Tuner for Windows 7 HTPC w/ Direct TV Set Top Box

You can use the Hauppauge HD PVR in conjunction with the DVBLink for HDPVR software. That's pretty much the only option you have for HD recording from any dish right now.

I have the same problem with a Comcast HD STB, I thought of that combination to watch and record in Windows Media Center, but I decided against it because you cant record one channel and watch another channel.

There is not really any good solution that I have found.

if you have comcast you can do cable card now to get hd, or wait a few months for the 4-6 tuner cable cards to come out

You can get two STBs and two HD PVRs to do that.

I could, but spending over $400 is not worth it to me.

Do you have an info on this? I am not sure what to search for to find any info.

They'll quite likely be in the $400 pricerange, if not higher.

http://www.cetoncorp.com/ProductsWMC.php

i have heard $299 with a 2 tuner version even cheaper, but nothing has been announced yet.

They told Engadget <$600 but more than $300.

That'll probably be for the 4-tuner version. Even if it is 4 or 500, it's still a better setup than 2 HD PVRs with 2 HD STB rentals (two HD STB rentals can easily cost $180 a year). Another nice option is you can feed HD quality TV to every TV in your house and not have to pay an additional HD STB rental fee by using Media Center Extenders that can use the tuners off your Media Center CableCard, and if you have good quality COAX in your house you could even use the coax with a MoCA network and not have to install any new wiring.

yeah, but you're stuck with Media Center extenders and all their limitations (no DVDs, no Blu-ray, etc).

Not entirely true. First, this is only if you're talking about the 360 (which is currently the only sold extender). There are ways to support DVDs and a beta with Divx7 currently exists that allows you to play HD MKVs on the 360 without having to transcode. They're still working on DTS audio issues, though.

Media Center currently has weak extenders, yes, but they will be the only ones to support CableCard tuners and 3rd party utilities are being developed to help. Of course, I'd much rather see MS add this support natively or see another company start creating an extender again that does have better non-DVR support.

Do these "ways" include Chapter and Menu support, or are they the standard "Convert to WTV/dvr-ms/mpg" ways.


What about chapters? M2TS files? Blu-ray structures?


Every time I look at *MC, the crippled extenders shut me right down. And I'm running Windows 7 Ultimate and have an Xbox360 already, so it's not a cost of adoption thing. MS just doesn't seem to care about the enthusiast market.

Frankly if I wanted cablecard and was willing to be as limited as I would be with WMC, I'd probably just get a Moxi. Not to mention the IMO shaky future of CableCard now that it's all but been declared dead by the FCC.


I don't see that happening.

The hd-pvr still has one huge advantage compared to cablecard tuners, that makes having one a nice addition to a system: no drm.

Especially if you are subscribed to premium channels and want to archive your shows this is a huge advantage as most premium content is going to be copy once or copy never flagged and you will lose it when you upgrade etc. The hd-pvr shows can be kept forever and watched on other pcs hooked to your server (not sure if that last part is possible with DRMed shows or not).

I'm with FIOS. We do not have the DRM issues that many of you have with your cable providers. So far, none of the FIOS channels have been flagged for anti-copying that I am aware of.

TFYI - the 6-tuner Ceton CableCARD tuner is for OEMs only, Unless you plan on buying a complete turnkey HTPC you will only be able to buy the 2 or 4-tuner versions from Ceton and other vendors. Projected prices are approximately $300 for the 2-tuner model and $600 for the 4-tuner version. These prices are purely speculation based on what information has been released to date.

Consider using your HTPC to view content online/OTA and dump the $100/mo pay TV bill altogether.

Please elaborate.

I think he is referring to this article.

For some of use using a web browser to watch TV is not acceptable.

You can avoid the web browser with programs such as Hulu desktop, but my problem is the lack of quality and obviously, it doesn't have all TV content.

At the very least HBO etc. will be, and i'd be surprised if at least a few others were not flagged as well but its possible.

Does a remote work with that? Besides that's only one place. If I were to want to replace what I watch on Dish with streaming at least some of it would have to come off random provider's websites. That's really the question for me. The use of a PC in my living room/HT has never been a goal, in fact it's never even been a desire. It's only been a means, and for most things I had very good luck completely hiding the fact that it was a PC I was using and it was great. Then the wheels basically came off with Blu-ray.

I'd like to drop satellite and stream my TV on demand. Heck I'd sign up for a service that provided that (if it were high quality and "complete"). But really it just comes back to me understanding the OP's frustration with the state of things.

Hulu Desktop does work with remote. I've tried it and it does work well for animation shows, but I don't like it for any other shows. I'll have to stop it on Hulu and pull up the HD recording instead. It also doesn't support DD. Even if the quality was up to par, it's still lacking in enough content to replace a TV provider.