Basic Digital cable with ATI AIW9600

[cap]

Not sure if anyone can help me.
I have an ATI AIW 9600 capture card and and have a subscription for basic digital cable from my local cable company. I have no problem paying for this service and am not looking to illegally descramble services, but I don’t want to have to rent the cable box each month just for basic digital cable. Is there anything I can do to be able to use my AIW 9600 card without my Cable box and still receive my basic digital subscription? If not, can someone recommend a capture card that will accomplish this?
Thanks for any advice in advance.

[canadateck]

You need the Box "Here anyway",But to avoid renting it you can buy them"Here Anyway".

[cap]

Thanks for the reply, I'll see if i can purchase a box. Do you know of any good capture cards where you don't need the box?

[corwin102]

cap Before you spend any money find out if your cable company will allow this. I don't know who supplies your service but where I am the cable company does not allow other boxes and they have to be recognized by the service to deliver digital cable. Otherwise they are also just analog. So a word to the wise: call customer service before spending money.

[neomaine]

Cap,

To my knowledge, ATI does not have a digital cable ready card. Here's something I found that reports to support unencrypted digital cable TV.

http://www.ramelectronics.net/html/hdtv-cards.html

[ROF]

http://www.hauppauge.com/pages/prod_digital.html

[cap]

Thanks all,
I will check them out.........
have a grat day.

[edsmith77]

cap,
I know this is late but....
I have the same video card and I have my cable connected directly into the adapter cable that came with the card.
I installed the MMC 8.8 which came with the card. Once I completed the installation and had it search for available cable channels. I was able to watch any of the approx 100 available channels on my PC without a hitch. In fact recording is a breeze with MMC here as well.
What I do not have access to are the premium channels because they are encrypted.

I do not need any converter box that the cable company offers. The equipment is cable ready.

[corwin102]

edsmith77 yes this card is analog cable ready and receives chanels up to 125. However, cap was asking about the digital cable channels above 125 that come with digital cable subscriptions. This usually contains and exceeds the analog set of channels.

[cap]

Thanks edssmith77,
I will try that first…..I’m not sure how many channels the AIW 9600 is capable of scanning, but some of my digital channels are in the upper 100’s which are VH1 classic, Biography , History etc. I think the AIW 9600 only goes up to channel 125. I’ll have to check the specs again.
Thanks for the replies.

P.S. it's never to late.

[ROF]

All ATI's AIW and TV Tuners only go up to channel 125.

[edsmith77]

Then I stand corrected. I missed the distinction between basic cable channels and the digitized premium channels. The tuner as others have poiinted out only go to 125. Anything above that you will need your tuner box. Also, and unfortunately, the digitized premium channels are encrypted and require the use of their decoder box.

Sorry for the misunderstanding.

[neomaine]

We'll have to wait, not long I think I read, for the advent of CableCard (one way support) and CableCard II (two-way for ppv, on demand...) for full digital cable support.

We have this on some (high-end) tvs and understand that the specs are near complete for pc cards.