HDTV capture card?

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misle

misle

Diamond Member
Nov 30, 2000
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I really thinking about ditching cable. I do enjoy the late night shows (Fallon/Ferguson), so I usually DVR them and watch the next day.

But, if I ditch cable, my DVR box goes away. So, I'm looking at getting an HD antenna and some sort of capture card.

Can someone link me to some resources on how to do this or maybe recommend a card?

Thanks
 
misle

misle

Diamond Member
Nov 30, 2000
3,371
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76
Good, thanks. I was really hoping it was that easy, but I was sure I was missing something.

Is there any software that you would recommend?
 
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Binky

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
4,046
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81
Good brands include Avermeida, Hauppage, and Hdhomerun. I'm partial to the hdhomerun due to its flexibility, but any decent ATSC card will give you about the same results with a strong antenna signal. The picture quality will be as good or better than most cable feeds. Depending on the speed of your system, you can probably record up to 4 channels at the same time (with 4 tuners). USB tuners work fine but you may need a powered USB hub.

You will need a remote with a USB receiver. Google "media center remote" and you will find lots of them for very cheap. If you already have a programmable remote like a Harmony, you just need the receiver, so buy the cheapest one you can find.

Small antennas can cause problems. Go big.

Check the for sale forums and you should find several people selling used tuners, including me.
 
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Binky

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
4,046
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81
My E8400 has no problems recording 4 HD streams to a typical 500gb drive. I don't know the minimum cpu power required. With 4 recordings in progress, you can really hear the HD working hard, but I've never looked at cpu utilization.

Missingremote has a good forum for Media Center questions. The Green Button used to be great, but I haven't been there since MS absorbed it.
 
Aharami

Aharami

Lifer
Aug 31, 2001
21,205
165
106
in the same vein...so posting this question here instead of creating a new thread.

I have comcast and not looking to ditch it. But I dont want to rent another DVR box for the basement HT. I'm in the process of building a HTPC, and what options do I have to get HD Cable down there with all the channels that I get in my living room thru Comcast's DVR box?
 
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bobdole369

Diamond Member
Dec 15, 2004
4,504
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When it comes to ATSC - all "capture" cards are doing is tuning, doing the error correction (in hardware), and literally writing the decoded MPEG program stream to disk. It requires virtually no cpu or horsepower to speak of.

Back in the bad old days of NTSC a capture card had to decode, construct each frame, encode to MPEG-2 or whatever, then write that to disk.

I use MythTV based on Ubuntu 10.10 (mythbuntu its called) with 2 cards (obsolete, but usable hybrid tuners) Hauppauge 1600 and Hauppauge 1800 (one is PCI one is PCI-e).

Records perfectly and in beautiful HD. MythTV even commercial skips for you and makes it simple for you to automate encoding with something like mencoder or manually with Handbrake if you wish to archive.

Worth noting that while WMC gets program data seemingly from the ether - (though likely its from the MSN TV listings) - others must still pay "someone" for the program data. It "CAN" be gotten from EPG over the air, but that is unreliable at best, completely wrong and or missing at worst. In my area I can count on 4 hours of EPG and thats all. SchedulesDirect is $20/yr.

With my setup - E8400, 4GB DDR2 1TB disk (single 7200rpm for buffer and OTA recordings) - it rarely goes past 5% cpu time (watching top remotely) when recording 2 1080i streams. I'm certain at some point the disk I/O starts to bottleneck, but it seems 19mbitx2 isn't really all that taxing yet.

Watching 1080p BR rips however - THAT takes some CPU. I haven't actually gotten the MythTV video card acceleration working well yet - its called vdpau - and does some odd things with my video card.


Aharami - that is a totally different situation. You have no "reasonable" option for a DVR in the basement. Cable card cards are now shipping but the price will put you through the roof. Ceton makes the only CableCard tuner for consumers in existence, and it's $399.

http://www.cetoncorp.com/buy.php

The next possibility is to just record what comes out of the Comcast DVR. No HDMI device will allow you to record what is displayed over it. Thats part of its design. There ARE HDMI capture cards, but way over $1000 and they don't do audio. (BlackMagic comes to mind).

SO Component recording is possible, the Hauppauge HD-PVR will record anything Component - so you can record 480p (likely what comes out of the Comcast DVR on the component cables) or more if thats what that box will supply. It's integrated only in GB-PVR and SageTV from what I understand.

Next is any Svideo/Composite solution which can be done with any $20 analog card.

So lets re-examine what is desired:
You want to "watch" what is coming down from the Comcast DVR? Maybe you only need to connect the Component cables to it? It's feasible that you could use HDMI for one set and Component for another but that depends on the box.

That's it. Yay Comcast!

Noting that the Ceton card should and will work in WMC7, as Robert Heron has reported here:
http://heronfidelity.com/news/ceton-infinitv-4-update/

So for $399 and a PC + another CableCard from Comcast is likely the most economical resolution for "HD Cable in the Basement"
 
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Aharami

Aharami

Lifer
Aug 31, 2001
21,205
165
106
i guess I misspoke. I dont need DVR (recording) functionality in the basement...although that would be nice to have. I just want to watch the football games on my projector screen...so I want to watch cable channels like ESPNHD and NFLHD down there. I already have a RG6 line going down into the basement. Right now the only option I know of is to rent another HD cable box from comcast and use that to get HD TV in my HT. I was wondering if any way to get by w/o having to rent the box from comcast.

So with the ceton card, I'd still need to rent a cable card from comcast? Looks like it from the pictures. If it was just the ceton card, it might be worth it because I'll be able to recoup the price of the card in 18 months of cable box rental fees. But if I have to rent a monthly cable card from comcast....not sure if it is worth it anymore
 
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bobdole369

Diamond Member
Dec 15, 2004
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Aharami said:
i guess I misspoke. I dont need DVR (recording) functionality in the basement...although that would be nice to have. I just want to watch the football games on my projector screen...so I want to watch cable channels like ESPNHD and NFLHD down there. I already have a RG6 line going down into the basement. Right now the only option I know of is to rent another HD cable box from comcast and use that to get HD TV in my HT. I was wondering if any way to get by w/o having to rent the box from comcast.

So with the ceton card, I'd still need to rent a cable card from comcast? Looks like it from the pictures. If it was just the ceton card, it might be worth it because I'll be able to recoup the price of the card in 18 months of cable box rental fees. But if I have to rent a monthly cable card from comcast....not sure if it is worth it anymore
Click to expand...

If you want to decode ANYTHING (from comcast) that isn't analog, or broadcast in "ClearQAM" - you MUST use a Cablecard. Thats the way it is. The first "free" cablecard is inside your HD box already.

The cheapest and easiest way is to get a TivoHD or Premiere or whatever and set that up on the RG-6 which would split off your cable input to the house. Add cablecard and you now have an HDMI and a component out in glorious HD.

With a single RG-6 run you can only do composite video with no audio or (shudder) channel 3/4 over taht RG-6.

You could set up an encoder/decoder pair that runs over the RG-6 (though usually those require at least 2 runs from what I recall). You could do the same with an IP based encoder/decoder and use a CAT5 -> coax converter on either end. Way too pricy.

Also you could use the RG-6 to pull through 6 more RG-6 runs - and use the component + stereo audio out from the HD box. It'll run 50 feet or more no problem even at 1080i. That way whatever is playing on the HD box is playing in your basement.
 
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ajs_fla

Member
Dec 16, 1999
48
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Was reading the information that has been posted and I too am looking at trying to put together a pc for my tv that would replace the fios box and also record. The Ceton card is out and right now is at $299.00 at newegg and a couple of other online vendors. I read somewhere that Ceton signed these guys up and are offering a $100 discount hence newegg at 299.00 not 399. The cablecard (at least from verizon fios) is about a third the cost of a box. All you need is one card and you have up to 4 tuners available.

Silicondust has the hdHomerun Prime which is similar to the ceton card but only has 3 tuners from 1 cablecard. Cost is $249.00 at newegg and $229.00 at microcenter.

Both of these are fairly new products and i think the firmware is just now getting the bugs out of them.

I know this is more than you were looking for but this give you the ability to record all of you channels both clear quam and encrypted.
 
The Boston Dangler

The Boston Dangler

Lifer
Mar 10, 2005
14,647
2
0
ceton for $300? absolutely! it does run a wee bit hot and can hit thermal shutdown if neglected. i'd rather not put it directly on my vid card, but i'm SOL for pci-e slots. the driver and software are pretty good, although the temp reading isn't displayed until it alarms - i think it will always be displayed in the next update.
 
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Binky

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
4,046
4
81
The HDhomerun Prime is also an external box connected via your wired network. This may or may not be an advantage. It certainly enhances the flexibility of the device.
 
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