Way back at CES 2006, DirecTV announced that it was working with Microsoft to produce a tuner that would connect directly to a Media Center PC. The result would be the ability, in theory, to capture all of DirecTV’s satellite programming, including HD, and then view and manage it with the Media Center interface.
In nearly three full years since then, the DirecTV tuner has achieved the same notoriety as Bigfoot, the Yeti, and the Loch Ness monster. The occasional sighting is always enshrouded in fog and mystery. In January 2008, a product brochure appeared, and some people got invitations to test the new HDPC-20. But no one ever reported spotting one of these mythical creatures in the wild. In fact, as recently as September I had pretty much written the whole project off:

DirecTV “announced” its plans to support Media Center at CES in January 2006. It was pure vaporware. And DirecTV never announced the HDPC-20. A third party leaked scans of a product brochure, and some folks on the Fiji beta got paperwork that mentioned that name.
All on paper, no actual tests.

So imagine my surprise when I found a signed driver for this device in the pre-beta build of Windows 7 distributed at PDC.

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Posted By: z3r010
08 Nov 2008