[mythtv-users] HDTV Capture with Rogers Cable Box

[Brad Templeton]

On Mon, Jan 01, 2007 at 07:59:24PM -0800, Michael Kipper wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I've been using MythTV for a while for my standard definition needs.
> I recently bought a Sony 1080p HDTV, which came with a Rogers PVR for 10 months.
> The Rogers box (Scientific Atlanta 8300HD) is $24.95/month after the 10 month trial and is crap compared to MythTV.
> 
> So catch me up. What are my options for capturing HDTV from the Rogers box?
> All the HDTV capture solutions I've seen are for over-the-air HDTV, not capturing from my paid-for stream.
> 
> Thanks!
> Michael Kipper

There are currently no consumer priced HDTV _capture_ solutions.  Generally, HDTV is not
captured (which tends to mean doing A2D on an uncompressed analog stream and then usually
compressing it).   OTA HDTV cards simply receive a pre-encoded mpeg2 data broadcast,
which is not typically thought of as capture.

Unless your cable box has an unecrypted digital output such as firewire,
you'll be out of luck.  In the USA people can demand a box with firewire,
and often they get on that does it unencrypted, but that's not actually
required by law for non-OTA channels.   I don't know if there is such
a rule in Canada.

You can often tune the unencrypted channels off the cable line directly
as most tuner cards today support QAM as a modulation as well as ATSC.
But they tend to encrypt the non-OTA channels.

This will not change for some time, unfortunately, untill the
various companies realize all these systems cost more than they
protect.