What are my options when going to digital?

[scat]

I currently have a WinTV-PVR-500MCE
which is a dual tunner, link: http://www.hauppauge.com/pages/produ...pvr500mce.html

I currently have analog cable with Bright house cable in the hudson, florida area and received information that states effictive October 1, 2008 cable card installation requiring a seperate trip will have a one time charge of $39.95 and was wondering what my options would be.

I do want to record and play Blu-ray and HD content.

I just rebuilt my machine and this is my current hardware

Mother board - GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3L LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX All Solid Capacitor Intel Motherboard

CPU - Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz 2 x 4MB L2 Cache
with factory heatsink and fan

Memory - OCZ Platinum 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Micron D7 Chip Dual Channel

Video card - SAPPHIRE 100218L Radeon HD 2600XT 512MB 128-bit GDDR3
PCI Express x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card

Windows Drive - Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST3500320AS 500GB 7200 RPM
Partitioned 120 gb for windows, 380 gb for pictures and mp3 music

Video Drive - Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST3500320AS 500GB 7200 RPM

Power Supply - SeaSonic S12 Energy Plus SS-650HT ATX12V / EPS12V 650W Power Supply

DVD Drive - Blu-ray/HD DVD-ROM HD DVD Drive, LG GGC-H20L

Case - SilverStone Lascala SST-LC17 HTPC Case, Black

Thanks for any input.
Scat

[paulbeers]

Originally Posted by scat

I currently have a WinTV-PVR-500MCE
which is a dual tunner, link: http://www.hauppauge.com/pages/produ...pvr500mce.html

I currently have analog cable with Bright house cable in the hudson, florida area and received information that states effictive October 1, 2008 cable card installation requiring a seperate trip will have a one time charge of $39.95 and was wondering what my options would be.

I do want to record and play Blu-ray and HD content.

Sage can not work with Cable cards....That support is limited to Windows MCE/VMC as they digitally encrypt all recordings and Sage does not.

Your only choices for Digital Cable with Sage is to rent cable boxes from your cable co and hook them into your 500MCE and use a device such as a USB-UIRT to control the cable boxes.

If you want to rent an HD box, then you can look at the HD-PVR for connecting an HD Cable box.

As for Blu-Ray....current support for direct playing off the disk is limited to requiring an external player within Sage as Sage does not currently support all of HDCP required for Blu-Ray playback. However, you can rip Blu-Ray disks for playback in Sage. There are many threads discussing this issue.

[mistergq]

If you have an HD tv with a QAM receiver in it, I would plug the coax in and see what, if any, QAM channels come through your coax. Alternatively, you may want to consider an antenna for an network channels.

Then, depending on what you select (antenna or qam), pick up an HD Homerun. This is a great tuner for 2 sources.

I would then recommend one or two HD PVR depending on what you feel comfortable with. I would also recommend changing the channels of your HD STBs with firewire.

[scat]

Originally Posted by mistergq

If you have an HD tv with a QAM receiver in it, I would plug the coax in and see what, if any, QAM channels come through your coax. Alternatively, you may want to consider an antenna for an network channels.

Then, depending on what you select (antenna or qam), pick up an HD Homerun. This is a great tuner for 2 sources.

I would then recommend one or two HD PVR depending on what you feel comfortable with. I would also recommend changing the channels of your HD STBs with firewire.

mistergq

Is there a internal dual tuner card available?

Scat