HDTV capture card?

[Nysul]

I have free basic COX cable that comes with my high speed internet connection. Included is the basic HDTV channels.

I would like some way to capture the free HDTV channels with windows media center 2005. The problem is that most recievers I see use antennas, however, I do not need this as the HDTV channels are through standard coax cable. In addition, I have no idea if the channels are encrypted, but I am guessing they are not as I do not use a digital cable box.

Is there a card out there that I would be able to use?

[Nysul]

Bump

[jman98]

You can use any of the HDTV capture cards that work with Windows. I have the MyHD MDP-130 card. Here are the problems I had. It's up to you to determine how much of this does/does not apply to your situation.

I connected an antenna to my card and it worked fine for digital captures for a while, but my OTA (Over The Air) signals kept degrading to the point where I basically couldn't record anything without having large losses of signal. I have no idea what happened. Maybe a construction project in my neighborhood began to interfere with my signal. When I recorded OTA signals and it didn't drop out, the quality was great. My problem is that my cable company puts all the HD channels in the 800+ range. No tuner card can go that high, so even though in theory I could record those channels because my card has QAM, I could never tune in the channels on my card. I finally gave up and bought a cable box that supported HD. Then to my horror I found out that the only way to connect the cable box to my card was via coax and my card considered that to be an analog connection. This card is great for HD recording and very very bad for analog TV recording. I was screwed. I did a web search and I found
http://hdjunkie.com/tutorials.html
which tells how to record unecrypted HD channels from a cable box via a firewire connection to a PC. This was a godsend. Since I care nothing about recording encrypted channels, it was exactly what I wanted.

Bottom line:
You may be able to get HD channels via cable with no antenna, but if they are on channel numbers higher than 125, no tuner card that I know of will ever find them.

I don't like ATI's HD card solution and while I love Hauppage TV cards, their HD card sucks. I went with the MyHD MDP-130 because it was the only one I trusted. I know you're not going to want to get a cable box and do what I did, but it really cannot be beat for quality. If quality means nothing to you (there are people who honestly care nothing about it), then you should be able to buy any HD card that works with Windows and use it.

[jagabo]

I believe the problem with QAM is that the cable channel numbers don't correspond to the QAM frequencies. In fact, cable boxes are usually completely programmable -- any cable channel can be programmed (by the cable company) to tune any frequency. For example, our cable company recently switched all channels below 100 to digital. The old analog channels are still on the same frequencies (a TV without a cable box can still watch them) but the cable box displays digital versions (standard definition) when tuned to those channels.

If you get a card with a QAM tuner you'll have to search for the frequencies of your cable companies unencrypted QAM broadcasts. And don't be surprised if they change them around all the time too. You might be able to find an HDTV forum for your area where people have posted a list of open QAM channels.

Many of the DVICO cards support QAM too.

[Nysul]

It looks like these are my frequencies:
KASW-DT:537000000:QAM_256:33:36:2
KSAZ-DT:537000000:QAM_256:49:52:1
KNXV-DT:561000000:QAM_256:33:36:1
KPHO-DT:561000000:QAM_256:49:52:2
KAET-DT-1:567000000:QAM_256:33:34:1
KPNX-DT:567000000:QAM_256:49:52:2
KAET-DT-2:567000000:QAM_256:67:70:3

So does this help me at all? Should I be able to hook up the MyHD MDP-130 or similar card?

The problem with getting a cable box is then the cable is no longer free and I have to upgrade to the next highest tier, and honestly I don't watch cable that much to justify $50 more a month.

Thank you everyone for your help so far.