[mythtv-users] Why FireWire makes sense even for those without HDTV displays

Yeechang Lee ylee at pobox.com
Mon Jan 2 00:25:25 UTC 2006


Steve Hodge <stevehodge at gmail.com> says:
> > I made sure
> > to get an IR keyboard/mouse so I could teach the codes to my remote;
> > this way I haven't had to bother with lirc.
> 
> That's a benefit I hadn't thought of. Does it work ok?

I went into my setup's pros and cons in great, great detail in the
message you replied to. I'm glad of the choices I made, especially
every time I see another lirc-related question on the list.

Or, for that matter, all the ivtv/btvt-related questions; I'd highly
recommend anyone in the US using cable whose provider supplies a HDTV
box (which are all FireWire-equipped by FCC mandate) to consider
switching to it even if it means a few more dollars a month and *even
if you don't have an HDTV display*. FireWire cards and cables are
under $10 each at Monoprice.com, Linux has great support for the
Lucent chipset and others, and my FireWire setup with ATrpms' MythTV
build was about as plug-and-play as it gets [unlike the HD5000, which
I still haven't gotten working yet on Fedora Core 4; the directions at
hd5000.com and elsewhere simply don't apply to my particular setup, as
I've previously lamented here]. Yes, the one caveat is that
copy-protected channels might not be available through it, but you
never know, and I presume you can use your NTSC encoder card for those
channels. I don't know for sure, having never had to deal with NTSC
capture cards, and I'm glad for it!

> It's become our controller of choice. I've got a lirc setup as well
> but the keyboard is just so much more reliable and convenient that we
> don't bother with the remote at all.

My keyboard is light and easy to handle as well, but I'd hate to have
to go back to only having that without my remote.

-- 
Yeechang Lee <ylee at pobox.com> | +1 650 776 7763 | San Francisco CA US


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