PVR and Fedora

[Matthew Lenz]

I'm going to make a blanket statement and say that you need your cable
box.  Unless some pc card manuf. is making a video capture board that
supports DTV or has a slot for a cable card, which I don't believe is
the case.

here are the possible scenarios.

1. cable/satellite box -> rca/svideo -> capture card in computer
2. cable/satellite box -> firewire -> firewire card in computer
4. cable from wall -> dtv/cable card capable capture card in computer

AFAIK #1 is the most common.  #2 is rare.  #3 doesn't exist yet (there
are capture cards that support unencrypted QAM signals but most cable
companies encrypt digital tv)

So in short, yes you probably need your cable box and yes it will need
to be tuned to a specific channel to record.  Some cable/satellite boxes
support serial interfaces for channel changing which make them more
reliable than IR blasters.

Check out www.mythtv.org for lots of resources and read the mailing list
arcives.

On Wed, 2005-07-13 at 14:24 -0400, Chris Moore wrote:
> Does anyone know what channels I can record, ie digital and analog, if I 
> set up a Fedora box as a PVR. I have digital cable with 'Brighthouse' 
> and am wondering if I can record the digital channels, HBO and Cinemax 
> for instance, with MythTV without actually having the particular channel 
> being outputted from my cable box. If I record one of the digital 
> channels but still have to have the cable box tunned to that channel 
> isn't that just video capture at that point? The overall question is, 
> can I get a Fedora box to act like TiVo and record any channel that I 
> subscribe to without having the cable box tuned to that paticular 
> channel? Do I need a digital TV tuner card? Don't know if I'm missing a 
> key point here. Any help or insight appreciated.
> -- 
> fedora-list mailing list
> fedora-list at redhat.com
> To unsubscribe: http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list