Normal People Can Now Install CableCARD Tuners On Windows 7 PCs

@AustineMozie: I'm a tad uneducated when it comes to CableCards. Do you pay a monthly fee on them or are they using your existing cable line somehow?

@AustineMozie: can you recommend a decent cablecard reader for a win7 pc? i have a custom built gaming/htpc, with 8800gt videocard 3gb ram, dual 2.6 amd proc, even threw a turtle beach montego ddl soundcard to get 5.1 gaming going. been wanting cablecard support forever, i think rcn offers the card for 1.50 a month.

This is great news. I remember being a bit uneducated (well, I still am about a great many things, but that's another story) regarding integration of CableCARD products and PCs. I bought the pictured ATI Digital Cable tuner for my PC. It wouldn't work. Turns out my old PC wasn't "marked" to be able to run the thing. I was astonished and annoyed, so I'm glad to hear that they're opening up the limitations.

J0hnP

Awesome!! This is really great news! I cannot wait to try it! I'm hoping the part about allowing four channels simultaneously doesn't still mean I need four cablecard tuners, but I suspect it does.

Man, this has been needed for a long time. I bought a Dell XPS420 just for the cable card compatibility, then Comcast said it wouldn't work with their system.
Wouldn't have bought that machine otherwise. Would have much rather built my own. Might have to look into doing so now...

benztech55amg

I just got two more CableCARDs installed in my Win7 DIY HTPC. I now have 4 analog tuners, 4 CableCARD tuners, and 2 clear QAM tuners. On the OTA channels, I have 10 tuners! Life is great, and I'm excited to learn that I'll no longer have to run the DIY hacks to get this going.

AustineMozie

nerdz

Grifter

@gadam07: eventually yeah itd even out, but from what im seeing the average ATI cablecard rig is over 200$, so itll take awhile to even that out, i mean for my cable, if i take off the box/dvr functions, saves me maybe 15$ a month, will take quite a bit to get the money back if i paid 200

@karelj: The problem with the cablecard before this was announced was that you needed to (usually) buy a computer that was certified to be (And had this little code int he BiOS) used with a CableCard device (Like this). Therefore, use your HTPC all the time without having to switch to a cable box for normal programming.

It's also slightly cheaper than using a Box (Most times). The one problem that I see is that with most companies they won't let you use their channel guide or OnDemand (Which shouldn't be a dealbreaker if you're using an HTPC).

Now that any old HTPC (or whatever) can use this, it's pretty freaking amazing. I'll probably pick on of these up myself.

paulrules

Is there a wide variety of options for PC TV Tuners with cable card support? With these restrictions lifted I can just buy one of these tuners and it will work with a Comcast cable card?

And more importantly, can I get one for cheap? I'm not paying 200-300 dollars. This really means nothing to me if these tuners are expensive. I know regular TV tuners are cheap but they don't get all your channels so they're pieces of junk.

holy shit... does this mean i can finally buy that ati dct off ebay and not have to bother w/ bootloaders and other stuff?

I've been waiting a long time for this.

I expect more good news at CEDIA this week

@krztov: yeah, but you don't have to pay the stupid leasing fees for the box anymore. Overall, you should come with a lower monthly payment, no?

@Mike Zuniga: You get the cablecard from your cable company, it plugs into the "tuner" box and you plug the cable from the wall and USB into that card. The internal and external ATI cards are basically identical (I have two of each). The first card is free w/Comcast in MN, the rest are $2.99 a month. They give you all the digital channels, including HD and premium (plus the basic analog cable channels). No PPV or On-Demand though.

@krztov: I have the ATI internal and external units, both work great, both use USB (so you need a USB to motherboard header cable). Internal uses floppy power connector, external uses a rather large power brick (4Amp) with about 8' of cable. I got them from cannonpc.

I was surprised that the clear QAM tuners don't count as "digital", which was pleasant, because that means you really get a total of 12 tuners possible. No more fighting over who watches what!

SampadaPhegeus

@Mike Zuniga: That was Unexpected: your cable provider (check first, im not sure all of them do it) would provide them for a fee

Can someone kindly overlook my staggering ignorance here and explain the advantages of using a cablecard?
There was a lot of talk about cablecard ability years ago when I was into HTPC, but since it was hit or miss I never kept up.
Thanks.

karelj

i wish Gizmodo would at least dumb things down for us a LITTLE sometimes.... I'm fairly tech savvy, but i barely understand whats being talked about above... and that makes me mad becuase i have a ATI TV tuner in my computer that i was just having a BLAST trying to reconfigure tonight.... does this in any way pertain to me being able to record a show and watch it on my TV thru a PS3 ? because that'd be nice...

shorty6049

I can finally build a new HTPC. I retired my last one when the cable in my area went all digital.

Thank you cable labs for relenting.

i may be building a new system soon....

endless

wow, i am completely baffled and embarrassed that I've been scratching my head for this long with my Hauppauge tuner card with my comcast coax fed into it... Some channels come through! Some don't!! Nothing streams to my xbox nicely!! I've just now from this article learned what the hell a CableCARD is!!! FML

@dagamer34: one can only hope. the tech is licensed from cablelabs. they're allowing this on regular PCs but they might still decide not to license to other manufacturers

@SacGamer:

Since it's going to be open to the public, I would assume that more manufacturers would want to start selling CableCard approved tuners, so you'll see prices go down eventually.

@SampadaPhegeus: you bought the tuners from cannonpc or the htpc + tuners?

@SacGamer:
1. Not so much, ATI is the only game in town right now.

2. Yep, when the new firmware is released.

3. Not right now, but MOCUR's (multiple tuners on one card) are right around the corner (it is only the first night of Cedia). Once ATI announces those, watch prices on OCUR's drop through the floor.

Hosemaster

@SacGamer: last i heard, ati is the only company that has em. they have an internal one and an external one and they're both frikken expensive

Great now I just need to figure out how to make my cable company give me free cable.

@shorty6049: this has to do with cablecards, completely different than the average tuner

[lmgtfy.com]

@WGPSuicideRun: regular tuners only receive over the air channels and basic cable channels like your local channels and a few cable channels like the weather channel. the ati tuner pictured above + a cable card will receive any channels that you're paying for such as hbo

So whats the difference between one of these things and a regular TV tuner. sorry if its been asked a hundred times but I havent found a comment that clearly answers this question.

And those few people who said that you won't have a true HTPC until cablecard tuners are releases for PCs are now silenced. But, it's good news. Our cable company here changed most of the channels with the digital cable switch and it messed with my old TVtuner. Looking forward to purchasing one of these.

"so you can have four digital cable channels simultaneously without any kind of special setup."

-- Um... wat

@krztov: but with your cable box, can you put as much storage as you need in the box, or are you stuck with a miniscule (in the HDTV world) 120GB, 160GB, or maybe if you are lucky 250GB PVR?

Not to mention true whole home playback of media via the extender, where you can start a show in one room. Stop it, then resume it in another room exactly where you left off?

Too bad suckers!, you waited too long and you ripped me off.

I switched to Direct TV last month. My bill is nearly 1/2 for just about the same number of channels.

What's even better is the HD. WAAAAAAYYY better quality. It uses much less compression and the colors are stunning!
Did not even touch the TV calibration. I would say 50~ 100% better quality and 1/2 the price.

A no brainer...

aec007

@Mike Zuniga: That was Unexpected:

They use your existing cable line, but rental for a card is generally less than a digital box ($3 or so).

An important thing missed in the summary of this announcement is that Windows Media Center will be capable of handling SDV (Switched Digital Video) along with the CableCard.

This is important for where SDV is deployed for people on Time Warner Cable. Cisco recently released an SDV tuning adapater for TiVo's, and now that Media Center supports it, that is even better.

@krztov: ATI is really the player in this area, but hopefully more players will enter the game. Right now they are still expensive ($250+), but maybe economies of scale will help soon as more people can buy them.

And multistream cablecards will be here soon, so with one tuner/cablecard you can watch and record multiple channels.

@SampadaPhegeus:

Not to mention if you run ATSC tuners, you can add 4 of those. I've been running a combo of an HDHomerun for 2 ATSC tuners and a couple of old ATI 650s that support clear QAM. I plan to buy a multituner CableCard setup as soon as I can find one (assuming it's not way out of the current price range). I can't see myself ever maxing out my tuners at that point.

@Weihovah: Yes. Yes it does.

What this means:

Windows Media Center just got REAL. And it's about damn time.

DMF

@shorty6049: Here's the deal: you have an ATI TV tuner, right? It can't record digital cable - only TV you pick up from antenna, or normal cable. Which means no HD over cable either. Well, a standard was made to allow TV capture cards to decode and record the full digital cable, without a digital cable box; you get a special "CableCARD" from your cable provider and insert it into the TV capture card.

But that standard was extremely limited - you pretty much had to buy a computer designed specifically for it (and they were really expensive). They wouldn't just let you buy the card and stick it in your computer. Now with Windows 7 they are apparently getting rid of that limitation.

Dreamwriter

@aec007: Wow, you must have had a truly horrible cable company if DirecTV's signal looks *less* compressed!

Dreamwriter

@J0hnP: Technically, you weren't supposed to be able to buy it. Those cards were only made available to OEMs.

wagnerrp

@aec007: You're right but your're pretty much stuck with the DirecTv DVR's which is a real bummer.

dahlberg123

Oh thank god... I was going to hack this together, but now I don' t have to.. I don't have to have the Cable guy give me weird looks when I have him install a cable card hooked up to my Ion/Atom mediacenter.