Connecting my cable box

[bgardner]

I apologize if I missed this somewhere but after a lot of searching online and on this forum I am still confused.

I am ready to make the jump to Sage. I have a spare PC and need to purchase a capture card. What I don't understand is how to record HD from my cable box. My cable company is Comcast and I have a DCT6200 box. The outputs for HD from the box are HDMI or component video. The problem is that all of the cards I have looked at support coax and s-video. They also talk about HD but always OTA. What am I missing? How do I record HD from my cable box?

This seems like something that should be in an FAQ but I have tried several and I can't seem to find the answer.

Thank you,

Bob

[BobPhoenix]

The only way you will get HD from that box is with Firewire - check this thread! Component or HDMI is not a viable capture option. The only cards to do it are very expensive monetarily (think I saw a several K$ post somewhere) or very expensive in terms of HD space required (think I saw a 60GB/minute post somewhere). I record down converted SD from the SVideo on my Moto 6412 box. Still looks better than Composite from my DCT2XXX class boxes! Of course if you have a DCT box without a firewire port you can go here and get a R5000HD.

Edit: only found recent posts on the large HD space needed here.

[bgardner]

Thanks for the quick reply. I was afraid that it wasn't going to be easy. The thread you provided a link to is quite impressive - it's going to take me a while to get through it. This will definitely keep me busy.

Thanks again,

Bob

[BobPhoenix]

OH! forgot QAM You can do a search for that to see if it is an option for you. The advantage here is NO STB required!

[GbrNole]

the other thing is really what shows are most important for you to be able to record in HD?

for a while i had this crazy need to be able to record HBO HD, Starz HD etc. but after a while it just became less important and i tended to find myself watching those channels realtime.

my current setup (as of last night) is the same as bob's. i record all network HD using OTA capture cards (avermedia a180, hauppauge hvr 950) analog cable tier using 2 pvr 500's and digital cable into one of the pvr 500's s-video port.

channel changing for the digital cable is handled by firewire and it works perfectly.

if either QAM or firewire video capture will work in your area though then go for it! no such luxury for me