> I'm thinking there are likely 3, maybe 4 major categories of
> television user that would want a DVR, at least that I can imagine...
> (excluding satellite, although they fall into a similar category as
> the "cable box" scenario below)...
>
> 1 - Basic cable - aka coax cable coming into the back of their TV
> 2 - Digital cable - coax to back of TV that supports/has a digital
> tuner
> 3 - Either of the above (analog or digital cable) with encrypted
> channels (HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, etc) - aka requires a cable box
> 4 - HD (whether OTA from antenna, OTA on your cable wire or from a
> cable box)
>
> For 1, I'd recommend we look at the support WinTV PVR cards, since the
> hardware mpeg encoder is going to provide better performance, and they
> are readily available. Of course, here the caveat is that we probably
> *do not* want to recommend the PVR-150 because of the "Happauge boxing
> HVR-1600 in a PVR-150 box" issue (see notes here if you aren't aware:
> http://mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Hauppauge_PVR-150)
>
> I don't know much about 2 yet. I haven't gotten that far in my
> personally learning curve. I guess you need a DVB card?
>
> For 3, the Happauge cards are probably still a good solution, except
> you'll need to suck in via S-Video or composite (unless you are lucky
> enough to have one of those firewire cable boxes). The "issue" here is
> that you need to have support for an IR blaster for channel changing.
>
> For 4, as Ted mentions, may be much more difficult to "support". Here,
> we probably would recommend a pcHDTV or maybe that HD Homerun, if we
> supproted it. Encrypted channels here are another ball of wax if
> people have HBO HD, etc.
Well, here is the other side of the coin. We have to set people's
expectations.
As far as I know, there does not seem to be any solution for "Encrypted
Channels". So we tell people: "MythTV does not record or play channels
encrypted by your cable company such as HBO, etc." But it does work
fine with OverTheAir television broadcast, analog, digital and digital
High Def. And it works with Cable Basic (and examples of those channels
from Comcast), and Cable Basic High Def. Most people only know
"channels" and their cable provider anyway.
> I've been following Jarod's HOWTO for the most part. I also have a
> decent amount of experience doing networked and automated installs,
> and I might be convinced to put the effort into figuring out how to
> condence the needed RPMS and/or repositories into a kickstart server.
How do you look in front of head-lights?
>
>
> The other items that come to mind:
> - Does NHTI have a TV or two they can wheel in on a cart. I'd hate to
> "block" on only one TV to test if multiple people are "finishing up"
> and want to test TV out at the same time.
Good idea. I think they have a few. I saw one up on a shelf in the
same room. I can ask, and with enough notice we can bring in a few of
different types (hmmmm, have to be careful of Saturday morning cartoon
time).
> - Distribution of the 2 cable jacks. Do they have splitters (or better
> yet a cable distribution amp) so we can get cable to each of the
> workstations
We can work this, but we thought that the cables would only have to be
used for a relatively short time in testing.
>
> That's all my thoughts for the moment. I really think this is a great
> idea and hope we can pull it off and have it be a success.
Good feedback and good ideas.
I put two stars next to it to show "feedback to incorporate".
>
md
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