[mythtv-users] Thinking of Switching from Cable to DirectTv

Gordon Rimac gordon.rimac at gmail.com
Sun Mar 6 19:10:27 UTC 2005


> I have analog cable now and I'd like to switch to DirecTV sat.   I have
> 2 pvr250 that are split on the cable.  How hard/possible is it to
> control those boxes with serial ports, guessing 2 ports, one for each
> external receiver.  Do people do this?

I just went the other way (DirecTV to Cable) but for about a year I
ran 2 DirecTV recievers with MythTV.  I used serial cables that I
bought from Snapstream.  They worked great, I never had channel change
problems.

>  I don't really want to use a
> IRblaster.  Does the Sat onscreen menus come up when myth changes the
> channels? 

The menu did come up on my RCA recievers, but I set it to a short
timeout and used a theme that overlapped over it, so you couldn't see
it on live tv channel changes.

> Is it transparent (analog cable like) after you got the
> serial ports working? 

Yes, it will work just fine.  Channel changes did seem to take a
little bit longer than with cable.  Picture quality was much better
than what I get today with analog cable.

> What model DirecTV tuners work the best here

Make sure you get boxes with "low speed data ports".  I used 2 RCA
recievers that I bought at circuit city.


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