Oct. 5--Gary and Pamela Hammer did more than help their son Jeremy find a job when he graduated from the University of Washington three years ago.

The Hammer family decided that was a good time to start a technology company, employing Jeremy, two of his classmates and another son who had been working at Fluke in Everett.

Now their company, Kirkland-based Ceton, is releasing a gadget that has caught the imagination of some digital-media enthusiasts and could find its way into the homes of millions of cable-TV subscribers within a few years.

Drawing on the sons' engineering studies, Ceton developed a cable tuner and decoder that plugs into a PC, giving it the ability to play and record multiple high-definition, encrypted cable channels.

Ceton's tuners work with CableCard devices that cable companies offer customers in lieu of cable boxes.

The tuners have powerful, embedded processors that decrypt cable signals and convert them into a secure format used by Windows PCs -- up to six channels at once, in real-time.

You could say that Ceton is the latest in a long line of Seattle-area companies promising to deliver valuable content in a fast, secure manner.

This goes back to UPS a century ago and Boeing's airmail service in the 1920s. More recently Microsoft, RealNetworks, Widevine and others have done this with digital-rights-management systems that securely deliver music and video across the Internet and to mobile devices.

Ceton is handling the delivery between cable networks and the Media Center feature in premium versions of Windows.

If Ceton's tuners work as promised -- and don't cost too much -- they could be key to finally making home theater PCs a reasonable alternative to cable set-top boxes.

Ceton is going to market now with a version for hotels that can receive and redistribute 24 high-def channels at once.

In early 2010, it will begin selling a four-tuner version for consumers PCs, priced between $300 and $600. Prices will be closer to $300 if Ceton gets big orders from PC makers and volume discounts on components.

That will be followed with two-tuner versions costing under $300; one will be an internal PC card and another will be an external device plugged into a USB port.

I mentioned Ceton last month after its tuners were highlighted by Microsoft at a home-theater conference in Atlanta.

When the Hammers were back in town, I went to Kirkland to learn more about this family of hackers and the amazing gizmo they've cooked up.

Inside offices near The Keg Steakhouse, they had a demo ready.