HD STB + Capture Card Support?

[Justintoxicated]

Well I have a HDHR and a STB (Scientific Atlanta 3250).

The STB works great but the firewire does not work correctly (I can get video but it skips ever2-3 seconds and also drops audio/picture distorts)

It also does not play back paystations.

So I'm trying to find a work around to still capture HD Pay Stations.

What if I was to setup an IR Blaster (or use the cable box drivers to change stations via firewire). Then use the DVI output from the cable box into a capture card that supports DVI/HDMI inputs? Followed by an optical able into the computer as well.

I heard I can pickup an anaolg tuner and run the coax to it with a great reduction in picture quality. but's I was thinking that if I used a DVI or HDMI video cable I would be able to get around the significant loss in quality?

Would this work? It would probably be expensive but cable company is forcing me to find other means of getting video from the cable box to my PC.

Could I then capture and record Pay stations in High Definition?

[GKusnick]

Originally Posted by Justintoxicated

Then use the DVI output from the cable box into a capture card that supports DVI/HDMI inputs?

What capture card would that be? If you know of one that can encode DVI to MPEG in real time at reasonable file sizes, tell us about it.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by GKusnick

If you know of one that can encode DVI to MPEG in real time at reasonable file sizes, tell us about it.

And without requiring a server farm of processing power

[Justintoxicated]

I don't know of one I was just thinking out loud. So if the device is out there it might be possible hmmm. Stupid Cable Companies make everything much harder than it should be.

I mean, If your paying for the service what do they care how you watch it? Guess I'll be a 5Ced loser until I move.

[Conejo]

There are many ways to get AV into SageTV. I don't think DVI/HDMI is one of them. Why?...

...there is a company (or companies) that are really into 'Digital Rights Management' and protecting your right from arrest and prosecution. Luckily for you, they didn't have to protect you when TV and Radio was first invented and the Japanese created tape-driven clocks that stuck at 12:00 and provided blurry playback.

But now there are sinister people bent on breaking laws and stealing potential revenue from child actors. This must be stopped.

So the 'electronics industry' comes to your rescue. They don't want to see such a good customer as you wind up in prison, that would be awful, so they've come up with ways to keep you from harming yourself with state-of-the-art ROMs embedded in video devices like STBs, HDTVs, Digital Recorders, etc.

---

Sorry, actually going beyond the global conspiracy, your desire to grab the data off the VGA/Component/DVI/HDMI ports is a good idea. There's just one problem: you're talking about trying to capture RAW AV at about 3.7Gb PER SECOND and somehow store it to disc. Yes, there are VGA/DVI Frame Grabbers out there that can had for about $US 3,999.95, OR, you could set up an HD Camera and point it at an HD TV screen, though neither of these is ideal. And hopefully you have hardware encoders to reduce the data capture to something your PC and drives can handle.

So far it's easier to capture the unencrypted MPEGx stream and record it to disc. Or capture it in a LOWER RESOLUTION and encode it and record it to disc.

For more easy to read technical information on HDTV, see: Wikipedia High-Definition Television

[CollinR]

R5000 mod your box.

[Fluffdaddy]

1)Very pricey

2) Hardware availability kind of pushes you towards Dishnetwork

But the R5000HD mod is your best choice for HD/SageTV recording. imo