[mythtv-users] Stupid question about tuning from cable boxes

Brad DerManouelian myth at dermanouelian.com
Sun Nov 16 04:17:10 UTC 2008


On Nov 15, 2008, at 8:01 PM, Josh White wrote:

> I'm currently working on building a home theater in my basement, and  
> I'll either be using a decent projector, or a 46"ish LDC HDTV.  My  
> question involves the HDTV thing.  I've never seen a working MythTV  
> system that worked with HD (In fact, I've never seen a mythtv system  
> besides my own...in person) and I was wondering what happens with  
> the OSD.  Say I get a digital cable box or 4 from Time Warner,  
> control them with whatever (IR blaster, or Firewire, or whathaveyou)  
> and run them through an HD Homerun or something; am I going to see  
> the OSD from the box in addition to whatever myth displays?  I'm  
> just curious to see what I'll be getting into.  Obviously, I don't  
> want to see both, and I'm pretty happy with what I have right now  
> with my lowly SD system, and I'd like to be able to continue along  
> the same path, but with simply higher resolution.  What do all you  
> HD myth users out there see?

This isn't just an HD issue. This is an STB issue. You can generally  
change the amount of time the banner is displayed after changing  
channels. My DirecTV boxes default to 4 seconds, I set them to the  
minimum allowed which is 2 seconds. Then I put in a 1 second delay on  
my channel change script so it takes 2 seconds to change the channel  
and I never see the banner any more. However, even if you have the  
banner displayed for a second or two at the beginning of each program,  
it's not that big of a deal. You learn to ignore it.

> Also, after reading about the PCI style Digital cable tuners  
> available from ATI (which I realize are not supported by linux),  
> does anyone know anything about integrating these with a myth  
> system?  I could imagine using an XP MCE box, or a Vista box with  
> one of these cards as a source (to deal with all the proprietary DRM  
> BS, etc.) and then finding a way to incorperate that with a myth  
> system (perhaps finding a way to control the windows machine vai the  
> network and then simply grabbing the frames...sort of like a HD  
> Homerun on steroids).  Maybe if I went that far, the whole mythtv  
> layer would be irrelevant; I don't know.

That's a long way to go for an unsupported configuration with many  
points of failure. I recommend the HD-PVR (and unstable MythTV code to  
get your hands dirty or wait for the next release) for a really slick  
high-def solution without restrictions.

> Anyway, that is something I've been pondering for a while, and I  
> figured it would be worth throwing out there.  I really like mythtv,  
> and I'd like to stick with it, but everything I've read about HD  
> seems like a major pain compared to using analog cable and a few  
> PVR-250's & 500's.  Obviously, it would be sweet to stick a card in  
> a machine to replace the digital cable/satellite box, but that  
> doesn't seem like it will be a reality any time soon.  I really hate  
> the idea of renting several cable boxes just to be able to have what  
> I have now, but in higher resolution.
>
> Thanks for reading my rant, and for any comments.

Don't forget that over the air high-def resolution is much higher than  
what you will get out of any cable box, so consider setting up an  
antenna and a box like an HDHomeRun. I don't know how much or what  
kind of TV you watch, but there's no monthly fees for over the air  
TV. :)

-Brad



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