[mythtv-users] Which is best for MythTV: Analog Cable, Digital Cable, or Satellite?

[Chad Coulliette, Ph.D.]

[I tried to post this message earlier, but it bouced because my request to join the list evidently did not go through yet.  Now that I have received the list membership notification, I am re-sending.  If it ends up going out twice, I apologize in advance.]

I have been using DirecTivo and UltimateTV for many years, and have thus been a big supporter of PVRs.  I've also done some Tivo programming, since its based on Linux.  I also recently discoved that ReplayTV (Tivo's newest competitor in the PVR appliance business) is also runs on Linux.  But, I have never been completely happy with Tivo, UltimateTV or ReplayTV.  Each has some good features, but none of them has everything that they should have.  So, it then occured to me that an open-source Linux project maintained on sourceforge would be a very cool project to start, and with the help of the entire community it could become the best PVR available anywhere.  So, I started doing a little web browsing to see what components I could build it on, and to my surprise, I discoved MythTV.  I was impressed that somebody had already thought of it, and that the project was already underway. I have not used MythTV yet, but have spent all of my free time during the last week reading everything I could find about it on the web, particularly the www.mythtv.org home site and the archives of this mailing list.  I must say that I am very impressed with what I have read so far.  It is an courageous project that actually aims to do more than I originally imagined could fit into the function of a PVR.  So, I have decided to build a MythTV box, and then afterward, try to find a way to contribute.  

In choosing the stream type to use with MythTV and the tuner card I ran into a few basic questions.  These issue has been discussed in the mailing list archive in one form or another, but I could not find answers to these specific questions:  
1)  In my area, I have the choice of analog cable, digital cable or satellite (DirecTV).  Which is optimal for MythTV?   
2)  If money is not a problem, when using MythTV which is the optimal tuner PCI card for each type of stream: analog cable, digital cable or satellite (DirecTV)?  WinTV PVR-350, WinTV-HD, WinTV-Nexus-s, respectively?
3)  I think that I understand analog cable and DirecTV fairly well, but I do not quite understand what a digital cable signal provides. Is it truly digital?  Can we use the Hauppauge WinTV-HD or WinTV-D as a tuner for a digital cable signal with MythTV without using a set-top box from the cable company? 

I have used DirecTV with my Tivo and UltimateTV for many years and been very happy with the results.  The picture quality is very good.  But, these units have DirecTV built into the PVR, so there is no encoding, only decoding to display on the TV.  The encoding done by DirecTV before the stream arrives is very good, and digital delivers better reception.  So, that would seem the like the best choice at first glance.  But, unless DirecTV has released a component for the common interface of a satellite PCI card that can unsramble their signal, then we must use their tuners/decoders.  This results in the stream going from digital, to analog, then back to digital, then back to analog... which makes no sense to me.  In addition, trying to get the DirecTV tuner to change channels with a serial cable or IR blaster seems like it would be a challenge, even with LIRC.  The other pitfall of using an external DirecTV tuner is that the on screen displays (OSD?) are always popping on when you change channels, and could probably end up in the recordings.  All of the DirecTV tuners I have experimented with do not have a way to completely turn off the OSDs.  I do not know much about digital cable, perhaps someone can enlighten me.  I am not sure if a digital cable set top box is needed, or if the cable can go straight into a WinTV-HD, WinTV-D card, or something like that, thus giving the computer access to all of the channels without having to mess around with seriel cable or IR blasting to change channels.  So, good old analog seems like the best option to me at this point... at least its the least painful to get set up and avoids OSD problems and probably avoids slow channel changing, too.  The only pitfall I see is just the quality of the picture.  It is the least in quality of the three options.  Does anyone/everyone agree with my logic in choosing analog as probably the best choice for now?  I really wish DirecTV would release or sell a PCI card that could unsramble their signal and perhaps give access to their pay per view channels.  That would be great.  If I understand correctly, the PCI card would not even need an encorder, just the algorithm or chip for unscrambling, and perhaps a hardware decoder would be nice.  That could form the basis for a really great DirecMythTV box.  

Thanks in advance for everyone's help and suggestions.


Chad   
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