Apparently you can download the beta now and start watching HDTV on your PC right away. First I’m hearing of it but then again I might have been under a rock or something.

http://www.directv.com/DTVAPP/global/contentPageNR.jsp?assetId=P4920044

 

 

It's very real, it's been in private beta for at least 6 months or so over at DBSTalk, just went public today.

Enjoy!

I take it this uses ethernet connection and not USB or Firewire?  Thus you can't control channel changes on the DirecTV box from the PC?  Or does this setup allow it  to act more like an HDHomeRun? And geniunely let the PC see the DTV box like an external tuner?  If this does allow full control of the STB from the PC then I hope it puts pressure on the cable companies to drop their Draconian methods of not allowing the digital signal out through USB and Firewire.  I don't know why they ever went the cablecard route to begin with.  The cableco STB (Dish/Direc box) could work just fine as an external periferral to a PC without any other kind of interface except for a software driver and a USB connection.  If they wanted to maintain encryption they could still do that from the head end and implement the copy rules.  It's just so bass ackwards and stupid.  There never should have been any such thing as cable card and OCUR to begin with.  What a crock.

are there any other sources for this beta i must test this!!
anyone have a copy they wouldn't mind throwing on my FTP server?? :)

Heck I am one of there VIP Tech's and fiber engineer's for Commercial and Residential systems and dont have access to it. I also installed and set up alot of the HDPC20 boxes for Beta testing and still here like the rest of you.

Trust me I feel all of your pain. Salivating at the mouth waiting to play with it since I have 11 HR21's and HR22's.......

EZEd:

...If this does allow full control of the STB from the PC then I hope it puts pressure on the cable companies to drop their Draconian methods of not allowing the digital signal out through USB and Firewire.  I don't know why they ever went the cablecard route to begin with.  The cableco STB (Dish/Direc box) could work just fine as an external periferral to a PC without any other kind of interface except for a software driver and a USB connection.  If they wanted to maintain encryption they could still do that from the head end and implement the copy rules...

CableCARD wasn't the idea of the cable co.s.  If it were up to them, they would only let you rent a box.  They were required to let other devices onto the network, so CableCARD was born.  See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CableCARD for more. 

Wikipedia:

"CableCARD" refers more broadly to a set of technologies created by the United States cable television industry in response to requirements by federal government's Telecommunications Act of 1996 that cable companies allow non cable company provided devices to access their networks.

 

While you may be ok with a STB hooked to your computer, most people actually want fewer boxes.  They don't want to hook it up through USB or Firewire, they want it all built into one box (perferrably the TV for most people).  This is what you will need for Media Center to become main stream, and CableCARD brings us closer to this.  I'm all for more laxed DRM on it, but lets be realistic, going with another box really isn't the answer most people want.

As for the Firewire comment, the box already puts out a video signal over Firewire, and if you have the right TV you can use this.  Tim Moore's FireSTB also tried to take advantage of this, though it wasn't 100% successful.

Did anyone notice the careful wording on DirecTV's site?

"Stream recorded HD programming..."

I'm not convinced that this will give you live TV on your PC.  Most of the wording seems to suggest it won't.

Everyone has access, it's public now.  That URL works.  You just need to be logged into DIRECTV.com (and obviously a susbriber).

Also, as far as I know, it's just for tranferring your DVR files onto a PC, or streaming live, NOT for watching live TV.  I don't have a DIRECTV DVR so I can't test it.  It does do HD though supposedly.

And finally, it is ethernet.

Now if you can get it to interface Media Center you won't need a HDPC-20...... Nice

Too bad I still have Comcrap as I am waiting for the HDPC-20 before moving over to Dave/DTV

DavidinCT:

Now if you can get it to interface Media Center you won't need a HDPC-20...... Nice

Too bad I still have Comcrap as I am waiting for the HDPC-20 before moving over to Dave/DTV

So is that feasible?  Can something be created to have it interface with Media Center?  I assume that it would be a huge hassle because you'd probably need to setup the recording on the DirecTV STB first, then transfer (or stream) it to your HTPC........as opposed to just directly recording to the HTPC HD.

Even still, I'm sure there's a lot more to it than that

I’ve always disliked Cyberlink Software but perhaps they just designed the transport software rather then the interface.

Anyone get this up and running do report back please.

Just a little curious ;)

Octavean:

I’ve always disliked Cyberlink Software but perhaps they just designed the transport software rather then the interface.

Anyone get this up and running do report back please.

Just a little curious ;)

The inteface is reportedly the same as the DVR interface, or at least mimics it.

You can get a lot of details over at dbstalk.com

I just recieved an email from both Cyberlink and Directv and the software will be available at end of month on Cyberlinks website. They are going to ask Directv to take down there site for now.

I got tired of trying to get it and no luck so asked both and that is what they both told me.....

The download link is now live on Cyberlink's site.

UPDATE: Almost forgot, D* has not done the national push for this, you will need something like 0x0290... In other words if you don't have the CE, it won't work.

UPDATE: 0x0290 is national now. This should work for everyone when they recycle their DVR.

Just to clear things up this software is just for playing back recorded content from your DirecTV DVR and not streaming live TV.

I just downloaded this and installed it on my Vista box, the "playback advisor" did flag my driver version(im running the latest catalyst) and my monitor (not HDCP-compliant) as fails, but I'm installing it anyway. 

I couldnt find much documentation on the order to install or how to get this working, but when I installed the DirectTV2PC client my DVR box rebooted after the initial scan and started downloading new software.  It rebooted again and I was able to see it in the server browser section of the software.

The menuing is just like the directv dvr menu and is very responsive.  I'm using the ethernet over power adapter so I'm getting about 10Mb of bandwidth so HD streaming is choppy, but I imagine it would be fine over a 100Mb LAN.