Question about digital TV

[Zebra3]

I have watched the demo video, and I am a bit confused about something... Maybe it was just in there to demonstrate it was possible...

I am confused as to why you would want to use the cable box when you have digital cable... Could you not just connect the line to a digital tuner card, and use the Myth interface? Then you can send the signal through the same means as everything else... Ethernet...

Is there a downside to taking the cable box out of the equation or was he just demonstrating it was possible if you wanted to not use a tuner card?

Anyone who can provide some info I would appreciate it...

[cirion]

I totally agree with you, for me there is no reason to use the Cable box.
But, I also do know that not everyone can do that physically or legally.

So if it is possible for you to use a internal DigitalTV card you can do that. The downside to this solution would be lossless recordings, better integration, lower power use, one less remote and so on

What you will lose are functions that your provider gives you on your Cable box, like Pay per View, channel specific buttons and EPG. The EPG in myth is a lot easier to use for recordings, and Pay per View can usually be done by phone. 

[Zebra3]

So, there is no latency like this or anything?

[japr]

Our cable provider gives us its own box and checks its MAC address. Using any other box or PCI/PCIe card is not allowed.

[cirion]

On my setup right now I use 2xDVB-C cards for my DigitalTV, and they work great.
I also have satellite dish with a motor, but my DVB-S2 cards are not working.
So for now I use my Dreambox for DVB-S. When I get support for my DVB-S2 card I will stop using the Dreambox.

I did initially have lots of problems with my DVB-C cards, but that was due to drivers not being available and when they came available, SASC-NG did not work in 64bit with those drivers. I also tried running both of them in the Core (requirement of VDR) and that ended up overheating my Core which again lead  to crashing my raid once in a while.... Now I use MythTV with the Cards in my MD's and they just work I belive my Core has been running without any reboots for a month now.

[skeptic]

I just switched from DirectTV to Comcast cable a few days ago so I'm still figuring out what all I can and cannot do, but so far it's worlds better than trying to use a satellite provider.  I now have channels 2 through 99 on my TV card (analog only) as well as channels 2 though 99 via firewire.  Using my TV to scan, it appears I could use something like HDHOMERUN for additional digital channels, but no where near all the channels I can get via STB and I don't know how well the channels would match up to Schedules Direct (lots of manual work to get them matched up I'm sure).

Why do I want to keep the STBs on the two main TVs?  First, HDTV.  Most (all?) HD channels are above 99.  HDHOMERUN could probably pick of some of these, but not all because most of them are encrypted.  Second, additional STB functionality.  Loads of channels only available via STB plus Comcast has a pretty cool feature I never knew about, free on-demand movies.  Some great older flicks that I've never seen, but watched just because they are there.  As far as I know, there is no way for LMCE to control the STB and access on-demand.

I could use a HD component capture card to copy the HD output from the STBs and put the STBs with a MD/Core somewhere out of sight and that would take care of the HD output and all other channels.  I'd still be left without easy access to on-demand movies, but everything else would be addressed.  However, those cards are not cheap (yet), so for now I'm going to use s-video output from the STB for any channels above 99 where I want to record a show (SD only), and simply use the STB for live HD content and the free on-demand stuff.  This is the plan at least, I'm not quite there yet.