[mythtv-users] Beginner Question

Fred Squires fsquires at gmail.com
Mon Dec 20 15:05:26 UTC 2004


On Sun, 19 Dec 2004 03:44:24 -0600, Gerald S <gerald at geraldandnicole.com> wrote:
>  
> Hello All, 
>   
> I am doing all my research before I dive into my MythTV HD project (I am new
> to Myth & Linux, and fairly new ot HD...so bare with me:).  I am using a
> digital cable box from Time Warner. 
>   
> I understand that my cable stream is encrypted going into my cable box,
> which requires me to use their box.  But why can't cards like pcHDTV3000
> read the component video coming out of my cable box.  I know it whould need
> to handle QAM for HD, but once that is done there is still the issue of
> being encrypted by the cable company.  How can that be encrypted, my TV
> would have to know how to unencrypt it?  Why can't I let the box do the
> unencrypting and just take the signal before it hits the TV? 
>   
> Is this because it is HD?  Or digital?  Wouldn't this work on just normal
> analog cable, that did not need a cable box? 
>   
> Thanks for any clarification, 
> Gerald S 
> San Antonio, Texas  USA 
>   
>   
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> 
> 

The reason why this isn't done is because the encoders required for
this are very expensive.  Right now there are no consumer level
encoders that can encode an analog HD signal.
The people here are correct that capturing a digital stream would be
the ideal solution, with no reencoding the quality would be much
better.  The proplem with this is that if all the cable companys
encrypt their content then capturing digitally might not be possible. 
Either that or we could find some way to capture the encrypted stream
and get a decoder to play back that encrypted stream, but that would
suck for osd's and other such things.

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