A few years back Comcast switched all its premium stations to digital. At that time I was using Freevo to record through a digital cable tuner with a PVR 250. The Comcast box offered coax and composite/component out. I set the PVR 250 up to record from composite in, bypassing the tuner all together. I purchased one of those $5 serial IR transmitters and used a second LIRC daemon to drive it. The remote codes were widely available (they haven't changed the remote in quite awhile). My particular cable box would switch the channel after the third button push on the remote, so in the channel lineup portion of the freevo config I padded the digits in the channel field.
I used this setup for several years until last summer when I switched to AT&T U-verse. The only gotcha would be that my setup is an early 1.5 version of Freevo on Fedora 4 :+) James Trietsch wrote: > Well the day is soon coming when I'll be moved into my new home and the > Freevo will come out of storage (of course) and life will continue on fairly > normally (hopefully)... > > However, in this new place, we have Comcast's all-digital cable service. I > have some questions about Freevo's ability to get along with this service. > I'm sorry if some of these have been covered before... obviously I wasn't > paying close attention since they didn't quite apply to me. I ask for > forgiveness up front. > > So now with all-digital cable my PVR-250's tuner is... useless. The better > things get, the less options we have. Joy. > > I briefly looked into QAM tuner cards, but it appears Comcast down here only > broadcasts the federally mandated channels in the clear (about 20 channels, > half of which you can pick up OTA, the other half are "shopping" and > government), everything else is encrypted. And yet 250 miles north, my friend > reports that Comcast "offers" over 160 channels in Clear QAM (including ones > not on his tier and some in HD), available to any decent digital tuner. > Double Joy. > > My first question: Is there a way to get digital encrypted cable via a PC > card? Is the mythical CableCard PC card available to the end-user? Even if it > was, are there drivers available for Linux? Will this dream ever be a > reality? I suppose I should also ask if Comcast would supply me with a > CableCard if I did have a PC card to put it in... > > Question-the-second: How well does Freevo work with IR-blasting channel > change commands to the cable box? I saw the message recently from Pascal, > which was good timing: I had forgotten if Freevo could even do it (and how to > set it up). I'm coming to terms with the fact I'll be running Freevo to > record video input from the cable box and while that is better than nothing, > it's a shame I won't be able to watch one thing (live) while recording > another. > > And as always, I would accept possible solutions that I haven't yet thought > of from anyone here: The collected knowledge of this list is what makes it > such a powerful tool. > > Cheers, and can't wait to get my Freevo back. I miss my internet radio > stations (and NPR podcasts) most of all! > > James > > > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Return on Information: > Google Enterprise Search pays you back > Get the facts. > http://p.sf.net/sfu/google-dev2dev > _______________________________________________ > Freevo-users mailing list > Freevo-users@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freevo-users > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Return on Information: Google Enterprise Search pays you back Get the facts. http://p.sf.net/sfu/google-dev2dev _______________________________________________ Freevo-users mailing list Freevo-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freevo-users
