Comcast hdtv and sage?

[mpegripper]

are their any hdtv capture cards that will work with my comcast hdtv box?

i know this isn't possible with satelite, but i haven't heard about cable yet

[mpegripper]

from what i can see, all i would need is an hdtv tuner card that can do qam

and i would need the hdtv receiver to have coax out, which it will...but how do i find out if the signal is encrypted or not, cuz won't i not be able to use this is the signal is encrypted?

[ke6guj]

IIRC, there aren't any consumer hd capture cards that will capture hd output from a STB. YOu would need to either use a firewire cable to connect the STB directly to the PC witout a HD capture card, or else, if/when Sage supports QAM, then your could 86 the STB and plug the coax into a HD capture card. It would then be able to record the unencrypted content. The holy grail is a Cable Card HD card which should decrypt all the subscrbed channels, but who knows if/when they'll ever arrive, and if/when Sage'll support them.

Capturing HD right now is only HD OTA into a HD capture card, or else, HD cable through a STB firewire connection.

Coax out of the HD STB would be SD, not HD. you could run that directly into a standard SD capture card, at SD quality though. I think that there is no encryption coming out of the STB on anything but firewire and DVI/HDMI. Coax, composite, and s-video are all SD.

[Interactive]

Ok, so assume I keep the 6412 comcast reciever. WHat else do I need on my PC other than firewire and SageTv application?

My goal here is to create a single user interface in my home theater for all TV and other media (pictures, music, etc). This will be far more efficient from a UI perspective if I can incorporate my HD tuner from cable. I have some premium channels and want to maintain them.

I'd be okay with by passing the DVR function of the 6412 (or returning it for a non-DVR unit) if Sage could give me DVR functionality on my HTPC.

[BobPhoenix]

Beware the 5C protection (Encryption) on your cable box. You may not be able to use a firewire connection if the channels you are interested in recording are 5C protected. All but my locals or the analog channels are for me (I.E. no movie channels like HBO/SHOWTIME). Firewire is a waist for me so I have to use multiple interfaces and record in SDTV format from my 6412 box. Firewire is only used to change channels on the box for me. I'm back to watching live or from the builtin harddrive on the cable box if I want HDTV.

BobP.

[deliverer]

On the comcast receiver. Can you use both the firewire and other outputs for both SDTV and HDTV captures? Meaning can I try to capture HDTV content via the firewire and everything else via the Svideo output to my PVR-500 card?

Regards,

Deliverer