channel! So if you were good you could write a script to tune to a channel using windows schedular and record your shows.

If you don't have firewire out, then you can get a capture card that has A/V inputs and some IR blasters. Use the IR blaster software to tune the channel and whatever recording software you wanted to start recording the shows.

(or you can just download 24 off bit torrent the next day...).

I do have FW ports! I forgot about these, firewire and IR so I could set this up a hackery way without buying too much hardware. I would much rather take this route. However the neatness of something like MCE would be nice to manage those recorded shows. Any software you guys know about now that does a good job of managing through firewire?

[umdivx]

as far as hardware, any good NTSC tuner will work, Avermedia Purity 3d 250, Vista View Saber 2020, Nvidia's Dual TV, ect...

and yes ATSC is OTA broadcasting. So an ATSC tuner will tuner over the air HDTV, avermedia A180, Vbox cat's eye 150, and Fusion5 cards are all great ATSC tuners.

ATI makes a theater 650 which is a combo tuner, or hybrid tuner, it has both ATSC and NTSC tuners on one card. So you can do both with one peice of hardware, only down side is that you can't use both at the same time.

in terms if firewire that may work, head over to www.thegreenbutton.com do a search for fireSTB, fireSTB is a mod you can do to windows MCE 2005 to tune firewire with MCE. However your firewire ports need to be enabled on the box and the channels need to be un-encrypted.

- Josh

[ProtonageNet]

Originally Posted by umdivx

as far as hardware, any good NTSC tuner will work, Avermedia Purity 3d 250, Vista View Saber 2020, Nvidia's Dual TV, ect...

and yes ATSC is OTA broadcasting. So an ATSC tuner will tuner over the air HDTV, avermedia A180, Vbox cat's eye 150, and Fusion5 cards are all great ATSC tuners.

ATI makes a theater 650 which is a combo tuner, or hybrid tuner, it has both ATSC and NTSC tuners on one card. So you can do both with one peice of hardware, only down side is that you can't use both at the same time.

in terms if firewire that may work, head over to www.thegreenbutton.com do a search for fireSTB, fireSTB is a mod you can do to windows MCE 2005 to tune firewire with MCE. However your firewire ports need to be enabled on the box and the channels need to be un-encrypted.

- Josh

Josh,

Thanks for your input, I have been searching around and reading about the IEEE 1394 features on this box and reading about what service providers prevent/allow from this port. http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/print...&page=11&pp=30 about 1/4 down the page someone lists these features.

Here is the link to the Explorer 3250HD STB I have >> http://www.sciatl.com/customers/Source/4005304.pdf

I'm still searching but I want to keep this discussion alive.

[mattsoft]

If you want to watch/record unencrypted QAM from your cable company using MCE, I highly recommend the hdhomerun (www.hdhomerun.com) -- there is also a thread about it up here on AVS.

I just got one today and even though the MCE support is beta, it really does work! The device has 2 HD tuners in it -- both capable of OTA ATSC and QAM (unencrypted). The beta Windows driver wraps the QAM signal in an ATSC wrapper so that MCE recognizes it. We watched American Idol tonight and it looked fantastic. Pause, rewind, etc...all works wonderful in MCE. The guide mapping to the QAM channels is a little funky, but it will only get better as the software matures. They are also working on Vista MCE drivers!

[ProtonageNet]

Originally Posted by mattsoft

If you want to watch/record unencrypted QAM from your cable company using MCE, I highly recommend the hdhomerun (www.hdhomerun.com) -- there is also a thread about it up here on AVS.

I just got one today and even though the MCE support is beta, it really does work! The device has 2 HD tuners in it -- both capable of OTA ATSC and QAM (unencrypted). The beta Windows driver wraps the QAM signal in an ATSC wrapper so that MCE recognizes it. We watched American Idol tonight and it looked fantastic. Pause, rewind, etc...all works wonderful in MCE. The guide mapping to the QAM channels is a little funky, but it will only get better as the software matures. They are also working on Vista MCE drivers!

Wow, thanks a lot mattsoft, I will look into this solution.

After reading more about the 1394 feature, it seems like I will not be able to get it to work with out any decryption (illegal?). I think I'm going to read more about this hdhomerun. It's really neat how it can wrap the QAM in an ATSC wrapper. Now I just need to find out how many unencrypted QAM channels I have available in my area.

[ProtonageNet]

Thank you all for your comments, I have opened up a new thread here:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...64#post9659464

Please all if you are interested continue this discussion on this thread for it will have the most up to date and detailed information about my project.

Thank you all for your feedback!

[huesmann]

Originally Posted by Gary McCoy

Time to break out the Red Rider carbine-action anti-bird device.

Careful, you'll shoot your eye out!

[huesmann]

Originally Posted by umdivx

You can use the HDMI capture card like Gary pointed out, but since most cable box's HDMI is HDCP you won't be able to capture anything from the cable box.

Will a HDMI capture card work if your output from the cable box is DVI, and you have to use an adapter to connect to HDMI?

[umdivx]

Originally Posted by huesmann

Will a HDMI capture card work if your output from the cable box is DVI, and you have to use an adapter to connect to HDMI?

NO.... as DVI stilll carries HDCP requirements. You can't capture copy protected content from a devices like a cable or sat. box form a digital connection like DVI or HDMI.

- Josh

[huesmann]

So what good is an HDMI capture card? What CAN you capture on it?

[umdivx]

Originally Posted by huesmann

So what good is an HDMI capture card? What CAN you capture on it?

Well the card in question is more for the PRO's, studios and such can use the card to capture and edit HD material they got from somewhere.

They don't want the average joe, taking a HDMI capture card, hooking up a cable box or a dvd player and ripping a perfect copy of something.

- Josh

[SpeedyHTPC]

Originally Posted by mattsoft

We watched American Idol tonight and it looked fantastic. Pause, rewind, etc...all works wonderful in MCE.

Sorry for the OT but I dont think American Idol is actually in HD. Are you watching it upconverted? Even the OTA HD channels upconvert it.