I'm looking for input here. Last summer I got 90% finished with my myth setup. Three PVR250's in a backend box fed by three RCA DirecTV boxes controlled over serial cable. Storage on 320gig of Raid5 over NFS. Frontends were to be xboxes. Remotes were going to be the Media Center USB reader controlled by lirc_mceusb.
And then, I lost my job, had to move, etc. Everything got thrown into a cardboard box where it's been sitting in my basement. The new house has a back yard filled with four story tall trees, and I have almost zero clear shot at the DirecTV satellite. I'm about ready to kick this back in gear, and I wanted to hear from Time Warner users on their experiences with myth and the SciAtl EXPLORER boxes. The way I see it, I have a few choices. 1) I can just get three Explorer 2000 boxes from Warner, stack them up, and tape an IR blaster to the front of each. I've heard from local tivo/replay users that the SA boxes are notoriously bad with blasters, and can take upwards of 10 seconds to change channels. Anyone have positive experiences with these boxes and IR blasters? 2) I can get the same Explorer 2000 boxes and work out some way to feed them the right characters on their USB ports which expect a keyboard. I've read the other threads in the archives that call for using incredibly expensive "Protocol Convertors" to do this. It seems to me there HAS to be some way to use a few bucks worth of PIC or some other circuitry to do this conversion. They make a PIC that has USB on chip for like $14. Anyone have any other ideas how to do this reasonably? Even buying USB keypads at $20 would be worthwhile if someone knows how to trigger them from a linux box. 3) I can pay the extra per month and just get three of the SA 3250 boxes and pull the signals in over Firewire. This loses me any hope of HBO, but based on what I've read, it should work. Can a single machine have more than one HD box connected to it's firewire? 4) There is one spot in my yard, up against the sidewalk in the very front of the yard, that I could put a dish. In the name of neighborly harmony, I'd want to camouflage it somehow. Those fake fiberglass rocks they sell for just that purpose are like $300 a pop, not the best solution. I think my best bet at this point is #1 or #2. All comments welcome. _______________ Chris Thompson
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