[mythtv-users] Firewire or capture card?

bhaskins at chartermi.net bhaskins at chartermi.net
Thu Dec 24 21:29:05 UTC 2009


---- William <william_munson at comcast.net> wrote: 
> steve wrote:
> >
> > My existing MythTV setup has crapped out (capture hardware failure) 
> > and I am starting over. I want to get the new system set up to handle 
> > HD, and I’m trying to decide between doing a firewire connection to 
> > the cable box (SA Explorer 3250HD) and using a capture card. The 
> > firewire option seems sensible, but I’ve been looking at the Wiki page 
> > on that and it sounds like a “challenging” setup. Also the reports on 
> > the firewire cards flag a lot of cases where they don’t work, don’t 
> > support channel changing, don’t stream video properly, etc. So would I 
> > be better off using a dedicated capture card like the pcHDTV 5500?
> >
> > Your thoughts appreciated, especially if you have done either option.
> >
> > TIA…Steve
> >
> I am a firewire user and I am thinking of changing to using external 
> capture off of the component output of the cable box

Question for anyone one the list:
What would be a good ( myth ), (HD) card choice for this?
SD capture is great off of S-video.
Thanks


> IMHO this is the 
> only way to access all the content you pay for with cable. I have, in 
> the past, used a HDHomerun and while it was stable, not all channels 
> were available and there is absolutely no mapping of HDHR channels to 
> cable channels so you have to figure it out yourself. My current setup 
> is direct firewire capture and it also has issues. Namely, occasional 
> failures to capture a recording even on clear channels. This requires a 
> power cycle of the cable box to fix (front panel button). It always 
> changes the channel correctly using the firewire so I am going to 
> continue to use the firewire to change channels. If that fails to be 
> reliable, I have an older MyBlaster IR blaster I can use to control the box.
> 
> I am not up on the current products but if it captures from component 
> and supports full 1080i/p then its probably a good choice. I would 
> prefer one that is self contained and connects to the network rather 
> than a pci card. This is to keep the bus loading down on the front/backend.
> 
> Bill
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