Love

Love is a curious thing. It might make even a rabid programmer spend more than he ever planned on something he definitely doesn't need. And we're not talking Valentine's Candy.

Now, we're talking about this.

Just wait half a year, and the high end of the line will come with a QAM Tv tuner and make the finest media center, ever.

The homebuild hdtv recorder, Part II: Solution

There's good news. And there's bad news.

The good news first: it's possible to record unencrypted home QAM channels in Windows Media Center in Vista.

The bad news: that means that all the money I thought I had saved will be spent to build a home hdtv pvr.

The magic tool is the HDHomeRun, with Vista Beta drivers discussed here.

The HDTV PVR problem

I spent a significant amount of time in the last week researching ways to convert my PC into a media center that can record HDTV so that I can replay it via the media center extender in the xbox 360. I am getting COMCAST HDTV over cable - QAM encoded free channels, equivalent to the Over-The-Air programming that I just couldn't easily get with a room antenna where I live.

The end result - it is just not possible. There are tuners which can decode QAM channels, but even Vistas Media Center cannot record QAM just yet - and likely never will. Solutions that can accept cable cards to record HDTV from cable sources will be sold as complete computer only, I won't be able to build my own.

So sad.

On the upside, I just save several hundreds of dollars I would have otherwise spent on a new computer.