TV Tuner w/Cable Card Support

[toscrawford]

I'm looking for a digital QAM 256 TV-Tuner card that will accept a Cable Card for descrambling TV signals from Verizon Fios. The cost of the monthly boxes disturbs me and I figure there must be a better way.

 

[roadrunner197069]

I been looking for something to do the Same with Direct TV HD to no available. All I hae found so far is some very few cable companies offer a PC cable card but good luck with that.

 

[pchoi04]

Right now ATI is the only one that has such a device. Unfortunately there pretty hard to come by because there only available to prebuilt systems, such as Dell, HP, and Sony. It looks like Sony is the first to break this "rule" by selling it seperately as a "VAIO Digital TV Tuner."

I heard a rumor that cable cards can only work with a special BIOS, and certified cable labs parts. But I would think that a USB device such as this would solve all issues such as this because wouldnt the device itself have its own BIOS?

Anyway.. its $299, and may still have some bugs in it. I want to buy one but its a bit to expensive for me to buy without knowning how well it works. I'm sure there is more information on it but I'm to lazy to check it out at the moment. But there might be some people on the AVS forum that may have used this device already.

http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10551&storeId=10151&langId=-1&productId=8198552921665246461&tab=Features

http://www.engadget.com/2007/10/25/sony-selling-the-ati-tv-wonder-cablecard-tuner-all-by-its-loneso/

 

[toscrawford]

Reading up on this you won't be able to use that Digital Tuner unless you have a PC pre-configured from the manufacturer with Magic BIOS. If you have a Magic BIOS system you could purchase one of these to add extra tuners. The point in all this is a company called CableLabs has decided they don't want the consumer to be allowed to do away with the rented cable box that their contributors make so much money on so they make you jump through many expensive hoops if you want to do it (the ability to provide a third party solution was written into law).

 

[pchoi04]

Yeah... Thats pretty much what i just said. But at least this is a step forward. Hopefully there will be a cable card option soon.

 

[Guest]

directv has a cable card.they gave me one but i dont have the tuner.Help Me!!!!!!!!!