Q: Is it possible to view encrypted channels?
A: Not with the Terratec DVB-C card. You may only view channels transmitted in 'clear' or 'free to air'. Where I live, the cable provider delivers all channels of the 'base-subscribtion'; that are the 50 'most common/viewed' channels, without additional subscribtion.
A: Please read this thread on the MediaPortal forum:
Finally i got DVB-C to work in the netherlands.
What you need:1. FireDTV DVB-C
2. Alphacrypt Full 3.05 cam
3. offcourse a smartcard+subscription
If I read this thread correctly, it should be possible with this FireDTV DVB-C thing, to view encrypted channels.
Q: How is this solution working?
A: It took me lots of time to figure out how this stuff works. I believe that MediaPortal has improved a lot. My system (AMD Athlon 1700+ on 1.47GHz with 768Mb RAM), seems to be a bit 'undersized'. CPU is at 60-70% when viewing TV; that does not leave much air for handling peaks.. the TV display and sound sometime 'stutter'. The Terratec card is a budget card, that means that all data for a specific transponder (frequency) needs to be processed by the hardware. More expensive/sophisticated cards filter the datastream for just the TV channel (streams) that you are interested in. After I changed from 'overlay' to 'Windows Media Version 9' rendering; performance improved a lot.
If you don't like to experiment with computers/hardware/settings, I'd advice you to leave the Terratec card in the shop.
Back to mediaportal setup.