Moving From Analog to Digital Cable

[Karen0302]

Hi,

I need a bit of advice here. I am currently using 3 tuners with analog cable from Comcast. I understand that if I move to digital cable I will need to use a cable box supplied by Comcast. Here are my question.

1. How do I get Sage to control multiple cable boxes. Right now I don't use any cable boxes at all.

2. Will I still be able to watch the captured video on my SD TV?

Thanks!

Karen

[mistergq]

Originally Posted by Karen0302

Hi,

I need a bit of advice here. I am currently using 3 tuners with analog cable from Comcast. I understand that if I move to digital cable I will need to use a cable box supplied by Comcast. Here are my question.

1. How do I get Sage to control multiple cable boxes. Right now I don't use any cable boxes at all.

2. Will I still be able to watch the captured video on my SD TV?

Thanks!

Karen

Karen:

1) you will need a device to change the channel on each box. When I had a regular comcast digital box, I was using the USB UIRT. It has 3 zones, two controlled with ir emitters, and a third zone from the front of the usb uirt. The problem is reliability of usb uirt.

If you use HD boxes, you can control them with a firewire. That is much more reliable to control the boxes.

I am not sure if anyone has gotten USB or a USB to serial connection to work to change comcast digital.

2) As to the analog SD, it depends how long Comcast is going to keep SD alive. They are systematically shutting down analog channels to create more bandwidth for HD channels.

[JmpnJimBob]

I am in exactly the same boat that you are right now. I literally just changed from Extended Basic cable to digital cable a couple of weeks ago.

Here is what I’ve put together so far.

From the information that I have picked up from these and other forums, it appears that most of the digital cable set top boxes have some kind of audio and video output. In the case of the General Instruments cable box that I have there is a composite video output and a left and right stereo output. I have simply run cables from those output jacks into the auxiliary input jacks of my tuner card. I have a Hauppauge 150 card that has an S-video and a composite video input as well as a mini pin stereo input on the back of the tuner card. When you setup Sage you can specify the auxiliary inputs of the capture card versus the television tuner that you normally would as the input device.

The next hurdle to overcome was how to change channels on the set top box. I purchased a USB-UIRT as was mentioned previously to change the channels. This did work well. Upon some further reading I then realized that the remote control unit that came with my Hauppauge PVR-150 tuner card also has the ability to also tune the channels of the cable box. If you have the right Hauppauge remote (maybe they’re all this way) you will have 2 leads coming off of the jack that is plugged into the back of the tuner card. One of the leads is the piece that reads the signal from the remote control and the other is the lead that can emit an I.R. signal, the I.R. Blaster. I did get the USB-UIRT to work but have settled on using the Hauppauge remote and Blaster. Depending on how the system grows I may need to use the USB-UIRT sometime in the future.

After much head banging I finally realized that you have to have the emitter, the I.R. Blaster setup and working with your cable box before setting up Sage. There is a program called BlastCfg that is used to setup the I.R. Blaster to work with your cable box. It was a fairly simple program to use, just choose your cable box manufacturer and then test different setup possibilities to find the one that works with your cable box. From what I found the I.R. Blaster doesn’t have a lot of range so it has to literally be placed right on the outside of the cable box so that the cable box can see it. The other problem that I had was finding the location of the cable boxes I.R. receiver. There was no place shown on the outside of the box to indicate this. So I simply moved the I.R. Blaster’s transmitter around on the front face of the cable box until I found the location where it interacted best with the unit.

I am only using a single set top box. If you are going to use multiple cable set top boxes you may have to use the USB-UIRT(s) or you may be able to use both the Hauppauge remote and I.R. Blaster along with the USB-UIRT but in this area I’m uncertain since I'm new to this and only using a single set top box. I'd like to have it all explained to me for future expansion of my own setup.

Another thing that I’ve found is that even though I’m using the Digital Cable package from Comcast, at least for now the old analog tuner still works great with the analog channels 2 through 99 (at least in my area). I’ve heard that Comcast is slowly fazing out the analog stations and my situation could change, but for now it’s nice to still be able to have the analog tuners and their ability to tune channels without having to use the set top box.

I also purchased a Hauppauge 1600 tuner card. It has an analog and a digital tuner. When I started this current round of my own PVR upgrade I didn’t quite realize exactly what I was getting into and what was and wasn’t necessary. I naively thought that I would be able to use the digital tuner of this card to tune in the digital content from Comcast just as I had previously been able to with the old analog tuner and extended basic cable.

Unfortunately this isn’t so. The digital tuner can only be used to tune in the unencrypted content offered by Comcast which appears to be the major networks local stations and a few public access channels.

What I have ended up with is to have both of my Hauppauge cards installed in my system. The analog tuner of one card is setup to record the standard analog channels, the auxiliary inputs of the other analog card setup to capture the output from the set top cable box and the digital tuner is setup to capture the unencrypted Clear QAM digital channels.

As far as being able to still watch your captured video on your old standard definition television, nothing should change there. Everything ought to still work fine. It’s working fine for me on my standard definition television.

My system may not be perfect but it's how I've been able to make it all work. It can be tough to pull out the information that your looking for here in the forums so I thought that I'd tell you what I've pieced together so far. I hope this helps.

[sic0048]

There is a lot of confusion out there concerning the FCC and the OTA analog broadcasts that will be ending soon. The cable companies are not going to stop broadcasting in analog for quite a while. So unless you just like the idea of getting digitial cable, you are not going to be forced to switch right now.

I'm not sure exactly where you are in Indiana, but I found this news article written in July 2008 that talks about Comcast in Indiana.

Last month (so June 2008), officials in Comcast Cable's Philadelphia headquarters told USA Today that many of the company's markets would drop basic analog pack-ages in favor of all-digital transmission by the end of 2010.

This month (July 2008), local Comcast officials said there are no plans to end analog in central Indiana."That hasn't even been discussed for Indianapolis," said local Comcast spokesman Mark Apple.

Bright House Networks, a cable TV operator that serves 120,000 households in central and north central Indiana, plans to make the switch to all-digital by 2012.

So it sounds like you will not be forced to switch to digital service for several years.

Of course if you just want to get the better picture quality of the digitial broadcasts, then move forward in your plans to switch.

[wayner]

Originally Posted by sic0048

Of course if you just want to get the better picture quality of the digitial broadcasts, then move forward in your plans to switch.

Not to mention the hundreds of channels that are only available with digital cable.

[thomaszoo]

Originally Posted by Karen0302

Hi,

I need a bit of advice here. I am currently using 3 tuners with analog cable from Comcast. I understand that if I move to digital cable I will need to use a cable box supplied by Comcast. Here are my question.

1. How do I get Sage to control multiple cable boxes. Right now I don't use any cable boxes at all.

2. Will I still be able to watch the captured video on my SD TV?

Thanks!

Karen

1. USB-UIRT is the best way to control multiple cable boxes

2. It depends on the signal and how you capture it.

As already mentioned, you should still have analog recording capability. I have had digital cable for years and then HD digital cable and I am still using 2 analog capture cards for the SD cable channels. For the digital and HD channels you have a few options:
1. The first and easiest is to use the S-video connections to capture the signal.
2. The second is to use firewire, if available. However, some programs will not record this way (5c). Firewire is also a nice way to change channels on one box.
3. The third way is to use an HD-PVR. There are still some bugs in this solution, but you will get the best picture quality.

Since you didn't say, I am guessing you are not using a media extender. If you are using your PC it should be able to scale any recording to SD. An MVP would only work with an SD signal. An HD extender would scale any recording to SD, also (preferred method).

Hope this helps.

Wayne

[wayner]

Originally Posted by thomaszoo

...Firewire is also a nice way to change channels on one box..

Why only one box - why not several?

[Karen0302]

Thanks for the advice guys, but some of it brings up an additional question. It appears as if using a USB-UIRT is the best best way to control multiple cable boxes. But how do you get the USB-UIRT to talk to a specific box instead of all the boxes at the same time?

Karen

[sic0048]

The USB-UIRT supports up to three different zones (one front blaster and to zones available by plugging in two wired emitters into the back of the USB-UIRT). So you could have 3 identical cable boxes hooked up to a unique zone and specify which zone sends out the commands.

So zone one could send out "1" "2" "3" to change the channel of the box connected to zone 1 to 123 and it would not effect the other two boxes hooked up to to the other 2 zones.

[thomaszoo]

I'm not sure but if I remember correctly there is a limitation of the software / drivers that doesn't allow control of more than 1 box; I could be wrong.

Wayne

Originally Posted by wayner

Why only one box - why not several?

[mistergq]

Originally Posted by thomaszoo

I'm not sure but if I remember correctly there is a limitation of the software / drivers that doesn't allow control of more than 1 box; I could be wrong.

Wayne

I control two boxes right now. And the best part, they are daisy chained meaning that the firewire goes from server to box 1, and then the next firewire cable is box 1 to box 2. So you can control more than one box, if you need me to, I can hook up a third, but I am pretty sure it can do three. And its a lot more accurate and faster then my USB UIRT ever was.

[JPMNICK]

Originally Posted by mistergq

I control two boxes right now. And the best part, they are daisy chained meaning that the firewire goes from server to box 1, and then the next firewire cable is box 1 to box 2. So you can control more than one box, if you need me to, I can hook up a third, but I am pretty sure it can do three. And its a lot more accurate and faster then my USB UIRT ever was.

wow that is an awesome setup, I have always wondered if it would work. I am about to try to hook up my cable box directly to my PC, I think I might give this a shot