Recording HDTV for SageTV?

[TheraEdge]

So I have my HD Theater, and it has been working great to play back all my SDTV. I finally took the plung though and the HDTV is on the way. After some research of options it would seem that Sage isn't set up to really work cleanly with the state of HD service in our area yet.

My cable provider, provides about 5 unscrambled channels that I could use a QAM tuner for I believe. The service we currently have also provides an additional 6 HD channels that require an HD set top box or a cable card. We also have an upgrade option for an additional fee 13 more HD channels, but that also requires the set top box or cable card.

So, the only thing I have seen is the Hauppauge HD-PVR for recording scrambled HD channels, and that has to be set up to control a set top box. There are 2 downsides I see there. It's clunky and uggly pieced together with a PC and set top box and it is pretty pricey at $225. I'm used to grabbing some $60 to $70 SD tuners and cramming a bunch into one machine and being spoiled with recording multipule channels at once. The rental prices and high cost of the tuners make multipules less likley.

I would really prefer if there was some way to use a cable card, but I haven't seen an option for this. It seems my cable company is a minority in offering the cards. They also charge less for renting the cards than for the set top boxes. ($5 + $3 for each additional vs. $10 + $6.50). Does anyone know of a cablecard option?

[MitchSchaft]

Your only option is to use the Hauppauge HD-PVR and the cable company's settop box.
Cablecard is for Windows Vista Media Center only.

[TheraEdge]

WTF! seriously? I guess a friend said something about there being an issue with cable cards only being allowed to work with recorders that can maintain some kind of copy protection. I also had heard something about a second generation cable card that seemed to be a great idea, but seems to have fizzled out because I haven't heard anything about it latley.

[MitchSchaft]

I think you can record HD from the firewire output off the settop box if it has one. You can't watch it live from there, though. Don't quote me on that one.

But, yeah, cablecard is a Microsoft/Cable companies deal. Unless something has changed recently that I haven't heard about.

[TheraEdge]

Drat, back when I first heard about cable card I thought it was supposed to be more open than that. I know there were a few TVs produced that could accept the card so they didn't have to have a set top box, and I thought there would be similar internal tuner cards produced for PCs that could take them. Something must have changed along the way, because I don't remember them being an MS exclusive when they first came out...

[MitchSchaft]

No, they were MS exclusive from the start.

[Fuzzy]

There are many TV's, and aftermarket PVR's that make great use of CableCards... however, the reason they are allowed in those devices is that they have a certified copy protection system, so there is no way to use the CableCard to copy the digital media. They are even only allowed on certain OEM media center PC's, and those cannot take much modification... the files are locked down and cannot be edited, or even viewed on another system. Perhaps someday, if Sage implements some sort of DRM, it would be possible, but as of now, your only options is to either see what is available via QAM or Firewire, or go with an HD-PVR.

[TheraEdge]

Me sad. Well, if Sage can't do it, I may have to give it up. I'll look at the HD-PVR, but heck, if I want 2 channels, I can pick up a Tivo with 2 cable card ready tuners for around that, so not sure what I will do.

Thanks for the help though.

[MitchSchaft]

Nothing else can do it is the problem (except a cablecard machine).

You can't use cablecard at all unless you buy a brand new OEM Microsoft media center PC.

Sage is your only real choice if you want to record real, encrypted HD (i.e., HBO, PPV, etc..) off of cable, besides a windows media center box with cablecard. That's just where the industry is at right now.

[TheraEdge]

No. No other home computer based DVR machine can do it. Tivo and other's can already use them.

I understand what you are saying though, there is no need for Sage to work on supporting a copy protection format with such a minority of machines out there that could actually use it. I wasn't harping on Sage, I was just bummed there really isn't an economical option to do encrypted HD content.

We need some good old fashioned Hardware Supplier competition to spark some price drops and provide options to the HD-PVR. I just can't believe I have to drop that much money just for one tuner.

This little snippet from Wikipedia gives me some hope that one day we might see an advance on this front: "...Further, they have requested that consumers should "be allowed to save content to a DVR, to move content to a second or third TV, to a PC or to a portable device, subject only to the rules and limits set by the content provider and not subject to artificial and arbitrary limitations set by the cable operator." They, refering to the consumer electronics companies side of the debate (vs. the cable companies). Unfortunatly that was back before 2007 and it would appear that little has transpired since then.


I will weigh my options, thanks again for the background.

[MitchSchaft]

Well, yeah, I was talking about PC based stuff. You wouldn't be here if you didn't want to do this stuff on your PC.

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by TheraEdge

I understand what you are saying though, there is no need for Sage to work on supporting a copy protection format with such a minority of machines out there that could actually use it.

What do you mean by that? If, in some perfect world, anyone could put a cable card in their home PC, I think a lot of people would use them (assuming there wouldn't be major restrictions on their use). I think all US cable companies have to provide cable cards upon request now.

But, it's not really even the [lack of] DRM that is holding Sage back. Even if Sage could implement DRM on recordings, there's no way a company as small as Sage could get Cable Card certification. It would be way too expensive. So, things like the HD-PVR (and QAM/ATSC and firewire) are going to be the only way to get HDTV in Sage for the foreseeable future.

We need some good old fashioned Hardware Supplier competition to spark some price drops and provide options to the HD-PVR. I just can't believe I have to drop that much money just for one tuner.

Competition would be nice. I'd really like to see an mpeg2 version of the HD-PVR, though I wonder about the price. There are rumors that Hauppauge has some sort of exclusivity deal with the manufacturer of the hardware H.264 encoder in the HD-PVR, but there are other HD-capable H.264 encoders.

In any event, I don't think the price for the HD-PVR is that ridiculous. It's normally about $200, and has been found for as low as $150. It takes a lot of horsepower to encode HDTV to H.264 in realtime, so you'd expect it to cost significantly more than standard definition analog capture devices. And, since it has to have an encoder, you'd expect it to cost more than digital TV tuners.

Unfortunatly that was back before 2007 and it would appear that little has transpired since then.

Yeah, I wouldn't hold my breath. I think at some point it will be possible to move content from device to device relatively easily, but I don't expect to see that until well after we've moved to an all-Internet approach to delivering video.

[Fuzzy]

There's always the R5000 mods.. the DIY kits are not really prohibitively expensive, and the quality is unmatched (well, same as a TiVo, but with full usability of SageTV). R5000+Dish Network ViP211 is a killer combination... I love the one I have, and can't wait to modify the other two boxes when I get there... which brings me to another point. MOST of the time you will probably not have 2 recordings of great importance at the same time. What this means is, you can very easily start out with a single HD-PVR, and a couple SD capture cards. It's what I do (1 R5000'd 211, and 2 211's into a PVR-500), and I don't really miss that much potential HD... Then, as money allows, upgrade the next tuner to HD.