I'll be the devil's advocate and put it out there since there's several threads intermingling the three product's and getting off topic.  Here's some bullet points, what did I forget?

I'm aware that this is premature as none of these are yet available.

Ceton

Four HD tuners (Two and Six expected in the future)

Low profile

$400

Silicondust

Two HD tuners

Netwoked

Device off site including TA

Fantastic customer support

$250

Media Room

No hardware purchase necessary.

Shared guide

Two HD tuners + 2 SD tuners

Device off site

Big Corporation

 

Looks like that covers it.  However, for me the Media Room is out of the question.  I live in the country and barely, but luckily have cable and AT&T doesn't provide UVerse out here.  I'm getting a Ceton card when it ships for my main HTPC and then most likely 2 of the HDHRCC's for the other smaller PC's thought the house.

I checked earlier to see if Uverse was available in my area yet just to weigh my options but they decided for me as it's still not.

I'm torn between the Ceton and the SD.  The SD just seems so much more practicle to me, I love my QAM SD's.  The idea of putting the TA's elsewhere and having the option to use a small footprint PC is liberating.  The drawback of course is the two tuner limit aside from purchasing two which puts it $100 over the Ceton but on the other hand, the price of admission is cheaper with SD if two tuners will suffice.

The selling point for the Ceton (despite much debate) is four tuners for $400.  The drawback is I don't see my HTPC getting smaller in the future (even though I find it sexy the way it is (for now)) and the extra addition of TA(s) in my living room doesn't appeal to me but I can live with it.

The selling point of the Silicondust is obviously that it's on the network, eliminating the need for a coax run to the PC and displacing the TA(s) to my networking gear.  I'm getting an itch more and more to have nothing more than small PC powering MC that I can easily stash.  The cabling would be minimal, one cat5 to the PC, HDMI to my AVR, and an HDMI to my TV.  The drawback is that the selling feature of sharing tuners is limited to two tuners, not much to share, two would be inevitable in my opinion putting the SD at $500.

I didn't list Hauppauge above, what are they making, maybe I can confuse myself somemore.

HDHR clear winner here for me. Comcast said they only offer a 2 stream cablecard anyway...I'll have to do all sorts of digging now to find out if they support 4 to change my mind.

 This is dumb, AT&T Uverse is available in a tiny portion of the country I have no idea why it is even brought up in this forum...

Mevi

HDHR clear winner here for me. Comcast said they only offer a 2 stream cablecard anyway...I'll have to do all sorts of digging now to find out if they support 4 to change my mind.

 

You're one step (at least) ahead of me, I haven't even talked to Comcast here in Chicago as to what they provide.  How many different types of cards are there?

BTW: I'm pretty sure the SD is where I'm heading, although for some reason I also like the idea of having the gear in the PC for the reason that if extenders actually come back to life (wow, now I'm actually talking extender crap) which would place the PC back by the router anyway.  <I don't think extenders are coming back any time soon>

alton987

 This is dumb, AT&T Uverse is available in a tiny portion of the country I have no idea why it is even brought up in this forum...

This is an option for other providors as well, you're right though, Uverse is the only one to be said of integrating it.

Mevi

HDHR clear winner here for me. Comcast said they only offer a 2 stream cablecard anyway...I'll have to do all sorts of digging now to find out if they support 4 to change my mind.

There are only two types of CableCARDs. "Single stream CableCARD" (S-Card) and "Multi stream CableCARD" (M-Card). The M-Card can decode up to 6 streams, so I don't know what Comcast is talking about.

The HDHomeRun is definitely the winner for me as well. I love the concept and it's essentially in line with the gateway device concept that Tivo and others proposed to the FCC recently as a replacement for CableCARD. I might consider replacing my two DCTs and ClearQAM HDHomeRun with a couple of CabledCARD HDHomeRuns and put them in the closet with all the other network gear. That's the perfect setup in my mind.

Comcast doesn't know what they're talking about. That was my understanding too - I spent a good 2 hours on the phone with them on December 8th having my bill reduced (over 6 months I'll save about $250...) for taking away the QAM, as well as getting transfered to their "cable box technicians" who "knew about all the comcast cable box and cablecard stuff". I'm glad to have some reinforcement, maybe it will be Ceton after all :) 6 streams - I'd LOVE that. I HAD 4 tuners in my house, but now have 2 (since Comcast killed QAM, all I have is Windows Media Center with HVR 2250)

 

The problem with SD is that if you view certain types of protected content you can only view it on the pc you first watched it from, you can't then go to another pc and watch it... It does not transcribe DRM across the network to extenders... this is a major problem.  Ceton's will transcribe across the network to extenders, allow for a fully functional media server, all content, to any extender in your home.  SD is too limited

 There is also the issue of multible people trying to access the tuners and managing records from different pcs...

Johnh0000

 

The problem with SD is that if you view certain types of protected content you can only view it on the pc you first watched it from, you can't then go to another pc and watch it... It does not transcribe DRM across the network to extenders... this is a major problem.  Ceton's will transcribe across the network to extenders, allow for a fully functional media server, all content, to any extender in your home.  SD is too limited

 There is also the issue of multible people trying to access the tuners and managing records from different pcs...

As long as the extender is connected to the PC that made the recording you will be able to watch. Same way you can watch protected recordings on extenders done with an ATI DCT today. You are correct that they can't be watched on another PC.

Mevi

I'm glad to have some reinforcement, maybe it will be Ceton after all :) 6 streams - I'd LOVE that.

You won't get 6 streams in consumer versions of Win 7.  Only 4 tuners per type are supported.  You could have 4 CableCard+4 ClearQAM+4ATSC (etc), but not more than 4 CableCard tuners.

That can get messy... you don't want to start spreading your content around... SD shines in Open QAM envirments, not in the protected content world.  At least not as protected content is controled right now.

So I'm struggling to understand the difference between the SD solution and two W7 cablecard pc's sharing content via the HomeGroup.  Both can stream DRM'd content to extenders but neither can stream DRM'd content to another W7 pc.  So what's the big deal?

By the way, I'm tired of hearing about MediaRoom.  Big Steve made no mention of AT&T integrating it into MCE, only into XBOX.  He said that vendors "such as AT&T could" do this, but didn't say that they WOULD do this.  Knowing that it will be over 3 years not that AT&T has had the ability to integrate the XBOX into U-Verse (and we still don't have it), I seriously doubt that they are going to jump on integrating MCE now.