On 3/16/07, <b class="gmail_sendername">jmk</b> <<a href="mailto:jmk@foofus.net">jmk@foofus.net</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, 2007-03-15 at 10:16 -0500, Jerry Rubinow wrote:<br><br>Thanks for the feedback.<br><br>> I did this for a while, but I was never really that happy with the<br>> reliability of the firewire recording. This may have been due to the
<br>> crappiness of the coax in my 30+ year-old house, I don't know, but<br>> every so often things wouldn't record right. For the most part it<br>> worked though, and due to the particular shows we watch, there was
<br>> rarely a conflict due to trying to tune to something on s-video at the<br>> same time as the firewire. Of course, I have a pvr-500 as well. So<br>> in my setup, I used the pvr-500 for all the analog channels only, the
<br>> s-video for all the digital channels only, and the firewire just for<br>> the HD channels which were in the clear (in my area, just the<br>> broadcast channels). However, then Verizon started offering FIOS TV
<br>> in my area...<br><br>Did you just setup two capture devices (1 firewire, 1 ivtv s-vid) and<br>hope for the best? I'm curious if you had to make any additional<br>modifications to Myth to try and limit collisions.
</blockquote><div><br>Yes, two capture devices, where the ivtv one would issue an external channel change command using 6200ch, and just keep an eye out in Upcoming Recordings for collisions. I had aspirations of modifying the code, but in the end it didn't turn out to be a big enough problem to motivate me to do so.
<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;">> This is what I use now instead of firewire. The pvr-500 and s-video<br>> is still set up the same as it was. But I get all my HD and broadcast
<br>> SD over QAM. I've found this to be rock solid, plus I don't get<br>> tuning conflicts with the set top box. It's more of a hassle to set<br>> up initially, but once it's done, who cares? On both the cable that I
<br>> used to have (Comcast in the Philly area) and the FIOS, only the local<br>> broadcast channels (SD and HD) and analog channels were unencumbered<br>> by any protection over QAM and firewire. But like you say, I've heard
<br>> of people who get everything unencrypted in other areas (but I think<br>> this is more the exception).<br><br>This may be a dumb question... I'm wondering what level of cable service<br>I need in order to access QAM. Do I need the HD tier, if I decide that
<br>all I want is the OTA HD via QAM?</blockquote><div><br>With Verizon FIOS, there's no HD tier - it comes with the basic $43 a month subscription. Whether you get an HD set top box, that's another thing, but that shouldn't impact the QAM signal. Oh wait, I see you were switching to cable, not FIOS. It was someone else who brought up FIOS.
<br><br>I don't know. I never had non-HD cable. If I had to bet a dollar, I'd say it's there, since the cable company probably would like to be able to simply send a signal to your set top box to enable/disable services which are already present on the cable, plus the must-carry rules. But I really don't know.
<br><br>-Jerry<br></div><br></div><br>