Wednesday, July 21, 2010

SiliconDust HDHR CableCard Might Sort of Work with MythTV SageTV Others

How’s that for a squishy headline!  Making the headlines pop obviously isn’t one of my strengths, but I am pretty good a picking up on “behind the fold” Digital Media news stories like this.  According to one of the SiliconDust employees their coming-soon HDHR Prime, the 3-Tuner CableCard device might have the ability to work on non-Microsoft MediaCenter software including MythTV & SageTV.

Here’s what Nick – a SiliconDust employee had to say:

The video stream for copy-freely content is RTP - same the the HDHomeRun.
There is a ECR under review that would enable us to stream copy-freely content without requiring DRM registration. This will enable streaming to third-party applications.
Internally we use MythTV as part of our QA testing.
Nick

I’m told by someone who knows more about these things that this ECR Nick is speaking of is probably an “engineering change recommendation.”  It seems that SiliconDust might be working with CableLabs on their new HDHR CableCard device that so they can support sending “copy freely” content to devices without DRM certificates.

Is this good news for SageTV, MythTV and other HTPC software?  Yes.  Is it the silver bullet CableCard support we are looking for?  No.  Because we are only talking about “Copy Freely” programming which is pretty rare on the big cable company systems like Time Warner.  It will likely give you much of the same programming you can get with Clear QAM tuners like the existing HDHomeRun tuners.  Still, it’s great to see SiliconDust working to get as much out of the device as they can – and especially recognizing those non-Microsoft HTPCs out there.

Read the forum thread at SiliconDust

thanks to Jakesty for the tip!