[mythtv-users] Possibly a "dumb" question

[Brian Wood]

On Friday 05 February 2010 08:40:52 am Jim Morton wrote:
> Can someone explain this to me? I just don't get it...
> 
> Myth records shows as mpeg or whatever is being broadcast with no
> decoding or other changes effectively capturing it unaltered.
> During playback, Myth has a myriad of ways to process and render
> video/audio to then deliver to the TV.
> Why can't it just stream the exact file to the TV and let the TV tuner
> receive/decode/render/interlace/deinterlace it. In other words hand it
> to the TV exactly as it were broadcast.
> 
> I believe cable boxes do just that. Provide the broadcast stream on
> channel 3 or 4 and let the TV deal with it.

If you mean a cable STV outputs ATSC, just like it would be received off the 
air? I don't think so. Those I have seen output baseband video as composite, 
S-Video or component, or RF modulated as NTSC.

ATSC modulators are still expensive, much more than the entire STB, and cable 
operators are cheap.

> 
> The TV should not know any difference between live OTA, live cable, and
> a playback of a recording from Myth...

Most of us use the DVI, HDMI or VGA connector to connect the frontend to the 
TV set, and nobody I am aware of outputs ATSC from their frontend.

No TV set I am aware can accept ATSC as anything other than RF.