[mythtv-users] HDTV reception via Cable

[Jerry Rubinow]

The PVR-XXX can deal with the straight coax, so you'd have all the
analog channels available at once, multiplexed together, and the tuner
on the PVR would select which one was being digitized.  With the
firewire, you're using the cable box's tuner and only getting a single
channel over the wire.  In this case, the firewire is a two way
connection, able to tell the cable box to change the channel it's
sending.  For a coax connection to a PVR, you're not even dealing with
the tuner on the cable box.

However, the PVR-XXXs also have an S-Video input available, in which
case you could use it to receive the S-Video output from the cable
box.  In this case, you would be using the cable box's tuner and could
use the 6200ch program, which tells the cable box to change channels
using the firewire.  The advantage to using S-Video would be a cleaner
signal.  The disadvantage is that you couldn't record two different
channels at the same time, since both s-video and firewire would be
relying on the cable box's tuner.  Another advantage of s-video is
that you'd be able to receive the digital channels over it.  Straight
coax only gets you the analog channels.

In my setup, I have the firewire input for 2-99 (crisp digital
versions of the analog channels) and the HD OTA stations the cable
company carries.  100-199 (digital stations) are encrypted, as are the
non-OTA HD stations (Discovery-HD, InHD, ESPN-HD, TNT-HD), so they
don't come in over firewire.  I also have coax going into one input on
a PVR-500, so I can record 2-99 independently of the firewire/cable
box, and s-video from the cable box for channels 100-199.  I just have
to be careful not to us the s-video and firewire at the same time.

-Jerry

On 3/9/06, Jesse Guardiani <jesse at wingnet.net> wrote:
> On Wednesday 08 March 2006 10:52 pm, Steven Adeff wrote:
> > Firewire is a good chance to take, and will cost a lot less than a HD
> > tuner card. You'll have to wait for the firewire capture to be fixed
> > in 0.19 to really use it though.
>
> I take it firewire is still broken in 0.19-fixes?
> How would channel changing work if I used firewire for HDTV, but still
> used a PVR 350's svid for SD input? Could I use the firewire for all channel
> change operations? Or would I still need my IR blaster?
>
> --
> Jesse Guardiani
> Programmer/Sys Admin
> jesse at wingnet.net
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