[mythtv-users] Why FireWire makes sense even for those without HDTV displays

[Yeechang Lee]

Chris Ribe <chrisribe at gmail.com> says:
> Just to clarify this point, some cable providers (like mine -
> Comcast) only make OTA rebroadcasts available unprotected over
> firewire.  The only channels I get over firewire are CBS, ABC, NBC,
> FOX, and PBS.

Ouch! Too bad. As noted, this definitely varies, even within the
providers themselves; it's entirely possible that if you were to move
to the next county over Comcast's offerings (and the box, for that
matter) over FireWire might be completely diffferent. RCN, my
provider, in San Francisco is--shall we say--much more generous, but
RCN in NYC might be completely different; I really don't know.

> In addition to the substantial cost of the firewire solution (which
> I find bearable because I am 100+ miles from the broadcast towers),
> it is less than perfectly reliable in operation - although I cannot
> compare it to other HDTV capture solutions.

Neither can I, but I've had zero problems with FireWire since I
started running each hour with cron the little script comprised of
four plugctl lines that's been posted here several times, and even
before then any issues were infrequent, only occurred some of the
times I restarted mythbackend, and could be cured by rerunning
mythtv-setup to move the FireWire node used from 2 (the usual number
with my setup) to 1, then moving it back after the next MythTV box
reboot.

-- 
Yeechang Lee <ylee at pobox.com> | +1 650 776 7763 | San Francisco CA US