How is the live/recorded TV video quality?

Yea, I read that part of the manual too. I'm not saying it won't work in a 16X. Just saying that in my mb/case setup the card was sloppy in the 16, and was easily bumped out of place. (no tail hook, like agp) In my setup, it fit better, and seems more secure in the 1X. You might not experience this problem in your setup. But if you do.......

I read about a lot of CableCard nightmares and decided to save myself the headache. I paid them the 20 bucks to install the CableCard. Make sure you get the "Type M (Multistream) card" and not the Type S (Singlestream).

I just chatted with a rep at TWC, they couldn't tell me if it's a multi or single. Guess I'll find out when it arrives, but the FCC mandate says this:

(4) Effective August 1, 2011, provide, through the use of a commonly used interface and published specifications for communications, firmware-upgradable navigation devices with the ability to tune simultaneously as many switched-digital channels as the greatest number of streams supported by any set-top box provided by the cable operator, or four simultaneous channels, whichever is greater.

That tells me they HAVE to provide a multi-stream card.

how many times they broke that rule since August 2011.

FINALLY got all the parts and hooked it up today. PQ seems indistinguishable from the provider-supplied DVR. Now to decide how to tame the spaghetti of coax cables behind my TV stand. I have a feeling I'll be sticking with this setup, just need to find an appropriate case, hopefully with a front-panel display (for the time), and get my HarmonyONE set up for WMC. I'll give it a week before making my final decision, need to see how it handles recording first.

I'm also disappointed that it overscans on my TV when using applications other than WMC, though that can be rectified by just using VNC from my Mac to perform those tasks.

For digital cable it should be just as good as on the tv, I guess no encoding has to be done if it is already digital i have a dual tuner myself evermedia duet but i use it for over the air antenna has in built splitter it just saves the stream that way no encode needed, If it is analog i could see a reduction as you have to encode it to a digital format that the computer can play.

crash2009 said:

If you don't all ready have one, consider a SSD for the O/S and record to the spinner.

As it happens I just bought a cheap Crucial 30GB SSD to replace the very old and very slow 20GB disk in my media PC. The rest of the machine is decently spec'd - quad cord Intel Q6600, 8GB RAM, 1GB Powercolor 5850 GPU... Not sure how I managed to install Windows on such a crappy drive, so thought I'd better replace it.

Can I expect a bit of a performance boost from the SSD while in Media Centre? I really only expected it to speed up boot times for the odd occasion I have to do that. And to ensure the whole thing doesn't break suddenly!

Everything gets better with an SSD, not only the boot. Check your existing hard drive using Windows Experience Index, then check same after your new drive. Mine went from low 5's to high 7's when I installed mine.

Here are some tips and tricks if you have time to do a bit of reading. View topic - How do you choose a SSD?

http://www.thegreenbutton.tv/forums/index.php

Thanks Crash, I'll have a read.

I was planning on cloning the existing drive to the SSD, but on second thoughts I'd rather do a fresh install to finally resolve a problem I've been battling for months with HomeGroup (it'll join but flat out refuses to share its folders). Since my recorded shows are on another drive, do you know if I can just point the fresh install of Media Center at them to regain my catalogue? Or will I loose everything?

100thIdiot said:

Or will I loose everything?

Not sure about the UK. Over here, we have this DRM crap. When we go fresh we lose the rights to play our "DRM protected" content. I thought I read somewhere that you guys don't have DRM, but I don't know for sure. Ask StumpyBloke or Holidayboy over at the green button.

My thought is go fresh and don't erase/format the original drive in case you want or need to go back.

[QUOTE=crash2009;2291197]

100thIdiot said:

My thought is go fresh and don't erase/format the original drive in case you want or need to go back.

That sounds sensible, I'll do that, and if it looks like I've locked myself out of anything, I'll clone the old drive over the top. Cheers!