<HTML><BODY style="word-wrap: break-word; -khtml-nbsp-mode: space; -khtml-line-break: after-white-space; "><DIV><DIV>On Jan 10, 2007, at 10:11 AM, notimeinco wrote:</DIV><BR class="Apple-interchange-newline"><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><P><FONT size="2" face="Arial">I apologize for not responding in the thread - I was in digest mode (now out) so I'll just start a new one.</FONT> </P><P><FONT size="2" face="Arial">My limited understanding of 169time is that the AVX1 is a bootable OS provided on CD. You can purchase their box (PC) or provide your own. You connect your firewire-enhanced STB to it and the AVX1 emulates a D-VHS recorder. From there, you can tap the HD content with MythTV, etc. R5000HD is rumored to be more robust and seems to also use a D-VHS emulation (under WinXP). I also found some discussion of D-VHS/1394 emulation under Linux but it was not recent. The idea was to eliminate the WinXP box and go directly to MythTV. </FONT></P><P><FONT size="2" face="Arial">My question about cabling out of a DirecTV STB was specific to HD. If I assume that HD is only available on an HDMI port, what is the obstacle to capture of that content? Is it encryption? If HD is available on component and/or s-video, is there degradation and how much?</FONT></P></BLOCKQUOTE>The obstacle is that there are no consumer-grade cards that can capture from an HDMI port. You're looking at a pro card for many thousands of dollars if you want to do it. The HD signal is downsampled when output on S-Video so you will be only getting a standard def signal. Of course, it will be a REALLY nice SD signal, but SD none-the-less.<BR><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><P><FONT size="2" face="Arial">Sorry if I'm being dense and these are really basic questions.</FONT> </P><P><FONT size="2" face="Arial">Thinking it through, a more basic question is "Besides OTA, which currently has fewer hoops to jump through for recording HD content, cable-HD or satellite-HD?" <BR></FONT></P></BLOCKQUOTE>Cable is definitely easier with the right box. Firewire from the STB to Myth and you're done with the hardware part. However, you will run into limitations with encrypted channels that you don't have to worry about with satellite. Unfortunately, there is no single good solution that works for everyone. My cable system sucks, so I went with satellite and only OTA HD. If they had a better line-up and weren't evil, I would switch to get HD content via a cable STB.<BR><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><P><FONT size="2" face="Arial"> </FONT></P><P><FONT size="2" face="Arial">Paul</FONT> </P><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">_______________________________________________</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">mythtv-users mailing list</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><A href="mailto:mythtv-users@mythtv.org">mythtv-users@mythtv.org</A></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><A href="http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users">http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users</A></DIV> </BLOCKQUOTE></DIV><BR></BODY></HTML>