I have a PC with a little ATI tv tuner card in it, but I'm hooked up on digital cable. So.. to get all of my channels, and in a decent quality I have to hook my cable to a cable box, then from the box to the computers tv tuner. I have to leave the computer set to channel 3, and then change channels on the cable box.... this all feels so 1985 to me somehow.
I started looking around for a cable decoder pci card that would accept one of the "credit card" looking decoders from the cable company. I'm finding tons of information on them, but its all from 2004... and says they suck. It tells me they are 1 way so you can't get video on demand, or the guide. I read stories about how the cable company restricted the installation of the cards to OEM's that had key the cards to only work with a particular PC... I'm reading alot of stuff that basically tells me the technology is totally pointless and doomed to die.
Is there a new solution for this... or has this already lost its momentum and pittered out? Ideally I'd like to replace my tv tuner card with a "digital cable" card that accepts one of the little decoder cards from my cable company. One that is TWO way so I can use the guide and video on demand. Also the ability to change channels on the computer would be very nice.
I've bypassed the cable box and hooked the cable directly to the pc, but nothing above like channel 50 or something like that comes in, and the quality is severely lacking. So.. thats not much of a solution.
Any ideas?