HTPC Tuner Cards

[mij1525]

Hello All,

I've been delving into the world of home theater PC's and I heard a while ago that Dish had a tuner card in the works (an MS partnership comes to mind). I could be mistaken.

Any one hear anything about this lately? One would think the recent external storage parameters may help lead up to this.

It would be nice to start limiting the boxes sitting under my TV set.

 

[Cyclone]

I remember what you are talking about. It was so that you could get Dish on a Microsoft Media Center PC. I can't say that I've ever heard anything about it since that orig announcement.

 

[mij1525]

Exactly. Maybe the idea was too progressive for dish?

 

[dlsnyder]

I seem to recall it was DirecTV that was working on this. Was Dish trying to get in on it too? Check out this old news item from ArsTechnica: Link

Can you imagine how HOT that card would get inside your PC?

 

[Jim S.]

I don't see anything at the link you posted, but you can get DVB-S cards for your PC now, and I never heard of anybody complaining that they run too hot. I'm pretty sure in other countries you can even get them with CAM slots. It's too bad Dish won't let you use their cards in other people's receivers, or all this nonsense with their buggy software and their overzealous DRM would be a thing of the past.

 

[Smith P.]

Search for ABA-1020 and ABA-1030.

 

[dlsnyder]

I don't see anything at the link you posted, but you can get DVB-S cards for your PC now, and I never heard of anybody complaining that they run too hot. I'm pretty sure in other countries you can even get them with CAM slots. It's too bad Dish won't let you use their cards in other people's receivers, or all this nonsense with their buggy software and their overzealous DRM would be a thing of the past.

DVB-S cards work great in Europe but have only limited usefulness here. It is technically possible for Dish to create such a card but they must satisfy the copy protection fears of the content providers. That may be the biggest reason why the model 5000 HD receiver was functionally disabled so quickly. It was way too easy to record HD content on to an HTPC with that thing. Hollywood types went nuts over that. College kids back in the 90's ruined it for everybody with Napster.

Try this link: Ars Technica

 

[mij1525]

That's why I figured the new external storage protocols might change that as then there's really no difference between internal storage on an HTPC or external from my 622 with a thumb drive.

 

[mloebl]

YEARS ago I had sent an email to Echostar asking them if I could test a PCI tuner they had in some article I had found on their www site. Couple of weeks later I actually got an email saying they were looking for beta testers. I believe I even sent back an NDA but nothing came from it.

-Mike