<div dir="ltr">On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 9:23 PM, Adam Rosenfield <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:adamrose@mit.edu">adamrose@mit.edu</a>></span> wrote:<br><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
Hi all,<br>
<br>
I'm currently in the process of setting up a MythTV box for use as a<br>
DVR. I have Comcast digital cable service. Ideally, I'd like to be<br>
able to record any channel I can get normally through the Comcast<br>
set-top box in HD for HD channels, and I'd also like to be able to<br>
record two channels at once. From what I can gather, I'm guessing<br>
that I won't be able to capture the HD streams, except for the<br>
channels which are also broadcast OTA; is this correct?<br>
<br>
Will I also need two separate STBs? And if I need two STBs, will I<br>
also need two video capture cards? If I'm piping the streams right<br>
from the STBs, it's all digital, so I only need a digital capture<br>
card, right? I doubt my CPU (a Pentium 4) can handle software HD<br>
encoding, let alone dual encoding.<br>
<br>
With that in mind, are there are specific capture cards you would<br>
recommend? My motherboard can only handle PCI, no PCI-Express.<br>
<br>
Thanks,<br>
<br>
-Adam<br>
</blockquote></div><br>Yes, you will need two set top boxes. Assuming you will get a digital stream out of your STB is generally not a good assumption. It can be challenging to get a STB with the firewire enabled. If you can then this is the best choice. However, even if the firewire is enabled, you still may only get OTA or a few other unencrypted channels over the firewire. If you don't have firewire. Then the only other way to capture cable HD channels is with the HDPVR or some simlar device that can capture HD off of the component outputs of the STB. The HDPVR is relatively new and isn't supported in the stable release of mythtv. You can get support by compiling from SVN trunk. Your question imply you are new to mythtv and therefore running the unstable trunk probably isn't the best idea for you. If that is true then your only hope for HD is to get it from firewire or from OTA. <br>
</div>