HDMI from HD set top box to Media Center - possible?

I'm not aware of a card that has an HDMI input that will allow you to bring the signal in to your Media Center computer, but there are graphics cards that have HDMI outputs so you can connect from your computer to the TV. Here is an example:
Newegg.com - MSI NX8500GT-MTD256EH GeForce 8500GT 256MB 128-bit GDDR2 PCI Express x16 HDCP Ready Silent Heatsink Video Card - Retail

Hi ktriebol,

Thanks for the link.

So i can get the picture out to the TV via HDMI .... i just need to find a card that will accept HDMI in from a set top box?

Does it have to be a TV card or will a graphics card do?

Sorry if this sounds like a noob question .....

ktriebol said:

I'm not aware of a card that has an HDMI input that will allow you to bring the signal in to your Media Center computer, but there are graphics cards that have HDMI outputs so you can connect from your computer to the TV. Here is an example:
Newegg.com - MSI NX8500GT-MTD256EH GeForce 8500GT 256MB 128-bit GDDR2 PCI Express x16 HDCP Ready Silent Heatsink Video Card - Retail

Click to expand...

Like I said, I am not aware of a card for your computer that will accept input via HDMI. As far as I know, there is no such animal.

You should also be aware that if you choose to use a grahpics card to output video and sound from your computer to the TV via HDMI, your motherboard must have an SPDIF output for sound. You will need to connect a cable from the SPDIF output on your motherboard to your graphics card so that the HDMI connection will have sound as well as video. Most current motherboards have an SPDIF output on them but older motherboards do not. If you buy a graphics card with an HDMI output, it will come with a cable for connecting the SPDIF on the motherboard to the graphics card.

do you think this will do the trick?

thanks for the tip on SPDIF

Blackmagic Design announces Intensity, first HDMI PCI Express card - Engadget

ktriebol said:

Like I said, I am not aware of a card for your computer that will accept input via HDMI. As far as I know, there is no such animal.

Click to expand...

That sure looks like it would give you an HDMI input (actually two of them) on your computer. I noticed that there was no definite information regarding whether or not this card supports HDCP. This is very important. All of the video-handling devices from the source to the monitor should support HDCP. If they don't support HDCP you will have all kinds of problems with successful handling of video. If you want to learn more about HDCP, you could start with this link at wikipedia.
High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The good news is that almost all new computer video components support HDCP, so my guess is that this card supports HDCP also, but I would want to be sure of that before I bought it.

Yes 99.9% of HDMI video cards support HDCP provided it is connected directly not via a converter, I have two HDMI video cards (ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series) connected to a HP w2448hc HDMI Monitor, the only headache I have had so far is with the HDMI drivers from both ATI and Realtek HD Audio and this relates to who is going to take charge of the sound coming from the HDMI Cable, I found that if you install the ATI driver and restart your computer you end up with an unaudible sound but install Realtek HDMI driver straight after makes that sound go away, anyway coming back to the first question "Is it possible to connect a vista media center to a HD set top box receiver and then connect the media center to a tv again via HDMI?" Yes it is possible but MCE don't have the plug-in to run native HDMI but AverMedia do (AverMedia AverTV CaptureHD Hybrid TV Tuner) the only downside is that you have to run the Aver MediaCentre which is not a bad thing, this is the card that I run along with an HD Set Top Box from Sky TV running in harmony with each other.

You can go to AVerMedia AVerTV Global - AVerTV TV Tuners and Multimedia Products - AVerTV CaptureHD to get a run down on the card, it works in full HD and works well.