# Cablecard DVR options



## twilyth (Jul 17, 2011)

I wanted to share this with anyone who might not be aware.

I have Cablevision and the DVR boxes they rent you are primitive at best.  I won't go into details.  If you have one, you know what i'm saying.  So I wanted to see what my options were.  The problem is that any substitute DVR has to be able to accept a cablecard if you expect to get any encrypted or premium channels.  

As far as I could tell, my only option was Tivo.  This was completely unacceptable.  Their DVR's aren't cheap and you have to pay $12 or $13 per month to subscribe to their tv schedule service. Either that or you have to get a lifetime subscription for some outrageous amount.

Eventually, I happened across what seems to be a new product that you plug into your PC and accepts a cablecard - Ceton's InfiniTV 4.

According to their web site and comments on a couple of forums, it lets you record up to 4 HD channels simultaneously and works with any cable provider.

It retails for $400, but Newegg has it on sale right now for $100 off.  I've ordered one and might post something about it once I get it set up.  Apparently you can also use it with an Xbox 360 to access recorded programs from other PC's in your house.  Sounds pretty cool.  I'm looking forward to trying it out.


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## twilyth (Jul 23, 2011)

I got the cable card and the Ceton InfiniTV 4 card, so I'm ready to go.  I've looked over the installation instructions and it seems pretty clear.

You install the card, hook it up to cable with the adapter in the pic.  Insert the cablecard and call the cable to company to "bind" it - I guess to your account.

From there, you just have to set up Windows Media Center and you're ready to record up to 4 shows simultaneously.  No more conflicts where the DVR decides which shows to record and you wonder WTF happened during the last 3 episodes of Supernatural that you missed.


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## twilyth (Oct 15, 2011)

It was a rough couple of months and this project was on the bottom of my priority list.  I just haven't been watching much tv and for the things I really want to watch, I still have a DVR as well as all of the other ways to grab an episode of your favorite show.

The problem I ran into a couple of months ago had to do with the DRM settings of Windows Media Center.  In some cases, in order to get through the part of the setup where you identify the cable card and type of signal, you have to reset the DRM.  Here is the email advice I got from Ceton which resolved the issue perfectly on the first try.


> PlayReady is required for Media Center to use Digital Cable Tuners like the InfiniTV. If you are having a PlayReady issue you will probably need to reset your DRM. Go to the following link to find instructions on how to reset your DRM.
> 
> http://support.microsoft.com/kb/976590
> 
> ...



I did in fact have to run it in compatibility mode, but after I took care of that, the rest of the installation was uneventful.  I did have to run through the last part of the set up a couple extra times to make sure all 4 tuners were recognized, but that was a minor inconvenience.

I finally set my first shows to record today so we'll see how that goes.  In one case, it will try to record 3 shows simultaneously, so that will be a good test.

I'm not familiar with WMC, but it doesn't seem to be very convenient to use - especially for browsing a tv guide.  Unfortunately, since WMC is the only cheap/free software that has the necessary DRM protections, you're basically stuck with it.  

However there are several programs that you can overlay on WMC and I'll eventually be giving a couple of those a try.  First on the list XBMC.  All of the forums I've looked at seem to love this program.  Hopefully, if everything else goes well, I'll get around to playing with it over the next week or so.  After that, I guess I'll try MythTV.

All in all, even at $300+ this little gadget seems to be a great deal.  Tivo's new 4 channel DVR sells for about $500 and they charge more than $20/mo for the guide IIRC.  If you decide to go with a lifetime subscription, tack on another $500.  So while I might not recommend this product for gramma or grampa, if you're not afraid to pop the hood and follow some basic instructions, this is definitely the way to go if you're tired of recording conflicts.


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## twilyth (Oct 26, 2011)

Things seem to going pretty well so far.  I did run into one problem with scheduling.  The default is to start recording a minute or 2 before and continue for a minute or 2 after.  However if you take the default and have double, triple or more shows recording back to back, it creates a conflict.  Basically it seems to the scheduler that you are trying to record 5 or 6 show simultaneously for those 1 or 2 minutes and as a result, it won't record the lower priority shows.  So you think that you're recording 3 shows, but you only get one or  two.  

So basically, change the default scheduling parameters to record on time and stop on time with no overlap.

Another thing I discovered is that there is no front end for WMC.  There is a utility (no longer supported) called Media Center Studio that will let you customize WMC, but you have to dl from a blog referenced here - http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=21085672#post21085672.  It's not a straightforward install, but apparently still works.  I haven't played with it yet.

Another utility that I like and seems to work well is MCE Buddy.  This will automatically convert your recorded shows to various mpeg4 formats.  It also removes the commercials and has some other handy features.  The resulting files can be played on you favorite media player like GOMplayer, VLC, etc.

However becareful to set the appropriate input and output directories.  Also set the quality to the highest setting.

I'm running the beta version of MCE 2 (beta 18) and it seems to work well but I'll report more on this as I view the output from it.

You can set it to automatically transcode shows immediately or let them age for a few days.  You can also tell it how many threads to use.  I have it set to 4 on my i7-2600k leaving the other 4 for BOINC.  I also used process lasso to set the priority to below normal from idle so that it takes priority over BOINC.


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## Jetster (Oct 28, 2011)

Did you ever get around to trying XBMC ? Ive been using it for 4 or 5 months now. Not for recording shows but to organize all my media and watch Internet channels. The latest version is Eden 11.0 There are so many options with this program. It has a steep learning curve so be prepared. Plenty of add ons that open up content. This program looks clean and make WMC look like a toy. I haven't seen any programing add ons but there are literally hundreds to choose from


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## twilyth (Oct 30, 2011)

The biggest limitation with WMC is the fact that any recorded content is copy protected and aside from MCE buddy, there doesn't seem to be any other software than read the WTV files.  

Once I'm sure I have MCE buddy working properly and have it convert my recordings to AVI or MV4 files over night, a media manager like XBMC will be very useful. 

But the problem I had was that I wasn't recording on the max resolution.  You can't set this directly in WMC.  Well, you can, but you have do it under your monitor set up - which is stupid.  What if I don't want to watch something on a 720p monitor - does that mean you have to record it in 720p?  My old KDS-50A2000 is fully 1080p compliant but I had it set to some weird resolution like 1750x???? instead of 1920.  So a bunch of recordings were borked.  I had to go back in and set the monitor to 1080p under the TV monitor section.   

Now that I've got that sussed, I'm going to see if MCE buddy handles the conversions correctly.  Once I know that's good, I'll try XBMC.

Thanks for the reminder.


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