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Saturday, September 12, 2009

CableCard card tuners on the way - Hack a Day

CableCard card tuners on the way
posted Sep 11th 2009 5:19pm by Mike Szczys
filed under: peripherals hacks, video hacks

cablecard

We were momentarily excited when we heard that CableCARD compatible
tuners will be available for purchase by the end of the year. A card
like this would allow you to hook up your digital cable to your computer
and record programs natively. This has been possible for a long time
with analog cable and PVR software such as MythTV. Up to this point,
recording digital cable has required a dedicated cable box and
workarounds to allow the computer to change channels.

Wait a minute though, the announcement was made by Microsoft? Indeed.
Microsoft has been making a big push into the home theater PC market
with Media Center. Redmond's PVR offering is also limited to recording
analog television;opening up digital would expand the marketplace for
them. But here's where it gets hairy: if you read the Microsoft
announcement, TV shows flagged as CF (copy freely) are the only ones
that can be recorded.

So, if we have this right: you shell out money for a new tuner then you
pay more for the rental of the CableCARD. Both of these expenditures are
on top of a digital cable subscription. And yet you can only record
shows marked with a "Copy Freely" flag. Who makes the decision on which
shows we can pay to record?

Go there...
http://hackaday.com/2009/09/11/cablecard-card-tuners-on-the-way/

Don

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