How to watch cable on my monitor?

[Raizinman]

I have Time Warner Cable in my living room with all the movie channels. About 40 feet away is my home office and I would like to be able to watch these same channels on my 40 inch monitor while I do other work. I run Windows 7.0.

Currently, I have a $20 dongle plugged into a USB port with the TV cable screwed into that which gives me about 40 channels. This works great, but I’m limited to only 40 channels. I considered getting a cable box, but Time Warner said that I would not be able to size the window (not good).

I would need to be able to size the viewing windows so that I can do other work at the same time.

I have a fast Internet (50Mbs) and fast Network. Can you recommend me anything that would allow me to do the above?

 

[bradly1101]

Media center with a cable card tuner would do that. I use a Silicon Dust HD Home Run Prime networked triple tuner.

 

[Raizinman]

Media center with a cable card tuner would do that. I use a Silicon Dust HD Home Run Prime networked triple tuner.

Are you saying that all I need to do is contact Time Warner to get a cable card tuner to; I'm guessing install in my computer? Or is it USB? And that would allow me all the channels and to size the window on my computer?

 

[TastesLikeChicken]

You would purchase the HD Homerun Prime from Newegg, Amazon, or similar. You would also need to order a cable card from Time-Warner to use with the tuner. The HD Homerun Prime is a network tuner so you plug it in to your router, connect it to a cable drop, and any networked computer in your house with Windows Media Center could utilize the tuners.

 

[Raizinman]

Stopped at TW on way home. I picked up the cable card, they told me they will be adding $2 to my bill each month for rental. I'm OK with that. I just purchased the HD Home Run Prime for $65 with free shipping. I should be in businss shortly. Thanks!!

 

[TastesLikeChicken]

Once you get it running and iron out any kinks, get an extender for your main TV (if you already have an XBOX 360 you can use that) then turn your cable box in and save on the monthly rental fees. The HD Homerun Prime will pay for itself in no time. Plus you'll have the Media Center interface which blows Time-Warner's menu system out of the water.

 

[Raizinman]

Once you get it running and iron out any kinks, get an extender for your main TV (if you already have an XBOX 360 you can use that) then turn your cable box in and save on the monthly rental fees. The HD Homerun Prime will pay for itself in no time. Plus you'll have the Media Center interface which blows Time-Warner's menu system out of the water.

What is an 'extender'? I don't have an Xbox 360. Is there something else that an work?

 

[TastesLikeChicken]

What is an 'extender'? I don't have an Xbox 360. Is there something else that an work?

An extender is a device that is not a PC that extends the functionality of Media Center to a TV using wired or wireless networking. I use a Linksys DMA-2100. They are no longer made but you can pick one up from eBay for @ $50.

 

[bradly1101]

There weren't any problems during my setup of the HDHRPrime, I just followed Silicon Dust's setup guide, but you have to call the cable company to activate the cable card.

You should also be getting a 'tuning adapter' with the cable card (TA), which enables the encrypted channels.

There's a USB remote receiver and remote control for Media Center, and its IR codes (and the ones for a PC/MCE keyboard with mouse control) are available in Harmony remotes.

 

[Raizinman]

I received my HomeRun Prime and hooked up everything. Call the Cable company for authorization and was up and running in 5 minutes. Picture perfect digital quality.

A few questions:

1) Being that the Home Run Prime has three tuners, I suppose I can record up to 3 shows at a time?

2) What is the limit of recording shows? How many hours? Is it limited only by my Hard Drive?

 

[hoorah]

Its limited by the size of your hard drive. Yes, you can record 3 shows.

As long as you're playing back on the same computer you should be fine, but if you start getting into moving the files around you have to watch out for the broadcast flags (Time Warner will set a broadcast flag on some programs that say you can only playback the media on the device it was recorded on).

Recording takes place at about 5 GB per hour of HD television. You can compress old saved shows with something like MCEbuddy or other video editing program but anything with a broadcast flag (and thus, DRM) you wont be able to edit.

Don't record onto an SSD if you can help it.

The Windows Media Center remote is a must have for using media center as a set top box.

 

[bradly1101]

I received my HomeRun Prime and hooked up everything. Call the Cable company for authorization and was up and running in 5 minutes. Picture perfect digital quality.
...
2) What is the limit of recording shows? How many hours? Is it limited only by my Hard Drive?

I'm glad you like it. The Media Center interface blows away all others IMO, and it was free in W7!

As hoorah said it all depends on the HDD. My OS is on a small SSD and I record TV to a 2GB RAID0 array which allows about 400 hours of recording with my music on there too.

The default for recordings is "Delete when space needed" so I just let the drive fill up and automatically delete, since it's seperate from the OS drive this doesn't cause problems.

 

[Raizinman]

Don't record onto an SSD if you can help it.

The Windows Media Center remote is a must have for using media center as a set top box.

Why not record on my SSD? I have more than enough space?

What is this Windows Media Center remote? Please elaborate.

 

[hoorah]

Why not record on my SSD? I have more than enough space?

What is this Windows Media Center remote? Please elaborate.

Just because you're writing a huge amount of data. Even writing a lot, you're probably fine, but the fastest way to wear out the usable writes on an SSD is to use it to store the temporary recordings (live TV buffer).

If you record one or two things that you're watching its not really a big deal, but if you run MC like a set top box and have 3 things recording for a significant portion of the day, thats a lot of writes.

 

[bradly1101]

I forgot to mention that it's really easy to stream Media Center and other content to portables with Media Browser (free server program to run on the PC and a $4.59 mobile app.).

 

[bradly1101]

Why not record on my SSD? I have more than enough space?

What is this Windows Media Center remote? Please elaborate.

You can record to an SSD, but it's lots of large files (depending on your usage) which will degrade the flash memory faster.

As for the remote see my post above with link.

Edit: You only need a remote if you're using this on a TV and you're a few feet away.

 

[Raizinman]

Thank all of you for bringing me into the electronic world of watching Cable TV on my computer. It works great!

 

[bradly1101]

Thank all of you for bringing me into the electronic world of watching Cable TV on my computer. It works great!

Yeah the HDHR Prime exceeded my expectations. But after switching from analog (S-Video) signals to cable card, I ran into a couple of glitches.

I would get very occasional errors from Media Center that the signal was not there for recordings, but the program would record anyway. So the error was erroneous. There's a fix here.

Also about daily I'd get a split-second error saying "Copying Prohibited" that would drop a few frames but otherwise was fine. This was solved with a restart of the HDHR by unplugging it or running this command:

"C:\Program Files\Silicondust\HDHomeRun\hdhomerun_config.exe" 192.168.0.179 set /sys/restart self

(Replace the IP with your HDHR IP or Network ID and the smiley with a colon and a backslash .)

I put it in a batch file and made it a scheduled task for every morning at 3:00AM.

 

[hoorah]

I would get very occasional errors from Media Center that the signal was not there for recordings, but the program would record anyway. So the error was erroneous. There's a fix here.

Thanks! I suffer from the problem and its always bugged me.

I put it in a batch file and made it a scheduled task for every morning at 3:00AM.

Uh, I have some really, uh, important recordings scheduled for 3AM cinemax.

 

[bradly1101]

Uh, I have some really, uh, important recordings scheduled for 3AM cinemax.

;-)

 

[Patre]

Good thread!!

Subscribing to it as a future reference tool.