Hauppauge TV tuner card set-up question...

[tinpanalley]

Question...
My Hauppauge card has an HD coax cable in jack.
I currently have cable from my wall being split to my cable box and my computer's internet.
- Can I split it a 3rd time to go into my Hauppauge TV tuner card and get full HD channels?
- Will it give me the same channels as I get on my HD RCN DVR box?
- Will there be any demonstrable lessening of quality either on the tv or computer?
- If I only go to the PC instead of the cable box, is there any way to send the signal from my computer to my HDTV? (Assume it's close enough)

Thanks!

 

[NutBucket]

1.) Yes
2.) Not likely since it will only receive unencrypted QAM, or clear QAM. Most of the HD channels are encrypted.
3.) No
4.) How close are we talking? Does your vid card have HDMI?

 

[tinpanalley]

We're talking 10 feet.
My main video card has HDMI and DVI. My TV tuner card does not. My monitor also has outputs.

 

[TastesLikeChicken]

Your Hauppuage card will only tune unencrypted cable channels so you won't get the same channels your HD DVR box gets unless you currently only get locals and PBS via your cable box. If you want encrypted channels you'll need a cablecard tuner like the Ceton InfiniTV4, the Silicon Dust HD Homerun Prime, or the Hauppauge WinTV-DCR-2650.

 

[tinpanalley]

Sorry to be such a noob... how are these devices different from my card? I've got the Win-TV HVR 1250.
And are they NTSC and PAL? (I'm moving to Europe soon)

 

[TastesLikeChicken]

Except for locals and a few others, most cable channels are encrypted. Your card can't decrypt those channels. In order to decrypt channels a cablecard is required and, for a PC, only the ones I named above can do so.

Edit: I you're moving to Europe soon don't even bother with a cablecard tuner because they are useless over here.

 

[tinpanalley]

Ok, VERY good to know! So what is the solution there? I watch videos that are taken from television there and they're in perfect HD or high res SD. How is that done? What device would I need?
(My Hauppauge card works fine for what I take from my DVR now. SD for classic movies via S-Video. It only gets 4:3, but that'll do.)

 

[TastesLikeChicken]

Ok, VERY good to know! So what is the solution there? I watch videos that are taken from television there and they're in perfect HD or high res SD. How is that done? What device would I need?
(My Hauppauge card works fine for what I take from my DVR now. SD for classic movies via S-Video. It only gets 4:3, but that'll do.)

Oops. My last word was missing a "t". It should have been "there," not "here."

I'm not sure what they have in Europe, if anything, that is the equivalent of a cablecard tuner. The best to get an answer to that question would be over at AVS Forums.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Ok, VERY good to know! So what is the solution there? I watch videos that are taken from television there and they're in perfect HD or high res SD. How is that done? What device would I need?
(My Hauppauge card works fine for what I take from my DVR now. SD for classic movies via S-Video. It only gets 4:3, but that'll do.)

Everyone here so far has been hitting solid down center-field.

I think my system has been eight years in the making, and I had always chosen PCI or PCI-E tuner cards for my system. As our friends say already, you can get all the SD cable-channels, but the HD encrypted channels are another problem.

This time, I started out with an Avermedia 780-combo I'd used from the beginning in an earlier system I built in 2007. It went into my Sandy Bridge -- fine for a couple months as I tweaked the system to perfection. I was getting SD through one input, and HD-over-the-air broadcast through the other. Then, the HD component went on the fritz, and I junked the card.

Perhaps needlessly from the benefits-to-expense comparison, I replaced it with an Hauppauge 2250 "white-box." And then I discovered the problem with HD encrypted from my cable-provider.

I kept the 2250-HVR and added a SiliconDust HomeRun PRime to our network. Also, one could pick a CETON InfiniTV box I've seen, which has a fourth tuner advantage over the SiliconDust. I use the Hauppauge card for HD over-the-air broadcast, so there's redundancy in the occasional (once or twice annually) cable outage. Further, It adds additional recording capability for those over-the-air antenna-input channels -- on top of the SiliconDust. All of this is seamlessly integrated with internet-TV (like NetFlix) through Windows Media Center -- all on the same "Guide" menu.

The SiliconDust device with cable-card has slight limitations you may not have expected (or at least, I didn't . . . ) If, for instance, you set it up on one household HTPC with Media Center's cable-card wizard, and then run upstairs to another HDCP-ready computer to install the software and enable the SiliconDust access, the second of the three tuners on the SiliconDust is no longer available to the first computer. So I can only record two channels at a time instead of three from that computer. But -- to a limited degree -- the Hauppauge card allows recording for some unencrypted channels. Sort of like "2-and-a-half DVRs" -- to make some obscure Charlie Sheen joke if you could call it that. . . .

 

[olds]

If he is only trying to get the unencrypted, basic channels, does he need a cablecard?

 

[NutBucket]

Nope, not at all.