How do All in Wonder Cards work with Digital Cable

[bobdelt]

Ok, so I want to get an AIW card, but how do they work with cable boxes? Or does my PC work as the cable box?

Thanks

 

[thilanliyan]

When I last had an All-in-Wonder card, I could plug my TV cable directly into the card and change channels using the built in software...That was several years ago though but it should work simililarly probably.

Look for reviews of the AIW cards, they should show you.

 

[bobdelt]

Did you have digital cable or a sattelite dish? I know with regular plain old cable it will work fine. I had a friend who had problems with his tivo and digital cable, so I figured the PC would have the same problems...

 

[bobdelt]

Surely someone must have an aiw in these forums....

"And quit calling me Shirley"

 

[darkswordsman17]

It depends. For instance, you could plug it in through S-Video and then use your cable box remote to change channels.

Hmm, would digital cable be QAM? If so, then you'd probably need a tuner that can do that (I don't think the AIW or other analog tuners can decode the signal properly).

If it is QAM and you plug it into your AIW through coax, you'll probably end up with it just decoding the non-digital but basic or possibly extended (or whatever your cable company calls it) channels, and so you won't be getting it digitally (and possibly with much fewer channels).

 

[EvanAdams]

AIW I think is just a standard cable solution. If you have to have a break out box you are out of luck. I have DirecTV and am REALLY out of luck. But there are options:

A while back I remember seeing a TV tuner card that had IR blaster ability. What that does is it sends the IR signal (via a wire with an IR emmiter on the end) to the box and controlls it that way. This is kinda a bad solution and why I just have TIVO's.

DirecTV is coming out, in next 12 months hopefully, a tuner card that can take a DirecTV smart card and decode as needed.

Cable companies are moving to a tech called CableCARD. Goolge it. Verry confusing. But when that is all out and runing you may begin to see tuner cards that can take a cablecard.

In general I recomend you get a monitor that can display S-Vid or component and get an external TIVO for the job.

I'm a TIVO fanboy incase you cant tell.

 

[thilanliyan]

Originally posted by: bobdelt
Did you have digital cable or a sattelite dish? I know with regular plain old cable it will work fine. I had a friend who had problems with his tivo and digital cable, so I figured the PC would have the same problems...

Regular cable. That's probably why it worked. Maybe the ATI HDTV Wonder could be a solution. It actually accepts Digital broadcasts and can pick up HDTV signals.

 

[EvanAdams]

HDTV wonder, I think, is only over the air.

 

[darkswordsman17]

Originally posted by: EvanAdams
HDTV wonder, I think, is only over the air.

Yeah, I don't think it supports QAM.

It doesn't look like the new Theater 650 supports it either. If it doesn't then it won't really be much use to me (I was planning on getting it to watch/record HD), as there isn't an antenna anywhere near here (and there's too much obstruction nearby, not to mention the fact that I'm in a basement apartment). My TV supports QAM, so I don't know if its picking that up or if they might be actually broadcasting ATSC through the cable (I have the extended cable, not digital, but it picks up NBC, ABC, CBS, and PBS in HD as well as some of the non HD digital channels).

Looks like I've got some research to do.

 

[cptstern]

I have an AIW and it works like a cable ready TV from the 80's. Any digital features or chanels are not going to work. You can hook up a cable box to the the card and that will work. Of course you can FF and RW so maybe it is better to say it works like a first gen TIVO.

A while back I saw a preview of an external TV tuner from ATI that allowed for use of a cable card from your cable provider. That would allow for viewing the digital channels, but no features like PPV or shows on demand. Basically it is the first version of cable card so it is only allowing you to recieve, but not send anything back to the cable company like you can do with your cable box. If I rememeber the preview said it would be released in Aug with Vista.

Ric

 

[thilanliyan]

Originally posted by: cptstern
If I rememeber the preview said it would be released in Aug with Vista.

Ric

Vista's coming next year sometime.

 

[EvanAdams]

true vista had cable card support built in. BUT I believe it may have been recently striped out

 

[cptstern]

Originally posted by: thilan29

Originally posted by: cptstern
If I rememeber the preview said it would be released in Aug with Vista.

Ric

Vista's coming next year sometime.

I meant what I said. The preview said it would be released in Aug with Vista. But I should have been clearer in my message.

I don't know if the item is still going to be release in Q3 or if they will delay with Vista. I think they made it sound as if Vista was a requirement. Which this means if they stripped cable card support out of Vista, my whole post is moot.

Ric

 

[cptstern]

http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i=2662&p=2

 

[EvanAdams]

nice!

 

[bobdelt]

Thanks for all the responses. That thing looks sweet. Too bad they don't have that now.

So how do all the people use HTPC's and stuff without digital or hd cable? I think its odd that the PC is behind the times in this area.

 

[EvanAdams]

A question I have allways wondered about. I'm waiting on that DirecTV PCI card. It is all a matter of DCM and who owns what. That is why Vista is so important.

Hopefully Vista will have some way to get the pirates of games and media. That would probably help the industry quite a bit.