SDV = Switched Digital Video.

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April 3, 2012 at 10:37 pm #7067
Aaron Ledger

    SDV = Switched Digital Video. It is a technology used by some cable companies to allow multiple channels to share the same bandwidth since not every channel is being watched all the time everywhere in the cable system. Using SDV, the subscriber requests that a channel be sent when tuning it. Due to the nature of CableCARD, this requires a SDV adapter which the cable provider must give to CableCARD subscribers. The SDV adapter is plugged into the CableCARD device via USB.

    Hopefully, you’re on a cable system that doesn’t employ SDV since it requires you to just have one more thing laying around to hook up. You might be able to determine this by looking at a list we’ve been maintaining for various cable systems here.

    That’s correct regarding the quad tuner. You can record four programs simultaneously (or record three and watch a fourth live).