Question on Digital Cable from Comcast

[acadman]

Question: I have digital cable in my house, can I if I set the digital box output coax receive the digital TV on my PVS or would I need to purchase another TV Tuner card specifically for this?

[RobertH]

Yes you can the way you would set this up is to have the cable box connected in one of two ways to your computer's tv tuner.

1) Connected via coax cable and then forceing the tuner on the pc to lock onto a specific station (like when you use a vcr or the cable box you have to tune the tv to channel 3 or something like that)

2) Connected via svideo/composite, with audio cables

you would then either need a serial control or an IRBlaster cable to allow the computer to "control" the cable box. The serial cable only works with certain models of cable/satalite boxes. The IRBlaster can control a wider range of boxes because you teach it what your remote control does and then it emulates it.

If your computer does not have a tv tuner you would need to purcahse one, recommended tuners are listed here as are the system requirements: http://www.snapstream.com/Products/P...VS3_SysReq.asp you can purchase cables, and tuners via the online store at: http://store.snapstream.com

[acadman]

Do I really need a remote as they are hard to find? I have a digital cable box and it is directly connected to my tuner card. I am not really sure what I need to do or if absolutly needed a for the PVS to manage the cable box.

Cant I just use my remote on the digital cable box to change the channel shown on the PVS Watch window for the shor term? The StreamZap is hard to find locally and I am not sure it can control my cable box. All documentation I have read is that it is a receiver from the remote not a sender to the cable box. Am I wrong and confuised on this as usual?

One last if I connect using the video cable (not coax or S video, but the the composite) to the digital cable box then to my tuner card, do I need to also connect audio from the cable box to the sound card or like I have it with the coax setup and a patch from the tuner card to the sound card.

AverTV Stereo
XP Pro
want to use a Comcast Digital cable box - Motorola DCT1800

After I got the regular analog cable working with SnapStream PVS, the natural step was I want all the hundreds of digital cable channels with HBO and the other movie channels on my PC! I am begining to see some real exciting possibilities in this PVS and no more stayting up til 4AM to see the only showing of the movie or messing with that old decrepid VCR that never records it right. Thank you Snapstream.

[RobertH]

Do I really need a remote as they are hard to find? I have a digital cable box and it is directly connected to my tuner card. I am not really sure what I need to do or if absolutly needed a for the PVS to manage the cable box.

to control snapstream from a distance it is recommended that you have a remote, you could also use a wireless keyboard as the majority of remotes are just mapped to the keyboard. Remotes can be purchased from snapstream's online store (http://store.snapstream.com) and you can get the streamzap or ati remotes in a various number of online retailers.

Cant I just use my remote on the digital cable box to change the channel shown on the PVS Watch window for the shor term? The StreamZap is hard to find locally and I am not sure it can control my cable box. All documentation I have read is that it is a receiver from the remote not a sender to the cable box. Am I wrong and confuised on this as usual?

you could use your cable box remote to control the channels on your cable box, but this will not tell snapstream that the channel has changed, and it will not allow for snapstream to be able to control the cablebox so that you can do recordings while you arent there. The stream zap is a PC remote it will not control any other devices, it is only designed to work with the pc and the ir dongle it comes with. To have snapstream control your cable box (change channels) you would need either a serial cable if the box is compatible or an irblaster (please see this article:http://www.snapstream.com/Community/...externaltuners for more on information about controlling a cable box)

One last if I connect using the video cable (not coax or S video, but the the composite) to the digital cable box then to my tuner card, do I need to also connect audio from the cable box to the sound card or like I have it with the coax setup and a patch from the tuner card to the sound card.

your current setup (or past as it may be) is this:
cable (coax tv cable) comes into to tuner then tuner has patch cable going to the sound card. To deal with an svideo or composite (yellow one) the tv tuner will either have another headphone jack that says line in, or you will have to replace the cable going from the tuner to the soundcard with a cable going from the cable box to the soundcard. either way you will need a cable that goes from 2 (stereo) rca to 1 headphone minijack, these are available in the irblaster cable pack on the webstore, you can also get these at radio shack and most electronics stores

AverTV Stereo
XP Pro
want to use a Comcast Digital cable box - Motorola DCT1800

After I got the regular analog cable working with SnapStream PVS, the natural step was I want all the hundreds of digital cable channels with HBO and the other movie channels on my PC! I am begining to see some real exciting possibilities in this PVS and no more stayting up til 4AM to see the only showing of the movie or messing with that old decrepid VCR that never records it right. Thank you Snapstream.

since I bough snapstream over 2 years ago I havent owned a vcr or bought any vcr tapes (though I have spent about as much buying harddrives and blank cd/dvd-r disks )

[acadman]

I sure appreciate your assistance. I guess I am still a little confused.

If I am using digital cable in and say I buy the StreamZap remote, although the only place that carries them anymore is SnapStream. Now will I be able to change channel up to those above the 125 channels as is available in digital cable and can be see in my AverMedia Stereo PC card when set up to channel 3 in SnapStream then manually changing the channel on the cable box.

How would Snapstream know the channel info I am on? My digital cable box does not have a serial port just a coax in and coax out.

Sorry for the questions.

[Julia]

The trouble here is that you would have remotes in serial... The StreamZap would be controling snapstream, and to that end you would need some sort of irda controller to control the external cable box. So, when you use the StreamZap to change the channel it actually has a command sent through the irda controller for the cable box.

Hope that helps,
Julia

[Julia]

One thing you can do, is what I do... I don't record off the digital THAT much, so I just make sure it's on the right channel before I head off to bed or work (though this wouldn't work if you do a remote recording)... And I use the normal tuner for the non-digital channels... So that I only need to worry about the digital ones being tuned in.

Julia

[DonK]

I swear by using a StreamZap and IRBlaster with Snapstream, it's a very good combination.

There's only been a couple of builds that the IR Blaster hasn't worked for me, and when it didn't, even though it's not "officially" supported, the Snapstream Developer team has always been attentive and react quickly to determine the cause of problems and fix them.

[acadman]

Thank you. I will give this a try as it sounds the easiest. Do you set 2 different view source profiles in the PVS one for digital and one for analog ones or do you switch somehow else? Currently my PVS shows the screen info for channel 3 and must be on channel 3 to get anything. Then I use the cable remote to change the digital cable box channel.

what are you settings in the admin config
From cable box or not?
lock the channel or not?

cheers

Originally posted by Julia
One thing you can do, is what I do... I don't record off the digital THAT much, so I just make sure it's on the right channel before I head off to bed or work (though this wouldn't work if you do a remote recording)... And I use the normal tuner for the non-digital channels... So that I only need to worry about the digital ones being tuned in.

Julia

[acadman]

I attached a rough layout image of what I have.

Thank you all.

[beyond]

what I would do if I were u...

buy the 25$ actisys IR BLASTER...

get the HE Remote Application, and let it change channels for you via snapstream.

works like a charm

[Julia]

I have digital cable from comcast (in Mass.) what I do is I run a coax cable into the tuner card for the normal cable channels, and then I take the composite out (they don't have svideo out on these motorola boxes we got) and run that into the composite input. Then I set up 2 different profiles, one for the tuner, and one for the composite.

Julia

[acadman]

Thank you. This is how I will do it.

Cheers

[acadman]

Do you have to also run specific audio cables from the cable box as well into the sound card?

Originally posted by Julia
I have digital cable from comcast (in Mass.) what I do is I run a coax cable into the tuner card for the normal cable channels, and then I take the composite out (they don't have svideo out on these motorola boxes we got) and run that into the composite input. Then I set up 2 different profiles, one for the tuner, and one for the composite.

Julia

[RobertH]

if you are going to use composite (yellow rca jack) or svideo then you will need to also get a headphone jack to rca jack cable they are like 5$ at kmart/wallmart/radioshack then either plug it into the sound card or if the tv tuner has a line in plug it into the tuner and leave the regular patch cable from the tv tuner to the soundcard inplace