Need help arranging my SageTV setup

[Chips20]

Hey guys,

I need some help deciding how to best set up my pvr system. Here's the situation:

I'm living in Atlanta using Charter as my cable provider with a HD motorola cable box connected to my HDTV. I want to have a client/server setup with the signal coming in through my main system and then actually being played through a separate computer connected to my tv. I need to be able to watch HD and SD programming and preferably record both as well.

What I need to know is how I can go about setting up this system. Some examples of what I would need to know:

What kind of capture card do I need (I heard something about an R5000 for recording HD content)? Do I connect the server to the cable box or do I skip the cable box entirely? Do I need to buy a USB-UIRT or something similar if I want to connect to the cable box? How do I actually connect the different components (via coax, firewire, HDMI, etc.)?

If someone could just do a quick run through of how everything needs to be setup and connected I'd really appreciate it. Sorry for the noobish questions but it all seems a little overwhelming .

Thanks in advance for your help!

[ke6guj]

Recording digital and HD cable signals, you basically have 2 choices. Firewire recording off the STB, or a QAM tuner such as the HDHomerun. The R5000 is a $$$ option.

With a firewire'd STB you just hook up the STB to the server via firewire, no capture card required. Depending on your cable company (CC), you may only get your local digital channels in the clear, the rest being 5C'ed. 5C is basically an encryption scheme that prevents a non-authorized device, such as a PC, from recording content they don't want you to. 5C can range from just about everything 5C'ed and blocked, to nothing 5C'ed and everything open to being recorded on the PC that is paid for. If you have the STB firewired, you can change the channels on the STB via the same firewire cable so no IR blaster needed.

QAM tuners record unscrambled content from the CC without any STB needed. That would be your local digital channels and maybe some other digital channels in the open. Definitely no premium channels in there.

Don't know too much about the R5000, just that you may need to modify the CC's STB or buy your own STB and have that modifed.