MythTV...

I was thinking of getting or building a DVR sometime soon. Obviously, if you get one from your cable company, you'll have to pay an extra monthly fee.

a) If I build my own, there won't be any extra charges from the cable company, right?

b) I want to be able to watch something while I record something else, so I'll need two video cards right?

c) If I build a myth-box, i can leave it running, and then turn just the TV off with something scheduled to record, and it will record it, correct?

Thanx!

I can't really answer your questions since I am still in the prepping stage of doing my own. Just thought this might interest you, it's a pretty cool setup and some useful information.

http//www.makezine.com/extras/4.html[]http//www.makezine.com/extras/4.html

I believe

a) no charges
b) no, I think you just need one card.
c) yes, you should be able to turn TV off.

Just from what I read and understand so far. I think I remember dmorris68 posting he has mythTV setup so probably wait for his answers.

[quotece6f03419a="ronmm"]I can't really answer your questions since I am still in the prepping stage of doing my own. Just thought this might interest you, it's a pretty cool setup and some useful information.

http//www.makezine.com/extras/4.html[]http//www.makezine.com/extras/4.html

I believe

a) no charges
b) no, I think you just need one card.
c) yes, you should be able to turn TV off.

Just from what I read and understand so far. I think I remember dmorris68 posting he has mythTV setup so probably wait for his answers.[/quotece6f03419a]
okay... about your "b)" answer, after reading, I think you will need one, for how would you record with one, while watching with another with only one input... ;) Any other suggestions/tips?

No charges, except for hardware is correct.

You may only need 1 card, but that would be to watch 1 show and watch a recorded show. If you want to watch live and record live, pony up for a dual tuner or 2 tuners.

And yes. The box would function normal with the TV off. The TV is really just treated like a monitor. Computers work fine with their monitors off, but good luck doing anything that isn't automated (IE recordings) with it off.

One of my biggest hurdles, that i've yet to overcome, is forking up the cash to buy nice enough equipment that is quiet enough to run in my living room all the time. I sure wouldn't want a regular computer running 24x7 in my living room, it'd only be on when I was there... Which does no good when there is something on the telly that I want to record and I'm not home.

Okay. Now I have one last thing that really confuses me. I need my current cable box to watch my digital channels (above like channel 90). If I just ran the cable to a mythtv box, and then to the TV, I wouldn't get the digital channels. I don't get what I would have to interface with my digital cable box, so it could somehow run to the mythtv box, and then to the TV. If I just ran the cablebox's out into the mythTV and then to the tv, that wouldn't work, for I couldn't change channels with mythtv because it would only be getting whatever channel the digital box is sending out, correct? Do you see what I'm getting at? How would this work?

if you are using windows, use GB-PVR

[quote332eb1f5c7="Fugger"]
You may only need 1 card, but that would be to watch 1 show and watch a recorded show. If you want to watch live and record live, pony up for a dual tuner or 2 tuners.[/quote332eb1f5c7]

That is pretty lame, have to read up more on that. The DVR I have from my cable company can only record two things and once and if two things are recording you cannot watch another channel. You can watch something else that is recorded already or your stuck watching one of the two that are being receorded. Was hoping to get away from that limit because the gf records way too many shows.

I don't know anything about electronics, but does anything prevent a DVR from having three or four tuners, in order to record three or four shows at once?

[quote4096d971c2="ronmm"]That is pretty lame, have to read up more on that. The DVR I have from my cable company can only record two things and once and if two things are recording you cannot watch another channel. You can watch something else that is recorded already or your stuck watching one of the two that are being receorded. Was hoping to get away from that limit because the gf records way too many shows.[/quote4096d971c2]

Your DVR from your cable company allows you to do that because it actually has 2 tuners built in, even though it has the 1 cable coming in to it. It may be possible to get the same thing in a tuner card for your computer but I, personally, haven't seen one.

ilanbg You are only limited by your expansion slots. The folks over at snapstream (a DVR PC product) made a 6 tuner PVR that worked with their software. Because of all the cables coming out of the back of it, they named it Medusa. Check it HERE[=http//www.snapstream.com/community/articles/medusa/] HERE

ahhh, ok I get it. Just wasn't thinking along the right lines. WinTV which I was going to purchase for the setup has a dual tuner card. It wasn't the one I was planning on getting but I guess I will now that you've explained that.

http//www.hauppauge.com/pages/products/data_pvr500mce.html

So basically I will have the same limits that I have with my cable companies box?

You are limited to doing two things at once? You can record a show and watch another, record two shows but not be able to watch another channel, or record two shows and watch something that was previously recorded?

If I was to get a single tuner card I would have to watch what was recording?

I wonder if two single cards would work out better then a dual card.

I think the dual will be plenty after this month. I don't watch much TV myself but my gf does and my brother has been living with me for the last year or so and he records alot of things. He is going off to Marine bootcamp on the 27th so it shouldn't be a problem after that.

I want to do it for something to do though, seems like a cool project if you add more then just a DVR. Not like it's really saving much money, I only pay like 10 bucks a month for mine.

I've been running a MythTV box for years now, however I no longer use it's PVR functions since I have dedicated PVR's due to all the pay channels and such. It's just too much of a pain to hook up multiple boxes to a MythTV box to be able to get multi-tuner capability. However Myth still has a lot of other useful HT convergence features that I still use. Mine is currently offline while I'm in the midst of upgrading it, but when it runs, it runs very well. However Myth is probably [bb39be863e6]more[/bb39be863e6] for gearheads, since it requires a lot of tuning and tweaking to work well. If you're already into Linux, I'd say go for it. If you're not, and don't consider yourself the geeky type, you'd be better served by a Windows PVR solution such as Media Center or Snapstream/BeyondTV.

BTW you can fit as many tuner cards as your PCI slots will allow, and you can buy multi-tuner cards such as the Win-PVR 500, which is basically 2 PVR 150's bonded together and requires only a single RG6 connection.

[bb39be863e6]Edit[/bb39be863e6] LOL, fixed a typo that totally reversed the meaning of what I meant to say. I said "...Myth is probably not for gearheads..." when I meant to say MORE for gearheads. Damn dementia kickin' in...

[quoteb93f159cf2="dmorris68"]
BTW you can fit as many tuner cards as your PCI slots will allow, and you can buy multi-tuner cards such as the Win-PVR 500, which is basically 2 PVR 150's bonded together and requires only a single RG6 connection.[/quoteb93f159cf2]

Quality wise would be it better for the dual card or two singles?

[quote87e72867b6="ronmm"][quote87e72867b6="dmorris68"]
BTW you can fit as many tuner cards as your PCI slots will allow, and you can buy multi-tuner cards such as the Win-PVR 500, which is basically 2 PVR 150's bonded together and requires only a single RG6 connection.[/quote87e72867b6]

Quality wise would be it better for the dual card or two singles?[/quote87e72867b6]
Quality should not be affected by the number of tuner cards. A dual-tuner 500 has the same tuner chipsets as in individual 150. All WinTV-PVR cards at and above the 150 model have hardware MPEG2 encoders so the CPU hit is minimal compared to cheap BT878-type cards that have no encoders. This allows better quality encodings due to greatly reduced CPU load (otherwise you tend to skip frames and such). Still, you need a beefy box to manage the programming and other features of a multi-tuner setup, so don't try to use an old P3-800 you have collecting dust and expect it to make a good multi-tuner Myth box. ;)

lol, back to my last question
[quotece62fbcb20]
Okay. Now I have one last thing that really confuses me. I need my current cable box to watch my digital channels (above like channel 90). If I just ran the cable to a mythtv box, and then to the TV, I wouldn't get the digital channels. I don't get what I would have to interface with my digital cable box, so it could somehow run to the mythtv box, and then to the TV. If I just ran the cablebox's out into the mythTV and then to the tv, that wouldn't work, for I couldn't change channels with mythtv because it would only be getting whatever channel the digital box is sending out, correct? Do you see what I'm getting at? How would this work?
[/quotece62fbcb20]

To control an external tuner like a cable or sat box, you have two options (technically three, but practically only two).

1. [li974d0c08d1]Use an IR blaster, which connects to the PC via a USB or serial port and relays IR remote commands to the box.
   [li974d0c08d1]If your cable/sat box has a serial connection (might look like a DB9 or a RJ11/45 jack), you can buy/build cables that connect to your PC and control the box.
   [li974d0c08d1](the one that isn't practical yet) Many newer boxes support Firewire streaming and/or control, however nearly all cable/sat providers have disabled it due to lobbying by the MPAA and premium broadcasters who oppose digital quality streaming, for piracy reasons[/listo974d0c08d1]You will also require individual capture cards in the PC for each box. So if you want dual-tuner capability (record 2 shows at once), you'll need 2 boxes and 2 capture cards (they don't have to be tuners, just video capture cards). Or 3+3, or whatever.

the thing that sucks is that the tuner cards for the PC can't decode the high number digital channels, most premium channels like HBO and HD channels are in the high numbers, so you would have to go from the cable box to the PC instead of going from the wall(where the cable comes in) and then spliting it to the PC and the cable box

Like for me I have a MOXI box but I wanted to be able to get the recorded shows from my moxi box to the PC(to burn them on dvd) then I got to thinking why not cut the moxi box out of the picture all together, but then the problem of high channel numbers screwed it up
now I have a media PC in my living room that I hardly ever use