[mythtv-users] New Setup Question regarding tv tuner cards

[Fred Squires]

On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 11:51 AM, Ethan Pierce
<ethan.pierce at earthlink.net> wrote:
> jarpublic at gmail.com wrote:
>
> On Tue, Mar 10, 2009 at 4:25 PM, Ethan Pierce
> <ethan.pierce at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>
> Greetings, I'm new to the list and mythtv.  My hardware is all on order
> (a fairly beefy quadcore, 8gb and 1tb machine), which includes a
> pcHDTV5500 as well as a PVR-500.
>
> I use timewarner cable.  I spent about 3 hours researching cards the
> other night
> and it seems like the two I purchased are best for my setup and having
> the ability to watch/record shows a the same time.
>
> I may have went overboard with my card purchase, but am wondering if I
> will be able to record multiple shows
> at the same time with this setup?  I understand the PVR-500 doesnt do
> the HD content but can it be assigned to use its hardware encoders for
> the job of transcoding/etc?  Basically I want to be able to watch/record
> HD shows as well as those found on the analog stations.  Did I over do
> it on my card selection?
>
> I have a DCH6200 Motorolla box too, will/can that be eliminated from the
> picture?
>
> Will I just split my cable lines three ways - 1to the pchd card and 2 to
> the PVR-500 lines?
>
>
>
> Welcome to the list. Most of your questions can be answered by
> searching the list archives:
> http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/users/, or the wiki:
> www.mythtv.org/wiki/.
>
> You will only be able to get HD signals that are delivered to you
> unencrypted (ie clear QAM). You can find out what you get by hooking
> you HDTV (assuming it has a QAM tuner) strait up to the cable without
> the set top box. Then see what HD channels it can tune. Most likely
> this will only be the major local broadcast channels that you can get
> over the air (ie ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, etc). Depending on where you live
> you can probably get the best quality HD by recording ATSC OTA signals
> with an antenna and your 5500 capture card. Most of your other digital
> cable channels will be probably be encrypted. The only way to record
> the channels that are encrypted is 1) if you are lucky you may get
> some of them via firewire output of your STB. 2) running mythtv .22
> from SVN trunk and using the HD-PVR to record the component outputs of
> your STB. Option 1 often doesn't work or still only gives you the
> local channels over the firewire. Option 2 probably isn't a good idea
> for a new mythtv user. You shouldn't really run trunk unless you are
> prepared to deal with and help fix the bugs in the beta code.
>
> So you are basically only going to get what you can from clear QAM or
> ATSC with your pcHDTV 5500 card and you can get SD with your PVR-500
> either straight from cable or you could record the analog output of
> your STB. The best choice there depends on what is available via
> straight analog vs what you can get with your STB and what you would
> want to record. I haven't use a PVR-500 but you may be able to record
> straight from the cable with one encoder and the s-video out on your
> STB with the other encoder to get whatever isn't available on analog
> straight off the cable. I am just guessing about that since I haven't
> used one of those cards before.
>
>
>
> Thank you Jarpublic, Kevin and Doug for your replies.
>
> This is starting to make more sense.  I have two HDTV's in the house, one
> has the cable go straight to it, the other has the Digital STB.  With the TV
> taking the cable line directly it pulls all 74 SD channels and 4 or 5 basic
> HD channels (FOX, ABC & NBC, etc).  If I understand correctly these are the
> only channels the pcHDTV5500 will pickup?  The PVR-500 will only have the 74
> SD channels?
>
> Does it even make sense to have the PVR-500 card with my setup, or should I
> just get a second pcHDTV5500 card?
>
> If I plug in the MythTV box downstream of the STB will I be more likely to
> receive the extra HD channels?  I guess I'm not understanding why the HDTV
> by itself downstream from the STB can receive the premium HD channels (HIST,
> DISC, NATGEO, etc) but the cards after the STB would not?
>
> When using a configuration where the MythTV box is downstream of the cable
> box, which device would actually do the channel changing?
>
> I keep hearing mention of using firewire - is this in lieu of a decoder
> card, or in addition to it?  Does the firewire just act as a way to use
> mythchanger?
>
> My particular motherboard does not have a firewire port, I found a table
> that mentioned the DCH6200 at http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Fire_Wire - will
> any VIA IEEE1394 firewire card work for this with respect to channel
> changing?
>
> Thank you for your replies to my setup questions.

If you connect your PVR-500 directly to the cable you'll be able to
tune in all available analog stations, this includes any channels an
analog TV can pick up without a box

If you connect your PVR-500 to your cable box (with svideo or
composite) you'll be able to tune in all stations the cable box can
tune, but you'll need either an IR Blaster, Serial Cable or FireWire
Cable to change the channel on the box

If you connect your pchdtv card directly to the cable you'll be able
to pick up any unencrypted digital stations that come over the line,
these are usually just the local broadcast channels but sometimes
there's more

If you connect your pchdtv card to your cable box you'll get nothing

As for Firewire, yes you can sometimes record directly from the
firewire port, the FCC requires cable companies to provide a working
firewire port on all hd boxes, but they don't require anything beyond
that. So, sometimes you just get the locals, sometimes you can get
more, and sometimes you can get nothing at all, and sometimes firewire
is very unreliable, but I've never used it.

I currently have an HDHomeRun hooked up to an antenna, and my 2
pvr-250's and my pvr-150 hooked up directly to analog cable. This
works well for me, I've never bothered trying to record the digital
stations from my cable box, but now that AMC is no longer available to
me in analog I might need to work on it. I need some breaking bad
(I've resorted to watching it live for now).

I would suggest hooking them all up to the cable directly, and if you
want the digital stations that aren't available to the pchdtv hook up
one of the tuners in the pvr-500 to the svideo output of the cable
box.

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