Straight answers about digital cable

[tkmedia]

You need to manually add xmlids through mythweb  you can get the xmlids through the report feature on schedules direct.

As far as mapping my channels are all over the place  and you will find multiple sub channels and afik the first is HD ie 3.1  is CBS HD for me
3.2 is CBS digital SD  etc.

Maybe once the change is done the channels may make sense and will not change from time to time. Overall cable quam is a PITA as far as mapping goes. Where OTA channels are general automatically identified.



HTH

Tim

[Afkpuz]

No, comcast cable is encrypted and therefore un-recordable.  I did a test to verify this.  I went to my grandmother who has comcast digital cable.  (She's always been ahead of the curve)  Anyway, I used a mythtv+ubuntu box with a haupuage 1250-mc digital tuner and tried to tune the digital.  The result?  Nothing.  Only the free channels came through.  I tried every variation of tuner settings I could think of like Qam-256, 128, etc.  Broadcast freq table, cable freq table.  Basically, none of those channels worked.  What I found interesting was that her lcd tv was able to tune most of those channels without using a set top box, yet my digital tuner card could not.  As of right now, I'm convinced that digital TV from comcast cannot be recorded by mythtv in a reasonable fashion.  Please, if you personally have a tuner capable of tuning comcast digital cable, let me know as I am prepping the wiki page to say that digital tuners won't tune non-OTA channels.

[Afkpuz]

Ok guys, I've made the page, but have not linked it anywhere yet.  Please give me your feedback or better yet, touch it up yourselves.

http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Understanding_digital_cable

[tkmedia]

The HDHomerun will pull unencrypted quam channels form comcast which you can watch or record.
Most premium channels are encrypted therefore can not be watched or recorded.


Tim

[Zaerc]

No, comcast cable is encrypted and therefore un-recordable.  I did a test to verify this.  I went to my grandmother who has comcast digital cable.  (She's always been ahead of the curve)  Anyway, I used a mythtv+ubuntu box with a haupuage 1250-mc digital tuner and tried to tune the digital.  The result?  Nothing.  Only the free channels came through.  I tried every variation of tuner settings I could think of like Qam-256, 128, etc.  Broadcast freq table, cable freq table.  Basically, none of those channels worked.  What I found interesting was that her lcd tv was able to tune most of those channels without using a set top box, yet my digital tuner card could not.  As of right now, I'm convinced that digital TV from comcast cannot be recorded by mythtv in a reasonable fashion.  Please, if you personally have a tuner capable of tuning comcast digital cable, let me know as I am prepping the wiki page to say that digital tuners won't tune non-OTA channels.

Which... basicly is the whole point of encryption, it feels a bit like stating the obvious here but they are doing this on purpose.  And you will need some way to decrypt it if you want to watch/record it (like a set-top box does). 

Anyway, thanks for adding that page to the wiki.  Now it just needs to be categorized I reckon so people will be able to find it more easily.

[skeptic]

No, comcast cable is encrypted and therefore un-recordable.  I did a test to verify this.  I went to my grandmother who has comcast digital cable.  (She's always been ahead of the curve)  Anyway, I used a mythtv+ubuntu box with a haupuage 1250-mc digital tuner and tried to tune the digital.  The result?  Nothing.  Only the free channels came through.  I tried every variation of tuner settings I could think of like Qam-256, 128, etc.  Broadcast freq table, cable freq table.  Basically, none of those channels worked.  What I found interesting was that her lcd tv was able to tune most of those channels without using a set top box, yet my digital tuner card could not.  As of right now, I'm convinced that digital TV from comcast cannot be recorded by mythtv in a reasonable fashion.  Please, if you personally have a tuner capable of tuning comcast digital cable, let me know as I am prepping the wiki page to say that digital tuners won't tune non-OTA channels.

According to this: http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Hauppauge_HVR-1250 the 1250 support is digital only.  I'm guessing that Comcast in your grandmother's area is still primarily analog.  Her TV can tune analog or digital, hence can tune anything not encrypted.  I'm really not sure what you mean by "free channels" though. 

I have Comcast "digital" cable, and I'm able to tune most channels in the 2-99 range with my analog only tuner card (pvr-150).  Comcast "digital" cable is not fully digital, that's the problem.

I'm quite certain that Myth/LMCE can capture any signal that a TV can pick up off cable without a cable card.  The problem for me is channels are being converted from analog to digital and I know of no dual-tuner card that supports analog and digital in Myth.  I could probably augment my current analog-only card with a digital only, then modify my schedules direct setup separating channels by digital/analog into two different line-ups, assigning them to tuner cars as appropriate.  If Comcast is converting channels a few at a time that would be a huge hassle to try to keep up with so I'm not even going to try that route.

For another example of capturing tv from Comcast Digital cable, see tkmedia's post above (page 1), he's getting 20-30 channels with HDHomeRun (digital only).

[colinjones]

Ok guys, I've made the page, but have not linked it anywhere yet.  Please give me your feedback or better yet, touch it up yourselves.

http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Understanding_digital_cable

I've fleshed out some bits, added to the "world view", and edited a few bits that were not 100% accurate in the first section.