[mythtv-users] Aussie MythTV with Foxtel

[Martin Ravell]

The following may strike many of you as being extremely stupid but please
bear with me. My apologies if this post is somewhat off-topic as it concerns
the PVR-350 more that MythTV itself. I've not been able to find any
significant forums specifically for the Hauppauge products and I do know a
lot of you in MythTV land are working with these cards.

Being new to the whole PVR deal I am making some assumptions which I would
greatly appreciate your comments:


1. I plug the RF out (its marked 'TV') of my cable box (Foxtel, model
STU100/1F) into my Hauppauge PVR-350 TV Connector.

2. The cable box I have would need to place all of it's channels in this RF
out (TV) line in order for my Hauppauge PVR-350 to be able to tune them in
(thereby allowing me to surf through them).

3. The cable box is needed in order to descramble the signal coming in
through the raw cable. i.e. I cannot bypass the set-top box and plug the
cable straight into my capture card.

4. I have composite out as well on the back of the cable box but it is my
understanding that this sort of signal just shows the channel that I have
chosen with the cable boxes remote.


After having some frustrations with my Linux install (Fedora Core via
Jarod's guide) I've thrown an old disk into my machine  and installed W2K
with the Hauppauge software in order to make sure that the card is working
OK.

I can see signal on the Composite input fine.

When I plug the RF input into my terrestrial antenna I can get the card to
tune into the free-to-air stations we have here (Sydney, Australia) fine as
well. (BTW Picture quality is excellent.)

When I plug the RF out of my Foxtel cable box into the 350 it is unable to
tune in any channels. (using the AutoScan stuff in the Hauppauge software).
It seems to pickup the fact that there are a number of channels but the
picture for each is just snow. (Not the characteristic scrambled signal snow
but typical 'not tuned to a valid channel' snow)

I'm just going to go now and ditch the W2K disk and prove to myself that I
can do the same with the Fedora/Myth install but meanwhile here are some
questions I'd like to put to the list:

a) Have I missed something completely obvious re the setup of the cable box
and capture card?
b) Has anyone been successful in setting up MythTV with this sort of cable
box?
c) Are there any MythTV people here in Australia using it with Foxtel? I'd
love to hear from you.



Cheers
Marty