[mythtv-users] DTV switch means dealing with multiple STB's via firewire - HELP!

Robert McNamara robert.mcnamara at gmail.com
Tue Jan 6 17:59:11 UTC 2009


On Tue, Jan 6, 2009 at 9:55 AM, Tom Lichti <redpepperracing at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 6, 2009 at 12:51 PM, Joe Borne <joe.borne at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Feb 17th my cable company will switch to an all digital lineup. Wifey is
>> pretty used to having three inputs to my MythBox in order to avoid recording
>> conflicts (one via firewire, two analog). So obviously I need to find a
>> solution before the switch.
>>
>> I currently have a 4 port firewire card in my MythTV system. I haven't
>> really dealt with the issue of firewire since early `07 when I first set it
>> all up. I recall that using multiple cable STB's via firewire was
>> problematical back then due to the issue of ports being reassigned
>> dynamically if there was a reboot or other reset event.
>>
>> I'd rather not have to turn another home system into a backend if I can
>> avoid it. So my question for the guru's is this:
>>
>> Does anyone have a reliable solution for using several firewire connected
>> set top boxes on the same backend? If so, can you describe the setup and
>> hardware used?
>
> They are only shutting down analog OTA, if you have analog cable, you
> should still be ok, AFAIK.
>
> Tom
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Joe is talking about his cable company removing the analog lineup,
something many companies are doing in various markets.

Joe,  I have used multiple firewire boxes with now issues on a 4-port
VIA chipset card.  No issues-- I got best results using a dedicated
port per box rather than daisy-chaining, however.  Thanks to Myth now
using GUID instead of port/node, a lot of the issues have disappeared.

I also run a cron job at 5 and 35 after the hour to prime all boxes.

Robert


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