[mythtv-users] new myth hardware

Dewey Smolka dsmolka at gmail.com
Tue Dec 20 22:06:41 EST 2005


Let me see if can calrify a few things.

On 12/20/05, Dhaval Patel <dhaval at patel.sh> wrote:
> William <wmunson at rochester.rr.com> said:
>
> > > My questions are the following:
> > >
> > > - I would like to watch live TV so I am considering getting a
> > > dual tuner card that is well supported by MythTV and has a
> > > hardware encoder/decoder. I am considering the PVR 500. Do
> > > you have comments/suggestions?
> >
> > A couple of other things to consider. First, unless your dish outputs two
> > streams at the same time you are going to need 2 dish receivers.
>
> I can find out by trying to use Picture in Picture on my TV right? If the receiver is
> able to send 2 things over 1 s-video cable, I should be able to see different channels
> in the PiP. Right?

Each capture source needs its own device. The PVR 500 shows up as two
devices because it has two tuners. It is able to tune two signals
simultaneously through the coaxial RF input. I believe it is also able
to use one tuner through coaxial and the second through S-video,
composite or whatever (500 owners, please clarify). However,  I don't
think that a single S-video can be more than one device at the same
time

> > The 2nd point is controlling your receivers. I dont think that there are any dish
> > receivers that have serial port control so you are going to need a IR
> > blaster device or two. The big issue with remote control on dish is that
> > they use an odd frequency (56KHz vs 48KHz) which makes things interesting.
> > If you do some searching of the archives you will see that about the only
> > commmercial solution that works well is a device called "MyBlaster serial".
> > I forget the url of the place that sells them but you can get the linux
> > driver for it at myblaster.sourceforge.net That also is in the archives.
>
> Hmm, have not thought of this much. Are you talking about how the MythTV box will
> control the channels on the Dish receiver? (Man I wish I had cable :))

The tuners in the Hauppage PVR series are analog tuners -- they
convert analog NTSC or PAL (etc) signals into MPEG2. To give them a
signal to record, your source needs to be a clean analog signal,
either from the antenna or cable, or from a converter box.

If the signal goes through a converter box (necessary for digital
cable and sattelite + PVR x50/500) then MythTV needs a way to control
the converter. It may be able to do this through a serial cable (I've
seen serial ports on digital cable converters, but have never got a
good look at a sattelite system). Chances are you will need IR blaster
to control the converter -- this will control the dish decoder through
IR signals that mimic the native remote control.

Each input you want to record will require a separate decoder box
(because can a decoder can only put out one channel at a time), and a
separate IR blaster to control each (please correct me if I have this
wrong).

Hope it helps


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