Windoze Media Center, cable tuners, cableCARD

[gkainz]

Anyone use media center and cable tuners? Since Comcrap went all digital and effectively brain-deaded my TiVos (ok, "almost" - I could get a bunch of DTAs, IR Blasters and struggle with that Rube Goldberg setup)...

I bought a pc (Windoze 7) but cheaped out and it's only got 1 PCI slot. Got the Hauppauge HVR-2250 dual tuner, but now I'm back to square 1 again. Need to either kludge up IR blasters and DTAs, or get a cableCARD. I vote cableCARD. However, for that I either need a cableCARD ready tuner or another pci slot. Crap!

So, I heard there's a few USB cableCARD devices, but so far can only find Hauppauge InfiniTV 4 for $300 (replaces my newly purchased $150 2 channel tuner) or Hauppauge WinTV-DCR-2650 for $150 and again - what to do with the newly purchased PCI 2 channel tuner?

My wife's already miffed that she's been without TiVo (like) service for a weeks and I've already spent way more than just picking up the phone and getting a comcast dvr ...

 

[mikea]

No PC card. The hot setup is use an HD Homerun PRIME, which will put the content on the home network.
http://www.silicondust.com/products/hdhomerun/prime/
I know the guy behind this company and he's been a solid guru hacker all along. This was the guy who made the plug-in Ethernet card for the original TiVo.

But your better hot setup is sticking with Tivo and getting a new Premier Elite, now with 4 tuners at once with a single CableCARD. You can get Lifetime service for $299 as long as you call before you cancel your old service. That will cost you less in the end than futzing around with Media Center. Look. A new 2-tuner Premiere is only $79 from TiVo and it still goes on sale here and there for $50 or so.
http://www.tivo.com/products/home/index.html

I'll be selling my old S3 OLED in a few months but I'd want near $500 for it with Liftetime service and a 1.5TB disk - and that requires two CableCARDs.

 

[gismo]

No PC card. The hot setup is use an HD Homerun PRIME, which will put the content on the home network.
http://www.silicondust.com/products/hdhomerun/prime/
I know the guy behind this company and he's been a solid guru hacker all along. This was the guy who made the plug-in Ethernet card for the original TiVo.

But your better hot setup is sticking with Tivo and getting a new Premier Elite, now with 4 tuners at once with a single CableCARD. You can get Lifetime service for $299 as long as you call before you cancel your old service. That will cost you less in the end than futzing around with Media Center. Look. A new 2-tuner Premiere is only $79 from TiVo and it still goes on sale here and there for $50 or so.
http://www.tivo.com/products/home/index.html

I'll be selling my old S3 OLED in a few months but I'd want near $500 for it with Liftetime service and a 1.5TB disk - and that requires two CableCARDs.

Mike, I have a Motorola DVR w/cablecard that I'm renting from my cable TV service (Mediacom). Can I get TiVo's lifetime service if I purchase a TiVo Premier? On their website it appears my only option for that would be to purchase a Premier XL for $300 and add lifetime service for another $500. $800 seems kinda steep for that.

Alternatively if I went with the HD Homerun Prime, is a monthly service required for it's operation (in addition to the cablecard fee)?

 

[mikea]

Mike, I have a Motorola DVR w/cablecard that I'm renting from my cable TV service (Mediacom). Can I get TiVo's lifetime service if I purchase a TiVo Premier? On their website it appears my only option for that would be to purchase a Premier XL for $300 and add lifetime service for another $500. $800 seems kinda steep for that.

Alternatively if I went with the HD Homerun Prime, is a monthly service required for it's operation (in addition to the cablecard fee)?

You should be able to get Lifetime in any case - it's just that current subs get MSD - Multi Service Discount. They may not offer Lifetime at first to new subs because they went to a subsidized model at $12.99 a month.

I know *I* can get Lifetime for $299 and if you talk to me nice we can work something out. They're offering me a deal on the Premiere Elite but usually you can get a better price elsewhere. Look at Lifetime service as being an investment. You can always sell the Tivo and get your $300 back.

The first CableCARD has to be FREE from Comcast.

There is no subscription fee for the HD Homerun but you have the "fun" of getting stuff working on Windows (which isn't quite so bad these days.) It also has only about 70% of the functionality of a TiVo. You can also try Linux for the host.