Ceton Corporation has announced the launch of the Ceton Digital Cable Quad-Tuner card, which it bills as the word's first four-tuner digital cable solution for Windows 7 PC's with Windows Media Center.
Larry Larsen of Microsoft's Channel 9 interviews Ceton CEO Gary Hammer at CES. "This PCIe card will let you install a CableCard in your PC and record up to four HD channels at once. At one booth at CES, they were running two of these cards in one PC, and who wouldn't want to record 8 HD channels at the same time? I met up with Gary Hammer, the President and CEO of Ceton Corporation at CES and asked him some questions about their new TV Tuner."
Sports fans and movie buffs, get your browsers ready. Working with several cable providers, Kirkland, Washington’s own CETON Corp is on the cusp of launching the first HDTV capable Tuner Card that can simultaneously access and record up to 4 HD channels at once. There are more talks to include many of your favorite online movie outlets like Netflix to get optimal use from their unnamed “Quad Tuner Card”. This effectively gives you the best of both worlds: Internet and TV Service.
We make it no secret that our favorite video podcast is HD Nation on Revision3, so you can imagine how honored we were to be invited on to record a few segments on the CES 2010 episode, which included the new Ceton and Silicon Dust CableCARD tuners.
Ceton, a startup based in the Seattle area, has a cable TV card that can turn Windows Media Center-enabled PCs into centralized video hubs capable of shuttling video around the home to other TVs and displays, and all but eliminate the need for traditional digital cable boxes. Ceton says its product, the Digital Cable Quad-Tuner, can play back or record four simultaneous, high-definition TV channels when combined with one multi-stream CableCARD and a single RF cable connection.
Last Wednesday night, on the eve of the Consumer Electronics Show, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, tucked a small remark into a gadget-y keynote. And if you work in multichannel video, you're going to need to know about it. Soon. He said this (paraphrased): By March, consumers will be able to purchase, at retail, a gizmo that turns a Windows 7-based PC into a mambo-box, capable of displaying or recording four scrambled HD channels on as many HDTV screens. In other words, it shares a CableCard across four channels. This applies to new PCs with Windows7, as well as existing PCs, upgrading to Win7.
Listen to hosts Ben Drawbaugh and Richard Lawler discuss what they saw at CES, including hands-on with the Ceton Digital Cable Quad-Tuner card (Ceton starts at time stamp 23:56).
We caught up with Gary Hammer from Ceton this morning and snapped some pictures of the low profile quad CableCARD tuner that will be the first version to reach consumers. The card includes a little RG6 dongle so that it'll fit in either a full or low profile PCI-E slot and will be available late in the first quarter for $399.
Quick interview with Ceton's Jeremy Hammer at CES 2010. The CableCARD tuner provides four streams of HD, and is expected to reach the market on 3.31.10 for $399.
Discussion with Microsoft at CES 2010 about new HD tuners for Windows 7 Media Center including the Ceton Quad HD CableCard Tuner. By Neil Berman for theONbutton.