Challenge! build a 4 HDTV tuners to distribute to 4 HDTV for $1000

Question: Is cable-card required? If not, then:

$200 Sage HD300 / Server bundle
$450 3x Sage HD300 ($150 each)
$300 2x HDhomerun Dual ($150 each)
-----
$950 Not counting the computer

Wouldn't the best solution be a Ceton InfiniTV in a decent PC and then get 3 or 4 Xbox 360 consoles as the client devices for each TV? There always seem to be sales 360's especially if you are willing to get a refurb or used one.

I agree with rdb4133

start saving your schmeckles because thats the only way you are going to do what you want. you have a pretty ambitious dream for that low of a budget.

either get stuff for free or readjust your dream.

Just get U-Verse and use the left over money for beer.

Although I was just ribbin ya ... sort of. Since you ask, it may actually be worth getting a quote. In my neighboorhood, they have been beating on doors every 4 weeks or so.. price matching or better to get people to switch over. I've got 4 kids with cable in thier rooms and then 3 more cable runs, so they have limitations that I can't really deal with ... but your scenario .. it may actaully be worth looking in to.

Isn't U-Verse still limited to two simultaneous live HD streams, and the rest have to be SD?

Yes

actually no. It depends on your distance from the vrad. If you are close there are actually new 4hd feed profiles. I currently was upgraded to 3hd feeds at 2000ft from the vrad.

actually I would change that a bit...
$200 Sage HD300+Server Bundle
$450 3x Sage HD300's
$210 2x WinTV-HVR-2250
$220 eMachines EL1333-11f AMD 1.6GHz Desktop PC
$1080 Total
maybe find a cheaper tuner, or only support 2 'live' HD streams since everyone else could/would be watching movies/recorded shows and you are under $1K...

ditch cable, it is evil, and save $80 a month... actually ditching cable would pay for the setup above in just 13 months... that is a pretty good ROI....

According to you, you would ditch, all premium channels as well.

yup... they are less needed now...
exhibit A: you can have hard drives full of movies, your very own "on Demand" filled with stuff you like...
exhibit B: Netflix
exhibit C: Hulu
exhibit D: other sites "That Shall not Be Named"

there is a whole world of content out there that more than makes up for the loss of a few "premium channels"
I cut the cord years ago... never looked back, never been happier...

Ah . . . WinTV-HVR-2250, $105 at NewEgg. $52.50 per tuner. A good find.

I never knew these existed,

Will the sagetv hd theatre300 allow you to do the same? if you had that ceton tuner in a powerfull enough pc. could you control pvr functions off the little unit they sell?

For anyone that may get the wrong impression, SageTV *does not* support the Ceton Cablecard tuner. The closest approximation for Sage is an HD PVR 1212 hooked up with a cable/sat box (regular box, doesn't need to be a DVR box.)

Personally, I agree with the notion put forth by Somewhatlost. Dump cable, and fill your watching habits with other means. Assuming you haven't been watching exceedingly large sums of content for the last couple years, it's highly likely that you can find a backlog of TV series available at Netflix (either On Demand or in disc form) that will help you fill in the void that may be caused when you dump cable and lose a couple of cable shows (until they come out on disc less than a year later.)

Although it is an admittedly grey activity, a person can bump their Netflix plan up to 3 discs at a time for a month or two and fill up a large buffer worth of TV series or movies quickly by ripping and returning them. Then watching and deleting at their leisure. Add OTA, Netflix On Demand, free hulu and the ocasional Amazon VOD and you get a lot of content.

The above works out well if you tend to watch normal levels of TV. If you're parking it on the couch for vast stretches of time and usually consume 4 or more hours of content a day, day in and day out, you'll probably run out of content in short order. In that case, the endless feedbag of mindless cable/sat is probably the best option for a person.

-Suntan

So sage Tv wont support streaming of live tv?

I sort of wanted to bring in a single or two hd sat receivers into a single pc and be able to watch from multiple locations depending.

Hmm

Yes, Sage supports live TV (and DVR/timeshifting) it *doesn’t* support Cablecard (encrypted cable) tuners.

In Sage you can have multiple OTA (over the air) broadcast tuners, you can have multiple Clear QAM (un-encrypted cable) tuners, and you can have multiple Hauppauge HD PVR 1212 capture devices (physically records the component output of any device you plug into it namely a sat/cable box.) But you can’t use the Ceton 4ch Cablecard tuner (or the older, discontinued ATI cablecard tuner.)

In your instance, you would buy two HD PVR 1212 boxes, plug the output of two sat boxes into them, then plug them into your PC running SageTV. Then you can watch/DVR two channels at a time from that computer, or any other computer on your LAN running a sageTV client license, or any computer anywhere in the world running a SageTV Placeshifter license, or any TV in the world connected to an HD300 hardware extender.

-Suntan

I'll throw in another vote for U-Verse. I'm 3000 feet from the VRAD and can get 3HD/1SD to the quad-tuner DVR. It is so much nicer than my old 120 GB, dual-tuner DVR from Comcast. The third HD tuner really makes a big difference and the ability of STBs to access all of your content rocks.

I've spent the last 10 years (not to mention thousands of dollars) trying to recreate the basic U-Verse install. I started with DirecTivos and RF modulators, but then HDTV had to come along and ruin everything I built a HTPC with an AccessDTV card as my first HD DVR, then moved over to a MythTV based system. In the end, it could never quite do what I wanted.

The biggest lessen I learned is to not build a HTPC to save money. You need to view it as a hobby to build and maintain, as you will likely invest hundreds of hours of your free time. Even at minimum wage, you could buy a couple of lifetime HD Tivos instead! Or in my case, save a couple of bucks (at least the first year) and switch from cable to U-Verse...

Chris

Better yet, get 4 boxee box ($199) instead of xbox 360.

So you are saying that the boxee box can act as a windows media center extender and use the ceton cards ability to tune 4 hd premium shows at once? News to me...