[mythtv-users] visit from the cable guy (Firewire query)

[Marc Randolph]

On Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 12:25 PM, Steve Peters - Priority Electronics
<steve at priorityelectronics.com> wrote:
> ---Cable box is analog---
>
> Yesterday the Time Warner cable guy had to come over to fix my cable.
> Channels 14 to 99 on the cable box were snowey. Now i have an hd cable box,
> and i thought that all the channels were digital, but i guess they are not.
> He said that channels 14 to 99 are all analog, and no way of getting them in
> digital.
>
> I asked him well, what about your dvr's? Do they have an analog to digital
> converter in them such as the pvr series many of us use? He said yes.
>
> Has anyone else heard of this?

Time Warner in Dallas still has a number of analog channels, but
offers most of them in digital as well (higher channel numbers) -
sometimes digital three channels! SD and HD and I don't know what.

The only way to store something on a hard-drive is to convert it to
digital, so I'm not sure what you're asking about with regards to
that.

> ---Use Firewire to get all channels---
>
> Also, he said he had hooked up a cable box directly to a customer's tv via
> firewire. The customer then got all the channels he was paying for. I've
> seen many myth users talk about how firewire for the most part is encrypted
> (other than the local stuff).
>
> Has anyone else heard of this one?

Not many Firewire TV's, but they exist.  Most that do should have DTCP
(aka 5C) compliant decryption capability.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Transmission_Content_Protection

I was thinking about trying to do Firewire capture, but I believe I've
seen a number of people referring to spotty quality on Firewire
outputs (maybe this was only in reference to analog channels coming
across the Firewire??).  Any feedback/summary/brain-dump on the
"quality" of Firewire outputs would be appreciated.  Said another way,
would I be better off just doing component capture or would Firewire
be noticable better quality (ignoring that Firewire encryption might
get in the way)?

   Marc