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Hardware Support Discussions related to using various hardware setups with SageTV products. Anything relating to capture cards, remotes, infrared receivers/transmitters, system compatibility or other hardware related problems or suggestions should be posted here. |
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#1
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Tuning SD digital cable without a cable box
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. |
#2
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__________________
Sage Server: HP ProLiant N40L MicroServer, AMD Turion II Neo N40L 1.5GHz Dual Core, 8GB Ram, WHS2011 64bit, Sage 7.1.9 WHS, HDHR (1 QAM, 1 OTA), HDHR Prime 3CC, HD-PVR for copy-once movie channels HTPC Client:Intel DH61AG, Intel G620 cpu, 8GB ram, Intel 80GB SSD, 4GB RamDisk holding Sage/Java/TMT5 Sage Client:Sage HD-200 Extender |
#3
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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 |
#4
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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!
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Sage Server: HP ProLiant N40L MicroServer, AMD Turion II Neo N40L 1.5GHz Dual Core, 8GB Ram, WHS2011 64bit, Sage 7.1.9 WHS, HDHR (1 QAM, 1 OTA), HDHR Prime 3CC, HD-PVR for copy-once movie channels HTPC Client:Intel DH61AG, Intel G620 cpu, 8GB ram, Intel 80GB SSD, 4GB RamDisk holding Sage/Java/TMT5 Sage Client:Sage HD-200 Extender |
#5
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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.
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AMD A8-3850 | 4 GB RAM | 80GB SSD + 1TBHDD | Pioneer DVR-110D | Silverstone LC16M-S w/ Harmony 890 remote Hauppauge HVR-2250 | USB-UIRT Win 7 | SageTV 7 | nVidia decoders Yamaha HTR-5920 | Energy Take 5.1 | Samsung LN32D450 via HDMI | Winegard Square Shooter |
#6
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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.
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#7
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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. |
#8
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FOX (local) FNC TWC TCM TOON TVLAND FOOD ESPN/2 |
#9
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BobP. |
#10
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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.
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#11
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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? |
#12
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Gerry
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Big Gerr _______ Server - WHS 2011: Sage 7.1.9 - 1 x HD Prime and 2 x HDHomeRun - Intel Atom D525 1.6 GHz, Acer Easystore, RAM 4 GB, 4 x 2TB hotswap drives, 1 x 2TB USB ext Clients: 2 x PC Clients, 1 x HD300, 2 x HD-200, 1 x HD-100 DEV Client: Win 7 Ultimate 64 bit - AMD 64 x2 6000+, Gigabyte GA-MA790GP-DS4H MB, RAM 4GB, HD OS:500GB, DATA:1 x 500GB, Pace RGN STB. |
#13
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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.
__________________
AMD A8-3850 | 4 GB RAM | 80GB SSD + 1TBHDD | Pioneer DVR-110D | Silverstone LC16M-S w/ Harmony 890 remote Hauppauge HVR-2250 | USB-UIRT Win 7 | SageTV 7 | nVidia decoders Yamaha HTR-5920 | Energy Take 5.1 | Samsung LN32D450 via HDMI | Winegard Square Shooter |
#14
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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. |
#15
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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.
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Server: MS Win7 SP1; FX8350 (H2O cooled); 8GB RAM; Hauppauge HVR-7164 (OTA); HVR-885 (OTA); SageTV 9.1.5.x; 12+TB Sage Storage Clients: HD300 x2; HD200 x2; Placeshifter Service: EPB Fiber (1Gb); OTA (we "cut the cord"); Netflix, Hulu, etc. |
#16
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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. |
#17
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__________________
Sage Server: HP ProLiant N40L MicroServer, AMD Turion II Neo N40L 1.5GHz Dual Core, 8GB Ram, WHS2011 64bit, Sage 7.1.9 WHS, HDHR (1 QAM, 1 OTA), HDHR Prime 3CC, HD-PVR for copy-once movie channels HTPC Client:Intel DH61AG, Intel G620 cpu, 8GB ram, Intel 80GB SSD, 4GB RamDisk holding Sage/Java/TMT5 Sage Client:Sage HD-200 Extender |
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