can VCR software record from digital cable?

greetings all...i have a question. our household is about to get digital cable (AT&T). 1. is there a tv-tuner/capture card that can access the digital cable channels as it would regular cable? 2. can those channels be setup to be recorded using pc vcr software? 3. best card/software combo for this? all i want to do is record shows from digital cable onto my pc using a timed recording, then convert and toss onto dvd-r. suggestions? thanks e.

If you mean the premium channels, (HBO,Cinemax, etc.), then you can't capture them directly because they are encrypted. I have Time Warner, and they put all their digital channels accessible only by converter box. What I do to capture is use the S-video hookup and stereo cables. If I want to do a timed capture, then I use the timer record function of my box and make sure my system is on at the same time. I don't use the cable tuner of my card, because the cable out is hooked to my regular vcr. If you use the cable out, then you would have to tune it the same way you do the vcr, i.e. channel 3 or 4 to use the box. You'll have to try different cards and software and find what works best for your system. Myself, I use the ATI Radeon 8500 AIW DV and VirtualDub for my caps. True, I can't setup a timer record with VDub, but I've never found the need. Quality of my digital caps is very, very nice indeed.

I think an ATSC card like the Hauppauge WinTV-D($199) or WinTV-HD ($299) would fit your needs. They don't capture video the normal(analog) way, but they've got software which saves the digital stream flawlessly to your disk. I don't know how to get encrypted channels with ATSC, as I'm living in Europe. Scheduled recordings should be no problem. Converting the records to DVD-R should be as easy as pie then.

digital cable doesn't use ATSC, so those Hauppauge cards won't work.

...but tivo will do digital cable without a problem, using the timer, correct? e.

no, there's no tivo for digital cable. i don't think any of the north american networks released digital PVR for their systems yet. (there have been vague promises for a long time, but nobody has delivered yet) anyone who is using PVR with digital cable right now in north america is using it for analogue capture.