cablecard
Hardware
Ceton’s CableCARD Solution Has Six Tuners In One Slot
8:23AM Jason Chen | This Ceton Multi-Channel CableCARD is very interesting, both for its ability to decode six cable streams at once to record six shows at once on your Windows Media Center, but for the fact that it’s not all that expensive. More »
Hardware
Normal People Can Now Install CableCARD Tuners On Windows 7 PCs
9:44AM Jason Chen | FINALLY. Microsoft and CableLabs are finally opened the door to have regular people add in CableCARD tuners by themselves, after they’ve purchased the PC and set it up. This is good news. More »
Computers
System Builders Bypass CableCARD Certification With BIOS Tweaking
7:20AM Jason Chen | Tweakers have finally bypassed the one thing in the way of getting CableCARD tuners working on any old PC by fiddling with the BIOS and entering in certain product IDs. It’s a good start. More »
Home
Lifeware’s LMS-810 Is the Baddest Media Centre PC Money Can Buy
7:42AM John Mahoney | In a show full of ultra high-end home theatre installations, Lifeware’s LMS-810 Media Centre piece still manages to be a standout. Taking what they came with last year and doubling it, Lifeware has crammed eight CableCARD tuners (two on board and six more in the external Lifetuner box on top) into a dual Intel Quad Core, 12TB RAID 5 box that can stream out to ten Media Extenders (here, Xbox 360s driving Samsung LCDs). The box can record from all eight of its HD streams while streaming to all 10 Extenders at once, so if you’ve been wondering what to do with your home’s 8 spare digital cable feeds, now you know. No price yet for a pre-Christmas release, but last year’s model with half as many CableCARDs was US$15k. galleryPost("lifeware810", 3, ""); More »
Entertainment
Dell Reintroduces CableCARDs on XPS 420s
11:40AM Jason Chen | We’ve been keeping an eye on Dell’s discontinued CableCARD systems since they first introduced them on the XPS 410s because they were a relatively cheap way to get HD recording on a reasonably-priced desktop. Well, fantastic news! Chris Lanier says that Dell’s reintroduced the CableCARD option on their XPS 420s, which you can customise and get out the door starting at about a thousand bucks. According to Dell, this is a “functional upgrade to the platform”, which means you’ll be able to get the CableCARD on this line for the foreseeable future. Sounds like a cheap alternative to our set-top-box wishlist item. [Dell via Chris Lanier] More »
Cable Companies To Charge More For Box Rental, Thanks To CableCard
2:00AM Seamus Byrne | The good news is, as of July 1 cable companies are required to ship new cable boxes that use new bi-directional CableCards, a move mandated by the FCC to support CableCard-based alternatives such as TiVos and Vista Media Center PCs. The bad news is: Everybody’s gonna pay for it. By next January, set-top box rentals may go up $2 to $3 per month, and the rate hike may apply to every cable-box renter, and not just those who opt for the super-deluxe new models. The question is, are we turning a corner? The AP story below addresses how badly the cable companies are taking this new mandate. One industry spokesman called it a “set-top box tax” with “no benefit to consumers.” A cable-co watchdog countered that cable companies have no problem raising rates anyway, so having a reason shouldn’t make them mad. But what about those third-party products? The sad truth is, a set-top box issued by the cable overlords will still have more functionality than any third-party product, at least until CableCard 2.0 gets here. Cable firms to raise set-top box rates [AP] More »
