I've been reading a few threads in this forum, but I feel like I'm missing something. I made a purchase on Saturday to finally get with the HD world, bought a Mitsubishi 57" HDTV. I've been sort of looking at DVR stuff for a year or so now, but not really with any HD support. In reading a few things on this board I'm starting to wonder how much HD support I could get with MythTV. Can someone please kind of lay it out for me? If I use MythTV and have an HD signal coming in from Charter cable, will I be able to record in HD? If so, what kind of card do I need to do this? Is there any Hauppauge card out there that handles HD inputs? I'm just kind of stumped on some of this. I read something about QAM, what is this exactly? I know, I could probably find all of this out on the web somewhere, but I figured it'd be great if something was kind of laid out right here and maybe made into a sticky to kind of clarify all this. Thanks for the help in advance!

Jerel

Check out this thread:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=870574

I have a copy of a presentation that I made to my Linux Users Group posted there. Here is a direct link to the presentation.
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=84771&d=1183669222

It doesn't cover everything, as I was focusing on my particular setup that I brought to the demonstration.

So, do I understand this right? All unencrypted channels available from Charter (which I can easily see by the stations I receive on my tv downstairs - not hooked up to the cable box) are the only ones I can receive with MythTV? All other encrypted content is not accessible? Also, all OTA HD content is accessible, but any HD content broadcast over the cable is subject to the same rules that SD content is constrained to, it can't be encrypted. Which I'm assuming most of it is other than local channels. This I cannot test though, yet, because I don't have an HDTV today. I'm assuming I can test this though? The TV I'm getting does have an HD receiver built into it, will this allow me to plug in directly to the service coming from Charter without a cable box and see which channels are unencrypted much like I'm doing with the SD signal on my downstairs TV now? I'm totally new to all of this, but very willing to learn.

jerel

the encrypted content can be made accessible in one of two ways:

1) capture from set top cable box using a capture card and svideo/composite cable out/with sound
2) if channel allows use firewire output and capture channels from cable box (works for some areas. Depends on if encrypted content is set to 0 - which is allow any)

Yes, if your TV has a QAM tuner, whatever stations it can capture and display are the same QAM stations you can record via a QAM capture card in Myth. As blackoper said, you can also capture HD Quality via firewire from your cable box - depending on how the encryption is set. You can see this setting in a special menu in many cable box models.

If you want all your encrypted channels you'll have to capture it VCR style (without HDTV quality or digital sound) through a capture card, or hope DTCP (the firewire content protection system) is off for all your stations, which isn't likely (although it used to be for me, but now I don't have all available, but a fair amount).

I guess the other way to approach it is to ask yourself what stations do you want record, and then figure out if you can get them. There are a lot of stations that I watch, but much fewer that I care to record from.

Right, and I guess the other question to ask is if I want to pay to have a Tivo type of device that I 'rent' from Charter in order to get ALL the channels or if I'm more comfortable building something that is open source and that doesn't save files in a proprietary type of format. These are the things I must weigh! Great information though. So if I were to use Svid outs on the STB, it'd be just like using a VCR, I'd have to have the STB tuned to the station I wanted to record, and couldn't watch something else on that STB, correct? Thanks for all the help on this!

jerel

Right, and I guess the other question to ask is if I want to pay to have a Tivo type of device that I 'rent' from Charter in order to get ALL the channels or if I'm more comfortable building something that is open source and that doesn't save files in a proprietary type of format. These are the things I must weigh! Great information though. So if I were to use Svid outs on the STB, it'd be just like using a VCR, I'd have to have the STB tuned to the station I wanted to record, and couldn't watch something else on that STB, correct? Thanks for all the help on this!

jerel
Yep, I had the same question. If the Tivo HD had tivo togo and multi-room viewing when I was making this decision I might of bought that. But I decided 90% of what I want to record is the HD locals, and I have to have multi-room viewing, and I can build 3 mythboxes pretty cheap compared to how much the Series 3 used to cost (with some used parts). Plus I can watch on my laptop or other computers, view my photos, add storage, transcode, schedule over the web, organize my video files, archive, etc. And I absolutely love the commercial skipping and mythgame for old classics. Having an unlimited amount of tuners for all my family's recording needs is nice too (I'm up to 8 tuners now). And there turned out to be other advantages I didn't even think of until after I built it.
It took time to setup, but I'm more than happy with my choice.

the cable set top DVR drove me nuts with it's unreliablity, random rebooting, and other bugs, but I would hope the tivo powered one would be better.

You are right about the STB. With an IR transmitter (like with the later VCRs) or via firewire you can have myth change the channel on your set top box for you at the right time for your recording, but you won't be able to watch another channel on the set top box until the recording is over. But if you had a tuner in your mythbox you could watch a channel on that while recording :).

easy enough... mythtv > hd OTA (atsc) capture card > decent video card > plug into tv.. can record and playback any HD content captured ota.. works great...

Sweet! Thanks for all the advice guys! I think i'm going to have to figure out pretty well what I want to record and start building. TV gets here tomorrow morning, it's about time to make it all work! Thanks again for the help, I'll let you know how it goes.

jerel

Hi Jerel,

I'm not sure how far along you are in terms of hardware purchases, but I'm a big fan of the HDHomeRun, which is an external box that sits on your network and provides two ATSC and QAM capable tuners. MythTV has full support for the device, (but make sure you're on at least 0.20.2) and the really beautiful thing is that since the device isn't a PCI card you plug in to the mobo, but an external network device, there's no worries of kernel versions, driver support, etc.

And no, I'm not being paid in any way to say this, I'm just a satisfied customer.

-Mark

And no, I'm not being paid in any way to say this, I'm just a satisfied customer.


But you are an Oracle DBA, and for that I'm sorry.. ;) I actually admin some MS SQL servers, among other things.

Anyway, I haven't bought any hardware yet, I'm going to use as much old hardware that I can laying around the house. I'll definitely check out that HDHR box you speak of. I read a bit about it in some other forums, but didn't really know if I'd need it or want it. Thanks for the info!

jerel