Back in August the Ceton InfiniTV 4 USB was announced, and it was going to launch mid-September as one of the few external CableCARD tuners on the market. Now, almost two months late, it's finally shipping, letting you simultaneously watch four channels at once without the need for a big old cable-box. 

Ceton has had some success with the internal InfinitTV 4, but it required a free PCIe slot which you don't always find on most PCs — not to mention it had something of a reputation of being poorly fitting. The new release will work on any Windows 7 PC with a USB port, HDCP-compliant graphics card, 2.0GHz dual-core or better processor, and a few hundred gigabytes of free space to store recorded video.

The InfiniTV 4 USB requires a Multi-stream CableCARD (M-Card) from your cable provider, and once you have it you can watch multiple channels at once, record them, or send them to other computers and TVs in your network using Windows 7 Media Center. The tuner can be purchased through a number of online sellers for $299. If four channels simply isn't enough for your incredible multi-tasking capabilities, there is a six channel InfiniTV in the works, but we don't know when it'll arrive or what it'll cost.