MANY PC-TV WATCHERS
SEND EMAIL ASKING FOR
TV TUNER CARDS FOR
ACCESSING MORE THAN
125 CHANNELS

(This is page for those people who have DIGITAL CABLE TV and DIGITAL SATELLITE TV. Do NOT get confused when you see the "DIGITAL TV" TV Tuner cards in the marketplace where those "DIGITAL TV" TV Tuner cards allow you to get free over-the-air antenna digital broadcast television. Many people get mixed up and confused when they see those "DIGITAL TV" TV Tuner cards because they all say that they are "DIGITAL" - but read the fine print that says you need an antenna to use those cards. Just because it says "DIGITAL" doesn't mean it's "DIGITAL CABLE". Please don't just say "DIGITAL TV" (which is broadcast digital TV) when you are really asking about "DIGITAL CABLE TV" or "DIGITAL SATELLITE TV". So, if you are asking about how to get more than 125 channels, then the chances are that you are asking about how can you get DIGITAL CABLE TV channels or DIGITAL SATELLITE TV channels with your TV Tuner card. The short answer is: You need to hook up the set-top box from your cable TV provider or from your satellite TV provider to your TV Tuner card.)

People are subscribing to digital cable and digital satellite subscription television services in growing numbers. And by subscribing to such digital services, you get hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds (you get the idea) of channels on those digital cable and digital satellite television services. Digital cable and digital satellite provide people with more choices as to the number of channels that they can watch without being limited to the 125 channels (or less) that you have with basic cable. And those people want to be able to access those choices among the hundreds and hundreds (etc.) of digital cable and digital satellite channels on TV Tuner cards on their PCs.

Let's take this very typical email question that I've been receiving in ever increasing numbers in recent months:

Hi, Ruel. Quick question for you:

Are there any TV Tuner cards that allow access to greater than 125 channels for digital cable?

Thanks.

K.C.

Let me start off by putting a little perspective on this: Generally, TV sets are currently "cable ready" for receiving only 125 channels or as much as only 181 channels. Likewise, unfortunately, TV Tuner cards are for the most part limited to receiving 125 channels which would be for basic cable -- or a much lesser number of channels for terrestrial over-the-air free antenna TV stations (you can receive regular antenna TV with TV Tuner cards if you are not hooked up to a cable or satellite TV service) . However, many people want more than basic cable. With the increasing popularity of digital cable and digital satellite services, the 125-channel limitation is really terrible for many PC-TV users. Unfortunately, like you need a digital cable box or a satellite box to get the hundreds and hundreds of digital channels to watch on the TV sets that are limited to 125 (or 181) channels, you will also need that box to get those hundreds of digital channels for watching with a TV Tuner card.

With regard to digital cable, part of the problem is that TV Tuner cards are currently *NOT* "digital cable ready" -- they may be "cable ready" but that doesn't mean they are "digital cable ready." Being "digital cable ready" would require that the TV Tuner card have a built-in authorization device such as a POD security card which is something like a smartcard and is also known as a "CableCARD" from the cable company. Then the cable companies would have to program the appropriate authorization security "CableCard" as a "key" "decoder" "access" card that consumers can order from the cable company as part of a digital cable subscription and insert that card like a "key" into their "digital cable ready" TV sets and devices to unlock / decode the digital cable service. The U.S. Congress and the FCC are working to require that all new TV sets be "digital cable ready." (See these FCC digital cable news items: 1 2 3 4) Also, market forces are slowly working to introduce digital TV sets and digital TV VCRs that would use a "CableCard" from the cable company to get digital cable. But that's for TV sets and VCRs. The manufacturers of TV Tuner cards would have to separately decide if it would be profitable for them to make "digital cable ready" TV Tuner cards with the extra hardware required for the POD cards and related authorization hardware. Don't expect that to happen overnight for TV Tuner cards. Nonetheless, Microsoft recently made a deal with CableLabs to allow the use of the "CableCard" with new PCs running a version of Windows Vista (1 2 3 4). What you would do is get a "CableCard" which would be like an electronic credit card from your Cable TV Provider and you would insert the "CableCard" into a slot on a digital-cable-tv-capable Windows Vista PC that you will have to buy. Windows Vista will not be available until sometime in 2006. This is not on the market right now and there is nothing similar on the market right now. You will have to wait until a digital-cable-TV-capable version of Windows Vista becomes available in 2006 -- maybe expect something with the "CableCard" slot by the Christmas Shopping Season in 2006. And for other PC hardware for the do-it-yourself folks, then you may have to wait for some time before this also happens for other PC hardware. And then you will have to get a "CableCard" (the access "key" POD card) from your Cable TV provider as part of your legally paid-for digital cable subscription.

In the meantime, for now, since there is no actual "CableCard" digital cable TV capability for TV Tuner cards for PCs, and if you are still using your own PC-TV HTPC system that you put together yourself, and / or if you don't want to upgrade to Windows Vista, and if you want to watch all of the channels that you can get via digital cable TV, then you have to hook up your digital cable set-top box to the TV Tuner card in order to receive all of those extra digital cable TV channels. You don't need a "CableCard" if you have a digital cable set-top box that you can hook up to your TV Tuner card. (And for those of you who are reading this far on this page but you only have Basic Cable or good old antenna over-the-air TV, then you don't even have to worry about any "CableCard" or any set-top box because the folks with Basic Cable or antenna TV would only have to hook up the cable or the antenna to the TV Tuner card.)

To rephrase the current situation, if you want more than 125 channels, such as getting the hundreds and hundreds of channels from digital cable TV (or digital satellite TV if you using satellite television), you will actually do need the digital cable box or the digital satellite box that you get from the cable or satellite TV company. Then you hook that box up to the TV Tuner card and you will have to change the channel on the TV Tuner card to channel 3 or channel 4 (or setting the TV Tuner card to S-Video or Composite Video In) to get the feed from the cable / satellite box and you will typically have to use the remote control for the box to change the channels (except if you were lucky enough to have an IR Blaster to change the channels on the box as described further below -or- if you have DirecTV so you can use the DirecTV Serial Control Utility described in the next paratheical paragraph). Keep in mind that this is what you will be doing if you were to hook up the cable / satellite box to a regular conventional TV set. Afterall, it is just like hooking up to a TV set -- people forget this because it's a TV Tuner card on a PC. The limitations of the TV Tuner card in directly getting only so many channels without a cable / satellite box is basically the same situation you have with the typical TV set that people have in their homes nowadays. So, you need the box. As far as I know, there is no such TV Tuner card that can more directly get more than 125 channels without attaching the cable box or the satellite box -- you need the box to get more than the 125 channels.

If you have DirecTV satellite service, you could click here for the DirecTV Serial Control Utility to change channels on your DirecTV satellite box, but this software utility will not necessarily coordinate with any PVR recording software on your PC-TV system -- but if you are a C++ programmer then you can probably write another software application in C++ to have the utility work with other software on your PC. In order to use the software channel-changing utility, you will need a connection from the PC's serial port to the DirecTV satellite box -- as you can see, you still need the box.

Digital channels are digitally transmitted by the cable TV and satellite TV companies to provide more channels and to also prevent illegal access. This digital capability requires that you have the digital cable box or the digital satellite box. I'm not talking about HDTV which is about providing High Definition TV and which is more about the quality of the picture (note that HDTV means High Definition TV and does not necessarily mean High "Digital" TV). The "digital" in digital cable and digital satellite is for the technology that digitally provides more channels -- digital in this instance is about quantity as in greater numbers of channels and not necessarily about the quality of picture as with HDTV (i.e., the quality being the "High Definition" in High Defintion TV). So, for digital cable subscribers, you definitely need the digital cable box which provides the digital decoding and also provides something like an authorization signal to prove that you are an authorized paying digital cable subscriber thus allowing you to get the hundreds and hundreds of channels you get with digital cable (and you have similar authorization processes with digital satellite). The cable and satellite TV companies will not allow that sort of digital decoding and authorization capability for TV Tuner cards by themselves without the box. (There is at least one TV Tuner card that I know of which let's you insert something like a smartcard for access authorization -- but, at least in the U.S., I haven't heard of cable or satellite companies giving access authorization cards to PC users for use with such a TV Tuner card. Please keep in mind that the cable TV and satellite TV companies do not want to give any advantages to PC users that could become illegal access gateways to cable and satellite access piracy. You can click here to see how Ruel tries to shoo away the people who send in email asking about illegal access to cable or satellite services.) So, you need the box -- and then you hook up the box to the TV Tuner card.

However, I know you want to change the channels using the TV Tuner card. Is there a way to do that even if you really do need the digital cable box or the digital satellite box? Otherwise, if there is no way to change the channels using the TV Tuner card, then you're stuck changing the channel on the TV Tuner card to channel 3 or channel 4 (or setting the TV Tuner card to S-Video or Composite Video In) to get the feed from the cable / satellite box and you're stuck using the remote control for the box to change the channels. Yes, I know that sucks for most people who want to be able to control everything from a PC-based system, but, again, keep in mind that this is what you will instead be doing if you were to hook up the cable / satellite box to a TV set. But I know you're still asking whether there is any way at all to change the channels on the box via the controls for the TV Tuner card? So, is there any other possible way to change the channels?

The closest thing there is for being able to control changing more than the 125 channels via the TV Tuner card is what is called an IR Blaster sensor for actually controlling the changing of channels on the cable box or the satellite box. The only TV Tuner card that I know of that has an IR Blaster is the Creative Video Blaster Digital VCR card. You can click here to see what the IR Blaster sensor cable looks like for the Creative Video Blaster Digital VCR card and you can click here for information about compatible cable and satellite boxes for the IR Blaster that comes with the Creative Video Blaster Digital VCR card.

Are there any other products that provide an IR Blaster? Well, I don't know of any other TV Tuner cards that have an IR Blaster, BUT the only other product that I know of that would have the IR Blaster is the new Media Center PCs (from Hewlett-Packard and other manufacturers) which have the new Windows XP Media Center Edition. FYI, Windows XP Media Center Edition is currently only provided with that new PC and NOT currently sold-off-the-shelf. (In contrast, WinXP Home Edition and WinXP Professional Edition are sold off-the-shelf as standalone products.) Various reports indicate that WinXP Media Center Edition is currently compatible with only two-to-three expensive TV Tuner cards -- it's going to take Microsoft some time before Microsoft certifies compatibility for other TV Tuner cards. However, I am expecting that whenever Microsoft finally decides to sell WinXP Media Center Edition off-the-shelf so people can buy it (without having to buy a new PC) that Microsoft will most likely bundle it with an IR Blaster and a remote control so that people can control digital cable boxes and digital satellite boxes via the TV Tuner card on the PC. I haven't heard a clue of any such possible plans as to when that may possibly occur if at all. However, if you already have a TV Tuner card and want to add an IR Blaster, you may want to consider the Actisys IR 200L / IR220L / IR220L+ / IR220LN IrDA Com-Port Serial Adapter or the RedRat IR device to see if either device can work for you as well as checking out the IRTuner DLL software. Otherwise, you may want to get a new TV card that has an IR Blaster.

So, you're stuck hooking up your digital cable box or digital satellite box to the TV Tuner card on the PC, setting the TV Tuner card to Channel 3 or Channel 4 or setting the connection to Video-In or to S-Video input, and since you may not have an IR Blaster then you're using the remote control for the box to change the channels via the box. If you have an IR Blaster for your TV Tuner card (such as with the Creative Video Blaster Digital VCR card), then you still have that setup with the box but the IR Blaster serves as the "connection" so to speak to the box that allows you to use the TV Tuner card to change the channels on the box in coordination with whatever you are doing on the TV Tuner card such as a PVR function on the PC for a TiVo-like scheduling of the recording of a particular TV show on a particular channel at a particular time. I know that this IR Blaster set-up may sound like a convoluted workaround solution to some people, but IR Blasters have been around for some time. People who are audio-video enthusiasts and who have audio-video receivers for controlling multiple electronic components are already familiar with the IR Blaster sensors. Also, if you understand what is happening on the business side of providing cable and satellite television and acknowledge the illegal access piracy problems that the cable and satellite companies have to deal with, then you should be able to understand both why you need the box and why you have to go through the workaround process with the IR Blaster.

Of course, if you are willing to settle for basic cable (or over-the-air broadcast TV with a rabbit-ears antenna), then you can simply hook up the cable (or the rabbit-ears antenna) to the TV Tuner card -- but you are limited to the basic cable channel coverage of 125 channels (or the lesser number of channels with over-the-air broadcast TV) which is not what a bunch of people with digital cable / satellite TV want.

Please note although audio-video enthusiasts have been using IR Blasters with their component systems to control different boxes for years, the use of the IR Blaster with PC-based TV systems is very new with regard to major consumer PC products -- really within the last year or so which explains the lack of IR Blasters being bundled with almost all TV Tuner cards except for the Creative Video Blaster Digital VCR card and what you may find with the newly released Media Center PCs. It is now with the PC-TV users and the Home Theater PC users who are in increasing numbers beginning to demand a similar capability. So, expect more IR Blaster-compatible products for TV Tuner cards to begin coming out onto the marketplace in the near future. For my other discussions about the IR Blaster: (1) click here to see what the IR Blaster sensor cable looks like for the Creative Video Blaster Digital VCR card (you can also click here for info about the card and building your own PC-TV PVR system); (2) click here for information on cable and satellite boxes that are compatible with the IR Blaster for the Creative Video Blaster Digital VCR card; and (3) click here for other discussion about adding more capacity to PC-TV PVR systems including more discussion about the IR Blaster and accessing the hundreds of channels on digital cable boxes and digital satellite boxes.

Happy PC-TV Watching!
Ruel

P.S. Some people need to be reassured that Antenna TV watchers don't have to worry about boxes -- good old rabbit-ears antenna TV still works with TV Tuner cards. And most basic cable TV watchers don't have to worry about hooking up a box since many basic cable TV watchers are not required to hook up cable boxes to their TV sets. BUT for those basic cable TV watchers who are required to hook up a cable decoder box to a regular TV set, then those TV watchers may need to hook up the cable decoder box to the TV Tuner card even if those other "basic" cable TV services are for less than 125 channels. GENERAL RULE: If you need to hook up a box to your regular TV set, then you may need to hook up the box to your TV Tuner card.

NOTICE: Ruel provides many free links seen on these pages. If you buy anything, your purchases would be from a linked third-party website(s). The links are for your convenience since everyone asks for suggestions about products. The products should come with their own guarantees and warranties. As for return policies, the various online vendors who are linked should have return policies -- look at the specific vendor information carefully and decide for yourself what card, device, or other product you may want to get.