USB-based CableCard receiver??

[mhassman]

Anyone catch this?..

http://www.niveusmedia.com/products/dcr.htm

http://www.niveusmedia.com/products/...ns_1-30-07.pdf

It looks like dual-channel cablecard-enabled digital receiver via usb.

Obviously, it's geared toward the vista media center product.. but since it should be standards-based, could it be used with an independent package such as sagetv? Would it be as simple as finding a proper windows xp device driver? I can only assume it enforces the encrypted channel through the OS and computer hardware, but a lot of that is already present in xp.

Anyone have $1500 to blow to find out?

Thoughts?


-Mark

[Wheemer]

$1500!

[stanger89]

CableCard tuners are certified as part of a system and AFAIK, will not work in any system other than the one they ship with.

Further they require the security built into Vista and won't work outside it. Nor will they work in anything but MCE.

And my god, what are they thinking, $1500 for just the DCR?! You can get 3 Dish Boxes R5000 modded (or two pre-modded) for that!!!

[mikesm]

Originally Posted by stanger89

CableCard tuners are certified as part of a system and AFAIK, will not work in any system other than the one they ship with.

Further they require the security built into Vista and won't work outside it. Nor will they work in anything but MCE.

And my god, what are they thinking, $1500 for just the DCR?! You can get 3 Dish Boxes R5000 modded (or two pre-modded) for that!!!

Or multiple DCP501's being R5000-HD modded if you prefer cable to Dish. No MPEG-4 to deal with either. Plus in my area, Comcast has an actual procedure to provision DCP501's. They got it set up right on the first try.

cablecard has been neutered by the DFAST restrictions. If you have cable today, the best way of getting HD and SD programming is with an R5000-HD modified STB.

thanks,
mike

[crowland]

I don't even have HDTV, yet, but I don't understand why someone doesn't make a card that just accepts the output from a STB with HDMI or DVI outputs. HDTV's can display it. Seems like it could work just like an Nvidia DualTV accepts svideo... Is it some legal issue or something?

[GKusnick]

No, it's a bandwidth and horsepower issue. Recompressing HDMI back to MPEG is a much more demanding task than compressing S-video. Such cards do exist, but they cost thousands of dollars and the resulting files take up huge amounts of disk space. It's hard to imagine an inexpensive consumer-level card that could compress HDMI down to reasonable file sizes in real time without significant loss of image quality (at least with today's technology). To my mind that would pretty much defeat the purpose of recording HD instead of SD.

[srothwell]

Originally Posted by stanger89

CableCard tuners are certified as part of a system and AFAIK, will not work in any system other than the one they ship with.

Further they require the security built into Vista and won't work outside it. Nor will they work in anything but MCE.

And my god, what are they thinking, $1500 for just the DCR?! You can get 3 Dish Boxes R5000 modded (or two pre-modded) for that!!!

Hey Stanger....

WHAT is a modified R5000 box? I keep hearing that.

[Razillian]

http://www.nextcomwireless.com/r5000/products.htm

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by GKusnick

No, it's a bandwidth and horsepower issue. Recompressing HDMI back to MPEG is a much more demanding task than compressing S-video.

It's also a copy protection issue. Content owners are requiring copy protection on their media so that it can't be recorded.