Arch Linux

ljshap

Member

From: Ossining, NY

Registered: 2008-01-23

Posts: 160

TV Tuner Card - pcHDTV HD-5500

Does anybody have any experience with the "pcHDTV HD-5500" tuner card.  Its by a company pcHDTV that only makes cards for Linux and is supported under mythtv.
 
  The card does High Def but only if you have unencyrpted QAM. Does that matter if you have a cable box?  If the signal is encyrpted going into the cable box, is it still encrypted when it comes out.  Excuse my ignorance, but I might be confusing encryption with scrambling.

  I'm also curious if anybody has any experience with the Hauppauge 1212.

  Thanks

---

Live Free or Die !

brucebertrand

Member

Registered: 2006-07-24

Posts: 52

Re: TV Tuner Card - pcHDTV HD-5500

I may be mistaken, but I believe that the signal coming out of your cable box would no longer be QAM, but just a plain video signal or an RF modulated video signal - you either use the component inputs on your TV, or the coax in and need to tune to channel 3 or 4. 

Or HDMI/DVI, of course....

ljshap

Member

From: Ossining, NY

Registered: 2008-01-23

Posts: 160

Re: TV Tuner Card - pcHDTV HD-5500

I may be mistaken, but I believe that the signal coming out of your cable box would no longer be QAM, but just a plain video signal or an RF modulated video signal - you either use the component inputs on your TV, or the coax in and need to tune to channel 3 or 4. 

Or HDMI/DVI, of course....

I suspected that it may not be a QAM signal, but I never saw that issue addressed directly.  I'm amazingly ignorant of almost all video technolgies, but then again I'm not a big TV or video fan.  It just sounded like an easy way to do high def on a computer with mythtv.

Thanks

---

Live Free or Die !

Echo

Member

From: Ohio, United States

Registered: 2006-05-16

Posts: 239

Re: TV Tuner Card - pcHDTV HD-5500

In some instances you can plug your cable straight into your TV tuner card w/out the cable box. This would be true when the cable company is not encrypting all of their channels. For instance, my company only encrypts the pay channels so any QAM signals that are coming thru the cable (clear QAM) I can record including local HD stations.

I've also seen people reference using a working firewire port out of your cable box if you have one. You can record these signals without a tv tuner card. I've been wanting to try this but haven't gotten around to it yet.