Ok, I am in the same boat and procrastinating/family has slowed my progress. I have Digital Cable with TWC as well. I don't care to record the >125 channels, they are mostly dupes of the <125 channels. <br><br>So, my question is... Do I have to do the IR Blaster/Serial cable thing? OR can I just hook a up directly to the cable and get the lower 125 channels in analog or is it just completely gone with digital cable? If the lower 125 channel are not there in analog I guess I have to use the "change the channels through the cable box" thing whether by IR Blaster or serial cable (as mentioned in the previous message). If that is the case... (use IR Blaster), why bother with a tuner card? Why not just use a video in video out setup? I mean the digital box I have has video and audio out, so a tuner is not necessary ... right?
<br><br>Thank you,<br>G<br><br><br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 3/30/06, <b class="gmail_sendername">Kichigai Mentat</b> <<a href="mailto:kichigai@comcast.net">kichigai@comcast.net</a>> wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----<br>Hash: SHA1<br><br>On Mar 30, 2006, at 09.48, <a href="mailto:Yeraze.27524549@bloglines.com">Yeraze.27524549@bloglines.com</a> wrote:<br><br>> I'm currently working on specs for a future MythTV build, and I'm
<br>> relatively<br>> new to the whole thing. I have time warner's digital cable, and<br>> wanted to<br>> know if anyone here has any experience with it?<br>><br>> 1) Is there a PCI card<br>> (Like the PVR250) that I can use to bypass my set-top box? I don't
<br>> particularly<br>> care about VOD or any of that junk, just want to keep the higher<br>> digital channels.<br><br>No way, no how. At the moment, there is no digital cable tuner that<br>I'm aware of, and most of the digital cable channels you are talking
<br>about are encrypted, so that only the cable box can decode it.<br>Hopefully, in the future, when CableCARD becomes a standard, this<br>should be fixed. But for now, you're out of luck. (I'm kinda in the<br>same boat myself, with ComCast in MN)
<br><br>><br>> 2) Is there any way to connect to the set-top box "reliably"? I<br>> have a<br>> "PACE 510 TWC", which seems to be this model: http://<br>> <a href="http://www.pacemicro.com/corporate/products/prodinfo.asp?PID=DC510">
www.pacemicro.com/corporate/products/prodinfo.asp?PID=DC510</a><br>> , and it has a Serial Port & A USB port on the back. I can't find<br>> any information<br>> on the net about them, other than the Serial port is for diagnostics.
<br><br>Uhh, you'd need to tell us what your actual cable box model is. Most<br>cable companies tend to have a box with a serial port that can be<br>used to change the channels, but some companies refuse to do it<br>(because they figure you can just use an IR blaster) or don't know
<br>how (there's a thread in here where a guy talks about how the techs<br>were poorly trained, and no one knew how. Fortunately, he managed to<br>find what tech needed on the internet)<br><br>><br>> 3)<br>> How reliable is the IR-Relay stuff? I had thought about using an
<br>> IRBlaster<br>> (<a href="http://www.irblaster.info/">http://www.irblaster.info/</a>) to do it, but it seems this unit uses<br>> a non-standard<br>> protocol and may require something different (based on this Tivo
<br>> forum post:<br>> <a href="http://archive.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/history/topic/103589-1.html">http://archive.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/history/topic/103589-1.html</a>)<br><br>It's pretty reliable, unless you plan on bombarding your cable box
<br>with additional infrared light. In all fairness, it's not the blaster<br>that handles the protocol, it's the software. All that blaster is is<br>basically an IR light bulb, and all your computer needs to do is turn<br>
it on and off. MythTV relies on LIRC, and so far, I've never heard<br>anyone complain about it. TiVo ≠ MythTV.<br><br>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----<br>Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (Darwin)<br><br>iD8DBQFELAKwwAwn3hu8KxcRAtBVAJ9HhZE0hUKhXfnU7+xN6ha3XwQN/ACePcPB
<br>+5V9sCMjd8vwyEh0FRjHzgc=<br>=VP63<br>-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----<br><br><br>_______________________________________________<br>mythtv-users mailing list<br><a href="mailto:mythtv-users@mythtv.org">mythtv-users@mythtv.org
</a><br><a href="http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users">http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users</a><br><br><br></blockquote></div><br>