Hey everyone. I've gotta a pretty simple question. I want to use satellite or cable TV with my Mythtv DVR/PVR. Right now all I can use is an antenna.

Is there any way or are there any providers that will allow you to use your own DVR with their cable or satalite channels?

I hate how they encrypted it—I'm paying for the service, I should be able to use my own equipment.

The only options I have come across is to use the video out of the cable or satellite providers STB and digitize from a capture card (not a tuner). However, I want HD and I haven't found an HD solution that will do this. Plus, I would need to still use the services providers STB and control the channels with an IR blaster, etc.

Please... Any insight into how I can pay for cable or satellite and use my PVR/DVR would be a huge help.

If someone knows a better place to post this let me know.
Thanks again!!!!

For sat, a capture card and IR blaster is your only option, HD won't be available.

For cable, you can get a QAM tuner and pick up whatever local unencrypted HD channels your provider sends out, usually it's only locals though. To capture HD encrypted channels you either need a TivoHD with cable cards or a cablelabs certified Vista Media Center with cable card tuners.

The HTPC section here at the forum would be the best place for more info on this.

The Hauppauge HD PVR lets you capture HD resolutions via component. It encodes the captured video in AVC (MPEG4) format.
http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/data_hdpvr.html
Looks like there's some support for it in MythTV too: http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Hauppauge_HD-PVR

Search avsforums for the HD PVR from Hauppauge. May be your answer. Takes a powerful computer and video card though...

Ok. Thanks for the info. That HD-PVR seems like the best bet, just getting everything configured for channel changing and scheduling records will be a bit of work. It'd be nice if the tuner could do it, but I know that's just not an option.

Hi Wheniwork. I'm using MythTv to capture output from a Directv H20 receiver. I'm capturing just the S-video output to a Hauppauge PVR-350 I got a few years ago.

The nice thing about the DirecTV settop boxes is that they can be controlled via a serial port for changing channels, although an IR blaster can also be used, and most people find it just as reliable. (It's not a standard serial port, as it actually uses a USB connector, but anyway...)

You can search the MythTV wiki at www.mythtv.org/wiki for "DirecTV" for details, or search for "cable" for examples of how people record from cable.