I am new to the WMC scene, just setup a basic tv tuner & win7 & wmc7 for my mother's pc with all the addons hulu, netflix, etc. Works great.

 

However I am looking to setup my own pc with wmc and purchase myself a tv tuner card, only I am unsure as to which tv tuner card will allow me to receive the HD channels as well as digital channels Time Warner currently provides to me in the Brownsville, Texas area.

 Any suggestions as to what I need to look for? Will a simple Clear QAM capable card receive these HD channels? Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I've searched however alot of what is being said is over my head as I am new to the scene.

ClearQam will get you all the local HD channels- ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, CW, etc. If you want anything more than that, like CNN, MSNBC, Comedy Central (or Fox News for you texans ;)), you will need a cable card tuner.

The cable card options are as follows: there is an ATI Digitcal Cable Tuner (available now, though they can be finicky, and the support isn't great), the Ceton Card (4 tuners in one, coming end of March, Good support, requires PCI x1 slot), or the HDHomerun CableCard (2 tuners in one, release unknown, connects via ethernet).

Unfortunately, Time Warner apparently puts restrictive flags on all of the non-Local HD channels saying that you can not watch them on any computer except on the one on which the show was originally recorded.

 Ahh, interesting. Thank you so much for the helpful information and quick response :)

 That would also explain why my mother's card doesnt receive hd channels. apparently it only receives over-the-air hd channels as it does not support clearQAM

Thanks again

Didn't know that about Time Warner and the one TV restriction. Does recorded HD work on extenders from the original recording TV?

Yes.
For DRM purposes, an Extender is considered "the same PC that made the recording", because,  in a sense, it is.  It runs as a local account on its host MC, it runs in an RDP session on its host MC.  It is, literally, an 'extention' of its host Media Center.  Hence the term.  ;)

What about converting .WTV files to Mpeg 2 or Mpeg 4.  Can that be done with the DRM flag turned on?  If so, doesn't that eliminate the DRM flag when the copy is made?

You can copy the file (i.e. cut and paste in a new location or copy to a new location). You cannot convert the file however--at least my attempt was unsuccessful. You cannot scan the file for commercials which just writes an XML file either. The "flag" actually becomes MS DRM when the tuner hands off the file to the operating system so it travels to the OS as instruction that it's protected. You can't change mpeg2 to mpeg4 either on a protected file.

John