[mythtv-users] Moving from Cable to Satellite

[Brian Wood]

On Thursday 12 June 2008 07:42:03 Brett Williams wrote:
> I have my MythTV up and working just the way I like it with my local cable
> company and using a PVR-350.  I just bought, but haven't installed, a
> PVR-500 so I can have more tuners available.
>
> With that said, I have been looking at the offers from DirectTV and am
> really impressed with the savings that I would be able to have by switching
> to Satellite instead of cable.

If you call your cable company and tell them you are thinking of switching to 
satellite for economic reasons there's a fair chance they will make you some 
sort of offer to try and keep you as a customer. I know several people who 
have done this, but of course it depends on your cable company.

>
> My question is, how do I go about using MythTV through a Satellite
> receiver?  What would I have to be doing differently than just running the
> coax from the cable company into my PVR-350?

You would have to use the composite or S-Video baseband output of the sat 
receiver into the PVR. You will also have to set up some way to change the 
channel on the receiver. Some DTV receivers have a serial port for this but 
others will require an IR blaster. Not hard, many folks do it (including me).

Biggest problem I'm having right now (with DISH, not DTV) is that the receiver 
goes into "screensaver" mode (an obsolete term with LCDs) every time it does 
a data download, and Myth has no way to know that the receiver is in that 
mode. There are several workarounds, so it's not a terribly serious problem, 
but I thought I'd mention it.

beww