mikinho

greynolds

(unless you have the Advanced Entertainment Pack).

Not that I'm advocating torrents but do you really think it will be hard to get the Advanced Entertainment Pack for anyone here at tgb?

If you know how, please share it. It's like it doesn't exist much like the OEM PID for cablecard "didn't exist and couldn't be purchased" even by Gold Partners. So if there's a way to get the AEP, please share.

John

Wrong....You can use an Xbox as an extender with W7

dkreifus

 I'm new to building a HTPC. I'll be building mine in April probably. But now this SD has be all confused, whereas before I was just going to get the Ceton card and be done with it.

The advantage I see with the SD is that it can be far away from the PC. Essentially, an external tuner. But in order to watch anything on the saved on the HTPC on a different TV than the one  HTPC is hooked up to, you need an extender, correct? But currently, there are no Win7 extenders? Can an old extender work? If I understand correctly, even another HTPC (like the little Dells) will not work if there is any sort of DRM on the original recording HTPC, as that is where the tuner is.

So if I build my dream HTPC right now, with my 4 tuner Ceton card, or dual SD, I still can't watch it on different TVs, right?

You might want to consider have two NICs. Even with a giga network, I've run into network issues if I'm writing a dvd to my Raid at the same time it's playing a dvd out to an extender. That might be a particular hardware issue, but consider network traffic since "pausing" a live recording in the tuner feed to the MC isn't really a solution. A second network to just handle the SD would be the best solution. Ceton has said that there were issues with the 4 tuner version with USB, not that USB wasn't fast enough, just that there would be bottlenecks on USB busses whic is why they went with the PCIe for the first card. Network traffic issues might also be why SD went with a two tuner device rather than a four tuner device. Since the cablecard can handle the additional streams, the cost of two more little Liteon tuners isn't that great so expanding the SD wouldn't be expensive. But it might not have enough bandwidth to feed four HD streams if other things are happening on the network like big writes to Raids and downloads.

You can watch any recorded program on multiple PCs running Win7 with Homegroup as long as the recording isn't set with a CCI copy once flag. Unfortunately with TW that means everything that goes through the cablecard tuner that isn't OTA. On my cable system FXHD is on clear QAM and I can record it without restriction on a QAM tuner, but if I record it with the ATI Tuner (or a Tivo), it gets a CCI Flag of copy once.

John

Johnh0000

Unfortunately no... certain times of protected content will be locked to the first PC that views it, and you need Extenders to view it in other rooms... I don't think people realize that HDHRCC will not enjoy the freedom that made HDHR so popular.

 

 No need for the scare tactics. That only applies to two categories:

1.) Premium channels (HBO, etc)

2.) Time Warner users

 The second can probably be fixed *eventually* with more CableCARD publicity/awareness and enough recognized pundits bitching.

Cabal

Johnh0000

Unfortunately no... certain times of protected content will be locked to the first PC that views it, and you need Extenders to view it in other rooms... I don't think people realize that HDHRCC will not enjoy the freedom that made HDHR so popular.

 

 No need for the scare tactics. That only applies to two categories:

1.) Premium channels (HBO, etc)

2.) Time Warner users

 The second can probably be fixed *eventually* with more CableCARD publicity/awareness and enough recognized pundits bitching.

 

 

I doubt any level of complaining will fix the Time Warner issue. I was a Tivo HD user before moving to media center. They locked down everything except broadcast channels. Moved to media center to take advantage of the extender model.  Time Warner wrecks multi-room and tivo to go. 

Cabal

Johnh0000

Unfortunately no... certain times of protected content will be locked to the first PC that views it, and you need Extenders to view it in other rooms... I don't think people realize that HDHRCC will not enjoy the freedom that made HDHR so popular.

 

 No need for the scare tactics. That only applies to two categories:

1.) Premium channels (HBO, etc)

2.) Time Warner users

 The second can probably be fixed *eventually* with more CableCARD publicity/awareness and enough recognized pundits bitching.

 I believe it's important to talk about the limitations of SDHRCC because most people believe it will function like there old HDHRs and that is simply not true.

Unfortunately, Time Warner is not the only cable company to get rid of Open QAM.  I just hope everyone realizes that Open QAM will be gone soon enough.   

I'm not clear as to what the limitations of the SD are, can you be more exact or point to where you are getting this from?

The limitations are from the cable industry's DRM/OCUR specs controlled by cablelabs. Which all vendor must adhere too.

So what are the limitations?  Are you saying HBO won't be able to be viewed via the SD?

All he is saying is that recorded protected content can only be viewed on the system it was recorded on or via extenders connected to that system. No offense to him but I think he is making too big a deal out of this. Yes it is a limitation but you are not losing anything, you are gaining being able to watch Live TV on multiple PCs.

Don't these limitations reside with other tuners as well?  I think I'm needlessly confused.

Edit: So recorded TV can't be shared by other W7 stations with the SD?

mcewinter

Don't these limitations reside with other tuners as well?  I think I'm needlessly confused.

Edit: So recorded TV can't be shared by other W7 stations with the SD?

Yes. It is not a limitation of SDCC (I like this acronym, SD has too many meanings) it is for all protected content recorded via CableCard.

Correct, protected recorded content can not be shared by other W7 stations

mikinho

mcewinter

Don't these limitations reside with other tuners as well?  I think I'm needlessly confused.

Edit: So recorded TV can't be shared by other W7 stations with the SD?

Yes. It is not a limitation of SDCC (I like this acronym, SD has too many meanings) it is for all protected content recorded via CableCard.

Correct, protected recorded content can not be shared by other W7 stations

Not correct.  He specific said with SD.   Protected recorded content could not be shared with other w7 stations with either solution!

if you have fios, you don't need to worry about any of this. they don't protect any cablecard content.

mcewinter

Don't these limitations reside with other tuners as well?  I think I'm needlessly confused.

Edit: So recorded TV can't be shared by other W7 stations with the SD?

Correct PCs can't share recordings. 

This is a Vs. thread... and its a very important point.