Building a PVR that supports Digital Cable - Seeking TV Card

[ronnylov]

Too bad you don't live in Europe...

I have a Hauppage DVB-C card and I can record the digital stream of my cable TV in Sweden directly to my PC hard drive in PVA format. Demux with PVAstrumento to DVD-compatible video and audio stream and use that to author DVD and burn it so I can watch it in my standalone player. It works very good! There is similar cards for satellite called DVB-S and I have seen some reports that they also can be used on Dish network in USA. There are different types of cards that supports the Technotrend drivers that can be used for this.

The good thing is that it does not transcode the digital MPEG2 stream, it's untouched quality on the DVD, not recaptured or reencoded. I'm very happy. Of course the quality on all channels are not in DVD-quality to start with but it's at least not degraded during the capture process.

[lusid]

I had similar objectives, and this was my solution.

I have digital cable, needed unattended recording onto my pc hard disc in a format I could convert to vcd or dvd mpeg.

I run a fairly modest pc for recordings, PIII-850, AverTV Stereo capture board, and a 120gig capture drive. It's a showshifter based solution, and I am using the Actisys IR200L as my IR transmitter to set the recording channel on the cable box. I am also using an old IR receiver for controlling the system with an old remote I had on hand, using Girder to detect and relay commands to showshifter. The system records in mjpeg compressed avi files, and my server takes them and recompresses them to mpeg1 or 2, depending on the settings I've enabled for that show. It also applies whatever virtualdub filters I've encluded in the profile. If I'm going the vcd route, the machine records the vcd for me and it's done. If I go the dvd route, I do a simple author & burn later. I may automate that someday, but for now I can do it better manually. I could have done it all on one (more power) machine, but the server wasn't doing much aside from file/print services, so I split the load. The recompression process is handled by some vbscripts I wrote, using virtualdub and tmpgenc.

Although there are a lot of elements to the overall system it's been very reliable. It also didn't cost much to build. Most of it was parts I already had lying around. And in addition to recording whatever I want off digital cable whenever I want, even on the premium channels which the old VCR could never do, I get all the advantages of a pc based system. It can play virtually any kind of video file, has a nice mp3 jukebox, I can schedule recordings over the internet, etc.

[zap4]

I'm sure some of the things have been mentioned here already, but here is a site that may be of some help to you: http://ruel.net/pc/tv.tuner.getting.more.than.125.channels.htm

[HBOKid]

ok, guys best i can see so far is http://www.dvico.com makes a QAM digital cable TV card that should work with un-encrypted digital cable. My cable box indicates reg. digital cable is 64 qam and local HDTV carried on cable from Comcast, here in Pittsburgh, PA is 256 qam. I don't know if the HDTV is encrypted but, surely the std. digital cable is, so, it will not work with that because it doesn't have a CableCard decryption card slot. This product is sold for ~$169 thru

https://www.digitalconnection.com/store/Product_Details.asp?ProductCode=DFUSION3QAM

and

http://www.copperbox.com/lite/popinfo.php?lc_code=Fusion-HDTV3-QAM&uneek=146998437

I'm curious to see if Comcast encrypts the local HDTV carried on cable, if it doesn't this would work for that, i believe. I plan on phoning them but, i haven't yet. I have found some products on te web for sale with the cable card decryption slot but, they are only available to cable co's so far.

HBO Kid

[HBOKid]

oops

[Suntan]

Don't know about the software/hardware for the PVR functions, but for controlling setop boxes from the PC use Girder with a UIRT2. Which you can build yourself for about $30. It will not only control other components via IR signals, but you can start the PC from the remote control.

-Suntan