[mythtv-users] Comcast STB Firewire vs HDHomeRun

[Greg Woods]

On Sun, 2010-08-08 at 09:48 -0400, Chris DiLorenzo wrote:

>   Or is this one of these things I'll just have to try?  

Yes :-)

The reports here on the efficacy of firewire are highly variable. It
depends on what STB you have, what firewire chip you have on the Linux
side, and how lazy your local cable co. is at making sure the firewire
is locked down.

For me, I have never succeeded in getting firewire recording to work,
even for channels that should be available, although it works great for
channel changing for my HDPVRs. Others here report that they use
firewire for everything and get most of their channels unencrypted.
YMMV.

One thing to be careful about: if the cable company hasn't locked down
what is available through firewire yet, they soon will. Cable companies
across the country (and the world as far as I can tell) are busy locking
everything down so that you can't get anything but the local OTA
channels unencrypted on either direct QAM or firewire (anything that
could be attached to a computer). If you do get some other channels
through firewire, don't be surprised if one day they suddenly stop
working.

The HDPVR uses the component output of STBs, the so-called "analog
hole". That is what I use now, but the cable companies appear to be
working on closing that hole as well. It will take them considerably
longer to do this than it will to shut down non-OTA over firewire
though, I would bet.

--Greg