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Access Cable TV on computer without TV tuner card

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by a former member

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Setup: I am Comcast and subscribe to both Cable TV and internet services. I watch cable without a cable box and have a motorola cable modem for internet.

Question: I want to watch my cable (and record if possible) from my computer without having to split the cable and purchase a TV Tunner card. Is there any way to download a special program or get my enternet browser to view the cable stations coming into my modem?

thanks,
Steve

6 replies

by Former member

Clarifications

by thechas

I doubt that you can capture any TV feeds with your cable modem unless someone has devised a hardware hack for the modem.

A cable modem is designed to work on a data feed signal that is at a specific frequency band on the cable. The TV feeds are on different frequencies.

Unless I am wrong, as far as splitting the cable line, all you would need would be a splitter on the line that feeds the cable modem. Then feed 1 side to the modem and the other side to the tuner card or USB tuner.

Of course, adding a second tuner may violate your cable agreement. So, you need to check that first.

Chas

by Former member

Since a cable box is not necessary, does there have to be a hardware (physical tuner) to receive and display the seperate stations are can that be done with software?

by thechas

Even for digital cable, you do need a tuner of some sort before you can decode the data for the individual channels.

In order to get the bandwidth necessary for all of the signals on the cable, each signal rides on a modulated RF carrier.

The analog cable channels are ride on frequencies that have been defined for years.

In the gaps between or above the analog signal ranges are both the cable Internet and the digital TV feed.

At a minimum, a tuner / modem needs to demodulate the RF signal and extract the data stream.

Once the signal is demodulated, then you can use software to view just the data you want.

I picked up a USB tuner stick at Fry's a few months back for under $60. As I don't have cable, I cannot tell you how well it works with cable. I can tell you that it works well with both analog and digital broadcast TV. The only negative is that it is power hungry and runs a bit warm.

Chas

by mjd420nova

The only way to get the TV signals into a PC without a tuner card would be off of the TV itself using the composite video output or the S-video cable if your TV has them. Analog cable signals are for the most part on the regular channels but there are lots of signals inbetween them too. Digital TV signals are not accessable by any boxes you can buy as the actual digital signals are propietory and can only be descrambled by the cable companies boxes. A tuner card would only give you acess to normal analog channels and a "block converter" box would be required to move them up into the UHF range so your tuner could access all of them.

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