Comcast Moving Analog to Digital

[kwisher]

Hello All,

Well it has finally happened. Comcast has began moving their analog stations to encrypted digital stations in the North-Central Indiana area. This means the WAF of MythTV just went way down for me. I am loosing more than half of the stations I was previously able to watch. The bad thing is the free converter box will not work with Myth and their digital STB's have the firewire port blocked.

Thanks Comcast!!

[lobosolo]

My condolences, you should take this time to talk to your local polititians and see how to get another competing cable company in your city. These cable monopolies suck.

[marc]

Hello All,

Well it has finally happened. Comcast has began moving their analog stations to encrypted digital stations in the North-Central Indiana area. This means the WAF of MythTV just went way down for me. I am loosing more than half of the stations I was previously able to watch. The bad thing is the free converter box will not work with Myth and their digital STB's have the firewire port blocked.

Thanks Comcast!!

An HDPVR would not do the trick?
Time warner in San Antonio has not provided unencrypted QAM for over 3 or more years.
However, the cool little Hauppauge boxes work perfectly well.

Marc

[kwisher]

An HDPVR would not do the trick?
Time warner in San Antonio has not provided unencrypted QAM for over 3 or more years.
However, the cool little Hauppauge boxes work perfectly well.

This looks like a solution as long as the HD PVR blaster can interface with the converter box provided by Comcast. Anyone else using the HD PVR in this way?

[marc]

An HDPVR would not do the trick?
Time warner in San Antonio has not provided unencrypted QAM for over 3 or more years.
However, the cool little Hauppauge boxes work perfectly well.

This looks like a solution as long as the HD PVR blaster can interface with the converter box provided by Comcast. Anyone else using the HD PVR in this way?

I use the command ir myself but I believe the blushing penguin tutorial used for the PVR-150s works. Google up "blushing penguin" and "HDPVR" together and see if it yields more than the one mention I found on getting it to work as you describe.

You might have better luck getting control via fire-wire somehow. I know there are a couple of scripts to allow this without controlling the cable box for recording which Mythtv does perfectly. Too bad we cant just easily tell mythtv to change the channels through the back-end setup.

Imagine my disappointment when I found that all but the locals were encrypted and blocked via the fire-wire.
Too bad as the recordings were deliciously perfect.

[kwisher]

Before I drop $100-200 on a HD-PVR or HD HomeRun, I'd like to make sure it will work with the converter device I was given by Comcast. This is a very small unit, about the size of some cable modems I have seen. It has coax in and out along with a IR extender cable connection. Comcast is providing two of these to each customer for free.

[Patrick]

Before I drop $100-200 on a HD-PVR or HD HomeRun, I'd like to make sure it will work with the converter device I was given by Comcast. This is a very small unit, about the size of some cable modems I have seen. It has coax in and out along with a IR extender cable connection. Comcast is providing two of these to each customer for free.

HDHomerun doesn't require a cable box and will be able to tune in un-encrypted channels only. This varies from carrier to carrier in whatever area you're in. It seems the standard is to leave the main networks open (ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, CW, Fox). HD-PVR works with any STB that outputs via the component connections. Right now the HD-PVR is the only option for subscribers of satellite HDTV. I would do a search on the STB model + mythtv. Most of the bigger providers use the same generic hardware. Usually Motorola or Scientific Atlanta boxes. You'll probably need to setup an IRblaster to control the channel changing. Right now my tuners are HD-PVR + HDHomerun and I recording 95% HD content. It's been working well for me since last October.

[eddie]

Comcast has not forced us to digital yet, but we already use the dtv converters for ota broadcasts. Using homebrew antennas, we get over 40 channels which include all the mainline ones. PBS channels are the only required ones at our house. Need to go back an look at the pc digital card to see if it supports satellite. If it does that would be awesome. If it was not for the internet, Comcast would go bye-bye.

http://www.lyngsat.com/freetv/index.html