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Digital Cable HDTV Tuner Card Reviewed
Jack Kolesar of AMDPower writes "We have posted a review of a PC HDTV Tuner card that can receive QAM (Digital Cable) signals along with traditional 8VSB signals. This appears to be the first PC Card which can accomplish this task. Further, the software also comes with a utility to downsample HDTV content to DVD and DivX. "
Somebody else. Free software is like that, one million eyeballs and one burnt out developer!
Gimmie gimmie gimme!
From the pictures it looks like all connections are inputs, with no TVOut.
It would be nice if this had composite out to TV(A/V), not just the 'Play on PC'. Combine w/PC-based controller (MythTV), and I would not need to add HDDVR and HDTuner to get HD picture.
Its fine to have a card that can receive QAM signals from cable. However, as the article states, this card can only receive in-the-clear (unencrypted) content. Since most cable operators in north america encrypt their high value content (HD is definitely high value), the ability of the card to decode QAM signals is of limited value. Additionally, the modulation modes are not evident. That is, can the card decode 64QAM and 256QAM?
"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!" -- Dr. Strangelove
Of course, the problem with free software is that this driver won't full support the features of the device for several years and due to poor access to documentation or software-only features may never support some things that make the card worth buying. The software and the driver itself will probably have an inscrutable, ugly and complex interface that only works from the command line/KDE/Gnome and if you have a problem with it your only options are to fix it yourself (assuming you have programming ability and can figure out what the problem is) or pay a high hourly price for somebody else to do it.
Meanwhile, your stupid buddies who paid their Windows Tax have been running the thing for a year without a major problem, and have spent all the time they saved by not fucking around with beta drivers watching TV and generally enjoying their purchase. Problems they had during setup were fixed by the company's technical support staff because their platform is actually supported.
Of course, if the company EOL's the card or goes out of business entirely, the Linux driver will still work, whereas the Windows version will stagnate and die. Iomega, I'm looking in your direction as I type this.
In short: the beauty of free-as-in-beer is only skin deep, and its true value -- free-as-in-freedom -- lies underneath a mountain of major annoyances.
Hey freaks: now you're ju