[olug] Myth TV / Cox Digital Box questions etc

[Will Langford]

> have enough PCI / PCIe slots).  The other cool aspect is the backend /
> frontend duality.  My backend manages all of the recordings and other
> ripped media.  I can now stream that over the network I have in my
> house to any other PC/TV over Ethernet.

This is something I'd look into for myself, and perhaps for the kid,
too.  With only one TV in the house, gotta share or schedule to watch
stuff when the TV Overlord (her highness) is away from the tube :).
Being able to watch shows from a man-cave-esque location would be
nice.

> In terms of the user interface (post installation/configuration), it's
> really easy.  If you can TiVo, you can Myth.

Bwahaha.  Awesome :).  Assuming I get multiple front end stuffs
working, and I can simplify a front end to retard level, this might be
awesome for the kid.  He's five, and having access to our library of
DVD's through a simplish remote setup would be .... life saving on
scratched discs and abused players :).

> As far as video cards are concerned, I'd go NVidia all the way.  Their
> unified driver set works well with Linux.  However, your 3D needs are
> relatively low.  Your primary need is to get the video signal out to
> your TV.  Since I'm no where near the HD TV scene yet, all my NVidia

While anything with a DVI out would accomplish this goal, it appears
if the card is HDCP, then it might better understand talking to the
TV.  And... alot of the HDMI-ported cards are newer anyway (and HDCP
aware).  Alot of this may be me speaking out of my arse, though .. I'm
only comparing notes and item descriptions heh.  I do appreciate the
thumbs up on nvidia, btw.

> One other important thing you'll want to consider though once you
> start Myth'ing.  Storage.  You can count on a half-hour program

To begin with, was just gonna stick with a system with a a HD >= 250gb
and not really concern myself about it.  The Cox DVR is what, 80gb ?
Heh.  If I end up falling in love with Myth, I'll concern myself with
a semi fault tolerant storage array, similar to your own :).

> In terms of getting HD content over cable from COX, I know Hauppage
> has a new HD (HVR) series of cards coming out (or already out).  They
> can tune clear QAM.  However, I have no doubt COX probably encrypts
> their stuff.  I'm sure Google could locate a forum somewhere with
> instructions on how to get around that.

While browsing tuners at newegg, I came across the HVR series, and
Hauppage's site mentions them as well.  No cablecard support, etc, so
it's undoubtedly a dead end relating to COX.  The Hauppage cards are
also hybrid tuners... one analog, one digital.  The high end 1800
model appears to be able to use both tuners at once. Still looks to be
MP2 encoding.  Digital tuner caps out at 1080i (rather than 1080p).
And looks like they come with IR blasters.  As far as I know, there is
no way to beat QAM encryption stuffs.

-Will