[mythtv-users] Intro & question

[Aaron Howard]

On Thu, 2006-07-27 at 22:47 -0600, Chad wrote:
> Must be nice to have alternatives for a cable provider in your area.
> For me, at least for analog cable, Comcast is my only choice, and they
> are craptastic at best.
> 

I called WOW and they offer nearly identical service for nearly
identical price.  They use two different models of HD STB: 1) SA3250HD;
and, 2) Pace 551HD.  I was told I could not request a specific model and
of course they were clueless what firewire was and said their cable
boxes had component out but if I provided a DVI or HDMI cable, the
installer would use it if I asked.  A friend of mine who works in the
cable industry also told me the Pace box would likely be a PoS.

I keep thinking if I could guarantee an SA3250 I'd just switch to them,
but since they won't guarantee it, I'm on the fence.  No matter what I
do, I realize I'll have to bypass my MythTV box if I want to watch HBO-
HD (and probably ESPN-HD as well) which really sucks.

> The problem you'll face when you do get to the point of figuring out
> if HBO-HD is encrypted or not is that if it is, the only way to get it
> run *through* MythTV is to use a PVR-x50's analog inputs.  It'll
> downgrade to a 720x480 signal, but will give you the ability to
> pause/rewind/record the movies that are broadcast on it at their best
> quality.  I'm sure you know this, but encryption needs to be
> decrypted, and the only thing currently capable of that (legally) is
> your STB that your cable company sends you.  If they choose to encrypt
> a channel, and don't decrypt it over firewire, then... well your
> choice is listed above ;)
> 

If HBO-HD is encrypted over firewire, it sounds as if you're saying I
have to go with an S-Video or such connection to an analog tuner card
(like the PVR-x50s) and watch/record it at 720x480. But it still would
be a broadcast NTSC signal, right?  Not only interlaced, but not even
truly 720x480.  A few more questions:

1) if the signal coming into the S-Video port on a PVR-x50 card is NTSC
broadcast quality (not DTV 480i), it's not 720x480 is it?  It's
something roughly equivalent to 440x480, is it not?  I mean, it's analog
with 480 scan lines interlaced, but how much data is really there in the
horizontal?  I'm going off stuff I read on wikipedia, so I know there's
no guarantee it's 100% accurate info.  Still, even if it's not actually
a 720x480 signal, I can set MythTV to record it that way?  Will it de-
interlace on the fly, or do I record it interlaced and then run a
process on it after the fact to convert it to de-interlaced?

2) Does anybody know: if an HD signal is encrypted over the firewire
stream at its full resolution, could it still be down-sampled and sent
from the cable box at 720x480 (DTV 480p) in unencrypted form?  That's
DVD quality and good enough for me.  (Somehow I doubt it's doable
though.)

3) What's with S-Video anyway?  I thought it used 6 pins but it seems
most S-Video devices (and cables) are only 4-pin.  Anybody got the scoop
on that?

Thanks again, folks...

-Aaron
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