HD signals (1 Viewer)

[opeth]

Quick question on TV Tuner cards. I apologize if this has been answered.

I currently have a DVR/HDTV settop box from my cable company. The purpose is obvious to switching to a HTPC utilizing media portal is to get rid of this setup entirely and to quit paying a monthly rental fee on this equipment.

My question more pertains to the HD signal. Do current TV cards accept HD signals? To clarify my set top boxes has all the HD channels on channels 700-750 respectively.

Is this possible to do with the current TV cards? If so any suggestions on what to buy? My TV is running a resolution of 1776x1000 using the component cable. Media Portal looks sweet on my 52 inch LCD

opeth

 

[wishywashy]

I have no clue on QAM tv cards, just over the air (OTA) HD. I use a VBOX150 to receive OTA HD with no problems.

 

[mzemina]

opeth - What do you mean "current TV cards"?
The reason I ask is there are SD TV tuner cards and also HD TV tuner cards.

But are you looking to route your signal from your settop box into MediaPortal or are you looking to replace your settop box with a TV tuner card?

 

[opeth]

opeth - What do you mean "current TV cards"?
The reason I ask is there are SD TV tuner cards and also HD TV tuner cards.

But are you looking to route your signal from your settop box into MediaPortal or are you looking to replace your settop box with a TV tuner card?

Thanks for the replys guys.

Im looking at completely looking at replacing my settop with a TV tuner card and curious how I can get the same kind of configuration with my set top box into a TV Tuner card.

I.E.
I have HD channels that come in on channels 703, 705, 708. These would be your standard over the air HD channels for 3, 5, and 8. My LCD TV can except these channels without the set top box but the channels on this particular TV are 3-1, 5-1, 8-1.

But I also have HD channels like channel 120 (Discovery HD). Im just curious if a TV Tuner card can emulate something similiar. Im not sure how to think about this type of configuration. Its the last thing I need to inergrate on my HTPC. I don't want to spend a ton of money on a couple of TV Tuner cards if it can't do what I want it to do.

Im just not sure how to go about this.


Does any of this make any sense?

 

[mzemina]

I am like wishywashy - I have no experience with cablecard adapters, only over the air (free) adapters.

 

[milhouse]

I haven't actually tried, but from the research I've done it seems that this would work - but only for unencrypted HD channels.

Ignore the settop box channel number (irrelevent). The "real" channel number is more like the 3.1, 5.1, etc.

The digital channels you can tune with your LCD tv directly are the unencrypted ones (QAM tuner). For example, if you do a channel search and let the LCD find the channels, those are the same channels you'd be able to tune directly with an HD tuner card in MP. Discovery HD is probably encrypted, so you wouldn't be able to tune it with the LCD or an HD tuner card.

The mythical cable card would theoretically let you unencrypt. But 1) AFAIK they don't exist yet, and 2) once they are generally available they'll be so locked down with DRM that it will probably never work with non-commercial software.

(I believe things are MUCH better in Europe than the sad state of U.S. digital television...)

Milhouse