Let's be clear right up front, we're not asking you how much you
want to pay because we already know the answer; as little as possible. We want to know, what is
the most you would pay. Now before you answer, lets put this into perspective. A dual tuner
TiVo HD costs $300 at retail (plus subscription), a
Moxi is $800 and the old ATI single CableCARD tuners were $300 -- so unlike the
Ceton tuner, you'd have to rent four CableCARDs instead of just one. So keeping all that in mind, what is the most you'd pay for a single PCI-E card that could turn your Windows 7 PC and Xbox 360 into the best premium content HD DVR today?
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
chasman@gmail.com @ Sep 14th 2009 12:00PM
I realize that most people will pick the low end here but i can't honestly say that I wouldn't be willing to be 600 for 4 tuners. I may be a rube but i paid 600 for my ps3 on launch day and i really can't say that having tuners for my entire house is any less of a value. I realize that 600 is hefty and would probably be at the high end but given the fact that a single tuner is over 200 bucks right now id much rather buy a 600 dollar 4 tuner card.
Gliff @ Sep 14th 2009 10:54PM
i think your right i picked 500 tho i may be willing to go to about 550. this isn't for a PC under your tv its for a media server than you access with extenders tho it would be cool if you could access it with other media center PCs
Fanfoot @ Sep 15th 2009 12:05AM
Extenders? You mean those things all the vendors are dropping left and right? Linksys, HP, Niveus, D-Link, Samsung have all dropped their Windows Media Center extenders recently. Sure maybe they'll do a new version with RVU support in a couple of years. Maybe. Or maybe not. Which basically means the only option you've got for this right now is an XBox 360. Which is loud and expensive. Buy a few for your house and you can virtually guarantee one of them will be in the repair shop at any given time. Sure, I'd tolerate that from a game console, but from you DVR? I don't think so. I don't want more than one of these in my house really.
Neil @ Sep 14th 2009 1:09PM
Dude, whats with the jump from $50 to $300? I would pay between $150 - $200 on the spot. Any other price required too much justification and drama at home.
Jonny561201 @ Sep 14th 2009 1:10PM
The reason the price jumps from $50 to $300 is because Centon's CEO said at CEDIA that the price range will be between $300-$600. Saying you would like it for $50 is pretty much saying you wont get it because it is above your price range. There is no way this will cost around $200 at the launch of the product. A Hauppage 2250 cost around $200 when first released and it wasnt a quad cable card tuner only a dual QAM tuner.
Once economies of scale kick in it could be possible to see prices drop considerable, but that wont be for quite a few months after the launch.
Ben @ Sep 14th 2009 1:12PM
Jonny's got it exactly right. I put that in as a trap to trick anyone who'd just put the cheapest no matter how cheap it is. These people don't even count so I didn't want them all piling in on the 300 option.
Prey521 @ Sep 14th 2009 3:05PM
You to, my friend, need to grow a pair.
Foxer @ Sep 14th 2009 12:05PM
I'd probably pay $300, but It'd be a hard sell for the wife. While it may be worth more than that, I don't think I can do it.
What I'm more interested in is the 2 tuner card, as I'm assuming that will be cheaper. I'm hoping that'll be around $200, and I'll be all over that.
Prey521 @ Sep 14th 2009 3:02PM
Hard sell with the wife? Grow a pair my friend....grow a pair!
Wes @ Sep 14th 2009 5:49PM
The problem is he already has a pair...and wants to use it.
yaksplat1 @ Sep 14th 2009 12:10PM
By choosing 300, i really mean 200. But that wasn't an option.
Justin @ Sep 14th 2009 12:12PM
I would pay $350 or so. Beyond that, it will become pretty difficult to justify.
yaksplat1 @ Sep 14th 2009 12:12PM
And after reading the comments, it looks like i'm not the only one who thinks this.
PuBeLeSs @ Sep 14th 2009 12:17PM
what i dont understand is how does one cable line allow you 4 HD streams? i mean i dont really know anything about cable, but man thats amazing.
Aesculapius @ Sep 14th 2009 12:48PM
Unless the cable is SDV (switched digital video), then all the channels are flowing through the cable at the same time. You simply have 4 different tuners pick out the frequency of the channels you want.
It is amazing how much bandwidth a coax cable can handle.
Wes @ Sep 14th 2009 5:58PM
Its like a Radio. I might choose to listen to 105.7 and I'm hearing 105.7, but there are still ten to twenty other radio stations in my area that still exist. Even though I'm not listening to them, the signal is sent out just the same. If I had the radio in my car and two portable radios, I could receive three stations at once. It would be hard to follow but technology wise its easily done.
Cable's broadcasting every station your eligible to receive at the same time. A quad HDTV tuner has four receving chips or four 'radios' if you will. The four 'radios' lets your computer listen to four different stations(channels) at once. So you could record three channels while watching a fourth.
lindsaypace @ Sep 14th 2009 12:25PM
Since it will be using my hard drive I say 299.99
Rob @ Sep 14th 2009 12:21PM
I would pay the same as I would pay for a high-end ATI/NVidia graphics card.
Wes @ Sep 14th 2009 6:02PM
Good point. The 5870 from ATI. Aka the new generation is suppose to be just around the corner for similar prices as those in the poll.
David S @ Sep 14th 2009 12:25PM
Right now you can grab the Hauppauge PVR 1800 (PCI-Express dual non-cablecard tuner) for $100. Given the "premium" of CableCard and niche status of this tuner and the market it appeals to, I would find $300 or $350 to be "fair". But at $351 and above, I'd consider more price competitive alternatives like the single CableCard tuners coming from other partners.
Karl Hintz @ Sep 14th 2009 12:31PM
Wouldn't sneeze at $400. $500 might give me a case of the sniffles, but I'd still get it the day it comes out.
arcasinky @ Sep 14th 2009 12:32PM
I'd have difficulty justifying anything over $300 regardless of how many tuners it supported. If they were on the shelves today, I doubt I'd pay more than a $50 premium over a 2-channel card and probably not more than $200-250 in any case.
My reasoning: my current DVR (a craptastic Motorola 6416) has two tuners. The only scheduling problems I've ever run into were where two shows were scheduled while I was currently watching a third channel. That happens maybe three or four times a year. I don't think I've ever run into a situation where three or more shows were scheduled at the same time causing one to get missed.
So basically, the 3rd tuner would get used maybe once every 4 months while the 4th tuner would go unused entirely. Hard to justify paying a premium for that.
The reason I haven't been motivated to set up an HTPC was the inability to record cable channels without jumping through hoops. If I'm going to go through the trouble, I want it to integrate -all- of my media, not just 80%. Now that these cards are available, that changes and I can envision a nice setup where the HTPC organizes everything. I figure I'm willing to tack on $200 to the price of building an HTPC for this ability. Whether that includes 2 tuners or 20 is largely of no consequence to me.
dwickline1 @ Sep 14th 2009 12:33PM
I said picked $400 because thats tottaly the max that i would pay and if the put the price that high i think they will sell alot less than if they put the price down around $200 they would fly out the i think alot more people would be interested in trying MCE because lets be serious if you only have 1 or 2 tv's then the price not to bad but what if you have 5 now you to buy 4 more xbox's at $200 or go with the linksys if you can still find them its still expensive but awesome.
neiltoe @ Sep 14th 2009 12:34PM
$100 per tuner (4 tuners = $400) seems fair market value to me.
But as they are introducing a new product they will expect a premium. So I will have to wait for more competition to get the price where I want it. Unfortunately with these are the sort of products only a few people will see a value in them and waiting sometimes means the product fades to death. Honestly they should consider going low with the quad tuner and rape us with the 6 tuner configuration. Why because they have a little piece of software that is required to go along with that hardware to allow such a configuration. This little bit of extra will give them nice leverage to pay to play game.
kcmurphy88 @ Sep 14th 2009 12:36PM
Zero.
I have DirecTV and my 3rd and 4th tuners (and second DVR) cost me all of $5/month. The DVR cost $99 when I got it. Sure, I have to pay the DirecTV subscription, but I'd have to pay that to cable, too.
brennok @ Sep 14th 2009 3:35PM
Well except cable you would only pay that fee once for 4 tuners versus a $99-$199 lease fee on top of the $5 fee per receiver to use the service you already pay for.
jeremyturnley @ Sep 14th 2009 12:52PM
$100 per tuner, no more. I'd rather pay less (200-300 being much more ideal), but that's the top figure.
aeroderek @ Sep 14th 2009 1:14PM
I agree, $100 per tuner is about right. That said I don't see myself using more than 2 but if you do, go for it. I talked to the FiOS online chat yesterday and they said the cablecard rental is 2.99/mo but you also have to rent a 3.99/mo tuning adapter and you dont get HD. Not that I really believe the online chat guy to be an expert but this is ridiculous. My HD STB has a cablecard (locked) in it and it obviously supports HD, VOD, guide, etc. Ideally I could get a cablecard tuner for my HTPC, rent the card for $3/mo, and get rid of my $10/mo STB. Then I would even consider paying more for the tuner card... Ok all of that rant leads to this point: If the software is good and the cable companies fully support it then this obviously has tremendous value. Otherwise I'd be paying a lot of money for a risk that the thing would even work...and that it doesnt get disabled next year like my old tuner did as channels go digital.
Ben @ Sep 14th 2009 1:17PM
FiOS doesn't even use SDV which means they don't have Tuning Adapters. I do pay $4 a month for the CableCARD rental though.
Fanfoot @ Sep 15th 2009 12:38AM
Agree that FiOS doesn't use SDV so that whole tuning adapter thing was Bogus.
That said, Time Warner subscribers WILL need a tuning adapter if they want to record all their shows, since they're rolling out SDV quite agressively across their markets. And from what I've heard the whole tuning adapter thing on Tivos has been a bit of a nightmare, with the tuning adapters needing to be rebooted regularly etc etc. So much for an automated setup.
And of course Microsoft is still protecting content (as they're required) from premium cable channels like Showtime and HBO, so you won't be able to move those shows around.
I'd balance all of that into the equation when you consider how much this is worth to you.
aworkman @ Sep 14th 2009 2:36PM
If it supported MythTV/Linux I would pay $400.
I don't want some dedicated windows box to record TV. I have 4TB of storage in the main Linux rig where all music/movies/tv is stored but am currently limited to clearQAM recordings. Luckily a majority of the shows I watch are on locals, but it would be nice to record some of the HD shows from Discovery/SciFi.
Schwinn @ Sep 15th 2009 8:33AM
Totally agree. I don't trust Windows to let me keep my recordings or even make them in the first place (read: copyonce/copyright flags). If it can't run on Linux where I am guaranteed to get the stream every time, then I don't want it.
I know some MCE fans will say I'm (we're) just being a pain about Linux, but the fact is, there have been more than a few occasions where these flags have locked away content that we should have already had access to... and that's during a time when the studios (supposedly) aren't using the flags at all. Chalk it up to mistakes for now, but when they finally turn on their flagging, then this card becomes more and more useless. IMO, that's how the industry plans to kill the DVR... or make you pay through the nose for it - get you hooked on it now, while content is free, then start locking it down and paying a premium for it.
jeremyturnley @ Sep 14th 2009 1:04PM
Oh, one thing that needs to be mentioned here, to the people saying that they never run into conflicts with two tuners - that's correct for 95% of people, but that's not the intention of having four. Four tuners is so you can record shows, while you watch live feeds via extenders/HTPCs located elsewhere in your home.
For example, the kids can watch cartoons on one TV via an Xbox 360, you can watch the PPV game on the big screen (assuming you have the SDV adapter and your cable co supports it), and you can still record two prime time shows for the wife.
b84fish @ Sep 14th 2009 1:11PM
I would pay $400 for this easy. My justification. A singe cable card tuner right now costs you at least $200 on eBay. A HDHomeRun sets you back another ~$150. And toss in an analog tuner for another few bucks. This is what I have currently in my system. I could probably get $300 pretty easy if I sold my existing tuners. So that would be only $100 out of my pocket to upgrade to 4 cable card tuners. So $400 would be pretty easy to part with to get one of these guys.
Matt @ Sep 14th 2009 1:18PM
$50 is a bit on the high end for me. I would probably be putting it in a $500 - $700 computer making the 2xTiVo option a better deal.
jeremyturnley @ Sep 14th 2009 1:27PM
I have two Tivo HDs now, and I love them (apart for how hard it is to watch content on one from the other). The problem with Tivo is the fees. $18 a month for two box fees, plus $20 a month for 4 cablecards (since I could not for the life of me get the things to work with M-Cards). $40 a month adds up to $400 in no time.
WMC being a no-fee solution, plus only needing only one cablecard is a real attraction.
Fanfoot @ Sep 15th 2009 12:42AM
@jeremyturnley: Huh. I have a couple of Tivo HD units on Comcast and both are working with M-Cards just fine. And I'm pretty sure my rental fees are only $2.95 for each of them...
If you can't get your Tivo HD units to work with an M-Card, which could easily be either your installers fault, or an issue with your cable provider, or ... why would you assume a Windows solution would work better?
jeremyturnley @ Sep 15th 2009 1:52PM
I spent nearly a month talking to various people at the local cable company and trying various m-cards (motorola branded) that they provided, and finally just asked them to send me s-cards, which worked from the moment I stuck them in. I was assured that they got the m-cards working on every other piece of equipment they had tried (which may be a lie, they lied to me a LOT during that month).
And yeah, they charge $5 each, the same price they charge for each STB.
You make a good point that I may not have any better luck with the OCUR tuner, but I am paying too much per month to not give it a try when they become available - I'm paying nearly half as much a month for card rentals and Tivo fees as I am for the cable itself.
Jason @ Sep 14th 2009 1:17PM
$99.
And when they finally come down to that price, all of you who would gladly pay hundreds more can send me the extra dough you would've paid.
Dana @ Sep 14th 2009 1:23PM
I think ~$350 is the right price here. It doesn't take 2X the price to add a second tuner, etc, so it should not be 4X the price of a single tuner. The other part of the equation is that Ceton needs to sell many of these and get their name out there.
AndyS @ Sep 14th 2009 1:23PM
I picked $400, but I did that with the assumption that the loosening of DRM on a lot of the recordings allows for good flexibility (transcoding/reencoding for other devices, commercial skip, etc).
If that's still restricted too much, my price goes down. My real price is $350 or so, but I might go to $400.
I think $299 might be the sweet spot. And I think a 2 tuner card at $200 for the mainstream who are not current MC users and who are interested by all this hype the CabelCard/Dish press out of Cedia has created.
Fanfoot @ Sep 15th 2009 12:44AM
I assume the content that is locked down by Tivo based on the "Do Not Copy" bits in the broadcast feed will be similarly locked down by M/S (yes they said as much in their press). Which means most stuff will be unprotected, but EVERYTHING from Showtime, HBO, Cinemax etc will be locked down.
Charles @ Sep 14th 2009 1:29PM
$150-200 seems like fair market value.
Evan @ Sep 14th 2009 1:34PM
You expect me to pay $300+ for a tuner (plus around $100 a month for cable service) when my PC can already receive Hulu, Netflix, etc on the built-in network hardware?
brennok @ Sep 14th 2009 3:36PM
Try 4 tuners not one hence the quad part.
JayC @ Sep 14th 2009 1:48PM
why no $150, $200 or $250 level?
Chris M @ Sep 14th 2009 1:49PM
$400 seems like a good sweet spot for a 4 tuner card. I think there are a couple different camps here though who see things a bit differently. The whole house DVR camp who want to be able to record a couple shows while having live TV playing on extenders in a couple other rooms. And the single TV setup camp who plan to use their WMC rig as a single cable box replacement. For most of them 4 tuners is overkill.
My suggestion then is for Ceton to release a cheaper 2 tuner card to satisfy the single box camp. Price that one at $230 or so. Now, you're down into the $200 territory that a lot of people don't want to exceed but not high enough to completely discourage them. If they wanted more tuners down the road they could always add another 2 tuner card. Yes, it would cost more overall but it would make financial sense for some people to take this approach.
Those prices give you about a 12-18 month break even point over STB rental. Anything less than 12 is not really reasonable I think, and anything much over 18 would be hard for a lot of people to justify.
Jim @ Sep 14th 2009 2:00PM
I would be willing to pay up to $400, but a product like this really should be priced under $200. This will never amount to more than a niche market with these ridiculous prices.
If we had quad tuner cablecard cards available in the $200 range with full featured extenders available in the $100-150 price range, I would be singing Media Center's praises from the roof. With the high cost of entry AND the hassle getting everything setup only diehards are going to be interested...
Jonny561201 @ Sep 14th 2009 2:31PM
I agree with you to a point. There is a high cost of entry associated with media center, but that is mostly indicative of the computer under the tv solution. Yes I admit that when I setup my media center I put it in a small form factor case, but where this solution really shines is the extender model. If you can use any old computer in your house as a backend and stream to the extender then the cost of entry is not nearly as high since you already had the majority of the hardware purchased for a different use. This would mean your cost of entry would most likely be (assuming Home Premium) $300-$400 plus the cost of an extender. If you already own Xbox 360's then you are even further ahead in the game.
I agree that the price point for the average consumer is considerably lower than the enthusiast, which hampers wide spread acceptance. Media Center may be expensive, but that is the price some of us pay for the best multi-room/unified media platform.
Ghoti @ Sep 14th 2009 2:40PM
I think that $300 is reasonable, but I want it to be able to handle 6 streams (which is what the m-cards are capable of, from what I've read at least).
And to be honest, all the Ceton card is doing is communicating with the Cablecard to tell it which tuner to tune where, and streaming a given tuner to your hard drive. They should sell it for a fixed price with the built-in capability to tune "up to" 6 tuners. That way, if you only needed 2 currently, you could configure your system that way, or you could do 6, whatever you want.