Been gone a while, hoping something has changed.

[DwarF]

Heya gang,

I have been out a while. Busy with school and such, and I haven't really had to do much with the HTPC. It has been working great. The stats on my sig are still accurate. But there were a few things that I left in-complete a year ago when I built it, and I am hoping someone can tell me what's changed in the interim. I have been doing some searches, but I can't find a clean answer:

1) HDTV: I have HDTV service from my cable provider. I can get HDTV by connecting the set-top directly to the TV. In the 3rd party hardware section, it doesn't appear that sage supports any of the hardware capture cards that would allow me to actually use HDTV to my HTPC. Is this still true? Perhaps any HD capture card would work since it wouldn't have to tune, and that's why it's not listed?

2) Music Player: This thing was pretty bad in version 4.1. I tried an upgrade a while back, I can't recall the version, but it didn't improve some of the DVD playback issues I was having so I backed it out. Has this been improved in recent versions?


Thank you for any replies,
DwarF

[GKusnick]

1. HDTV tuner cards are for capturing over-the-air HD broadcasts. They're not meant for cable box input. As far as I know, there are no consumer-level (i.e. < $1000) capture cards that can encode component video inputs. That's not really an ideal solution anyway; why decode a digital signal to analog component video just so you can re-encode it as digital? Better to just capture the digital bit stream directly (which is what the inexpensive OTA capture devices do).

My understanding is that some cable boxes provide digital output via FireWire, but I'm not an authority on that. Other cable and satellite boxes can be modified for about $500 to provide a USB digital output; search the Hardware forum for R5000. (That's what I'm using for DirecTV HD capture.)

2. The Music and Media UI has been completely revamped for SageTV V6, which went into open beta last week. Most people consider it an improvement; a few don't. Be aware that you now need a $30 upgrade license to upgrade from V4 or earlier; if your original purchase of SageTV was V5, then the V6 upgrade is free. See the Beta forum for details.

[DwarF]

Thank you for the reply Greg.

About the HD thing. Does this mean that there is a way to watch the 1392 or USB signal in real-time as I do with my current hauppauge setup? (if my set-top supports this)

If my set-top does not support this, is it possible for a tuner to pick the signal up and decode it straight from the coax (replacing the set-top)?

Thanks,

[GKusnick]

The R5000 USB feed works just like any other tuner or encoder. (In Sage parlance it functions as a network encoder.) You can record to disk or watch "Live TV" (i.e. record and playback the same file at the same time). I don't have any firsthand experience with the FireWire solution, but I imagine it works the same way.

As far as I know there's no way to capture digital cable straight off the coax. You need some sort of equipment from your cable provider to decode their proprietary format, either an STB or some sort of PC-based CableCard device. However CableCard seems to be one of those technologies that's been talked about forever but has yet to actually materialize in any useful form. Again, I'm not a cable user so these are just my secondhand impressions from reading the forums.

[stewart710]

I beleive all you would need would be a QAM capable capture card/ HD Tuner in your PC. Unfortunately, this is a bit of a brick wall in programs like SageTV because of the drivers . You can record/watch unencrypted HDTV from your cable company's coax feed through the computer if you have the right card (MyHD and Fusion make these cards I beleive), but you have to use their proprietary software/drivers. I thought I read on the forums that Frey was currently working on this. Who knows, maybe in SageTV v7.

[blade]

Originally Posted by stewart710

I beleive all you would need would be a QAM capable capture card/ HD Tuner in your PC. Unfortunately, this is a bit of a brick wall in programs like SageTV because of the drivers . You can record/watch unencrypted HDTV from your cable company's coax feed through the computer if you have the right card (MyHD and Fusion make these cards I beleive), but you have to use their proprietary software/drivers. I thought I read on the forums that Frey was currently working on this. Who knows, maybe in SageTV v7.

I take it you haven't checked up on this in awhile.

In the last beta release it was announced that Sage had added support for a QAM device. I don't recall the name of it, but there have been a couple of posts on it and it is mentioned in the beta announcement post. There is another device with dual QAM capable HD tuners that is in the process of implementing support for Sage. Several Sage users have already purchased the product and are signed up to be beta testers with the company.