Can I record premium HD channels from cable box?

[showson1]

Hi all.
Can I record premium HD channels from my cable company's cable box?

I was under the impression that I could just buy an HD card and hook it up to the output of the cable box and record the HD shows.. I'm looking around and see only talk about QAM and OTA signals.

Am I not going to be able to record the HD shows (non QAM or OTA) in HD?

Thanks for any info!
Steve

[ke6guj]

Originally Posted by showson1

Hi all.
Can I record premium HD channels from my cable company's cable box?

Maybe

I was under the impression that I could just buy an HD card and hook it up to the output of the cable box and record the HD shows..

Nope, there is currently no consumer-grade HD card that can record an HD component or DVI/HDMI input.

I'm looking around and see only talk about QAM and OTA signals.

Yup, you can only record digital via OTA, unscrambled QAM, or if you are real lucky, unencrypted (no 5C encryption) Firewire output from the cable box. There is a big Firewire thread, http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...light=firewire , that talks about recording off your cable box via firewire. And if you record that way, you don't need a HD card at all for that cable box. There is also a R5000-HD solution, but that is mainly Dish and some DirecTV.

Am I not going to be able to record the HD shows (non QAM or OTA) in HD?

Only if you are lucky and can record off the cable box via firewire, otherwise you are stuck with usually just your local digital channels.

[showson1]

Thanks for the info and.. bummer.

Looks like I may have to rent one of the cable company's DVRs.
I don't really care about the local stations, I'm more interested in HBO HD and Discovery Channel HD so the QAM / OTA is pretty pointless for my needs.

Thanks again.

[ke6guj]

I'd take a chance and rent a standard HD cable box from the CC that has a Firewire input and try it out. You may get lucky and have a fully-open FW port without any 5C issues.

If it doesn't work, then you can take it back and get a DVR if you want to.

[phelme]

there is a premium HD content solution available if you get DirecTV or DishTV and spend $500 to have your satellite receiver modified. see http://www.nextcomwireless.com/ for details. I think they have a mod for a tiny selection of cable boxes too. search around here for "R5000" for threads on the subject.