[mythtv-users] Satellite TV and MythTV, getting started

Marc Chamberlin marc at marcchamberlin.com
Thu Jan 22 05:33:23 UTC 2009


I guess the time has arrived and I must byte the bullet on this so... I 
live out in the countryside and with the upcoming switch to HD TV, and I 
have determined that over the air  HDTV will not be an option  for me 
(too far away and signal reception is pretty bad). Nor is cable 
possible. So that leaves satellite. I been researching on the internet 
and monitoring this group and the MythTV website, but not really finding 
a good answer on just what is the best way to accomplish merging 
satellite TV with MythTV.

I am totally unfamiliar with satellite TV, never having used it, but do 
understand that each supplier will give me some kind of a set top box to 
control what channels I want to watch. They also offer choices between a 
HD receivers for the HD channels,  PVR's  and HDPVR's as options, but it 
seems to me that since MythTV IS a PVR I don't want to get a PVR or 
HDPVR from the satellite TV dealers?? I suspect that the video output 
from the satellite set top box, for most of their regular channels, will 
be straight NTSC that I can feed directly into my current Hauppauge 350 
card? And I am guessing that, like with cable TV set top boxes, I just 
set and leave the Hauppauge 350 tuner on channel 3 or 4 and MythTV has 
the ability to control the satellite set top box somehow, to select 
channels.... (i.e. I am guessing that MythTV will not try to change the 
channel the Hauppauge card is set to and there is a way to inform MythTV 
about this..)

So what about these HD receivers? Do I need to have an HDTV card for 
those? If so any recommendations would be much appreciated. In fact I 
would like to hear how others are setting up MythTV to work with 
satellite TV. (I probably am interested in either DirectTV or DishNet) 
With a satellite set top box will it be possible to watch one channel 
while recording another or (I suspect this is the case) will I need two 
set top boxes and two cards...

 From watching a recent thread on DirectTV it appears there are some 
issues with controlling the set top box via a USB/serial cable? I have 
heard about something called IR Blaster which I gather is a computer 
controllable IR transmitter? Will I have to acquire one of these as 
well? Seems rather awkward if a simple USB cable can be used instead..

Anywise I sure could use a few pointers and recommendations on what will 
be the most easy and wife compatible solutions available...  Thanks in 
advance...

   Marc...




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