XPS420 Continued – Part Deux Revenge Of The CableCards

I scratched my head when I found out the external digital cable tuners were coming from a different Dell division via a different carrier. DHL finally made it to my house several days after the XPS made it here. Now I can say I am the proud owner of a PC that will allow me to play premium HD content :). I will be hooking everything up after the New Year and will report back on my installation experience. With any luck, the writeup will be.. it went smooth :).

I had also expected a MCE remote and receiver to ship with the tuner cards as these two items had not come with the original package. I was set to phone Dell support wondering where they are but I decided to check out their site instead. As it turns out, no where does it mention that a remote or receiver will be included. I guess I was imagining things. It seems rather silly not to include a remote and receiver with tuner cards.

"Billy Joe, get up and switch the channels again. Use the broom if you have to."

Here are a few pics of the external digital cable tuner cards. 

Front view	Side View

The manual recommends you use the stand for proper airflow and ensure that they do not operate in hot conditions. Surprisingly enough the first step in the manual does not ask you to sacrifice a your first born.

Cable and PSU input	Analog inputs

 The tuners will also support free QAM. I am not sure why you would want to tune only QAM with this system, but it is your only native QAM tuning solution for MCE.

Power brick and USB cord.. Where is the remote?? 🙁

 
The general plan for my setup is to use USB connections for two optical drives and the digital cable tuners. This should keep the system nice and cool. I will likely use the ESATA port sooner then later as well :).