New HTPC build... a few questions.

There are lots of great threads that cover all this stuff, search is your friend

The biggest issue you're going to be dealing with is that the tuner card works just like the tuner built into you TV. It can't access any of the channels that you can't get without the cable company's box.

The only exception to this is the cable-card based tuner from ATI, which is generally only available as part of a complete, ready-built HTPC.

I used my HTPC as a way to get rid of the $100/mo cable bill entirely. A lot of content can be found online for free.

But not in high def

as already pointed out, you CAN get cable card tuners (from ATI) to replace the cable box however they are expensive and hard to come by. generally can be found on fleabay but upwards of $200 per tuner used, or $300 new.

Windows Media Center is generally the defacto standard for noobs when it comes to a htpc interface, it is just easy to use, and looks great.

however there is no real blu ray support inside of media center, Arcsoft total media theater 3 and Power DVD have added "plug-ins" to media center to get some seamless support for blu ray playback within media center but its not 100% there.


again cable card tuners are an option, and that would replace the cable box dvr completely, but its a high up front investment.

if you were to use a cable box, non-dvr cable box, you can feed the coax from the wall into the cable box as normal, then svideo out of the cable box and into a tuner/capture card on the pc.

the pc then would have an IR blaster that would change the channels on the cable box, and the pc would record the feed.


short answer, yes.


I don't have a receiver that supports hdmi either.

I "split" it. I send hdmi directly to my dispaly. And then send spdif to my reciver.

only down side, is you always need the receiver on for audio.

- Josh

sure there is. forum rules say we cant discuss how though...

that is like having a Ferrari and only driving is 20mph. Yes you can, but why would you? You get absolute horrible picture quality with coax. use svideo or composite video if you can night and day difference over coax.

- Josh

Coax from your STB to your htpc can't do HD either.

Your STB is decoding the signal, so only analog, SD video is coming out of the coax from your STB.

IF you wanted HD from cable tv, you'd skip the STB all together, and do coax striaght into a QAM or cable card tuner. Then you would be able to get unencrypted HD (generally only the locals channels in HD) with a QAM tuner, and then with the ATI cable card tuner you would get the premium HD channels as well.

When you use a sat or cable STB, what cable(s) do you use for HD to your tv? Component (red,blue,green rca) or DVI/HDMI are the ONLY ways of getting HD out of a STB (well you can do firewire but that is something completely different)

the Coax that comes into your home, is just a distribution medium. The HD signals that are on the coax from your cable provider are in digital format, digital uses up less bandwidth than analog does, so it allows you to get HD over that cable. but again if you want/need to use a set top box from cable or sat, and wanted to use coax out of it and into your htpc, all you are going to get is analog SD video, and NOT HD.



again, coax out of your cable box, does NOT get you HD video. ONLY component, or HDMI will get you HD video. and since there is NO HDMI capture cards for htpc use, your ONLY option is the Hauppage HD PVR, which is a component video capture box, that is your only option if using a hd cable box.



yes all those are the digital channels. which is what I was explaining above. You CAN get an ATI cable card tuner, which would negate the need for a cable box at all, however again it is expensive and hard to come by.

- Josh

the problem is your cable box wont output hd over coax so your tuner card can capture it. the cable box just passes through to signal. you need something decode it and pass the decoded signal to the htpc.

there aren't any tuner cards that can capture component video or hdmi (maybe one but i never used it, and i don't know how well it works)

you need to get a cable card system that will decode the hd signal from the cable co, but they are pricey.

you can do QAM natively with win7 but you will only get local networks in HD, plus a bunch of others in SD.

component video there is: http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/data_hdpvr.html

where have you been? its been around for almost a year now.

- Josh

like i said maybe there was one but i never used one...

can it do live tv pause/rewind? did it work with media center?

I want a similar result. If I understand well, the HD-PVR from Hauppauge is the only common way to connect a HD satellite receiver to a computer.

There are no other comparable devices? Most of the htpc people on this forum use this?

Can't I just use the hdmi output of the satellite decoder and plug it in a sort of video capture card on the htpc?

To decode the encrypted digital cable/satellite channels on a HTPC, you would need a cable card solution. Cable card solutions are only available through OEM system builders or system integrators, unless you are adventurous and attempt to follow a certain hack that is out there (not sure if we are allowed to link to it or not).

I was quite surprised by this limitation too. I thought for sure there was a DIY solution to build a Linux or Windows box on the cheap that surely could run better than the junky Scientific Atlanta DVR i get from my cable company, but the powers that be have the lock down on digital and premium channels.

My TV provider is Bell TV in Canada and I doubt there's an easy way to decode their signal directly in a computer. I was more thinking of buying their non-PVR HD box and then plug it (by HDMI or component?) into my computer so I can get all my media from the network and my tv programs in one simple interface.

So, my question is : Is the HD-PVR from Hauppauge the only device that can achieve this?
It would be surprising as many other people must watch satellite HD tv programs through their computer (or not?). If it's not the case, I guess that a htpc isn't a good solution for us satellite TV users, and I'd rather buy a propretary PVR from Bell...

Pretty much... The HD-PVR is the only consumer level device out there that can capture HD over component. There are some professional level devices, but you are looking at a $1000+ investment for them vs the $200 or less for the HD-PVR.


As for our original topic poster:
1) For HD you will need a fairly decent computer running Vista or Win7, a HDCP compliant video card, a HDCP compliant TV/display, and possibly a HDCP compliant receiver or audio/video pre-processor (if you want to do surround sound). That is just the minimum. If you really want full Blu-Ray capable system, you will also need an Asus Xonar 1.3 (normal or Deluxe) sound card as it is the only sound card which can really output HD audio without down-converting it, but again, unless you have a high end receiver/pre-processor for surround sound, this is pointless. For software, if you want the full audio, you will need TMT3 Platinum, which will set you back a few benjamins, and as said, doesn't really work well with Media Center, which is why I recommend using Media Portal and not Media Center for your interface. Media Portal is free, but not very intuitive to setup and configure (because you can do too much with it, it is simply complicated). Read the thread about it in here for the basics. I personally love it.

2) Correct, if you have premium content channels, a tuner will not replace a STB. You will still need a HD STB from the cable company if you want your HTPC to capture the premium stations (and HD premium stations). You might be able to use the cable card capture devices, however, you will have to first find one (and they are hard to get on their own since they were not meant to be sold to consumers but to system builders to integrate into their complete computers), and then you have to contact your cable company to have them install their cable card into the device. Just do some quick looks on google to see how big a pain that has been for the few people who have tried doing it since most cable company locations have not dealt with it, and thus don't know how to do it, it has always been a fiasco each time. Your best solution is currently the HD-PVR from Hauppauge if you want premium station content. If you don't need premium stations, the HDHomeRunner works very nicely. With a STB, you will need a device on the HTPC that can transmit IR signals (see below for more info on that), and the capture/control software will need to be configured so that it uses that device to send the proper IR codes to change the channels.

3) For the most part yes. That said, you don't absolutely need to get a case that has this kind of support. You can just get a USB-UIRT for about $20 which can both send and receive IR commands and is a commonly used device that most HTPC interface software (Media Center, SageTV, MythTV, Media Portal) know how to use it and let you easily setup any IR signal you want to use for whatever command you want to give it. So for a harmony, you need to simply do something like select the "Media Center Remote" as the device and most of the programs will let you say that you have a MCE remote.

4) This method may or may not work. It really depends on your TV and how it can deals with audio over HDMI. If it is HDMI v1.1, you will only have stereo sound. With HDMI v1.3 you might or might not get 5.1 audio due to converting the audio to an analogue device (the "analogue hole" issue and how the MPAA etc., is fighting against it). I can say that going HDMI to the TV and using SPDIF from the sound card to the receiver should work. The downside being that you may or may not be able to send audio to both the HDMI and the SPDIF at the same time and thus would need to have the receiver on for any type of audio (this is how my setup works).



Now a LARGE part of this is all about the software. You need a good interface to the system which works well with just using a remote control for inputs. Again, I like Media Portal + StreamedMP plugin. I also have it configured to use "Zoom Player" for watching recorded TV, and DVDs, and Total Media Theater 3 for Blu-Ray disks. Now that said, I don't actually use Media Portal to actually schedule and record my TV shows because it doesn't fully support the HD-PVR (it works fine for stereo, but not for S/PDIF for surround sound). For recording I use SageTV. You can simply use SageTV for everything and not configure Media Portal. I did for years, but I have grown to love Media Portal and their interface and plugins (Moving Pictures and MovingPictures-TV) for their awesome eye-candy and information. SageTV will set you back around $80 if you want to use that. I think you can use the included software from Hauppauge to schedule recordings, but I don't know how well it works since I have never used it. I know with SageTV, I simply tell it what shows/series I want, if I want only new episodes, or new+reruns, and what specific channels I want it to record (so you can say record the HD version of the show, not the SD channel). Media Portal doesn't do as good a job getting the channel lineup (from my experience, well, it can if you subscribe to a website for getting your channel listings, but there is no real good free website out there). And from my understanding, you simply tell it to record a specific channel at a specific time on specific days. While this works (and works the same way our VCRs did in 1980's), I would rather it let me say, record this show whenever it happens to be on, on whatever channel it happens to be on (checking if I already recorded that episode or not).

your pc does the pause/rewind, not the box.

and yes it will do live tv.

and now it will not currently work with media center, they are suppose to be releasing drivers and support for 7MC but I have yet to see it.

- Josh

for HD, the only other option is hacking your sat box, using the R5000 mod: http://www.nextcomwireless.com/R5000/home.htm

those are the only two ways of getting HD content into a htpc for sat service.

Rumors are that Dish is working on a ethernet mod for their VIP-211 box

also Direct TV was working on a media center tuner: The HDPC-20

but nothing of either have come to light yet.

- Josh

sorry but cable card, is ONLY for cable. Doesn't work for Satelite tv at all.

- Josh

[quote=Fallen Kell;16657055 If you really want full Blu-Ray capable system, you will also need an Asus Xonar 1.3 (normal or Deluxe) sound card as it is the only sound card which can really output HD audio without down-converting it, but again, unless you have a high end receiver/pre-processor for surround sound, this is pointless.[/quote]

You can still do 8 channel analog out and not need an expensive ass sound card that frankly isn't worth it.



Have you even tried it? it adds a "plug-in" for media center, which yes its not integrated into media center, but makes it seamless to transition to and from media center into TMT3.

So not sure what you are talking about there.


Media portal is fugly frankly. and isn't as user friendly if you ask me. plus if you are using vista or win7 like you recommended above "technically" media center is free too



I bought a cable card tuner off of ebay, and then had comcast come in and plug in the cable card, it honestly wasn't that hard at all. The hardest part is doing the "hack" which is pretty well documented out there already.

The hard part is justifying $150 - $300 for a single cable card tuner. I ended up selling mine, because I only purchased it for testing purposes and also because it is summer time, I dropped my premium cable package.

call up your cable company and just tell them you are setting up a Tivo Series 3 or Tivo HD and they will know what you want to do. You don't have to tell them it is for a media center pc, all you need is the cable card.



Issue with that, that I have, as well as many others, is that you are still paying a money cable box rental fee.



SageTV, Myth TV, Beyond TV, GB-PVR, want more?

The MCE USB IR receiver/blaster or the USB-UIRT.


No you can't do both hdmi audio and spdif at the same time. windows unfortunately doesn't work that way, as well as all the dvd apps only allow you to allocate a single audio source at a time.



problem with above is, it is not very "noob" friendly, way way too many pieces to configure and to go wrong there.

- Josh

umdivx,

your wrote, "Issue with that, that I have, as well as many others, is that you are still paying a money cable box rental fee."

I think this is one of the hardest things to get a grasp of when srtarting to research an HTPC. I monitor social media conversations and trends for a communications company and see a lot of people interested in ways to cut the fees for cable, especially with consumer services like Boxee and Hulu getting a lot of attention. This leads people to start searching out solutions and often get interested in an HTPC. With all the advances in Media software, more than adequate hardware for high definition for reasonable prices, it is quite puzzling that a way to easily integrate premium channels into ones HTPC media mix without equipment from your provider (whether that be cable or satellite) is not widely available. Thanks for the nice clear descriptions and clarifications.

Thank you for the info. I find it a little bit expensive at 250$ + 100$ for the Bell HD receiver, compared to an easy (but boring, granted) 400$ Bell HD PVR with dual tuner.