I want to buy a capture card and use it as a PVR. i am away allot and dont get home in time to see the programs i want to :-(
Is it possible to have the capture card get and descrable a cable signal? the shows i want to watch are either on HBO or Showtime, Witch are scrabled on my cable system.
i would just hook the capture card to to the cable box and have the box do the descrabling, however other poeple use the TV while i am gone, and this would render this idea useless.
is there a way to capture & descrable the signal on the software end? and if so what software do you recomend?

btw, i AM paying for the cable and DO own a cable box so im not trying to steal cable here.
i just want to be able to watch the tv shows when i get home.

Also, what capture card(s) would you recomend for this application?

Thanks for the help.

ATI has a tv capture card that works well (if you don't want to upgrade video cards). As far as the scramble thing you're probably going to need to rent another box. If there were software that will unscramble, noone will answer that here as it's not allowed.

When all else fails, beat the %*#$! out of it!!!

You say you are not stealing. You said the stations you want are scrambled. If you dont pay to get those stations and you are looking for a descrambling device then what is it other than stealing?

For every american man and woman who has lost your life in Iraq I say thankyou for so costly a sacrifice and pray peace to your families.

Here is an idea that I think may work. If you were to record the shows you want in the scrambled mode, then when ready to view them, feed them back thru the decoder box using an A/B switch. The decoder box should descramble the signal if you are paying for that channel. The channel you are trying to do this with needs to be in the first 125 channels on your system as that is all the tuner cards will receive. Give it a try.

I'm afraid Othehill's idea will not work, ingenious as it is. The show will be recorded as an AVI or MPG video. The cable box input is a Radio Frequency signal.

You are correct of course dale. I should know better, seeing as how I have a setup for recording using an ATI card.
Squ
I think your only option is to record the output of the decoder box. I do believe that TIVO and others like it can record scrambled channels but I don't know if they use the decoder box. You could probably lease another decoder box from the cable company.

To sum it all up, you're gonna need to rent another caable box.

The TV tuner card will only get the lower channel numbers.

My Aver Media TV card gets up to 149 channels, so I can watch or record basic cable only.

But cant record the pay channels without another cable receiver.

Richard

well, i wouldnt mind using another box, however as far as i know, the computer cant turn on and change the channel of the cable box (incase i want to record more then 1 tv program while away).
and asfar as PVRs (like TIVO) go, they cost way to much, i was looking for a cheaper way to go :-(

oh well, im sure i will come up with something. Thanks for your help everyone!