Lots of questions! First time DVR builder.

[CXK]

Hey everyone, I'm glad I found this site.  My wife and I have just bought a house thats being built now.  We've decided our cable bill is just too expensive for only watching network TV shows.  We knocked out over $100 in TV and digital phone crap.  We kept our internet for netflix and many other things.  

Heres what I've got now:
We have 2 Xbox 360's and plan on getting another one.  We currently have a media PC with about 300 movies and tons of TV shows and we stream to to the PC.  Its also used with 3 webcams for home security which we use orb.com to stream to our phones.  

Heres what I want to do:
I'm going to build a new PC, with a quad core, 4 gb ram and it will have 3 hard drives with a little over a terabyte with a terabyte for backups.  I will use Vista for the media center, I will never have a monitor connected to this PC so everything will stream out to the 360's.  

Questions: What type of antenna should I get?  
If I want to record 2 channels at once do I need more than one tuner card and antenna?  
I see Vista doesnt support clear QAM.  So if I choose to get basic cable will it not be able to view/record it?  My provider is Time Warner btw.
I've seen videos, but I can watch live TV from my antenna, to my PC tuner card, through my network to my 360?  Right?
I'd like to record and watch all TV in HD if possible.  
I've checked with antenna web and it says Red UHF for most channels I want.  

Do you think specs like this will be good enough to do what I'd like to do:

Thanks for reading this and any help will be appreciated.  

[Miller]

You only need one antenna. Just make sure it supports the frequencies you want from antennaweb.org. For a tuner card you will have to decide how many shows you want to record at the same time. If it's just one, then the hvr1600/1800 from Hauppaue would work fine. If you want 2 then go with the 2250. If you use MediaCenter it will stream to the 360s just fine. You could also use this card for basic cable if you wanted to.

[Craig]

Win7 will support clear qam. There is also a TV Pack for VIsta that gives this support as well.

[CXK]

Thanks for the replies.  I was considering using just basic cable, so would you not need QAM support?  Also, ive decided on the 2250 happauge.  So could I use 2 of those cards to record 4 shows at once if I wanted?  Then would I need two antennas or would a cable splitter work?

Thanks again for the help, I'm such a noob to this stuff. 

[Miller]

You still only need one antenna. You would just use a splitter. If you subscribe to basic cable then you could also use the QAM feature of the 2250 and record shows that way. You would have to decide between QAM or OTA though since the 2250 only has enough connections for one of those.

You can see what QAM stations you might receive by going here:
http://www.silicondust.com/hdhomerun/channels_us

[CXK]

You still only need one antenna. You would just use a splitter. If you subscribe to basic cable then you could also use the QAM feature of the 2250 and record shows that way. You would have to decide between QAM or OTA though since the 2250 only has enough connections for one of those.

You can see what QAM stations you might receive by going here:
http://www.silicondust.com/hdhomerun/channels_us

Hey Miller, I got your PM but I cant reply.  I guess I dont have enough posts yet to send messages.  It looks like I'm going to have to wait a little longer before building my DVR set up.  I figured my wife was ready for it, but she instead we had to buy a refridgerator for the new house lol.  So I'll pass on buying that card, thanks though.  When I get ready to build I'll check with you again.  Hopefully you see this. 

[Miller]

Ok. Happy shopping.