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Does Vista 5270 have cable card support?

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Does Vista 5270 have cable card support?


I have a msdn subscription so this isn't warez talk, but I don't have all the hardware either and I'd like to know before I drop some cash on a QAM tuner and a PCMCIA adapter or even if that's the required hardware.
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There haven't been any cablecard capable tv tuner cards released to the retail/psuedo-oem shopping sites (newegg et.al.). There is also talk that there may be specific graphics card and MB Hardware to provide a DRM-locked-down path from cable input to display output (noone has said for sure one way or another on this yet).


MS has stated that they won't be supporting QAM within MCE.


The best you'd be able to do right now is to build an MCE machine w an analog tuner and OTA HD tuner.


...unless you have tuner Mfr contacts that can get you a cablecard tuner... with working drivers for MCE.
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Yeah I've got my box all built.


I've seen conflicting reports as to the compatibility of the cable card it's self. Some say it IS a pcmcia card and once there are drivers the OS will simply recognize it. Others say that it is not pin compatiable with pcmcia and you will need a special adapter for the computer to recognize the cable card.


Since cable card support is essentially decrypting QAM signals, and the keys are on the card. It's the software (cable card reader driver) more than the hardware that needs to cable labs okayed, since without software to bring the keys from the software to the tuner nothing could happen. The software itself will need to be able to secure and flag the recording with all the correct DRM and that's what vista should do.


As far as output w/ HD goes, my understanding is that is more of a blu-ray/HD-DVD thing than a cable card thing.


granted I'm being a bit of an optimist, but I could see cable card support on a machine with a QAM tuner and PCMCIA adapter.


with pesmistict point of view it could require a new mobo, video card and a combo tuner/cable card adapter.
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