<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Aug 13, 2010 at 1:37 PM, Rod Smith <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:mythtv@rodsbooks.com">mythtv@rodsbooks.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
<div class="im">On 08/13/2010 02:51 PM, Chris Finley wrote:<br>
> What is the easiest/most reliable method for changing channels on a<br>
> set-top box? Is it still using IR Blaster? I have read the wikipages,<br>
> but the dates on them are pretty old.<br>
><br>
> I have Comcast, Hauppauge PVR 500, pcHDTV 5500 and a Motorola STB<br>
> DCH70/2081 - standard definition, but I plan to get a HD capable one soon.<br>
> I don't have an external serial port. Do the USB blasters work well?<br>
<br>
</div>I don't know about IR blasters with MythTV, but when I had a standalone<br>
TiVo some years ago, I found the IR blaster to be about 95-98% reliable.<br>
That sounds pretty good until you consider that it means it'll mis-tune<br>
1 in 20 to 1 in 50 recordings. This could be perhaps one episode per<br>
season of a TV show. If that show is important to you and repeats don't<br>
happen, or if you don't notice the problem until after the repeats have<br>
happened, that's very poor performance.<br>
<br>
Currently, I'm using FireWire to change channels on my HD cable box (a<br>
Motorola DCX3200-M). I also get a lot of my programming over FireWire,<br>
but some I get via clear QAM on an AverMedia AverTV A180, and some<br>
channels (which are scrambled even on the cable box's FireWire output) I<br>
get via analog inputs to a Hauppauge PVR-500. If my cable company (Cox)<br>
scrambled more HD content, I'd probably invest in a Hauppauge HD-PVR,<br>
but at the moment I'm one of the lucky ones who can get most HD content<br>
via FireWire. (My premium channels are scrambled via FireWire, but<br>
that's about it.) In any event, I find FireWire channel changing to be<br>
extremely reliable. Once I got things working at all, I don't recall<br>
having a single mis-tune, so that puts it up at 99.9%+ reliability.<br>
(FireWire video capture is a bit lower than that -- maybe 99.5%.)<br>
<div><div></div><div class="h5"><br></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>You are able to change to encrypted channels with firewire and then record over the STB component output? Is this analog output HD quality?</div>
<div><br></div><div> </div></div>