<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_extra"><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Oct 16, 2013 at 9:16 PM, George Nassas <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:gnassas@mac.com" target="_blank">gnassas@mac.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">On 2013-10-15, at 7:04 PM, Karl Newman wrote:<br>
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> This is important. This means your digital tuners are useless. Comcast almost certainly gave you what are called DTAs (digital transport adapters), which decrypt the cable signal for the selected channel and output an analog NTSC signal on channel 3 or 4. Or, if they gave you the HD-DTAs, it outputs on HDMI and you can't do any recording with that (legally). So your best bet is to get your analog tuner(s) working with the DTAs. You'll need one DTA to match with each analog tuner you want to record at the same time, and an IR blaster for each DTA as well, to change the channel.<br>
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This is good advice, I might refine it slightly to say your digital tuners are useless for recording digital cable but they’re still great for recording digital over the air broadcasts. Go over to <a href="http://tvfool.com" target="_blank">tvfool.com</a>, give it your address and antenna details, and it should come up with around a dozen digital channels which are in easy reception range for you. All you have to do is split your antenna cable into two lines, feed those into the hvr 1800 and 2250 cards, and do some easy myth setup which is similar to what you’ve already done. Digital broadcasts are really, really nice. Worth the effort.<br>
<br></blockquote><div><br>Yeah, I didn't catch that he was also looking to record OTA so the digital tuners could be used for that. And it may be possible that the Comcast is eliminating the analog signal he's been using, but maybe not encrypting it (yet, but it seems that's only a matter of time anyway). But there's an outside chance he could fight the continuous battle with QAM for a while anyway. <br>
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Like Karl says if you have a DTA with analog output you still have the option of recording it using the analog input of your hvr-1800 card. It can record digital and analog simultaneously so it’s all good. A tricky part is myth needs a way to change the channel on your DTA which means you have to get an IR blaster, write a script to control it, and hook that into myth’s tuning process. For an experienced person this is low to medium complexity, for you medium to high but there are lots of people here who can help.<br>
</blockquote><div><br></div><div>I'm a reasonably experienced Linux and Myth user and it took me almost a month to get my IR blasters completely working when Comcast switched us over about 3 years ago (I actually went a few days past the analog shutdown until I solved what turned out to be a hardware failure of one of the emitters). My setup was weird, though, mixing two different lirc devices, controlling two different cable boxes and using one of the lesser-known standalone IR blasters (CommandIR--great support though and they're committed to Linux & open source).<br>
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And like Gary described, you can try a CableCard approach but that’s also medium to high complexity and you’re spending on more hardware.<br></blockquote><div> </div><div>This actually seems to me like a simpler approach--only one device, well-supported in MythTV, no in-kernel drivers if you use an Ethernet-based model like the HD Homerun Prime and importantly, no IR blaster configuration.<br>
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In the short term you should get things going with recording off your antenna to see if you even like myth. Most people do but maybe you’ll think it’s too much bother. Then you can decide if recording cable is worth the effort.<br>
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- George<br></blockquote></div></div></div>