[mythtv-users] Pre-sales open for HD-PVR

[Scott D. Davilla]

>On Mon, 2008-04-07 at 12:15 -0500, Marc Randolph wrote:
>
>>  There is a possibility that set-top boxes could disable their
>>  component output for certain flagged channels, but I've not heard of
>  > that happening. 
>

Disabling component will never happen, the consumer backlash would be 
enormous. There are way too many people that don't have HDMI on their 
TV sets.

The HD-PVR is going to sell very well. It's a analog capture device 
just like a PVR-150, just includes component as well as s-video and 
composite and outputs H.264 instead of mpeg2.

The networks/studios could never mount an successful attempt to block 
the use of the PVR-150 and just because it's a higher resolution is 
not a valid argument. It's still analog and there are no legal 
controls on analog capture for personal use.

The networks/studios argument has always been against digital "bit 
prefect" copies. A capture from analog will never be "bit prefect", 
it might look very close but not a "bit perfect" copy.

I, for one, am very interested as these devices can replace my 
existing PVR-150s for s-video capture and provide an upgrade path to 
component capture in the future.

I'm also unconcerned about initial Linux USB support. A USB device is 
very easy to snoop regarding device protocol and data traffic. Given 
a working Windows driver, reverse-engineering for a Linux driver is 
pretty easy compared to a pci device. I predict that regardless of 
their releasing a HD-PVR Linux driver, one will magically appear in 
less than one month after the HD-PVR units start shipping.