Ceton InfiniTV 4 Digital Cable Quad-tuner Card PCIe Amazon $199 + FS

The first point makes some sense. The second point, so what? Why do I care if something is streaming over the internet vs. over my cable TV? In fact, I'd prefer the latter so long as Comcast continues to have ridiculously low download caps (yes, 250GB/mo is ridiculously low)

Stream whenever you want it versus a broadcast ? No need to store it locally if you dvr it ?

In an ideal world I don't store anything at home. I watch it anywhere/anytime I want to and only pay for the content I watch. Cable in it's current form is the opposite.

So I was looking into some kind of way to do Picture-in-Picture on my 47" LCD, I like to always have something on in the background while I am playing on my computer. Turns out, there is not really an easy way to do this anymore. I came across the Ceton as the only real viable option for this, but saw a couple posts back that when running Ceton in WMC it has to be full screen. Is this true, would there be no way to have a small windows of WMC playing my live TV while I browse the web and do whatever else on my computer? Could maybe a second small monitor be used exclusively for WMC/Ceton(maximized) and still have use of the 47" as my primary monitor?

So I was looking into some kind of way to do Picture-in-Picture on my 47" LCD, I like to always have something on in the background while I am playing on my computer. Turns out, there is not really an easy way to do this anymore. I came across the Ceton as the only real viable option for this, but saw a couple posts back that when running Ceton in WMC it has to be full screen. Is this true, would there be no way to have a small windows of WMC playing my live TV while I browse the web and do whatever else on my computer? Could maybe a second small monitor be used exclusively for WMC/Ceton(maximized) and still have use of the 47" as my primary monitor?

You can run live TV with a non maximized MC window. What I do sometimes is have my TV and a monitor hooked up to the computer, the TV has a window of MC running live TV while the monitor has a game running. You cannot maximize the MC window and browse on the second monitor at the same time however, but if you stretch the window you can get it basically full screen.

There's a great program called The Maxifier that allows you to do this.

http://www.mods.com.au/Maxifier/

Question does comcast charge an HD fee for a cablecard they want $10 dollars for the cablecard if i want hd channels.

Question does comcast charge an HD fee for a cablecard they want $10 dollars for the cablecard if i want hd channels.

Installed my Ceton PCIe card on Tuesday and picked up the CableCard from Charter - Madison. I installed the cable card and called to activate. All was good (pairing etc) except it would not receive a validation signal. I was able to get some channels, but not all. the rep scheduled a truck-roll but I didn't want to pay for it so I cancelled. Later I was able to remove a splitter from my configuration thinking it may be a signal issue. Again I called to activate, but this rep was even more incompetent than the last one, managing to turn off service at the headend and not be able to fix it. I believe he entered some of the numbers in the wrong place and didn't know what he was doing.

So I had to schedule a truck-roll for yesterday because of the employees incompetence. Tech came out and was vaguely familiar with CableCards. He checked signal levels and they were good. He called the office and they tried to send the signal to no avail. He went to his truck and brought back a new CableCard and Tuning Adapter, removed the old one from my account and called the office to add the new one. Within 5 minutes, it was showing all green in the Ceton diagnostics. I guess we'll chalk it up to a bad cablecard - a problem that seems all too common in these forums.

Anyhow, the tech stuck around and watched me configure the TV signal in WMC. He was pretty impressed with the setup as he had never seen anything like it and wanted to learn a bit more in case he ran into it again.

Did you have a tuner adapter too? I would assume Charter has rolled out SDV (Switched Digital Video) in Madison as well.

If so, how did you connect the tuning adapter?

I have a direct cable line coming up from the basement to a two-way splitter.

Should I connect both the tuning adapter and Ceton Infinitv device separately with a coaxial cable to the splitter? Or should I connect the coaxial cable into the tuning adapter and then use the out port on the tuning adapter to connect the coaxial cable from it to the Infinitv device?

Obviously I would still connect both the Tuning Adapter and InfiniTV device to the PC with a USB cable as well.