[mythtv-users] Anybody using an SA3250HD over firewire with .21 yet?

Bruce Markey bjm at lvcm.com
Sun Mar 16 04:28:49 UTC 2008


Matt Emmott wrote:
> Thanks for all the help, I will try your firewire_tester script and see
> if I can communicate with firewire outside of Myth; to be honest I just
> dove right into Myth and fired it up.
>
> Off topic, what channels have you guys succesfully recorded? Just
> unencrypted HD? What about SD? Back with .20-fixes I was able to get
> encrypted HD recorded without an issue (Cinemax) during the brief time I
> got firewire to work at all. I'm hoping that firewire is enough to
> record at least my HD channels along with SD from the cable box.

Several people have reported that they can get Cinemax so
I believe that is generally true. My MAXHDP and all SD MAX*
channels are available over firewire. None of my Showtime or
HBOwork.

I get all HD channel over firewire except SHO and HBO but all
are available down scaled to 480i over s-video. My cable company
apparently now has all SD channels as digital cable to the STB
and all channels are available as nnnx480i from firewire. However,
Some are flaky, may have dropouts, often don't have VBI CC where
the CC is available over s-video, sometimes the MPEG parameters
change during commercials which can trip up commflagging and the
times in the progress bar.

Receiving the original digital data seems ideal and there are
several SD channels that are always perfect so I record over
firewire. For most, I just don't trust them and record with
bttv/MPEG4 over s-video where VBI always works, the parameters
never change and if there is a glitch in the signal, it keeps
writing 30fps. Because I have the original digital files, I've
tuned my bttv parameters so they look just about identical and
I really can't see the difference.

Also, see the HOWTO section on using Input Groups to tell the
scheduler that it can record s-video or firewire from the STB
but not both at the same time:

http://www.mythtv.org/docs/mythtv-HOWTO-12.html#ss12.6

--  bjm




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