Lots of HTPC help needed

Congratulations on the windfall, nothing like winning some good stuff!
The short answer is "no" that won't work. The coax out on your set top box does not support ATSC (HD) signals, so that's out. You might check the FIOS thread to see if there is another solution (USB/Firewire)-
There is a card available that records HD via a component input, but kind of defeats your stated purpose.
I'd start by just hooking up your tuners to the wall and see what you get-you certainly can't hurt anything

FIOS does use QAM, but I understand it's nearly 100% encrypted.
At best you'll get what you can normally get OTA.

The only real solution it buy a full fledged Cable Card Equipped PC from a major OEM.

As for your Audio problem. I'd recomend running in hybrid mode as the 8200's HDMI port supports full 7.1 LPCM 24/192khz audio. The 9600 HDMI mode can only do DD and DTS or 2 channel audio. If you can't find an spdif header on your mobo for the 9600 then you'll get effectively the same thing using the spdif out on the back of your motherboard.

It will, but not over the coax connector - the only stb AFAIK that would do that was one from DISH a couple years back

And - there's most likely nothing easy about it - they actually go out of their way to make it hard

are you using the 9600 with the system or are you just using the onboard video of the mother board?


Simply put... you CAN'T! with the system and tuner cards you have now.

in order to get the "premium" hd channels and DVR them with a PC, you either need to get a HD-PVR capture box: http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/data_hdpvr.html

problem is you need to have an HD box directly connected to it to feed the HD video into it to turn your PC into a DVR.

The other option is to purchase a bran new OEM pc, that support Cable Card Tuners, Fios is technically cable tv, it still uses the coax in your home to distribute the TV services, it uses the same QAM modulation like cable tv does, so with Cable Card tuners you can then get the Premium HD channels and DVR them like you want, however to get cable card tuners you have to purchase an OEM pc from vendors like Dell, Gateway, HP, Velocity Micro, Cannon PC, ect... You can't use Cable Card tuners on home built pc's.


Nope doesn't work that way, and what I wrote above is the only two options that you have.

QAM is a modulation scheme that is used, and cable boxes decode that, like already mentioned most premium HD channels are encrypted, so you need something to decode that (IE a cable box or cable card tuner with supplied cable card) ATSC is off the air Digital SD/HD broadcast tv, has nothing to do with fios or cable tv.

The coax feed that comes directly out of the cable box is analog NTSC signal, so you won't get HD, you won't even get digital SD via the coax out of the cable box. Component Video, DVI, and or HDMI are the only ways of getting HD video out of a cable box.

- Josh

Sorry forgot to mention that. In most cases Firewire/1394 ports are disabled but if your lucky enough and fios doesn't disable them, and baring they don't have the 5c broadcast flag enabled on the firewire ports, that is certainly a viable option for getting HD video into a pc.

But if 5c is enabled it will only allow you to watch the HD feed, and NOT be able to record it.


I think you mixing up terms and technology here. A tuner card is just that, a tuner, it "encodes" the video stream, NOT decode it. so your tuner card might have a hardware based mpeg2 decoder, but unless your tuner card is like the older MyHD MDP-130 where it also has a built in mpeg2 decoder and had actual video outputs along with its tuning, I highly doubt it has an mpeg2 decoder.

Secondly these days, specially with the hardware you listed above, there is no need to EVER worry about mpeg2 deocding as both the on board video as well as the video card you have both have hardware accelerated mpeg2 decoding built into them.

Lastly if the firewire is enabled and you can record the feed from the firewire, there is no need for the tuner card what so ever as the cable box will be the tuner, and your pc will just "download" the stream and save it.

- Josh

Why must you buy a complete OEM system in order to have cable tuner cards compatible with FIOS? There is absolutely no way to do this with an existing system plugging in the same exact models of cable tuner cards purchased separately? Or is there some "legal issues" with doing that which means we can't talk about any workaround?

Hey what about this device: Hauppauge HD-PVR.

Would this be a good solution for watching live and/or recording FIOS signals ?

requirements put forth by the cable labs group.


not legal issues, but requirements put forth by cable labs, each system that can support cable cards has to be certified, a home built pc is not that. Also the cable card systems run a special OCUR bios, and finally the license of vista you need for it has an OCUR via key to activate the tuner card capabilities.



As I pointed out in previous post, yes it will, however you need to have a fios HD cable box to feed the HD video into the HD-PVR.

the HD-PVR isn't a tuner box, so has not tuner capabiliites at all, all the HD-PVR does is capture video, and audio, so you need a cable box (a tuner) to decode and feed the HD video to the HD-PVR via component video cables.

- Josh

The video card can pass DD or DTS, but it cannot due pure 5.1 LPCM.

Yes, your receiver will get the sound and turn it into DD or DTS 5.1 if supported.

hey thanks for the explanation Josh, I much appreciate it!

now, considering how much you know about these two alternatives: what would you personally recommend? getting a cable card ready oem pc or getting the HD-PVR?

my HTPC now is windows xp with sageTV software. It's got pretty decent hardware with core2 duo processor and nvidia 7 series video card. I use R5000 currently to capture my FIOS tv but I am not happy with it at all, which is why I am now exploring alternatives. it is terribly slow at changing channels (which is a multi-step process each with their own delays) and it has stability issues as well as problems with a few certain channels.

now, I imagine getting the HD-PVR would be a similar solution than the R5000 (I guess the R5000 is like having the HD-PVR modded into the STB instead of external, with IR blasters to change channels) which would mean it too would be terrible slow at changing channels- but I don't know.

I imagine a new cable card PC would be like my HTPC was before I got FIOS, where I had a dual standard cable tuner box which ran like a dream. Changed channels quickly, no stability issues, everything ran smooth...

what do you think?

well since the HD-PVR doesn't support Vista Media Center (no mpeg4 support), and that you already have SageTV which does support the HD-PVR that is a no brainer there.

But like you pointed out IR blaster, channel changing slowness issues.

Vista Media Center with Cable Card tuners isn't a good choice of channel changing speed is a priority for you.

I guess I don't channel surf much so It's never bothered me much, I DVR everything so that is all I ever really watch.

- Josh

I have a very similar computer (XFX GeForce 8200 board) and couldn't get DTS or Dolby Digital to play via the SPDIF connector until I installed this filter:

http://ac3filter.net/projects/spdifer

It lets the media applications know the motherboard can pass through these signals.

that is really only needed if you are playing back media files like MKV, WMV's, ect... were the audio isn't in native AC3 audio stream.

If you are playing back a DVD, the DVD app just needs to be set to spdif pass through and your done.

- Josh

I was using Directv2PC and it wouldn't work until I installed the filter. It played all recordings in stereo even though they were in DD5.1 format. Maybe it isn't needed by the OP, but it might be worth a shot if what you suggest doesn't work. There are known issues with some GeForce 8200 based boards regarding SPDIF passthrough. This worked for me - YMMV.

(1) HDMI to receiver.

(2) Analog to receiver.

(3) SPDIF to receiver. (You're SOL, the board doesn't have one but...)
You have headers in the board to do this, make an SPDIF bracket or get a soundcard and be done with it.

Good luck.

The driver for HDMI is included in the Geforce drivers as a package but you have to install it independently. If you can find it, go to the NVidia site and download it.

You might want to look in the GF8200 thread, as there are plenty of solutions and answers to your questions.