[mythtv-users] firewire/comcast/motorolla DHC3200

[Greg Woods]

On Tue, 2008-04-08 at 23:41 -0700, Marc MERLIN wrote:

> can I record encrypted channels that I otherwise cannot get as analog or
> unencrypted HD channels?

The answer, unfortunately, is that you are at the mercy of your local
cable company and it will vary. There have been a few lucky people on
the list who have reported that they get most or all of their subscribed
channels over firewire, most of the rest of us are not so lucky. 

I just finally got firewire working under Fedora 8 on the DCT-6214 box.
There are 5 or 6 channels that I checked directly because they are of
particular interest to me. These are all channels that I cannot get on
my HDHomerun or PVR-500 (they are digital and encrypted on the wire). Of
these, two of them seem to be available on firewire, but they are ESPN
and ESPN2 which are of particular importance to me during football
season, as many college games and, of course. Monday Night Football are
on these channels. So in my case it might be worth the struggle to make
firewire work with Myth just for this. But unfortunately there are
several other channels that I cannot get over firewire, such as MOJO
(which has the HD Colorado Avalanche and Colorado Rockies games).
Bummer. The new Hauppage HD-PVR device may work here; I've ordered one
(see two other threads for a discussion of that device). So the bottom
line is that nobody can answer this for you unless they subscribe to the
same local cable company that you do. There are also some previous
threads in the archive (or maybe it was on the wiki) describing a
tedious procedure where you can check each channel, one at a time, to
see whether or not the 5C encryption bit is set (if it's not set, the
channel will be in the clear over firewire).

--Greg