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Asking Suggestions: Cable Card Tuner vs Hauppauge HD-PVR

post #1 of 12
5/29/09 at 9:53pm
Thread Starter 
My question is..... which option is better IF the only HD recording you do is from a cable STB?

I have been doing QAM recording of non-premium channels, but have yet to buy a Hauppauge HD-PVR primarily because I have no interest in recording from any component sources other than a STB and my cable provider did not used to give us premium HD channels that I was interested in saving. But now that my cable provider has begun to broadcast some premium channels I like in HD, I am considering to get either a Haupauge HD-PVR or cable card tuner(s) on my Win 7 PC.

I have been interested in HD-PVR all along but with Win 7 RC Media Center having the ability to work with a cable card, would it be a better option?

The resulting recording will be in .WTV which is kinda pain, but Win 7 allows a right-click and convert to DVR-MS for mpeg2 stream WTV recordings (which is the case in the US). I'm not sure if that is applicable to encrypted TV channels though as I 'suspect' that one of the purposes of developing the WTV format was perhaps to protect broadcaster's copyright? If that is not the case though,,, companies that make popular video editting soft (e.g. Adobe, Pinnacle) may start making softs that take WTV for input in the future.

One downside of this is that for those who already own regular QAM tuners at this point, this method requires another tuner that takes cable cards. But you could argue that getting a tuner like that eliminates the need for a cable box and separate DVR. And in my particular case, I have to buy either HD-PVR or a cable card tuner anyway...

What are thoughts on a cable card tuner vs Hauppauge HD-PVR specifically for premium HD channel recording, editting and storing away permanently?


Thanks!

p.s. my PC spec, current tuners, cable setup
Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz, CORSAIR DOMINATOR 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500), SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 4850, GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3P ATX, PC Power & Cooling S61EPS 610W, Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB HDDs in RAID 1, LG 22X SATA DVD Burner with LightScrib, Winodows 7 RC x64 & Vista Home Premium x64 Dual Boot, Antec 900 Case, Pinnacle PCTV Tuners and Hauppauge 2250 Dual Tuner, Time Warner Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8300HDC.
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post #2 of 12
5/30/09 at 1:50pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by moonstar View Post

My question is..... which option is better IF the only HD recording you do is from a cable STB?

I have been doing QAM recording of non-premium channels, but have yet to buy a Hauppauge HD-PVR primarily because I have no interest in recording from any component sources other than a STB and my cable provider did not used to give us premium HD channels that I was interested in saving. But now that my cable provider has begun to broadcast some premium channels I like in HD, I am considering to get either a Haupauge HD-PVR or cable card tuner(s) on my Win 7 PC.

I have been interested in HD-PVR all along but with Win 7 RC Media Center having the ability to work with a cable card, would it be a better option?

The resulting recording will be in .WTV which is kinda pain, but Win 7 allows a right-click and convert to DVR-MS for mpeg2 stream WTV recordings (which is the case in the US). I'm not sure if that is applicable to encrypted TV channels though as I 'suspect' that one of the purposes of developing the WTV format was perhaps to protect broadcaster's copyright? If that is not the case though,,, companies that make popular video editting soft (e.g. Adobe, Pinnacle) may start making softs that take WTV for input in the future.

One downside of this is that for those who already own regular QAM tuners at this point, this method requires another tuner that takes cable cards. But you could argue that getting a tuner like that eliminates the need for a cable box and separate DVR. And in my particular case, I have to buy either HD-PVR or a cable card tuner anyway...

What are thoughts on a cable card tuner vs Hauppauge HD-PVR specifically for premium HD channel recording, editting and storing away permanently?


Thanks!

p.s. my PC spec, current tuners, cable setup
Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz, CORSAIR DOMINATOR 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500), SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 4850, GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3P ATX, PC Power & Cooling S61EPS 610W, Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB HDDs in RAID 1, LG 22X SATA DVD Burner with LightScrib, Winodows 7 RC x64 & Vista Home Premium x64 Dual Boot, Antec 900 Case, Pinnacle PCTV Tuners and Hauppauge 2250 Dual Tuner, Time Warner Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8300HDC.

Keep in mind, you cannot buy a digital cable card tuner and install it in any system. These cards are only available to OEMs (Dell, HP). Which means you'll have to buy a whole new system with the digital cable card tuner included.

I tried using the HD-PVR and returned it after a week. I was extremely disappointed by the picture quality. Plus, the HD-PVR records using the h.264 codec which is not supported by Vista Media Center. I had to use Sage TV software which constantly crashed.
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post #3 of 12
5/30/09 at 2:37pm
You can use a Digital Cable tuner in any PC now.

All the recording done with the DCT are protected. You can't convert them to anything or stream them to a device that is anything but a Media Center Extender.
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post #4 of 12
5/30/09 at 2:47pm
Thread Starter 
Then, HD-PVR is still the only option for saving premium HD shows in mpeg2 or to Blu-ray disks.. Thanks a lot guys. I hope I won' get disappointed by the picture quality, I hope it's at least better than SD.
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post #5 of 12
5/30/09 at 4:00pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by almostinsane View Post

You can use a Digital Cable tuner in any PC now.

False. Digital cable card tuners only work in OEM OCUR certified systems and require a special BIOS.
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post #6 of 12
5/30/09 at 4:20pm
Quote:


Quote:
Originally Posted by almostinsane View Post
You can use a Digital Cable tuner in any PC now.
False. Digital cable card tuners only work in OEM OCUR certified systems and require a special BIOS.

Almostinsane is correct on this. There has been a thread with links to the source to hack the bios or otherwise for cable card compliant bios.


MAK
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post #7 of 12
5/30/09 at 5:09pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by racerxnet View Post

Almostinsane is correct on this. There has been a thread with links to the source to hack the bios or otherwise for cable card compliant bios.

I stand corrected. I was not aware of this discovery.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1146572
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post #8 of 12
6/2/09 at 7:13pm
Thread Starter 
Nice!!! Someone's doing a great job finding out all those tricks!
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post #9 of 12
6/2/09 at 7:45pm
Just wanted to make a small point here about the Cable Tuner Cards. I have dual Cable cards in my HTPC and while Media Center does a nice job with recordings and the guide is accurate, you WILL NOT be able to use software like SageTV or MediaPortal with the cable cards.

I spent a great deal of time today researching that and it seems that since these cards are registered as network devices and not as Tuner cards, those software applications will not use them as a signal source.

I'm sure the "real" answer is more complex, but at least that is what I am experiencing.

Have not had a chance to play with recordings yet, but I thought I would pass along what I do know since you mentioned SageTV.
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post #10 of 12
6/2/09 at 7:59pm
I use a HDPVR with analog 1080i input from a FTA sat to record PBS-HD (1080i) using the SageTv V6, installed as a service on my HTPC. The output quality using SageTv's media extender set to 1080p matches the source HDMI picture quality. I havent used Hauppauges software much to do captures, but those I did, seemed to be identical to the original. I havent had any complaints on the picture quality.

I have had a problem of the device becoming unavailable (either its crashing, or the computers driver is failing to communicate with it). I havent figured out which. Simply turning off the HDPVR, waiting until the computer unmounts it, and then turning it back on, restores everything. Not good it it happens prior to a SageTv scheduled recording, but only happens about once a week. Hasnt been worth tearing everything apart and reinstalling drivers to try to find the problem.
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post #11 of 12
6/2/09 at 9:55pm
For a cable based system combined with Media Center I would to go with the cable card approach. As mentioned above cable cards only work with Media Center, whereas the HD PVR does not (really) work with MC as of now.

The HD PVR is more the solution for anything but cable, and it definetly has it's issues (just search on this forum). But I'd say it has become fairly stable recently, and it works pretty well with apps like Sage.
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post #12 of 12
6/7/09 at 11:30pm
Thread Starter 
Hm... I see. Thank you very much for your input and tricks. Hm.. but if I want to edit recordings, it has to be HD-PVR right? As Win 7's media center doesn't convert to DVR-MS recordings that are encrypted?
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