Tuning SD digital cable without a cable box

[null_pointer_us]

I'm moving from analog cable to (non-HD) digital cable very soon now, and I have a few questions. It would be a big hassle and a significant monthly cost to setup four digital cable boxes, USB-UIRTs, and whatever else needs to be done to use my two PVR-500's for digital cable.

Could I connect the digital cable feed directly to the DIVCO Fusion HDTV5 Lite directly for SD digital cable input and have the full range of channels (sans the special pay-per-view stuff, of course)? IOW, does it work as a digital cable tuner? With SageTV?

Any other cards than can do digital cable tuning on the cheap would be greatly appreciated. Searches for QAM don't seem to turn up very much.

[Kirby]

Originally Posted by null_pointer_us

Any other cards than can do digital cable tuning on the cheap would be greatly appreciated. Searches for QAM don't seem to turn up very much.

thats because other than some experimental linux stuff, there is no QAM tuning in Sage due to lack of BDA filters. You can use various QAM capable cards with their own software, but if you want that QAM tuning in Sage, your only options at this point are a digital STB with firewire (e.g. DCT-6200) or a Motorola box (without firewire, e.g. DCT-2xxx) modded with R5000 by Nextcom.

[null_pointer_us]

Originally Posted by Kirby

thats because other than some experimental linux stuff, there is no QAM tuning in Sage due to lack of BDA filters. You can use various QAM capable cards with their own software, but if you want that QAM tuning in Sage, your only options at this point are a digital STB with firewire (e.g. DCT-6200) or a Motorola box (without firewire, e.g. DCT-2xxx) modded with R5000 by Nextcom.

Do you mean Sage lacks BDA filters, or that the cards' drivers lack BDA filters?

From this article, it looks like the card is getting BDA drivers in some form:

http://www.fusionhdtv.co.kr/ENG/Supp...ID=9&SCATID=42

[Kirby]

The card. Sage doesnt do drivers, its all up to the card manufacturer. I think you will find the BDA drivers discussed in that website are for the ATSC tuner and not the QAM tuner. If there was QAM BDA's out there, you would certainly know about it, because there would be masses on these forums talking about it!

[chughes]

Originally Posted by null_pointer_us

Could I connect the digital cable feed directly to the DIVCO Fusion HDTV5 Lite directly for SD digital cable input and have the full range of channels (sans the special pay-per-view stuff, of course)? IOW, does it work as a digital cable tuner? With SageTV?

I was forced to order "digital" when I got cable, but quickly found out that the digital STB is only used for true digitally delivered services, like pay-per-view and such - which I never use. I also am still SDTV, and I don't do OTA HD yet. I ended up abondoning my STB and plugging the coax directly from the wall into my PVR 150's (after splitting it) and it works just fine.

Check it out, you may have that option as well. At least it will save you setting up 4 STB and all that crap. Cable companies will probably lie to you and tell you that you have to have the STB, but it's not always the case.

[stanger89]

The other problem is the vast majority of digital cable (SD or HD) is encrypted, and there's no way to decrypt that on a PC.

[null_pointer_us]

Originally Posted by chughes

I was forced to order "digital" when I got cable, but quickly found out that the digital STB is only used for true digitally delivered services, like pay-per-view and such - which I never use. I also am still SDTV, and I don't do OTA HD yet. I ended up abondoning my STB and plugging the coax directly from the wall into my PVR 150's (after splitting it) and it works just fine.

Check it out, you may have that option as well. At least it will save you setting up 4 STB and all that crap. Cable companies will probably lie to you and tell you that you have to have the STB, but it's not always the case.

Yeah, I doubt I'd get a useful answer from the cable company. You've heard the expression the left hand doesn't know what the right hand's doing, right? Cable companies are like octopi. Even if I get an answer about what's required and what model number STBs they use, the guy who actually shows up to install the digital cable will likely have different answers/equipment.

I'd really like to know before they come to hook it up. You see, with four tuners and several other TVs, Comcast digital service w/ 1 HD receiver (which I'm planning on hooking up later via firewire if possible) with all those STBs comes to about $100/mo. If I could cut that down, my family would be happier, and they'd be less likely to blame me for any PVR downtime.

(I don't have enough USB-UIRTs on hand to fall back on the STBs completely.)

But if this is my only option to eliminate the STBs, it's definitely worth a try. Frankly, I was looking forward to the additional (signal) quality of digital cable, and I'm not sure how that I'd get that with an analog tuner like the PVR-500's.

[null_pointer_us]

Originally Posted by stanger89

The other problem is the vast majority of digital cable (SD or HD) is encrypted, and there's no way to decrypt that on a PC.

One person says it works, another says it's not really worth it. Is chughes just lucky in that he happens to get the analog signal on the same line, or does he simply not use the encrypted digital channels? Which channels are likely to be encrypted? We normally only use:

FOX (local)
FNC
TWC
TCM
TOON
TVLAND
FOOD
ESPN/2

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by null_pointer_us

One person says it works, another says it's not really worth it. Is chughes just lucky in that he happens to get the analog signal on the same line, or does he simply not use the encrypted digital channels? Which channels are likely to be encrypted? We normally only use:

FOX (local)
FNC
TWC
TCM
TOON
TVLAND
FOOD
ESPN/2

On mine all of these are encrypted except FOX. I only get my locals unencrypted.

BobP.

[teknubic]

In my experience, if you go to the digital package with your provider, you will only need the STB for the digital channels. Your basic package will still be accessible without the box.

[null_pointer_us]

Thanks for all the input!

My current setup has two SageTV servers each with one PVR-500. As the second server is in an out-of-the-way place, I'll probably just end up downgrading the first server to a client and dumping all the tuners, storage, and four STBs (or two DCT-6200s) into/around the second one.

Am I correct in assuming that a single DCT-6200 can be connected to both s-video inputs on a PVR-500 to act as two separate tuners?

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by null_pointer_us

Thanks for all the input!

My current setup has two SageTV servers each with one PVR-500. As the second server is in an out-of-the-way place, I'll probably just end up downgrading the first server to a client and dumping all the tuners, storage, and four STBs (or two DCT-6200s) into/around the second one.

Am I correct in assuming that a single DCT-6200 can be connected to both s-video inputs on a PVR-500 to act as two separate tuners?

How will one settop box act as 2 tuners? You'll have 2 tuners (PVR500)recording the same channel from the STB. The STB only handles one channel. And there's probably only one s-video out on the STB.

Gerry

[chughes]

Originally Posted by null_pointer_us

One person says it works, another says it's not really worth it. Is chughes just lucky in that he happens to get the analog signal on the same line, or does he simply not use the encrypted digital channels? Which channels are likely to be encrypted? We normally only use:

FOX (local)
FNC
TWC
TCM
TOON
TVLAND
FOOD
ESPN/2

Lucky? Who knows, but I can tell you this: I get an extended package of channels from my cable provider (72 channels in all). The only ones I don't get are the specialty channels, and as I understnd it, those are the only ones that are encrypted. Now, I'm in Canada, so our lineups are a bt different, but I get Fox, Toon, Food and ESPN as part of that package. I don't know what FNC or TWC are, and I think that TVLand is considered a specialty (digital) channel here.

Also, I have found NO difference in signal or picture quality between the digital box and straight analog. I tried both as I was setting the system up. I think that on SDTV you may find the same. There's only so many lines of resolution in a SDTV and analog can fill them all just fine.

The other thing to note is sound quality. Cable providers don't talk about this much but the STB's they sell often don't enable the digital audio connections, so even though a channel may advertise that they deliver full surround sound or DD on a broadcast, the STB only has L/R RCA jacks for audio out, and the optical out has been disabled. Again, the end result is no better than analog cable.

Good luck.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by null_pointer_us

One person says it works, another says it's not really worth it. Is chughes just lucky in that he happens to get the analog signal on the same line, or does he simply not use the encrypted digital channels?

Maybe I should explain what I mean by "digital cable". From a subscribing standpoint digital cable is a package, but in reality only a small subset of those channels are actually digital. When I say "digital cable", I'm referring to the actual digital channels. For my parents package, that's about 50-70 channels.

chughes is right, much of a "Digital" package consists of analog channels (basically look at the "best" package you can get without going digital and that's what's analog). Analog channels are easilly tuned with just a TV card.

Now the channels that are unique to the Digital packages are the ones that are truely "digital". And of those, only a very small portion (maybe none) are "in the clear", the rest are usually encrypted. For me (technically my parents, I've got Dish), it's about 5 channels in the clear, of which only one holds any interest to me.

Basically digital cable, at this point is not worth bothering with IMO, there's too few channels available in the clear, and it's too hard to integrate tuning them directly. My advice to anyone with cable, would be to get an analog tuner or two, and a IR blaster, setup the analog channels (direct cable) into the tuners, and then additionally connect the STBs to the cards for the digital-only channels.

[hemicuda]

That's what I plan to do. Serial cable *IF* the Comcast STB has the port; IR if not. Pipe the STB s-vid to one tuner and coax to the rest. Not exactly sure how I'll arrange the different connections yet. I'll need to dig into the firewire stuff, but I haven't joined the HD scene yet.

[null_pointer_us]

OK, I understand digital now, and I'll definitely keep that in mind!

Hey, maybe there's light at the end of this QAM tunnel. I posted a message to DVICO's site and got a very quick reply:

Hi.
FusionHDTV WDM driver works either with free to air digital TV(8VSB) and unencrypted digital cable TV(QAM) broadcasting channels.
But BDA driver is supporting air digital only.
If SageTV work with both our WDM driver and BDA driver, QAM will available.
We'll check whether we can add the QAM tuning in the BDA driver or not.
If it is possible, we'll try to support it ASAP.
Thanks.

That really made my morning!

Now, it's entirely possible that this person is just going to get a stock answer from his higher-ups about legal/budget/technical reasons why they can't add QAM tuning to the BDA driver, so don't get your hopes up too high. But then again maybe they really will implement it? It'd be great to just get four Fusion cards and avoid all the expense, hassle, and mess of the STBs.

[Kirby]

Originally Posted by null_pointer_us

OK, I understand digital now, and I'll definitely keep that in mind!

Hey, maybe there's light at the end of this QAM tunnel. I posted a message to DVICO's site and got a very quick reply:

Hi.
FusionHDTV WDM driver works either with free to air digital TV(8VSB) and unencrypted digital cable TV(QAM) broadcasting channels.
But BDA driver is supporting air digital only.
If SageTV work with both our WDM driver and BDA driver, QAM will available.
We'll check whether we can add the QAM tuning in the BDA driver or not.
If it is possible, we'll try to support it ASAP.
Thanks.

That really made my morning!

Now, it's entirely possible that this person is just going to get a stock answer from his higher-ups about legal/budget/technical reasons why they can't add QAM tuning to the BDA driver, so don't get your hopes up too high. But then again maybe they really will implement it? It'd be great to just get four Fusion cards and avoid all the expense, hassle, and mess of the STBs.

Dont hold your breath. The info I just received (via a DVICO engineer) is that they will add QAM to BDA when M$ includes the appropriate API in the specification. Of course that's almost guaranteed to require a purchase of M$ Vista!