[mythtv-users] [Slightly OT] comcast moving to settop on Bay Area - goodbye analog

[Marc MERLIN]

On Sun, Mar 08, 2009 at 07:13:01AM -0700, Mark Knecht wrote:
> 1) 2-3 more STBs. Electricity bill goes up, Comcast bill goes up.
 
right :-/
 
> 2) Still need the PVR-150s to capture the analog output of the STBs.
> Inefficient but would probably work. More work for me to get the PVR
> to reliably sit at channel 3 or whatever channel the digital STBs put
> out their signal.

Right, I'm really not looking forward to setting that up.

> 3) Is there an IR blaster solution that doesn't require serial ports
> and supports multiple STBs tuning to different channels at the same
> time? I haven't found the documentation yet. I bought a USB IR Blaster
> but haven't gotten it to work with my digital converter. (No time.) No
> slots left in my server for a serial card and I aven't found one yet
> anyway. Serial is dead in the market. Depending on it here is no
> desirable.

For what it's worth, I've been doing ok with with USB->Serial converters for
other uses. I'm just not looking at buying more to tune analog from D->A
boxes controlled via IR blasters.

> 4) If the answer to #3 is no then I think I have to look at HD STBs
> controlled by Firewire. Does the Firewire solution support multiple
> STBs? It seems unreliable and buggy reading this list. Slow tuning
> changes. Hangups at boot time. The 1394 stack doing wrong things.
> Extra cron scripts to fix problems. And again, a higher bill from
> Comcast for multiple HD STBs and a LOT of work to get 1394 going.

So, I have one, DCH-3200, and indeed: it works well enough but it is not
super reliable. I'm not sure I'd want 2 or 3 of them (not counting, the
bulk, power use, and $7/month/box).