Hands-on with EI's four-CableCARD 754 LifeMedia Server

Ready or not, Exceptional Innovation is already showing off its latest LifeMedia server, complete with four CableCARD tuners. We know you're itching to see such overkill in more detail, so follow the trail to the gallery and gawk away.

[Jason Anderson @ Sep 7th 2007 5:14AM]

This looks rocking!

[Edgar Flores @ Sep 7th 2007 7:23AM]

The de esign of an Idiot!
Why you need to feed 4 cable to this box????
They can split the signal inside the box.

[jeff @ Sep 7th 2007 7:39AM]

These are digital not analog cable tuners. im no expert but i have heard from installers that cablecards are a bitch to install, partly due to their being finicky about signal quality.

splitting inside the box would make niveus responsible for doing so in every situation. im pretty sure cable installers use different modulators/amplifiers/whatevers depending on your specific wiring situation when they read the signal with their testers. you probably need pro installation to get 4 dcts wired up properly. at least someone with a tester and all the required knowledge and a nearby radioshack.

[Paul @ Sep 7th 2007 9:31AM]

Theoretically with a multi-stream CableCard (MCard) this could be done IF you had multiple tuners leveraging a single CableCard slot. However, since the only PC compatible tuners currently employ a 1 tuner to 1 slot design, this isn't feasible. Maybe one day, but CableLabs makes this prospect difficult.

I suppose they could rig some method of splitting the physical cable inside the box prior to attaching to the ATI tuners, but this would require the tuners be either 1) housed inside the box, which would obscure access to the CableCard slots or 2) custom designed to move the coax connectors inside the enclosure. Both are impractical and would expose the signal splitter to RF interference from all that electronic noise in the box, and would probably end up making the system even more "finicky". Better just allow the user to split the connection outside the box for now.

[smcallah @ Sep 7th 2007 11:13AM]

Exactly, the Tivo HD does 2 cable cards with one coax input.

This design is ridiculous. It doesn't matter that it's not "analog" cable. It's still the same signal coming into the house. If you add an external splitter on top of that just to get 4 feeds into your HD DVR, that's a bit of overkill. Especially considering the 7.5db signal loss per drop on the splitter.

A matrix that splits the signal inside the box would be trivial. Since TiVo, Scientific Atlanta, and Motorola have been doing this.

[Cal @ Sep 7th 2007 7:49AM]

is it just me or are there no further pictures in the gallery?

[Mike @ Sep 7th 2007 11:37AM]

Yep, Gallery is broken. Actually, ALL Their galleries seem to be messed up.

[Cole @ Sep 7th 2007 12:06PM]

What if your cable/satellite provider doesn't use cable cards anymore?