[mythtv-users] New Setup Question regarding tv tuner cards

[jarpublic at gmail.com]

On Tue, Mar 10, 2009 at 4:25 PM, Ethan Pierce
<ethan.pierce at earthlink.net> wrote:
> Greetings, I'm new to the list and mythtv.  My hardware is all on order
> (a fairly beefy quadcore, 8gb and 1tb machine), which includes a
> pcHDTV5500 as well as a PVR-500.
>
> I use timewarner cable.  I spent about 3 hours researching cards the
> other night
> and it seems like the two I purchased are best for my setup and having
> the ability to watch/record shows a the same time.
>
> I may have went overboard with my card purchase, but am wondering if I
> will be able to record multiple shows
> at the same time with this setup?  I understand the PVR-500 doesnt do
> the HD content but can it be assigned to use its hardware encoders for
> the job of transcoding/etc?  Basically I want to be able to watch/record
> HD shows as well as those found on the analog stations.  Did I over do
> it on my card selection?
>
> I have a DCH6200 Motorolla box too, will/can that be eliminated from the
> picture?
>
> Will I just split my cable lines three ways - 1to the pchd card and 2 to
> the PVR-500 lines?
>

Welcome to the list. Most of your questions can be answered by
searching the list archives:
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/users/, or the wiki:
www.mythtv.org/wiki/.

You will only be able to get HD signals that are delivered to you
unencrypted (ie clear QAM). You can find out what you get by hooking
you HDTV (assuming it has a QAM tuner) strait up to the cable without
the set top box. Then see what HD channels it can tune. Most likely
this will only be the major local broadcast channels that you can get
over the air (ie ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, etc). Depending on where you live
you can probably get the best quality HD by recording ATSC OTA signals
with an antenna and your 5500 capture card. Most of your other digital
cable channels will be probably be encrypted. The only way to record
the channels that are encrypted is 1) if you are lucky you may get
some of them via firewire output of your STB. 2) running mythtv .22
from SVN trunk and using the HD-PVR to record the component outputs of
your STB. Option 1 often doesn't work or still only gives you the
local channels over the firewire. Option 2 probably isn't a good idea
for a new mythtv user. You shouldn't really run trunk unless you are
prepared to deal with and help fix the bugs in the beta code.

So you are basically only going to get what you can from clear QAM or
ATSC with your pcHDTV 5500 card and you can get SD with your PVR-500
either straight from cable or you could record the analog output of
your STB. The best choice there depends on what is available via
straight analog vs what you can get with your STB and what you would
want to record. I haven't use a PVR-500 but you may be able to record
straight from the cable with one encoder and the s-video out on your
STB with the other encoder to get whatever isn't available on analog
straight off the cable. I am just guessing about that since I haven't
used one of those cards before.