[mythtv] PVR 250 & Linux vs Windows PVRs

[Desmond Rivet]

>Great info.  I really appreciate the editorial
>review w/regard to MythTV.  So the bozo question
>of the day, what do you mean by an external
>tuner?  Are you talking antenae vs cable TV vs
>Satellite dish or are you talking about the
>receiver for the tuner card?

By "tuner" I mean "the device which actually changes the channels". 
Normally, a cable signal comes in off your coaxial cable. This signal can be 
fed directly into your TV, VCR or PVR-2/350, and these devices will be able 
to interpret the TV signal and change the channel (perhaps via remote 
control), i.e. these device all have their own tuners.

I have digital cable. The signal, although it comes in on the same wire, is 
in a different format and must be fed into a seperate box for channel 
decoding - an external, and specialized, tuner. With this setup, the coaxial 
cable goes into the digital box, and I feed the resulting composite video 
output into the PVR-350 (for some reason, the last time I checked, the 
driver for the PVR-350 captured s-video in black and white).

MythTV can natively tell the tuner on the PVR-2/350 (in fact, most tuner 
cards) to change channels. However, it has no idea how to do this for my 
digital cable box. MythTV *can*, however, be configured to run a script of 
your choosing whenever it needs to change a channel. So with my digital box, 
I built a transmitter that literally acts like a remote control for my 
digital box - the difference being that *this* remote control in 
controllable via the serial port on my MythTV computer, and therefore can be 
controlled via the script that Myth runs whenever it needs to change a 
channel. Not hard once you visualize it, but might be more trouble than you 
want if you have one of these external tuners.

I think some external tuners can be control directly via a serial cable that 
plugs directly into them. If you have one, look into it.

You get the same sort of situation with satellite, I believe - a seperate 
box. Although I think you can by PCI cards for certain kinds of satellite 
services. Not sure, might want to look into it if that's what you have.

>    Also, regarding the PVR 350 vs PVR 250, you
>mention issues with TV out on the 350.  Does
>anyone know if the same issues exist with the PVR
>250?

The PVR-250 just has the MPEG2 encoder, but no decoder. Only the 350 has the 
MPEG2 decoder, i.e. TV out.

HTH,

Desmond

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