[mythtv-users] Best STB channel changing, IR blaster?

[Chris Finley]

On Fri, Aug 13, 2010 at 1:37 PM, Rod Smith <mythtv at rodsbooks.com> wrote:

> On 08/13/2010 02:51 PM, Chris Finley wrote:
> > What is the easiest/most reliable method for changing channels on a
> > set-top box? Is it still using IR Blaster? I have read the wikipages,
> > but the dates on them are pretty old.
> >
> > I have Comcast, Hauppauge PVR 500, pcHDTV 5500 and a Motorola STB
> > DCH70/2081 - standard definition, but I plan to get a HD capable one
> soon.
> > I don't have an external serial port. Do the USB blasters work well?
>
> I don't know about IR blasters with MythTV, but when I had a standalone
> TiVo some years ago, I found the IR blaster to be about 95-98% reliable.
> That sounds pretty good until you consider that it means it'll mis-tune
> 1 in 20 to 1 in 50 recordings. This could be perhaps one episode per
> season of a TV show. If that show is important to you and repeats don't
> happen, or if you don't notice the problem until after the repeats have
> happened, that's very poor performance.
>
> Currently, I'm using FireWire to change channels on my HD cable box (a
> Motorola DCX3200-M). I also get a lot of my programming over FireWire,
> but some I get via clear QAM on an AverMedia AverTV A180, and some
> channels (which are scrambled even on the cable box's FireWire output) I
> get via analog inputs to a Hauppauge PVR-500. If my cable company (Cox)
> scrambled more HD content, I'd probably invest in a Hauppauge HD-PVR,
> but at the moment I'm one of the lucky ones who can get most HD content
> via FireWire. (My premium channels are scrambled via FireWire, but
> that's about it.) In any event, I find FireWire channel changing to be
> extremely reliable. Once I got things working at all, I don't recall
> having a single mis-tune, so that puts it up at 99.9%+ reliability.
> (FireWire video capture is a bit lower than that -- maybe 99.5%.)
>
>
You are able to change to encrypted channels with firewire and then record
over the STB component output? Is this analog output HD quality?
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