I hate cable.
I’m in the process of researching my next big purchase, a giant flatscreen TV and a home theater PC for my living room, and I’ve run into a wall. A big, stupid, content protection scheme wall and it’s harshing my buzz. All I want to be able to do is connect my HD cable box to the HTPC so the HTPC can control/record anything I want AND let me surf the web or play video games on the big screen TV.
But the cable company doesn’t like that.
Apparently, I’m allowed to connect NON-digital cable to a PC without a problem, but trying to connect cable’s digital signal or HD content to a PC is evil! There are only two methods I’ve been able to discover for getting HD content on a PC, and they both suck donkey tail.
- Use a consumer-level OTA HD video card which will give me any local HD channels that are available over the air but I won’t get any of the channels I actually care about getting, like Discovery HD or HBO HD.
- Spend an extra $1,000 or so and get an HTPC with a cablecard connection, which would allow me to do everything I want to do, but only after paying heavily for the privilege! To make it even more infuriating, so far I’ve only found three PC makers who make HTPCs with cablecards; CannonPC, S1 Digital & Velocity Micro.
Sometimes life is so very, very cruel.
Ummm…silly question but what would be the advantage of having the HTPC? Can’t you control your cable box through the web without a direct connection? I can program my DirecTV DVR with my cell phone if I want. Plus I can surf the web with my PS3.
There are many reasons for the HTPC. Taken singly, each of my needs can be met by some other piece of equipment, like my XBox 360. However, an HTPC is the only thing I’ve found that can do ALL of the things I want. Things like playing the movies and music I have on my two 4TB ReadyNAS boxes from my downstairs office on the upstairs TV, or recording premium HD channels to those ReadyNAS boxes without the need for me to rent yet another cable box, or surfing the web while watching a show or movie PiP, or showing family pictures to my grandmother on the big TV while simultaneously playing music or downloading a movie.
And hey, I’m The Mighty Geek. I WANT to have a computer in my living room!
The PS3 detects media servers and has a gigabit ethernet connection as well as wireless. Obviously, the gigabit throughput would be more advantageous for media streaming but the PS3 cannot solve your issue in regards to recording content to your NAS storage.
What if you used an hdmi card on your HTPC? Does your cable company use HDCP (Copy Protection)? Check out the link below:
http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/intensity/
Man, I did some additional research since I was bored…you’re up a creek my friend. There is no easy way to accomplish what you want because of HDCP. Any copy-protected content is not easily transferred to NAS. For instance, you could get a Tivo Series 3 with a cable card but Tivo2Go will only download content that is not copy protected to your NAS storage so no HBO for you because of the HD Nazis.
Yeah, it’s as I feared. My Geek dreams are now shattered.
You can still do the things you want but they would fall under the realm of “questionable legality”. There are ways to get HD content to your NAS but it requires software sold from the Carribbean. You would also need a Blu-ray drive for your HTPC but exclusive content would not be available until released mass-market.
Take a look at the Hauppauge WinTV HD PVR. It won’t work with HDMI, but you evidently can use component to capture HD Cable and record it on a home made HTPC. This is the first capture device to my knowledge, and should allow you to record HD via component directly to your HTPC.