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CableCARD™ and Digital Cable FAQ

Digital Cable Tuner Setup for Windows Media Center in Windows Vista – A Set-by-Step Guide for Professional Technicians (pdf)

Dell XPS Desktop Forum

I finally decided to buy a Dell XPS 420 desktop computer this weekend.  Dell is running a great deal for Mother’s Day; $350 off XPS 420 systems.  I’m not a mother, but who cares right?  I can get the configuration that I want cheaper than I can get with my Employee Purchase Program discount mainly because I don’t have to take the 3 year warranty on the Mother’s Day deal.

This system is configured with the ATI TV Wonder Digital Cable Tuner.  I really want to start recording digital/HD TV content including Premium stations with Windows Vista Media Center.  With my current system I’m only able to record the analog stations and the quality leaves a lot to be desired on a 46″ LCD HD TV.

I went down to Charter Cable yesterday to talk to them about Cable Cards.  They were not very helpful.  Both the woman at the front counter and the technician that I eventually talked to really couldn’t answer my questions.  The reason is that they haven’t hooked up that many cable cards in PCs before.  They did say that I would be able to get the digital/HD and premium stations.  But, I could have a problem with voltage feedback into the cable lines.  After further questioning this could be an issue with any TV tuner card hooked up with a coax to the cable company.

Here’s my configuration:

• Intel® Core™ 2 Quad Processor Q9300 (6MB Cache,2.50GHz,1333FSB)
• Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium with Digital Cable Support
• 4GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 800MHz – 4 DIMMs
• Dell USB Enhanced Multimedia Keyboard
• 22 inch E228WFP Widescreen Digital Flat Panel
• Radeon ATI HD 2600 XT 256MB
• 750GB – 7200RPM, SATA 3.0Gb/s, 16MB Cache
• Dell Media Card Reader included in Dell Bluetooth Package
• Dell Optical USB Mouse
• Blu-ray Disc Combo (DVD+/-RW + BD-ROM)
• Integrated Sound Blaster®Audigy™ HD Software Edition
• Dell 19 in 1 Media Reader with Bluetooth
• 1Yr In-Home Service, Parts + Labor,24×7 Phone Support
• Single ATITV Wonder™Digital Cable Tuner with Remote
• McAfee SecurityCenter with anti-virus, anti-spyware, firewall, 24-months
• Adobe® Acrobat® Reader 8.1
• Included 3 GB DataSafe Online Backup for 1Yr
• No speakers (Speakers are required to hear audio from your system)
• No Productivity software pre-installed
• No Modem Requested

Windows Media Center is getting an update this week.   The October 2007 Cumulative Update for Media Center for Windows Vista resolves the following issues in addtion to the April and June 2007 fixes:

• Several issues that are related to the Media Center Extensibility Platform
• An issue that affects digital cable card components when you use Scientific Atlanta cable cards
• Interaction issues that occur between Media Center PC and Microsoft Xbox 360 when Xbox 360 is used as a Media Center Extender. 
• Autolaunch issues that occur with video CD (VCD) media 

Michael Dell announced at CES 2007 back in January that Dell would begin offering an XPS 410 “Dell Home Media Suite” that included the ATI TV Wonder Digital Cable Tuner which allows high definition (HD) content to be viewed and recorded with Windows Media Center.  After much delays and changes in the XPS 410 configuration and appearance, the ATI TV Wonder is now available on the high end XPS 410 models that also include blu-ray disk drives.

The ATI TV Wonder Digital Cable Tuner supports CableCard which allows HD, digital and premium cable TV content to be viewed or recorded without a set-top box.