On 7/28/06, <b class="gmail_sendername">Aaron Howard</b> <<a href="mailto:archanoid@gmail.com">archanoid@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<div><span class="gmail_quote"></span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
On Thu, 2006-07-27 at 22:47 -0600, Chad wrote:<br>> Must be nice to have alternatives for a cable provider in your area.<br>> For me, at least for analog cable, Comcast is my only choice, and they<br>> are craptastic at best.
<br>><br><br>I called WOW and they offer nearly identical service for nearly<br>identical price. They use two different models of HD STB: 1) SA3250HD;<br>and, 2) Pace 551HD. I was told I could not request a specific model and
<br>of course they were clueless what firewire was and said their cable<br>boxes had component out but if I provided a DVI or HDMI cable, the<br>installer would use it if I asked. A friend of mine who works in the<br>cable industry also told me the Pace box would likely be a PoS.
<br><br>I keep thinking if I could guarantee an SA3250 I'd just switch to them,<br>but since they won't guarantee it, I'm on the fence. No matter what I<br>do, I realize I'll have to bypass my MythTV box if I want to watch HBO-
<br>HD (and probably ESPN-HD as well) which really sucks.</blockquote><div><br><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">You should be able to decline the upgrade for some bogus reason if you end up getting the wrong box. :) </span>
<br></div><br><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">I can get ESPNHD right now over my firewire port and for the first weekend I had HBO and SHOWTIME HD and</span><br style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">
both worked over firewire for that weekend.</span><br><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">> The problem you'll face when you do get to the point of figuring out
<br>> if HBO-HD is encrypted or not is that if it is, the only way to get it<br>> run *through* MythTV is to use a PVR-x50's analog inputs. It'll<br>> downgrade to a 720x480 signal, but will give you the ability to
<br>> pause/rewind/record the movies that are broadcast on it at their best<br>> quality. I'm sure you know this, but encryption needs to be<br>> decrypted, and the only thing currently capable of that (legally) is
<br>> your STB that your cable company sends you. If they choose to encrypt<br>> a channel, and don't decrypt it over firewire, then... well your<br>> choice is listed above ;)<br>><br><br>If HBO-HD is encrypted over firewire, it sounds as if you're saying I
<br>have to go with an S-Video or such connection to an analog tuner card<br>(like the PVR-x50s) and watch/record it at 720x480. But it still would<br>be a broadcast NTSC signal, right? Not only interlaced, but not even<br>
truly 720x480. A few more questions:<br><br>1) if the signal coming into the S-Video port on a PVR-x50 card is NTSC<br>broadcast quality (not DTV 480i), it's not 720x480 is it? It's<br>something roughly equivalent to 440x480, is it not? I mean, it's analog
<br>with 480 scan lines interlaced, but how much data is really there in the<br>horizontal? I'm going off stuff I read on wikipedia, so I know there's<br>no guarantee it's 100% accurate info. Still, even if it's not actually
<br>a 720x480 signal, I can set MythTV to record it that way? Will it de-<br>interlace on the fly, or do I record it interlaced and then run a<br>process on it after the fact to convert it to de-interlaced?<br><br>2) Does anybody know: if an HD signal is encrypted over the firewire
<br>stream at its full resolution, could it still be down-sampled and sent<br>from the cable box at 720x480 (DTV 480p) in unencrypted form? That's<br>DVD quality and good enough for me. (Somehow I doubt it's doable<br>though.)
</blockquote><div><br><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">On my box w/ firewire the channel is either there on not there, no downscaling. </span><br></div><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
3) What's with S-Video anyway? I thought it used 6 pins but it seems<br>most S-Video devices (and cables) are only 4-pin. Anybody got the scoop<br>on that?<br><br>Thanks again, folks...<br><br>-Aaron<br><br><br>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
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