[mythtv-users] CableCard Chain.

[Yeechang Lee]

Rob Davis <rob at davis-family.info> says:
> OTA epgs are pretty much broken here and only provide a few hours if
> they work, so any manufacturer wanting to make a DVR has to buy a
> listing service from somewhere to enable scheduling, including us
> with MythTV (Schedules Direct).

You get what you pay for. Yes, US EIT is terrible, but $25 a year for
SchedulesDirect is stupendously, incredibly cheap consider how high
quality the listing service is (for those outside the US, it's the
same data that TiVo subscribers pay $10-20 a month for), especially
compared to UK's EIT or Radio Times (which, in turn, is far superior
to most of the rest of the world).

> Just my thoughts having lived in both places.  I would much prefer
> the UK setup to the US one, even though all our OTA channels are HD.
> Widescreen PAL looks so much better than SD NTSC.

Again, tradeoffs. Here in San Francisco, the following over-the-air
channels are available:

Channel	     HD?	Non-duplicate subchannels?
ABC	     X		1 (HD)
CBS	     X
The CW	     X
MyNetworkTV  X
NBC	     X		1
PBS	     X		4
Telemundo    X
Univision    X
Telefutura   X		
ion	     X		2
KCSM	     X		2
KICU	     X		2
KOFY	     X		1
KMTP			3
KCNS			3
KTNC			1

I've left out many more SD channels that I can't get from my
particular location. (One has 15, yes, 15 SD subchannels.) No
painstakingly slow rollout of one Freeview HD channel at a time; most
of the above HD channels have been available for more than a
decade. They are all the real thing; no "best of" programming subset.

I agree that it would be nice to be able to in the US choose from a
large selection of OTA tuner/DVR boxes using good-quality EIT guide
data the way Freeview boxes are available everywhere in the UK. (While
the Dish Network/Channel Master DVRs do exist they're not widely sold
in US big box electronics stores and, again, the poor quality of US
EIT is a major limitation.) More importantly, as has been discussed in
this thread, US cable/satellite penetration has been so high (more
than 90%) for so long--unlike in the UK, where over-the-air never fell
below a majority of households--that many people have never
experienced OTA TV, let alone modern digital ATSC HD. Further, the
typical US cable/satellite selection is far, far superior to anything
available in the UK or Europe; my cable provider offers ~75 HD
channels and hundreds of SD channels, and its lineup is somewhat
inferior to that of the larger US cable/satellite companies.

-- 
MythTV FAQ Q: "Cheap frontend/backend?" A: Revo, $200-300 @ Newegg
Q: "Record HD cable/satellite?" A: Hauppauge HD-PVR, $200 @ Newegg
Q: "Can't change Live TV channels w/multirec!" A: Hit NEXTCARD key
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