[mythtv-users] Current Verizon FIOS experiences

[Andre Newman]

On 23 Dec 2009, at 02:14, Jarod Wilson wrote:

> On Dec 22, 2009, at 5:53 PM, Andre Newman wrote:
> 
>> I updated my friend about all this and it turns out the reason he got FIOS was because they don't re-compress HD, so HD-PVR is a definite non solution for him.
> 
> Then he's probably out of luck to be able to record a good chunk of channels. And the video off the HD-PVR looks quite good. Bitrate is adjustable too.
> 
>> He's tried tuning some clear QAM with an Eye TV branded Mac driver only firewire tuner (big shame, no linux drivers)
> 
> That would be entirely doable if someone familiar with the linux dvb subsystem and the firewire stack(s) had that device to hack on.

We do know someone but time might be the problem as always.


> Oh, and the time to work on it. Firewire is quite nice to work with, sniffing the bus is dead-simple if you've got a PCILynx controller and either nosy under linux or FireBug under Mac OS X (I have both...).
> 
>> so that seems viable as a source with a HD-Homerun or similar.
> 
> Yep, should be.
> 
>> It's not very clear to me what hardware the OSX backend port supports, it mentions firewire which this tuner is but maybe "firewire" means just generic firewire stbs,
> 
> Just firewire set-top boxes.
> 
>> either way it might be worth a try to see if this hardware is usable.
> 
> Its not.
> 
>> If it supports OSX native video devices then that's the solution,
> 
> It doesn't.

Thanks, saved us a lot of wasted time.

> 
>> he has a G4 mac mini knocking around, no good for playback but would make a nice backend.
> 
> Would be a bit lethargic w/commflagging for my taste, but yeah, it would work (given a supported capture device tied to it, of course).

Can't be any worse than an Atom surely, I think I've managed to convince him to buy a cheap C2D rather than the Atom he was considering, for this reason.

Cheers