On Thursday, October 20, 2011 06:11:29 PM Jeff Artz wrote:
Then about a year ago I switched to FiOS HD. So I now have two HD STB's from Verizon, feeding Hauppauge HD-PVR encoders (Component Video IN, USB Out [H.264 encoded]). I use Firewire for channel changes on the FiOS boxes.
Can you explain this setup more clearly? You are running USB out from the FIOS STB into a PVR card? I also have FIOS, i just run the coax out from the STB a PVR/HVR card. I also use firewire for changing channels. I used to have comcast, but switched to FIOS and i was impressed with the number of ports in on the FIOS STB (comcast STB only had coax in/out and IR, nothing else). i was very happy to see firewire with FIOS, much easier than IR.
Gladly! In-between each STB and my Myth box is a Hauppauge HD-PVR box. This unit takes Analog Component Video (HD) and Digital Audio (Optical) from the STB, and encodes it to H.264 on the fly. It connects to your computer via USB. (You'd need one for each HD STB you want to record from -- I have two.) ;-) When I bought mine, they were about $220 each - looks like they haven't really come down much as the 'street' price seems to be around $200 each now. Here's a link to the MythTV Wiki for the HD_PVR: http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/HD-PVR And here's a link to Hauppauge's page for the HD-PVR: http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/data_hdpvr.html
For HD, the only current option is to feed Component Video from a STB into an Hauppauge HD-PVR.
Just curious, do you notice any small glitches in the audio and video in HD recordings (or live TV)? Every so often spot glitches in the audio and video on HD, it's a bit annoying, sometimes it even crashes mythtv (or X).
I haven't noticed any artifacts of the H.263 encoding coming out of the HD-PVRs - but maybe that's because I run it at the highest bitrate (13.5Mbps). I do that because even at that rate, the files are only about 6GB/hr.
also curious to know what distro you used for the base install, mythbuntu, fedora, etc ? I cut my teeth on Jarod Wilson's "MythTV on Fedora" guide a zillion years ago, and have stuck with it over the years. ;-) My backend is currently FC 13, and my frontends are running various versions, from FC 11 to FC 14...
I compile from source - I'm running 0.24-fixes now, anxiously awaiting the release of 0.25 ;-)
Oh, and you'll need a bit of disk space too! OTA HD broadcasts are 5-7GB/hour, and the HD-PVR's h.264 output is about the same size [maxed out at 13Mbps max rate]. I currently have 6.5TB of space on my backend - a bit overkill-- as I have over 1,000 programs recorded at any given time... ;-)
Yikes! Hehehe... My first 'production' backend was just a 18GB SCSI system/DB disk, and a pair of 50GB SCSI drives for Video... ;-) My current backend has a 60GB SSD for OS & DB, and 6.5TB of disks for Recordings and 500GB for 'Videos' - I've currently got 277 movies in my Video archive. ;-)
Note that MythTV is *not* the cheapest, nor the *easiest* to setup and configure - actually, I'd consider it more of a 'hobby' and requires occasional 'care & feeding'... But the flexibility that it gives you far exceeds any other offerings -- Like commercial detection and auto-skipping them during playback - just to name one!
Agreed. This is very well said. >
Hehehe, thanks. ;-) I originally setup MythTV as I was using Dish Network and had two DishPlayer 7200 DVR's - one with the 'stock' 8GB drive (~6 hrs), and another with a 120GB drive (~100 hrs). They worked great, but you could only watch things on the actual unit you recorded it on... So I setup MythTV, and 3 frontends, and then I could watch anything on any TV, and had more disk space too... (eventually!)
- brad
PS: My IRC nic is J-e-f-f-A and I'm on #mythtv-users pretty often... I run a proxy on my backend, so even if I'm not 'active', I'll see any message that my nic is mentioned in. ;-) Jeff