A couple of things to

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August 18, 2012 at 2:43 am #7473
johnw248

    A couple of things to consider. First is your cable provider–there is a great variance in the amount of content that is marked copy freely and that which is marked copy once. Copy Once can only be played on the machine that made the reocording or on a Windows Media Extender (right now that’s an XBox or a an ebay purchase of a Linksys DMA2100 or DMA2200 or a HP280n. By the end of the year Ceton will introduce a new extender with more features but that’s in the future.

    With cableCARD all your recordings will be MPEG2 unlike you HD-PVR so they have compatibility with the extenders but a larger than your h.264 files.

    The Ceton device has four tuners (either the internal PCIe card or external USB device) all current cableCARD tuners support switched digital video but you cannot get PPV or VOD. On the plus side you pay less for a cableCARD rental and you own the tuner. Most systems don’t charge for tuning adapters.  You won’t be able to use SageTV unless your cable provider does not copy protect content. Right now only Media Center has passed the DRM test with CableLabs to be able to record premium content like HBO/Showtime/Starz etc. If you’re on TWC that extends to everything except re-transmission of local OTA stations.

    A short primer. For comparison the SD Prime on sale has three tuners, the Ceton with four tuners lists at $199 for either PCIe or USB versions. So at $50 per tuner, they are pretty close to the same cost.

    John