Well the CableCard tuner for a PC has finally arrived. Unfortunately the restrictions and cost make it a poor choice for most. Let’s see why.
1. You CAN NOT buy a CableCard tuner, put it into an existing PC and get it to work. Why? First you need special BIOS. Second you need a special version of Vista, available only the original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) who have a PC that has passed certain testing by the cable company’s oversight group, CableLabs.
2. You can’t have a CableCARD tuner and analog tuner in the same PC. Vista uses the same tuning information space for analog and cable, so it’s one or the other.
3. You can’t save any HD recordings made via a CableCARD tuner to a High Definition DVD. All recordings are specially encoded in such a way that they cannot be accessed by any DVD software.
4. They are expensive. A CableCARD ready PC will cost $1200+, probably more. The high end of the HP Pavilion Elite M9100t Customizable TV PC (under the recommended configuration select the "ATI TV Wonder external digital cable tuner + internal TV tuner" in the TV & Entertainment Experience options) is probably the cheapest right now.
If that isn’t enough then throw in poor support, a flaky CableCARD activation process, no electronic program guide in Vista for the cable digital subchannels, and no access to on demand or special program channels.
If you think that maybe the cable companies and the movie industry really don’t want PC’s to have access to HD content, you just may have something. There is still hope that a less restrictive DirecTV HD tuner for PC’s will be available someday.
1. You CAN NOT buy a CableCard tuner, put it into an existing PC and get it to work. Why? First you need special BIOS. Second you need a special version of Vista, available only the original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) who have a PC that has passed certain testing by the cable company’s oversight group, CableLabs.
2. You can’t have a CableCARD tuner and analog tuner in the same PC. Vista uses the same tuning information space for analog and cable, so it’s one or the other.
3. You can’t save any HD recordings made via a CableCARD tuner to a High Definition DVD. All recordings are specially encoded in such a way that they cannot be accessed by any DVD software.
4. They are expensive. A CableCARD ready PC will cost $1200+, probably more. The high end of the HP Pavilion Elite M9100t Customizable TV PC (under the recommended configuration select the "ATI TV Wonder external digital cable tuner + internal TV tuner" in the TV & Entertainment Experience options) is probably the cheapest right now.
If that isn’t enough then throw in poor support, a flaky CableCARD activation process, no electronic program guide in Vista for the cable digital subchannels, and no access to on demand or special program channels.
If you think that maybe the cable companies and the movie industry really don’t want PC’s to have access to HD content, you just may have something. There is still hope that a less restrictive DirecTV HD tuner for PC’s will be available someday.
resources : .http://www.hdtvtunerinfo.com/
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