Suddenlink HD Cable Tuner Choices

[bigo93bronco]

I have long planned to move from cable to Dish or Direct because Sudden-link told me they had no plans to upgrade the infrastructure in my area to allow HD services. Now they have unexpectedly, and I want to go this direction (Ive been a SD subscriber for years).

Please chime in with any info or experiences you have with the following, or methods I haven't considered?

The way I see it, I have 3 options for HD:

Firewire Recording and Channel changing -did we ever get this working? Does Sudden-link use 5C?

Cablecard- Sudden-link says they don't have these (thought that was required by FCC?) Have concerns about reliability

HDPVR2 (GE) - HDMI all the way using a trick brought up before. Some concerns about stability, and audio issues

[wayner]

Firewire is dying out both from the PC side and from the STB side and you can't use a 64 bit OS as there are no firewire drivers for it so I wouldn't go in that direction.

Here in Canada we have the same cable infrastructure as the US except CableCards are not available so that is the same as your situation.

I have used two HD-PVRs for many years and have no major issues with that. I have the original HD-PVRs and use component cables and optical to connect to my STB. Having STBs means there is more stuff that can go wrong and you need an external tuning device but it is still very reliable. An advantage is that you can get access to all channels including premium channels that can some times be blocked by other methods.

I would recommend HD-PVRs

[bigo93bronco]

Thanks for commenting Wayner. I probably should have mentioned that I'm using Vista X86 OS so drivers shouldn't be an issue. This is 24/7 dedicated server so my memory usage is very low, and I have no plans to upgrade to X64.

When I asked about Cablecards, I asked the girl at Suddenlink Support "Do you have Cablecard support" and she said "NO". She may not have known what I was talking about, or she may have meant "we just won't give you any assistance". This option *may* not be off the table. The way I understand it, you have to have WMC running in the background at all times for the Cablecards to work with with Sage?

Can anyone comment on their experiences with Suddenlink and DRM? Do they tend to tag a bunch of channels? As long as Sage can do its PVR duties and record my shows for me, that's all I want. I don't copy my shows to other devices or anything. If I understand the tags correctly, something tagged by the cable company as "copy once" means that it can't be recorded? Strange if true, because that basically indicates "copy zero times" to me...


I could go the HDPVR route, I just know that it would take awhile to get things dialed in to where I could trust it. I need a minimum of (4) tuners to keep up with the volume of TV we record. Sunday and Wednesday nights we occupy all 4 cable tuners and often both ATSC tuners. I currently have 1 brand new Colossus 1st gen, and one basically new HDPVR2 (GE) device. If I recall correctly, the only issue people had with the HDPVR2 GE model (when using ONLY HDMI) was that you only get PCM stereo audio? Is this correct anyone that recalls? If true I don't think its going to be an issue for me, but I certainly wouldn't mind 5.1 audio if there is a way of getting it.



I'll probably add another dual ATSC tuner (or maybe even 2 for a total of 6) for HD OTA. This would allow me to comfortably disable local channels on the cable boxes, so that they can only be used for true cable content, and will maximize the usage of the (4) boxes. I'll be doing this regardless of what method I use for recording from the cable boxes.

[wayner]

Holy moley, you do a lot of recording to be running six tuners at once. I would recommend using OTA channels where possible with HDHRs as tuners.

I don't have experience with the Colossus or HD-PVR2 but the HD-PVR1 can do 5.1 capture over optical.

In terms of having no plans to upgrade to X64 - that makes sense for now but if you have to go to new hardware in the future (due to your old system conking out) it likely makes sense to go to a newer OS, especially if Sage V9 if better at supporting larger installs with more clients/extenders.

[Monedeath]

Originally Posted by wayner

Holy moley, you do a lot of recording to be running six tuners at once. I would recommend using OTA channels where possible with HDHRs as tuners.

I've had occasion to see 8 scheduled recordings(not due to padding) plus a live TV program going at the same time on mine before, but that is very rare. It has even seen all 12 tuners going at once as a test at various points.

Although the main reason for that many tuners is so recordings can be padded, even the back to back ones. So we determined a "normal need" and doubled the tuner count.

[wayner]

I am surprised that there is:

(1) That much stuff worth recording, and
(2) That anyone has time to watch that many TV shows (unless you have a lot of people living in your house but that brings up other issues about simultaneous connections to the SageTV server).

[bigo93bronco]

We don't "need" to record so much, but getting people to cut down on their favorites is like pulling teeth in my house. Our biggest issue is that our favorite TV shows all happen to be in the same 3 hour span on Wednesday and Sunday nights. Padding is a slight issue for us too, some channels run a little over, and you don't want to miss the last couple of minutes of your favorite show.

[bigo93bronco]

OK today is my day off, so I've been researching this all day. If anyone has any additional info, or a link to a related how-to for this type of setup i
d appreciate anything you got.

I am going to do a "trial run" with an HDPRIME 3X cablecard tuner. Suddenlink doesn't make you sign contracts, and they only charge 3 bucks a month for M-Cards. If it doesn't work out for some reason, I can always get cable boxes instead and go another route. If it works good, I'll grab another HDPRIME and have 6X tuners for less than the monthly fee for 2 cable boxes. Sounds like the best SAGETV+SAGEDCT support is for the HDPRIME. Just read a post from Fuzzy where he said he didn't even have to bother with WMC in this configuration. Best part is, my SD cable tuners and service will remain fully operational during this testing, so I "shouldn't" have to worry about missing any recordings. I can change the tuner merit values so the HD tuners only get used for recordings I specify during the testing period.

[will]

Originally Posted by bigo93bronco

Firewire Recording and Channel changing -did we ever get this working? Does Sudden-link use 5C?

I remain on a 32bit OS because I use firewire to change channels with my two STBs. I don't think you will get firewire recording working with newer STBs as most cable companies encrypt almost everything now (premium and most non-premium). I've never used firewire for recording but I believe it is only used still with old satellite STBs.

Originally Posted by bigo93bronco

Cablecard- Sudden-link says they don't have these (thought that was required by FCC?) Have concerns about reliability

Cable card (CC) seems like a great option but you'll need to verify that your provider doesn't list everything as copy once - TWC has everything but locals as copy once so I've never used CC before because it would be no different than what my ClearQAM COAX tuner can access. You are correct that they do have to provide CCs.

Originally Posted by bigo93bronco

HDPVR2 (GE) - HDMI all the way using a trick brought up before. Some concerns about stability, and audio issues

This is pretty much the setup I use myself though I use two HD-PVRs v1 (1212 model). I also supplement my tuners with a ClearQAM card which pretty just records the broadcast TV (ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, CW, and PBS) via a coax cable input. My setup is rock solid; I've read that the HD-PVR2 has an issue with live TV so you may want to research if the issue has been fixed before buying.

[Tiki]

Originally Posted by bigo93bronco

The way I understand it, you have to have WMC running in the background at all times for the Cablecards to work with with Sage?

No, you don't need WMC installed on the computer at all. In fact WMC can cause problems if you aren't careful (if you have it and Sage both trying to access the same tuner at the same time).

Originally Posted by bigo93bronco

If I understand the tags correctly, something tagged by the cable company as "copy once" means that it can't be recorded? Strange if true, because that basically indicates "copy zero times" to me...

Copy Freely = No restrictions - you can record without DRM, you can make copies of the recordings, you can play back the recordings anywhere...

Copy Once = You can make one recording, but the Recording Device must use DRM to restrict the recording so that it cannot be copied. DRM will lock the recording to the Recording Device (so if you used Windows Media Center to record it, you must use that same installation to play it back - if you migrate to a new server or need to re-install Windows, the recordings can no longer be played).

Copy Never = You can stream live, but the Recording Device cannot make a permanent recording. This is mostly used for Pay Per View.

Originally Posted by wayner

Holy moley, you do a lot of recording to be running six tuners at once. I would recommend using OTA channels where possible with HDHRs as tuners.

Not really - I have 8 tuners and tie all of them up for at least a few minutes every week. Padding is the main reason - I add 5 minutes of padding before and after all recordings by default. For anything on CBS or Fox on Sunday nights, I add 45 minutes of padding to the end (Fox isn't so bad, but CBS is almost always delayed due to football - why they schedule 3 hours, when they know most games last 3.5 and have post game stuff is beyond me).

[bigo93bronco]

So if its flagged as "copy once" sage will be able to record it, and because I use only extenders (which should be treated as though they are the same machine?) I should be able to play back that recording on any of my extenders right?

[mechling-burgh]

no only copy freely can be recorded by sagetv anything else will not work.

[bigo93bronco]

Did the "old" method where WMC was used in the background and Sage essentially "commanded" it get around this issue? I know I'm oversimplifying the process here, but I believe that was basically how it worked when someone 1st figured out how to get cablecards working in Sage.

[Tiki]

Originally Posted by Tiki

Copy Once = You can make one recording, but the Recording Device must use DRM to restrict the recording so that it cannot be copied. DRM will lock the recording to the Recording Device (so if you used Windows Media Center to record it, you must use that same installation to play it back - if you migrate to a new server or need to re-install Windows, the recordings can no longer be played).

Originally Posted by bigo93bronco

So if its flagged as "copy once" sage will be able to record it, and because I use only extenders (which should be treated as though they are the same machine?) I should be able to play back that recording on any of my extenders right?

Originally Posted by mechling-burgh

no only copy freely can be recorded by sagetv anything else will not work.

The key is that "Copy Once" requires that whatever does the recording uses DRM (digital rights management) to copy-protect the recording and prevent additional copies from being made. Whatever plays back the recording has to be able to work with that same DRM scheme. Sage doesn't support any type of DRM playback or recording, and probably never will.

So only "Copy Freely" works with Sage.

[Tiki]

Originally Posted by bigo93bronco

Did the "old" method where WMC was used in the background and Sage essentially "commanded" it get around this issue? I know I'm oversimplifying the process here, but I believe that was basically how it worked when someone 1st figured out how to get cablecards working in Sage.

I don't remember this ever being done, but could be wrong.

In theory, it should be possible for someone to create a network encoder that would launch WMC and tell it to record something. However, the file it creates would be DRM-protected, so Sage could not play it back.

In theory, it should also be possible for someone to create another plugin that would launch WMC for playback when you try to play a DRM-protected recording (this would only work if watching on a PC, and only if Sage was on the same PC as WMC - so, no extenders, no clients, no placeshifters, no Linux...).

Taking this a step further, in theory, it should be possible to create screen capture software that would run while WMC is playing back a recording and make a DRM-free recording of what is on the screen, that Sage could then playback. This would be relatively slow (it would take 1 hour to re-record a 1 hour show, since it would have to play back at regular speed), and there may be some loss of quality. But, the result would be playable anywhere. As I understand it, this is basically how PlayOn works.

So in theory, there are some possibilities, but I don't know that anyone is working on it. Not something I would know how to do.