Possible to record HD TV Via Cable

[onesikgypo]

Hi,

I have cable tv from cablevision - and i was thinkin about getting a tv tuner card - i was just wondering if it was possible for me to record HD(TV) Digital broadcasts on my PC?

If so, what would the general setup have to be at my home? - and also would the Hauppuage HVR-1800 suffice?

If not, does that mean the only way i could record HDTV on my pc is via coax cable from an antenna?

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Thankyou.

[fritzi93]

If you want to record HD programming in full resolution from a cablebox, you need something like a Hauppauge HD-PVR. It takes component out from the cablebox, with pass-through to your HDTV, and connects to your computer via USB. It records in h.264.

I'm not aware of any tuner card that has component inputs. Before I got the Hauppauge, I had a Winfast HDTV card that tuned Clear QAM, ATSC, and NTSC, with two coax inputs. I had a splitter before the box and one coax to the card through the cablebox, one not. I could record at full resolution from OTA and Clear QAM (local stations are unencrypted) but *NOT* through the cablebox input, which was down-rezzed to half D1. Same with S-Video input. And of course, the coax that wasn't outputted from the box was encrypted except for locals.

IIRC, my card was about a hundred bucks 4 years ago, dunno what a decent card goes for now. A Hauppauge HD-PVR will run somewhere under $200 from NewEgg, and is worth the money, IMO. There may be an equivalent product from another company, but I'm not aware of any. BTW, TMT(extreme) comes bundled with it, which has the capture module, an editing/conversion app, and a damn good software player (Digital Theater) which I play my Blu-Rays and AVCHDs on.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...uge%20hd%20pvr

Good luck.

[usually_quiet]

I was window shopping for a TV Tuner a few weeks ago. Good internal TV cards go for between $80 and $140, as I recall. Be sure to pay close attention to system requirements before you buy.

The Hauppauge HD-PVR is probably a better choice if you want to record anything other than your local HD channels.

ATI makes also an external HD tuner, the TV Wonder™ Digital Cable Tuner, that accepts CableCARDs. At some point, it may become a solution for some cable subscribers who want to record using a computer, but from what I understand the Hauppauge HD-PVR is a more reliable recording device.

[onesikgypo]

OK, so just ot make sure i understand right,

If i want to record my Local stations in HD - i can just connect it straight to the tuner (without going through the HDTV box, and the card i specified abov ehsould be fine) and i should be able to record the HD channels that way, but if i want to record any other in HD - then the best thing would be to get something like the Hauppauge HD PVR - which id then connect:

--> HDTV Box --> Hauppauge HD PVR -->(USB) PC

and thatd result in 1080i recordings for those non-local cable channels in HD



Edit:

Ive also done some further reading - if i wantde to record Local HD Channels in 1080i, its also possible if i have a compatible HDTV Set Top Box - I can hook a firewire cable from the Box straight to my PC - and in that case i wouldnt even need a tuner card?

[usually_quiet]

The HVR-1800 would probably be fine for recording local stations from cable, and enjoys good software support from 3rd parties, although based on what I read when shopping, some people still had problems with it. ...but that was true for any capture device I looked at. Also, in case you use them, analog closed captions are either unavailable, or hard to capture with any of the current TV capture device models.

You understood correctly regarding setup. An internal tuner card like the HVR-1800 would use a coaxial cable input directly, not output from your STB, to record HD channels. The same would be true for the ATI device I mentioned that takes CableCARDS. The Hauppauge HD-PVR doesn't have tuner and requires the use of a cable box. It only records the channel that the cable box is tuned to.

Cable companies are required by law to provide a box with a working firewire ouput, if the customer requests it. However firewire output may still be encrypted for anything but local channels, and even locals may at times include another form of copy protection that could cause the cable box to block transmission to a PC via firewire.

If those conditions don't exist, my understanding is you can capture whatever the cable box is tuned to at the time using appropriate software and the firewire port on your PC. See http://home.comcast.net/~exdeus/stbfirewire/ for more information about firewire capture from a cablebox.

VLC is one of the programs I have seen mentioned for playing the captured files.