miniboxes and HTPC

This information is opposite from that which the Cox representative presented.  Do you have a link to confirm your information?  The Cox woman could provide no link.

I don't have a link but 1st hand experience.  I have 2 TVs that were connected directly to the cable with QAM digital tuners.  I used to get all the ClearQAM channels directly off the cable.  Since the conversion to digital, I get nothing without a minibox or cablecard.  All channels are encrypted.  I don't know who told you a digital tuner will work but they are wrong unless it supports a cablecard.

Thanks for the answer.  So, Cox is charging PER TV tuner, now.  Next they will charge internet PER PC in your home and PER PHONE.

It seems my answer is get the digital tuner card for the HTPC with a digital antenna to record the TV.  Since we have only basic cable, this will be a non-issue.  It will be funny to go back to having rabbit ears.

Look at the HDHomeRun Prime from Silicon Dust.  It sports 3 tuners and uses a cablecard.  So, no, you are not paying per tuner but per device.  With this you can use 3 tuners with 1 cablecard.

Alan, I've looked up the SiliconDust device and it looks good.  If I read this correctly, I can actually record *3* channels at once.  The Hauppauge tuner card in our PC has encoding built in so it does not impact the CPU of the PC.  As such, we can watch one show and record 2 at the same time.  Do you know much about the Homerun Prime?  Does it encode the video for recording before it gets to the PC, so the software on the PC just copies it to the hard drive?  Or will it need to encode or 3 shows at the same time using the CPU? While the HTPC has a dual CPU, it's not that powerful.

I agree that an HDHomerun Prime with a cablecard is the best solution. I just recently got one set up (A bit of trouble that ended up being because of the signal coming into my house. I have a whole separate thread on here about that).  

My area hasn't made the all-digital switch yet (I think it's in July), but the tech who came out to help me fix my problem assured me the cablecard would work just as one of those mini-boxes do after the switch. I don't know all about your setup, but a great thing about the HDHomerun Prime is that, since it connects to your network and not directly to the computer, its 3 tuners are available to any PC in your house (where a minibox is only good for one TV).

I only have starter cable, but I wanted to get what few cable channels I had in HD. The cablecard in the HDHomerun does that. But you HAVE to use Windows Media Center to get any encrypted channels. So if you use some other HTPC software, you'd be out of luck unless you switch to WMC. 

I'm not entirely sure what the HDHomerun handles and what the PC handles. I do know that my main HTPC is a current-generation dual-core Pentium. My secondary HTPC is an old Core2Duo. They both play and record from the HDHomerun fine. I've also tested a Windows tablet (With current-generation Intel Atom processor), a Samsung Galaxy 4, and a generic cheap Android tablet with the HDHomerun. The bigger bottleneck with those seemed to be the wireless signal, not the device's processor. 

dawieg said:

I agree that an HDHomerun Prime with a cablecard is the best solution. I just recently got one set up (A bit of trouble that ended up being because of the signal coming into my house. I have a whole separate thread on here about that).  

I only have starter cable, but I wanted to get what few cable channels I had in HD. The cablecard in the HDHomerun does that. But you HAVE to use Windows Media Center to get any encrypted channels. So if you use some other HTPC software, you'd be out of l

Plus 2 for the SiliconDust HDHomeRun Prime 3 or wait to see if SD announces a 6 Tuner CableCARD device soon.

SiliconDust is developing their own DVR software solution that will run on a NAS or PC and not require Windows Media Center, and will support copy protected content (CCI=0x02)
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1275320038/hdhomerun-dvr-the-dvr-re-imagined

I selected Wees41 as the person who gave the direct and first answer.  However, I thank everyone who have contributed information.  The SiliconDust Homerun Prime device will do nicely.  While the DVR they are offering in the future would be very flexible, I have the HTPC sitting there right now and it does use Windows 7 Media Center for the recording.  I will simply have to get the Prime and reconfigure the Media Center to record from the 3 tuners in it instead of the 2 in the Hauppauge.

My wife is not really a Darth Vader, but she would have been upset at the loss of the recording as it was a birthday gift that she had requested.  She has always wanted TV in the kitchen while she cooks, so now we can put a laptop in there and she can watch.  Or, she can take her Galaxy S5 with her on the deck swing and watch her favorite shows in the cool of the evening.  This little device will allow a lot more viewing options for a one-time cost plus $24 a year for the cablecard.

Hopefully, in 2 years, when we will have to start paying $2 per month rental for the Cox Miniboxes, there will be a one-time purchase option for a type of minibox - from Cox or a third party vendor.  Or perhaps we will just have to use smart Blu-ray players to connect to the Prime with DLNA from our non-smart TVs.  Like Dawleg, we also have the starter package, so we are trying to cut costs with one-time purchases as much as possible.

Thanks again for all your help.