Saturday, June 29, 2013

Ceton InfiniTV 6 review: A six-tuner dynamo for Microsoft?s dying media center

Windows Media Center is dying a slow death. It?s not included with Windows 8, and it costs a hundred bucks to add it to the new OS. And now that the Xbox One has been revealed, Microsoft?s about-face when it comes to encouraging people to put PCs in their living rooms is less of a puzzle.

Third-party developers, on the other hand, haven?t given up on the home-theater PC concept. Ceton?s InfiniTV 6 is a good example: This digital tuner lets you watch and/or record up to six digital cable TV channels simultaneously.

Like Ceton?s earlier InfiniTV 4?a $199, four-tuner device that plugs into a PC?s USB port?its successor, the $299 InfiniTV 6, works with a digital cable TV subscription. It requires either a multistream CableCard (an M-Card) or an SDV tuning adapter, which your cable company is required to provide. Unfortunately, there is no equivalent for satellite TV subscribers. The InfiniTV 6, however, takes a page from SiliconDust?s HDHomeRun Prime: It plugs into your router, so that every PC on your network that?s running Windows Media Center can access live TV.

Ceton
The Ceton InfiniTV 6 can replace the set-top box you rent from your cable company (but you will need to obtain a CableCard from your service provider).

Let?s say you have a home-theater PC connected to the TV in your living room, a desktop in the den, and a couple of laptops scattered around the house: Each one can tap that generous pool of tuners. But keep in mind that your cable company?s largely uncompressed HD signals will eat up a lot of bandwidth. For a wireless network setup, you?ll need an 802.11ac router, the InfiniTV 6 will need a hard-wired ethernet cable connection (although you could try deploying an 802.11ac bridge nearby), and each PC would need to be outfitted with an 802.11ac adapter.

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Source: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2043158/ceton-infinitv-6-review-a-six-tuner-dynamo-for-microsoft-s-dying-media-center.html#tk.rss_all

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