[mythtv-users] Windows Media Center w/ Cable Card used as MythTV Tuner

[Melvin J. Cureton]

I did not intend this to be a borderline legal topic. I do have a Media Center pc and was just looking for options for when the Ceton 4 tuner card comes out. I am currently a cable card user on Charter's network and have less problems with it than I did with the DVR. Since I miss the record capabilities I was looking at it 3 different ways.

1. MythTV connects to Media Center as an extender and just accesses content remotely much like the Myth frontends  do with the backends. Now I would not be surprised if the protocol(s) needed for that requires a license to use.

2. Or as referred to in one of the replies, have Media Center set to record the desired shows then converted to say an mkv or similar. The myth can pull in the program info from media center and just access the converted file as if it was recorded by myth.

3. Just wait for the Ceton to come out and see if they keep their word about releasing Linux drivers. And if they do, pop it in my myth box and see what I can figure out.

It really irritates me that they exist but honest folk like ourselves can't get them. Oh well.

-----Original Message-----
From: mythtv-users-bounces at mythtv.org [mailto:mythtv-users-bounces at mythtv.org] On Behalf Of Andrew Gallatin
Sent: Monday, December 14, 2009 1:18 PM
To: Discussion about mythtv
Subject: Re: [mythtv-users] Windows Media Center w/ Cable Card used as MythTV Tuner

Melvin J. Cureton [melvincureton at MELCRYS.COM] wrote:

> Does anyone know if it would be possible to record in MythTV from a 
> Cable Card equipped Windows Media Center pc? Would be a weird setup 
> but if possible could be a simple way to get around the whole Cable 
> Card on Linux issue. Not sure if it is possible to configure MythTV as 
> an extender or not. If anyone has any ideas or input I'd greatly 
> appreciate it.

There is an ongoing project to do this for SageTV.  See http://babgvant.com/blogs/andyvt/archive/2009/10/19/sagemctuner-experimental-release.aspx
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=44864

SageTV uses MCE to tune the cablecard, then pulls the video out of the DRM'ed MS container.  The ability to liberate the video from the MS DRM is similar to firewire tuning, in that it depends on how the video is flagged by the cable provider.  There is a lot of discussion of this in the SageTV forum thread.  The general understanding is that it *should* work for non-premium channels (ESPN, TNT, etc) but not premium channels or VOD, but it all depends on how your cable company configures its equipment.

Avoiding the DRM entirely by using an HDPVR seems like a better choice to me personally.

Drew
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