[mythtv-users] Comcast Equipment Update

[William Jacoby]

On 9/9/2016 10:32 AM, Greg Woods wrote:
>
> On Fri, Sep 9, 2016 at 7:32 AM, Gary Buhrmaster 
> <gary.buhrmaster at gmail.com <mailto:gary.buhrmaster at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     But while CableCARDs
>     are mandated to still be viable for seven years(*),
>     viability will, as always, be in the eyes of the
>     beholder.
>
>
> Thanks to everyone who replied on this thread. It appears that the 
> situation, as it always does when Comcast is involved, sucks for 
> anyone who doesn't want to be trapped in their corporate silo.
>
> It is clear that my HD-PVRs are dead now,  or at least as soon as 
> Comcast finishes making whatever format changes they have in mind 
> (they gave a date of Oct. 31; I don't know if that's a hard deadline, 
> but I have to assume it is). The HD-PVRs of course will still work, 
> but the set-top boxes they depend on will no longer be usable, and the 
> replacement boxes Comcast offers will likely not work.
>
> For the present, I can most likely keep my MythTV system going for a 
> few more years by switching to a CableCard-based tuner, so that's my 
> immediate plan. I don't get any premium channels so I don't care that 
> those are not available this way, but I understand that channels may 
> start gradually becoming unavailable to this tuner, so I will have a 
> crappy Comcast DVR box to catch those (at least the new crappy DVR 
> looks to be considerably better than the old crappy DVR, but of course 
> it will never have 8TB of storage or instant commercial skip). If 
> enough channels that I watch regularly become unavailable, then that 
> will be when my MythTV system will be declared dead and I'll have to 
> get another set-top box for the basement TV and rely just on Comcast DVR.
>
> This depressing picture holds unless the laws change radically in this 
> country (USA), but since the MPAA owns our politicians, it seems 
> unlikely to change in my lifetime. For now I have ordered an HDHomerun 
> Prime and a USB 3.0 NIC. I realize a dedicated NIC isn't really 
> required, but I have no free ports on the basement switch where the 
> backend lives and I have problems with my current HDHomerun tuner 
> producing unwatchable recordings about half the time (OTA). This could 
> be due to packet loss (seems unlikely since all my network switches 
> are gigabit, but they are also crappy consumer-grade Netgear 
> switches), bad reception (I have no way to tell if that is happening), 
> or maybe the HDHR power supply (these are infamous but I'm pretty sure 
> I've already replaced it once). At any rate this is a pain to 
> diagnose, and a USB NIC is cheaper than buying a switch with more 
> ports, and using a dedicated NIC at least eliminates one possible 
> cause of issues for a networked tuner.
>
> --Greg
>
>
>
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With the HDHR + OTA, did you try using a powered cable amplifier?

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