Comcast Digital Cable (Not ATSC) PCI Cards

[afh1000]

I have 2 Shuttles systems that I built into DVR using ATI 550 Capture Cards, Sage TV and standard analog Cable. I am switching to Digital Cable (weather I want to or not - 2009 all digital transmition) and I need a card that will work. I've been researching it for a few days and found that all the post are about HDTV and ATSC. I want to know has anyone made a system that works the regular Comcast Digital Cable that, like my current system, does not need a cable box to tune the signal.

I've already tested the ATI 650 and the haagpauge 1600

 

[nsafreak]

Well there is a card that will use a Cablecard, that is manufactured by ATi, and therefore be able to tune into digital cable programming. The only problem is that these cards are not sold via retail, they are only sold directly to a couple of OEMs (HP, Dell & IBM I believe) and you can only get them by purchasing a system with them in them. Furthermore the cards will not work in an operating system outside of Windows Vista. On the bright side of things the analog conversion only applies to over the air transmissions at this time. There's actually an FCC mandate stating that cable must provide analog programming for a couple more years after 2009.

 

[jegrant]

I've been looking at getting the products/hdhomerun - Silicondust for a while. Downside is no CableCard support - Clear QAM cable channels only. Upside is no nasty encryption / broadcast flag / etc. etc. Also it works with / drivers are available for virtually every operating system.

Basically, due to the onerous copyright restrictions imposed on the cable industry by content providers, they are unwilling to let a CableCard be used in a product that is in any way open to the user, to move recordings around at will, to write their own software for recording programs, and so on.

I am a member of the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation), and I recommend anyone else interested in digital rights should check it out.

EFF: The Corruptibles - an animation that shows the future we could be headed for if the large media companies are allowed to write our copyright laws.