Can cable TV be captured or is it scrambled?

[catback]

Hi,

I'm a big fan of old music videos. My cable provider (Comcast Cable near the Philadelphia area)has VH1 Classic and MTV which occasionally airs blocks of old music videos.

I would like to capture these to my PC but I'm not sure if it's as simple as connecting the coax cable to my PC's video card coax input. I have an ATI All-in-Wonder 128 Pro card which has a built in TV tuner. I know I can capture free TV using a rabbit ear antennae when it's connected to my card. However, I'm not sure if the cable company's signal is scrambled in any way.

Anyone experienced with this kind of capture?

[ses]

Regards from Sweden, Catback,
Here in Sweden, we still have to use decoders for cable TV. When I lived in Chicago, I had a direct line to the TV from the cable conection.
What I have done with my MSI card, which is also an all in one type is exactly that. I ran the signal which runs from the cable box to the TV directly into the video card input. Then I ran a channel search in my capture program (iuVCR) to find the RF output channel for the decoder and I was able to use the decoder remote to change channels.
If you aren't using a decoder, try running your cable line into a conventional VCR and running the output signal from there into your video input at your card, then you could use the video remote for channel changing. I havn't tried it as I didn't need to but it seems like it should work. With any cable system, if one has a VCR, the cable line goes into the VCR first anyway. That was the same in the States and here. Go Cubs!
Good luck

[Dimmer]

If you can tape your cable content on a regular VCR, it means it's not copy-protected. First try to plug your cable directly to RF input. I know that every TV set has a setting cable/antenna, so probably you should have a similar setting in ATI software. If for some reason that won't work, you can always run your signal through VCR and capture its RF output or better yet Line Out if you have composite input on your card.

[rfmmars]

You shouldn't have any problem, if it looks ok on your TV, I am sure it will fine for capture.

Richard

[jggimi]

Your cable box's RF-out signal will normally be an unused channel that your TV is tuned to, such as Channel 3 or 4. You should be able to use this without trouble.

However, if possible, use a higher quality signal. My Comcast digital cable boxes can produce composite video and stereo audio via RCA connectors. While I can't get digital audio or digital video signals out of these boxes, the analog signal quality from the RCA connectors is significantly better than trying to capture the RF signal. Not only is there loss converting to RF in the cable box, and loss converting back from RF using the the tuner on the capture card, but there is a much higher likelihood of signal degradation due to interference.