The state of cable card capture - March 2016

[sic0048]

I've been away from the sage scene for a while as I changed tv sercive providers and ended up using their dvr system. However my contract is up and it is time to play the shopping game. I'm guessing I'm going to end up back on cable this time. So I wanted to see what the status of cable card capture is now.

What are the best tuners to use with regards to being compatible with sage?

What is the best method to connect those tuners to Sage? There seem to be multiple options for the DCT software/drivers now and I'm not sure which is best/most stable.

Should I jump right into using v9 or should I try to continue using v7? (V7 is still installed on my server, it just hasn't been used in about 2 years. I'd really like to move to a VM machine - I'm using ESXi).

Does anyone know the capture flag status of CharterTV in Greenville SC?

Thanks in advance for your time and suggestions!

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by sic0048

I've been away from the sage scene for a while as I changed tv sercive providers and ended up using their dvr system. However my contract is up and it is time to play the shopping game. I'm guessing I'm going to end up back on cable this time. So I wanted to see what the status of cable card capture is now.

What are the best tuners to use with regards to being compatible with sage?

What is the best method to connect those tuners to Sage? There seem to be multiple options for the DCT software/drivers now and I'm not sure which is best/most stable.

Should I jump right into using v9 or should I try to continue using v7? (V7 is still installed on my server, it just hasn't been used in about 2 years. I'd really like to move to a VM machine - I'm using ESXi).

Does anyone know the capture flag status of CharterTV in Greenville SC?

Thanks in advance for your time and suggestions!

The main thing is that you need to know if your channels are copy freely .... if they are DRM then SageTV is not for you ... Unless you use a Cable box and Hauppauge.

[phantomii]

So I have two SageTV systems in two different houses. Both are running SageTV 9. One in Raleigh NC with Time Warner Cable and a second in Wilmington NC with Charter Cable. In both I have set up OpenDCT. The Wilmington house has a Ceton Eth6 and the Raleigh House has a HDHomerunPrime. In the Raleigh house I also have one STB with a Colossus Card for the DRM protected Channels.

For Charter in the Wilmington house recording or watching live TV works great for all the channels in my package but I do not subscribe to premium channels like HBO so I can't speak to those. My issue there is extenders which is why I am hopeful the Android client really matures well. I took one HD200 to the Wilmington house from Raleigh and it works very well.

For TWC in the Raleigh house I can record about 30-40+ (not sure exactly) channels with the HDHomerunPrime. Most of these are local and some freebies TWC throws into the mix. I then use the Colossus card with a STB for the rest that are DRM protected. I can also FTP Recordings from Wilmington to Raleigh and watch them there if I need to do so which works well though I have to send them overnight due to upload speed limitations.

So assuming Charter in SC is following the same policies I would guess that a cablecard and a tuner would work. That though may be a big assumption??? Good luck!

[sic0048]

It seems I'll be good with Charter. I had a Charter tech friend confirm that the basic digital services are still flagged as "copy freely". Premium services are "copy once" and pay-for-view are "copy never."

So I guess I'm going to look at the Ceton Infinitv 6 ETH so I can get a decent number of channels with just 1 cable card. We have routinely needed more than 3 concurrent channels with our current provider (they maxed out at 3). I also have a HD-PVR, so that along with the STB should be enough to recording any potential premium channels we end up with.

[jgsouthard]

Based on my experience and what I've read in the forums, if the channels you want (i.e. non-premium) are copy freely, then I think HDHomeRun Prime and OpenDCT is the way to go. It's true that HDHRP only gives you three tuners per Cable Card (I have two HDHRP's and two CC's for six tuners), but I think the HDHomeRun Primes may be more reliable than the Ceton's. That's based on what I've seen in the forums, though -- I've only used the HDHomeRun Primes.

I've had extensive experience with SageDCT, PrimeNetEncoder, and OpenDCT; and without question the latest beta of OpenDCT is the most reliable and easiest to install.

[Monedeath]

The Cetons are pretty reliable, support for them however, may not be so great going forward.

[Telecore]

I am presently using a Ceton PCIe 6 tuner with OpenDCT and two HD-PVR's for copy protected channels on Verizon FIOS. I have used two HDHomerun Prime's in the past and my experience has been that an internal PCIe connection is less problematic than an external gigabit ethernet connection to the tuners.

[sic0048]

Originally Posted by Telecore

I am presently using a Ceton PCIe 6 tuner with OpenDCT and two HD-PVR's for copy protected channels on Verizon FIOS. I have used two HDHomerun Prime's in the past and my experience has been that an internal PCIe connection is less problematic than an external gigabit ethernet connection to the tuners.

Thanks for sharing. I was thinking the opposite just based on my good experience with network hdhomerun tuners and bad experience with old pic tv tuners. How times have changed I guess....

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by Telecore

I am presently using a Ceton PCIe 6 tuner with OpenDCT and two HD-PVR's for copy protected channels on Verizon FIOS. I have used two HDHomerun Prime's in the past and my experience has been that an internal PCIe connection is less problematic than an external gigabit ethernet connection to the tuners.

I'll add to this since I have something similar going on. I have an InfiniTV 6 internal card too and get some local channels via ClearQAM from an HDHomeRun. If I do large file transfers while recording, the internal card is fine, but my computer starts to not receive UDP packets randomly from my HDHomeRun. This is an inherent to UDP in general and is considered acceptable. When I'm recording, I don't find it acceptable to just lose parts of the recording. For that exact reason I once had my HDHomeRun directly connected to it's own dedicated NIC.

Fortunately the newest HDHomeRun devices also can use HTTP, which is a much more reliable method. HTTP is currently available in OpenDCT for ATSC and soon will be possible for ClearQAM (currently testing in production at home) and CableCARD (soon to be added).

[nyplayer]

One thing about the HDHomerun Prime is that there is a DVR being developed for it that will also eventually record DRM. I have it running on a NAS no PC needed to record ... and it works great at the moment for recording Series and Movies. I am able to share the Prime with the DVR and SageTV thanks to OPENDCT. I do not think that any DVR is being developed for the Ceton that will do DRM.