Cable Card and ATSC tuner

[Maiyr]

Is there no such thing as a cable card and ATSC HD all in one tuner. My search is coming up with nothing, but maybe I don't know what I am looking for.

Thanks,

Maiyr

 

[snoturtle]

Why would you need ATSC if you have a cable card tuner?

Maybe you are unsure of what you need

What is the goal you are trying to accomplish?

 

[Maiyr]

You are right in that I may not understand what I need. If I understand correctly ATSC is viewing your local HD stations via an antenna (free). Unless I am just missing it the cable card tuners do not seem to have this feature.

I want my HTPC to be able to record both OTA (ATSC, I think) HD TV via my outdoor antenna and record shows from my cable provider (FIOS).

Thanks,

Maiyr

 

[snoturtle]

So you don't get local channels through FIOS?
Guess I'm not understanding the need for both

afaik there isn't one box that will do both
hdhomerun prime with a cable card and a simple.tv for ota stuff

 

[TastesLikeChicken]

No one single card does both ATSC and CableCARD. As mentioned though, with FIOS an ATSC card wouldn't be necessary. With FIOS you already get local channels so there really isn't any need to have a separate ATSC tuner card.

If you want both tuners anyway, per your other thread, using XBMC would be a crap shoot. If you want to combine both tuner types seamlessly AND reliably, the only way to really do it is to use WMC.

 

[bradly1101]

Around here there are many more local digital stations (.2,.3,.4...) than cable offers for locals, so I could see wanting both. You know you can combine say a triple tuner networked box with a dual ATSC pci/e card an have five tuners, more with more hardware.

 

[Maiyr]

Thanks for all the replies everyone.

It is correct that I get my local channels via FIOS, but I am contemplating the whole cord-cutting thing. The reason I want both the cable card tuner and an ATSC tuner is so that I can test drive not having FIOS while at the same time still having access to FIOS.

I was hoping that all the tuners could be combined into one single guide. From above it sounds as though WMC may do this and that XBMC may not. I am not dead set on XBMC and could certainly use WMC if it does what I want.

Thanks,

Maiyr

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Thanks for all the replies everyone.

It is correct that I get my local channels via FIOS, but I am contemplating the whole cord-cutting thing. The reason I want both the cable card tuner and an ATSC tuner is so that I can test drive not having FIOS while at the same time still having access to FIOS.

I was hoping that all the tuners could be combined into one single guide. From above it sounds as though WMC may do this and that XBMC may not. I am not dead set on XBMC and could certainly use WMC if it does what I want.

Thanks,

Maiyr

I had similar motivations. I don't like it when we have cable-tv outages and I want to continue catching news broadcasts. So I have my system fitted with a Hauppauge HVR-2250 tuner card for the OTA broadcasts, and a SiliconDust HD HomeRun Prime with cablecard is connected to my network switch -- the HTPC system of course is a workstation on the LAN.

 

[hoorah]

I had similar motivations. I don't like it when we have cable-tv outages and I want to continue catching news broadcasts. So I have my system fitted with a Hauppauge HVR-2250 tuner card for the OTA broadcasts, and a SiliconDust HD HomeRun Prime with cablecard is connected to my network switch -- the HTPC system of course is a workstation on the LAN.

I have something similar setup as Bonzai. I use a SiliconDust Prime 3 tuner cablecard tuner that shares 3 tuners to all the PCs on my network. I have 3 HTPCs in my house and I supplement the cablecard tuner with a few ATSC tuners. Heres why:

1 - one HTPC is on wireless, another is on powerline networking. They work most of the time but can hiccup now an then, and while cat5 is on the to-do list it hasn't happened yet. With a local ATSC tuner connected to a roof antenna, local shows can record OTA as a priority over the cablecard tuner and not be troubled by network bandwidth.

2 - WMC can balance the number of recordings vs the number of tuners on a single PC (it knows not to schedule 4 things to record when there are only 3 tuners), but it doesn't know what the other PCs are doing. So, if I set 3 things to record on one HTPC and 1 to record on another, WMC will go to start the recording and one of them will be a tuner short. You won't know until its too late. Prioritizing OTA tuners can sometimes save you if one of the 4 shows was an OTA broadcast show.

3 - While I've not had to deal with this personally, network blackouts arent really an issue when you can just tune with an OTA tuner.

4 - I can pick up an ATSC pcie or pci tuner for around $10/each on ebay. 3 extra ATSC tuners is around $40 where it would be an extra $120 for another 3 card tuner, plus the additional rental from comcast for the cable card (and will inevitably eff up my bill in the process).

5 - Whoops, forgot one more. Sometimes the cable company will set shows to be 'copy once', meaning you can't play them on anything but the original device they were recorded on. OTA shows never have this. So even if its something on FOX or NBC, recording it over cablecard will sometimes net you some nasty DRM, recording the same show OTA leaves you free to copy it around.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I have something similar setup as Bonzai. I use a SiliconDust Prime 3 tuner cablecard tuner that shares 3 tuners to all the PCs on my network. I have 3 HTPCs in my house and I supplement the cablecard tuner with a few ATSC tuners. Heres why:

1 - one HTPC is on wireless, another is on powerline networking. They work most of the time but can hiccup now an then, and while cat5 is on the to-do list it hasn't happened yet. With a local ATSC tuner connected to a roof antenna, local shows can record OTA as a priority over the cablecard tuner and not be troubled by network bandwidth.

2 - WMC can balance the number of recordings vs the number of tuners on a single PC (it knows not to schedule 4 things to record when there are only 3 tuners), but it doesn't know what the other PCs are doing. So, if I set 3 things to record on one HTPC and 1 to record on another, WMC will go to start the recording and one of them will be a tuner short. You won't know until its too late. Prioritizing OTA tuners can sometimes save you if one of the 4 shows was an OTA broadcast show.

3 - While I've not had to deal with this personally, network blackouts arent really an issue when you can just tune with an OTA tuner.

4 - I can pick up an ATSC pcie or pci tuner for around $10/each on ebay. 3 extra ATSC tuners is around $40 where it would be an extra $120 for another 3 card tuner, plus the additional rental from comcast for the cable card (and will inevitably eff up my bill in the process).

5 - Whoops, forgot one more. Sometimes the cable company will set shows to be 'copy once', meaning you can't play them on anything but the original device they were recorded on. OTA shows never have this. So even if its something on FOX or NBC, recording it over cablecard will sometimes net you some nasty DRM, recording the same show OTA leaves you free to copy it around.

I couldn't have said it better. The "copy-once" feature seems assured for premium channels and possibly some others which are encrypted.