cableCARD

[graanco]

I am cheap and hate giving $$ to a company because people are just.. ugh!! Anyways... I am getting rid of the DVR from my cable provider and just want to use my Mac mini as a PVR.

Now here is the issue, my cable company encrypt the digital signal and doesn't offer any analog signal at all. So, I would need my Mac to have the ability to use a cableCard from my cable provider.

So... Has anyone figured out a way to do any of this? How would I connect a cableCARD to the Mac mini??

This would make my life that much better and save me 20$ a month in costs.

 

[unlimitedx0]

I am cheap and hate giving $$ to a company because people are just.. ugh!! Anyways... I am getting rid of the DVR from my cable provider and just want to use my Mac mini as a PVR.

Now here is the issue, my cable company encrypt the digital signal and doesn't offer any analog signal at all. So, I would need my Mac to have the ability to use a cableCard from my cable provider.

So... Has anyone figured out a way to do any of this? How would I connect a cableCARD to the Mac mini??

This would make my life that much better and save me 20$ a month in costs.

You need to purchase a tuner ... such as SiliconDust HDHomeRun Prime. I bought mine on Amazon. Link to HDHomeRun Prime's Mac Support Community.

You can run HDHomeRun on Mac...and watch / record shows on the encrypted channels using VLC. But I struggled getting HDHomeRun to work with a Mac + NAS. There are options to use MythTV (open source program). But there's a lot of behind the scenes coding & use of MySQL server (such as getting the channel lineup to match Verizon).

The great thing about the Prime model is you can watch & record up to 3 channels at a time.

Since I'm not very technical, I had issues getting MythTV to run (in particular, scheduling shows) so I gave up and I installed Windoze so I can use Windows Media Center. WMC does everything, from giving you the TV guide listings, to scheduling recordings. WMC seems to be the only easy to use program that allows you to record encrypted channels. I was able to find a cheap license for Windows 8.1 Pro on CL. Then bought WMC for $9.99. Windows 7 offers WMC for free.

 

[mcnallym]

From what I can gather then only really Windows Media Centre with good support for CableCard.

MythTV/Mediaportal and the like will only work with content marked 'copy freely' you won't get DRM broadcasts to view/record.

Whilst the HDHomeRun Prime can record this then no support for the copy-protected content in the software.

If want to do this then probably best to look at a WMC system,

 

[cosolin]

Cable Card w/ HDHomerun Prime

So, I just got this all to work with a Mac.

Here's the setup.

1. Mac Mini (I have 2010 Server version) connected to an HDHomerun Prime.
2. Bootcamp mini into Windows 7, run HDHomerun software to initiate and pair the cablecard wtih your local cable company. Pain in the ass. CAN NOT DO THIS WITH MAC EYETV SOFTWARE.
3. Verify it's all working on the PC side, view channels.
4. Boot back into mac, run eyetv (I'm running v. 3.something) set up as a new device, HDHomerun. There is no option for the Prime on the mac side. You'll only see two tuners.
5. Back in business.