Ceton Infinity-4 new multicard recorder compatible with SageTV????

[Ericft]

With the new ceton card announced for preorders shipping may 31 does anyone have any idea if it will be sageTv compatible. so far seems like only media center but would love to use this instead of all my hdPVRs...

[davephan]

Originally Posted by Ericft

With the new ceton card announced for preorders shipping may 31 does anyone have any idea if it will be sageTv compatible. so far seems like only media center but would love to use this instead of all my hdPVRs...

I sent Ceton an e-mail to find out more about their product. I found a Youtube video and some product information with a web search for Centon.

I'm not sure you cable providers like Comcast would be willing to accept the device, which is not owned by them, on their cable system. Comcast would loose $10 a month from every HD cable box that they would not be renting. I would jump at the price of about $400, if it worked, and the $10 per HD box monthly rental price could be avoided.

Dave

[Tiki]

Originally Posted by davephan

I'm not sure you cable providers like Comcast would be willing to accept the device, which is not owned by them, on their cable system. Comcast would loose $10 a month from every HD cable box that they would not be renting. I would jump at the price of about $400, if it worked, and the $10 per HD box monthly rental price could be avoided.

Dave

Comcast has no choice but to allow it. That's the whole point of Cable Card - it was mandated by the FCC. This is no different than using a TiVo with Cable Card. Comcast freely publishes the rates for renting a cable card now.

As for whether Sage will support it, there has been a lot of speculation and many threads on this forum regarding that topic. It appears that there is no way for Sage to support any cable card tuner natively right now due to DRM restrictions. The best chance of support in the immediate future is through the use of a a 3rd party add-on.

There is at least one add-on currently available that is designed to make any tuner installed under Windows Media Center appear as a network encoder to Sage. In theory, Sage would be able to send a command through this plug-in to tell Windows Media Center to use the Ceton device to record a show. WMC would record the file in its standard format which includes DRM and cannot be played by Sage. The plugin would then transcode the video in real-time back to a MPEG-2 stream that Sage could accept and play back. The limitation is that this would only be possible on recordings that had been flagged as "Copy Freely" any recording marked "Copy Once" or "Never Copy" could not be trans-coded and would still not be playable by Sage.

Obviously this hasn't been tested with the Ceton cards yet, since they haven't been released. But, it should work. The big question is, which shows will be marked "Copy freely"? This seems to be largely up to the cable companies and could vary from market to market, plus they could change their policies at any time. You can bet any "premium" content, like HBO movies will not be marked "copy freely".

[tmiranda]

I called my cable company and spoke to the techs who told me it was no problem. They just had to some to my house to install the CableCard and that would cost me a one time charge of $35.

Too bad the darn thing is so expensive.

Tom

[ericscottf]

Be very wary of any product that enforces copy protection flags. Some cablecos will blanket-flag everything (time warner does this AFAIK), while others do it on a per show basis that could change at any time (FIOS does this). All of that could change overnight, rendering your $400 box and $35 install fee worthless.

I got my parents a tivo HD awhile ago, and they're running it with two cablecards. I showed them how to use tivo2go or whatever the pull-it-to-the-pc program is called these days. Back when they were on TWC, every show was DRM-ed when they pulled it off the unit, and once they switched to fios, only the premium channels have DRM.

[sflamm]

Is there any chance SageTV can support this?

http://www.cetoncorp.com/products.php

* merged *

[hufnagel]

subscribed. hopefully sage announces something in here. this could be very nice.

[dfitz43]

If you haven't already seen, there is a long thread about a plugin from babvgant which uses cablecard via WMC as a network encoder.

Thread here:

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...ight=cablecard

As pointed out by Tiki, obviously no one has tested this with the Ceton quad card yet, but it should work.

The biggest caveat as mentioned by Tiki, is whether your particular provider has marked content as "copy freely" or not. This will vary by provider, and may make the ceton card either a) an awesome solution to get multiple streams of non-network HD into sage or b) a complete nonstarter. Premium channels (HBO, etc) will almost certainly not be tagged "copy freely", but it will still be great to have an HDPVR or R5000 (which seems to be fading, at this point) alternative.

cheers,
Dave

[doncote0]

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...&postcount=292

Check before you buy.

Some cable companies use a technology called Switched Digital Video to transmit TV stations. If your cable provider uses Switched Digital Video, you will need to use an SDV adapter. Some cable providers only support two tuners with their SDV adapters. Please contact your cable provider to find out if you live in an SDV area and how many tuners their adapter supports.

You might want to look into this before looking at getting any CableCard device. If SDV exists and the cable company adapters only support two tuners, then it doesn't make sense to get a model with more than two tuners.

[chosen_one]

Will the Ceton InfiniTV 4 (including W7) work with SageTV (server)? Also, will I still be able to utilize my Hauppauge MediaMVP clients? I have no problem moving to an HD compatible device once I get everything up and running. My Comcast analog channels are dropping like flies and I don't want to make any moves until I know what SageTV can provide.

* merged *

[MitchSchaft]

No, cablecard does not work with SageTV.

[mr_lore]

Directly, no. Indirectly? Yes.

http://babgvant.com/files/folders/sa...ntry14737.aspx




However, the whole "so you're saying there's a chance...one in a million talk" scene from Dumb and Dumber comes to mind...

[doncote0]

No, cablecard does not work with SageTV.

It would be more accurate to say that CableCard does not directly work with SageTV, yet.

It probably will though--Sage has already had a few conversations about this (with Silicondust and the FCC for instance).

[chosen_one]

Originally Posted by mr_lore

Directly, no. Indirectly? Yes.

http://babgvant.com/files/folders/sa...ntry14737.aspx




However, the whole "so you're saying there's a chance...one in a million talk" scene from Dumb and Dumber comes to mind...

yeah, I saw that post a while back. I would be nice to hear something official from SageTV regarding cable card support on the upcoming v7. Again, my biggest issue is the client/server ability.

[GKusnick]

Originally Posted by chosen_one

I would be nice to hear something official from SageTV regarding cable card support on the upcoming v7.

They've been pretty forthcoming about what's in V7, and so far CableCard hasn't been mentioned. I think it's pretty unlikely that they would add something that significant this late in the Beta cycle.

[darcilicious]

Originally Posted by mr_lore

Directly, no. Indirectly? Yes.

http://babgvant.com/files/folders/sa...ntry14737.aspx

Wowza, this might just work for my Hava tuner that's already integrated with WMC. That. Would. Totally. Make. My. Day.

[mikejaner]

Originally Posted by darcilicious

Wowza, this might just work for my Hava tuner that's already integrated with WMC. That. Would. Totally. Make. My. Day.

Which Hava are you using? I was using my Hava HD Wireless for about a year, natively with SageTV before the HDPVR came out.

BTW: Is it as hot on Venus as they say it is?

[darcilicious]

Originally Posted by mikejaner

Which Hava are you using? I was using my Hava HD Wireless for about a year, natively with SageTV before the HDPVR came out

That's what I have but the more recent firmware versions has screwed up channel changing from SageTV. I think. If I'm wrong, let me know Or maybe I'll try it now that I was able to figure out how to add network -- ah, that was the problem, I think, I couldn't quite figure out all the right settings when adding it as tuner...

BTW: Is it as hot on Venus as they say it is?

Hotter

[darcilicious]

Okay, configured a new tuner to use the Hava and it won't change channels

Monsoon (the company) have supplied a nice virtual tuner that works with WMC which is why I was hoping the SageMCTuner bit would work -- I can get the Hava to work just fine with WMC.

[mikejaner]

Originally Posted by darcilicious

Okay, configured a new tuner to use the Hava and it won't change channels

Monsoon (the company) have supplied a nice virtual tuner that works with WMC which is why I was hoping the SageMCTuner bit would work -- I can get the Hava to work just fine with WMC.

Ahh, I use a USBUIRT for tuning, so I never dealt with their stuff.