Windows 7: Tuner card and Verizon FIOS questions

[StarsFan4Life]

I have Verizon FIOS (internet and HDTV). I get my Windows 7 Ultimate in the mail tomorrow and will be installing it on the following machine specs:

* Cooler Master Elite 330
* Gigabyte GA-MA790X-UD4P motherboard
* AMD Phenom II Quad 940 Black Editon - Stock cooling
* 8GB G-Skill PC2-6400
* XFX Radeon 4870 1GB
* Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB SATA II
* Western Digital Caviar Black 640GB SATAII
* Onboard LAN/HD Audio
* Logitech DiNovo Keyboard
* Logitech MX Revolution Mouse
* 2 X Yate Loon 120mm silent case fans
* 2 X Dell" S2309 W @ 1900 x 1080

I would like to know if it is possible for me to watch my FIOS using a tuner card and not have to use a FIOS HD receiver. If I can do this, will the Windows 7 media center pickup all the channels on the guide? I am really not apt to recording on my PC as I already have an HD DVR from Verizon. My house is ran with both cat5e and rg-6 coaxial cable. The FIOS tv is ran off of the coaxial cable.

If all I need is an HDTV tuner card, which card do you recommend?
Edit/Delete Message

 

[bruceb]

See link for more info

http://www22.verizon.com/resid.../computer/computer.htm

What is a TV tuner card? A TV tuner card is a hardware component that lets your computer receive TV signals so you can watch TV from a computer. Many TV tuner cards also provide the ability to record TV programs on your computer's hard disk.

TV tuners are available either as a PCI-bus expansion card or a USB device that you plug into any available USB port on your computer.

Like other digital TV services, FiOS TV is compatible with TV tuner cards that support digital TV.

A TV tuner card lets you watch unencrypted channels in the FiOS Local package (Channels 2-49) from your computer. To receive Premier, La Conexion, or Premium channels, your tuner card must be CableCARD compliant.

To determine if your tuner card is CableCARD compliant, review the documentation that came with your computer or tuner card. If there is a DCR (Digital Cable Ready) label on your computer or tuner card, then your tuner card is CableCARD compliant.

Like this one:

http://ati.amd.com/products/tvwonderdigital/index.html

 

[StarsFan4Life]

So, apparently I need a tuner card that is cablecard ready if I want to watch HD channels?

 

[manimal]

One way to get cable in the past into a HTPC was to use the firewire port. Most of the scientific atlanta boxes allowed you add external storage via firewire and connecting the firewire cable out from the box to a htpc would be recognised by vista with a little tweaking. I used this method for a while and while it was a pita with one board it was plug and play with another.

What are the outs on the box?

You could also use the coax out and a tuner card to watch the exact thing that is being pushed out of a box. With an IR blaster you can from within windows-sage tv etc- change the channels from your htpc and the ir blaster will change the channels on the box. This allows you to use your internal storage for pvr duties etc.
Since switching to uverse I have been using OTA for most of the shows we watch on reg tv since they would tie up our 2 hd streams 2-4 nights a week in prime time.

 

[StarsFan4Life]

Manimal,

I want to avoid getting another FIOS box/receiver and just use a tuner card altogether.

I can't seem to find where to "purchase" the tuner card with the cablecard slot. Anyone link me to these?

 

[armstrda]

You'll probably want to wait to see what the Ceton Card that comes out in Q1 is priced at. It will be a 4tuner cable card for the PC.

 

[Markbnj]

I don't know about FIOS specifically, but I have looked into the situation with cable pretty carefully over the last few years as Comcast went through their digital transformation in our area.

Few years back I had a standard ATI 550-based tuner card and was getting 70 analog channels from Comcast. Such cards only receive analog NTSC or PAL signals. The rest of Comcast's stuff is transmitted using a digital channel and QAM encoding. Later on those 70 channels shrank to 23, and eventually they will all be digital.

So now you need a digital-capable tuner to get much out of cable. There are a number of tuners out there compatible with QAM, but how much value you get from one depends on your cable provider. There are two kinds of QAM channels: clear and encrypted. The premium stuff is always encrypted, so no Discovery Channel or Pay per View without a set-top box or cablecard. The rest of the channels may or may not be encrypted. You won't know which are or aren't until you either buy a tuner and scan, or ask someone else in your area who has already done so. You can find some lists for different areas on http://www.avsforum.com/, along with just about everything else you might want to know.

Cablecard is a different beast from a QAM-capable tuner. No QAM tuner card is ever going to get the encrypted stuff, because it has no way to decrypt it. Cablecard was mandated by the FCC working with cable industry engineers as a way to allow you to "plug in" decryption capability to an existing digital-capable tuner (i.e. in a TV). You could get rid of the set top box, the cable company would get to rent you the card, everyone's happy.

Except that the cable co's have zero interest in doing anything to CableCard besides minimizing its use as much as humanly possible. They don't want their content in your PC, and they don't want you to have a Cable Card. They want to maintain the status quo and rent you and STB. The few stories I have heard of cable card installs reflect this attitude.

So, practically speaking, what you can get is whatever unecrypted QAM channels your provider sends, and that's about it. Over time I think the number of channels you can get, whatever that number might be, is going to decrease.

 

[bruceb]

I had already linked you to one HD TV Tuner card that Does have a Cable Card Slot

To determine if your tuner card is CableCARD compliant, review the documentation that came with your computer or tuner card. If there is a DCR (Digital Cable Ready) label on your computer or tuner card, then your tuner card is CableCARD compliant.

Like this one: ATI TV Wonder Digital Cable Tuner

http://ati.amd.com/products/tvwonderdigital/index.html

One place that has it is here for $299

http://www.compuvest.com/Desc....P2CeJGfUkr?iid=1088789

 

[zig3695]

an agreement has finally been made to unrestrict cablecard's for pc's. meaning, you dont need an OEM machine, which means a few more manufacturers will be making cards now. look for some by xmas, or spring. it doesnt look like they will be 2way yet (you cant watch ON DEMAND content or payperview) but we likely wont see the real cat's ass cable cards for another year at least (2way cards arent even out for regular tvs to my knowledge..)

 

[elconejito]

I have verizon FiOS and two AverMedia combo PCI-e tuners. Each one has an NTSC and ATSC tuner. The ATSC tuners get the signal straight from the wall (no cablebox) and I get the main channels like NBC, FOX, etc and a few other channels like PBS and some other random channels. These are usually in both HD and SD.

I use a cablebox for the two NTSC tuners which allow me to get all of the cable channels (Discovery, ESPN, etc) but only in SD. If you got something like the Hauppauge HDPVR that would work for all the channels, but you'd need a cable box.

The cablecard is going to either make or break the HTPC world. If the cable companies don't cripple it, it will be a great solution for a lot of people. However, if they cripple it with DRM or lord knows what else, then it will effectively be useless.