[Macworld]

Post your comments for Boxee Live TV Tuner adds over-the-air TV to Boxee Box here

[scottmyers]

If I have cable can this be the digital tuner? Like, say, iTV?

[DominikHoffmann]

My TV is a projector without coaxial antenna input. Thinking about digital over-the-air TV only months after the FCC shut down analog broadcast TV, I had the hardest time finding a stand-alone digital TV tuner. The vast majority of them had been snapped up under the government's program giving them away for free, and the market for them had disappeared, because all TVs sold since then had them built in.

I know that with this situation I am in a small market niche, but would be a potential customer. Not having a Boxee Box, however, but an Apple TV, I would prefer an Apple device. I would love to chuck the digital tuner, which is clunky and has a clunky user interface. Accessing over-the-air digital TV through the Apple TV would be cool.

[digler26]

 scottmyers, on 22 June 2012 - 11:38 AM, said:

If I have cable can this be the digital tuner? Like, say, iTV?

Most likely No. They scramble the channels at most companies.

[zarmanto]

 scottmyers, on 22 June 2012 - 11:38 AM, said:

If I have cable can this be the digital tuner? Like, say, iTV?

Maybe, but it depends upon several factors. Aesthetically, the plastic case design of this tuner appears to be identical to certain models of EyeTV and Hauppauge tuners, which means that it almost certainly supports Clear Qam; some (but not all) cable companies broadcast some (but not all) of their channels using Clear Qam. (Likely, if it does work then you'll only get the basic channels... no premium content.)

[zarmanto]

 DominikHoffmann, on 22 June 2012 - 11:41 AM, said:

... Not having a Boxee Box, however, but an Apple TV, I would prefer an Apple device. ...

Plugging something into the AppleTV in this fashion would indeed be cool. Since Apple doesn't have anything like that yet, you could consider mirroring my setup instead: I have a Mac connected to my home theater projector, with a couple of USB tuners plugged into it, and EyeTV DVR software running the show... both figuratively and literally. (Two tuners means I can watch and/or record up to two channels at once, much like most cable DVR systems.) It is obviously quite a bit more pricey to dedicate a computer to this task... but it offers a myriad of other viewing opportunities which I personally think makes it worth the investment.

This post has been edited by zarmanto: 22 June 2012 - 03:15 PM

[iPadRulezthe39netpwrq]

 digler26, on 22 June 2012 - 01:44 PM, said:

 scottmyers, on 22 June 2012 - 11:38 AM, said:

If I have cable can this be the digital tuner? Like, say, iTV?

Most likely No. They scramble the channels at most companies.

On my TimeWarnerCable connection, I can just take the raw cable feed and hook it up to my TV and watch dozens of OTA TV channels without the cable box. There's definitely an unscrambled signal available. There might be some law that forces them to run a few unscrambled channels.

[JoelBernsen]

 iPadRulezthe39netpwrq, on 22 June 2012 - 04:36 PM, said:

 digler26, on 22 June 2012 - 01:44 PM, said:

 scottmyers, on 22 June 2012 - 11:38 AM, said:

If I have cable can this be the digital tuner? Like, say, iTV?

Most likely No. They scramble the channels at most companies.

On my TimeWarnerCable connection, I can just take the raw cable feed and hook it up to my TV and watch dozens of OTA TV channels without the cable box. There's definitely an unscrambled signal available. There might be some law that forces them to run a few unscrambled channels.

He's absolutely right. I live in the DFW area in TX, and have Verizon FiOS (which I f*****g love, btw). In my attempt to cut costs, I replaced one of my two Verizon STB's with the Boxee Live TV tuner (already bought the Boxee last year when they lowered the price). I was planning on using an antennae but to my surprise was able to get a couple dozen OTA channels just by plugging my existing coax into the Boxee Live TV adapter. Picture looks great, and the well designed guide gives me all the programming info I need. For $50 this is a great replacement for that STB, which was costing me $20 a month(!).

Only thing that could make it better would be the option to use an external HD to turn Boxee into a true DVR. Maybe in v2.0?