[mythtv-users] Disj Network or Direct TV?

William Powers wepprop at gmail.com
Thu Jul 22 14:32:09 UTC 2010


On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 8:19 PM, George Mari
<george_mythusers at mari1938.org> wrote:
>
> We'll see - I just got the H24 a few weeks ago, but so far, so good.
>
> One of the things I'll have to get around is connecting my Kill-A-Watt to
> it.  The H20 used 22 watts (!) when on, and 22 watts when "off", which with
> MythTV, it was never off, of course.

I just switched from Comcast to DirecTV when Comcast dropped Syfy and
AMC from their analog lineup.  My Kill-A-Watt says my new H24-700's
use 15w ea. regardless of whether they are 'on' or 'off'.

I picked DirecTV over DISH because DirecTV had all of my "must have"
channels in their lowest service tier.  No one else (DISH, Comcast,
UVerse) did.

I got 2x HD receivers and 2x SD receivers (D12MP-500).  The two SD
receivers are connected to my two old PVR-250's over S-Video.  The HD
receiver for Myth is hooked up to a new HD-PVR via component.  The
other HD receiver is hooked directly to the TV via HDMI.  I was
surprised and somewhat disappointed that the H24 only has a coaxial
digital audio output.  Since the HD-PVR only has an optical digital
audio input, I had to purchase an extra cable and a coaxial to optical
converter before I could record 5.1 audio vice stereo.

I started out trying to control everything with an IguanaIR
transceiver and Smarthome emitters but was never able to get better
than about 97% reliability on channel changes.  The IguanaIR works
fine but the emitters are apparently too powerful when placed directly
over the IR receivers in the DirecTV units.  I tried various means of
optical and electrical attenuation but 97 correct channel changes out
of a hundred was the best I was able to achieve.  So I switched to the
USB->Serial->Null Modem->Serial->USB method of channel changing and
have had 100% reliability with that method so far.

I think I could have gotten 100% reliability for IR channel changing
with a single emitter mounted some distance away from the receivers.
But there I ran into a code setting conundrum.  The HD boxes have
eight codes: 00001 - 00008.  The SD boxes have two codes:  00001 -
00002.  So, to split up the SD boxes I have to use 00001 and 00002 for
them and other codes for the HD boxes.  But my URC R6 universal
remotes only support the 00001 code.  Thus, if I change the TV
receiver to something other than 00001, I have to either use two
remotes to control everything, or start looking for new universal
remotes that support more of the DirecTV codes, or do a lot of
'learning remote' teaching.  USB - serial channel changing was a
better solution.

I don't have all of the kinks worked out of the HD-PVR yet.  Twice it
has locked up during a recording and required a power cycle to return
to normal operation.  Still working on that...


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