Capture / Tuning with Cable STB and Firewire

[zehd]

Hey Folks... it's been a long while.... I hope everyone's been having fun!

I read through a bunch of posts regarding firewire and stbs but most of them seem to be fairly old (maybe a year or so) so I was wondering if I could get some new information, answers and help... thanks in advance...

First I'm in Calgary Canada, using Shaw's Dual Tuner PVR (I should say I will be using it, it was just ordered)

I've read that Shaw likes to turn on and off the firewire port and encryption to their content randomly... and there's no laws to prevent that... so I'm prepared to have a few missed shows

So a few of questions:

Tuning / Channel Changing
I've seen a few of you using some software to remotely change a tuner's channel. I believe I have the right links to get that working, but I haven't been able to confirm whether one firewire cable can channel change one or another tuner within a dual tuner PVR. Within some command lines, can I select tuner one over tuner two etc...?

Capture
In general can I capture the stream from a tuner through a firewire. Can I capture two different streams simultaneously? I've read through some of the docs for Firewire capture and really haven't seen a yes or no to that...

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthre...t=firewire

I recognize that I will still need an intermediate interface like GraphRecorder... Is that right? Alternatives?

If I can't use firewire to capture, I suspect using the Haup HD-PVR is the only way to get a full format HD programme on my GB-PVR, using Component. (is that correct?)

Something I haven't had a chance to play with yet was the other video outputs of the Shaw PVR... If I decide to not worry about full format HD, and just really want 16:9 picture to my TV (through GB-PVR) will I be able to use any of the other connectors (dare I say composite, or s-video) to send a wide picture to the computer's capture card? Is the downscaling on the outputs any good?

TS file format
Has there been any improvement with Canadian TS file playback and muxes etc? The last few posts I read said that playback was still jerky.


Thanks for any and all help...
Frank

[mvallevand]

Hi Zehd, I can't tell you the Shaw experience, but my Rogers experience is that only a few channels are available (ie don't have 5C enabled) so firewire capture is useless. It really was only useful for SD anyway. For my dual tuner PVR I only get one channel that I do record with GraphRecorder

Firewire for channel tuning is great (I had my first little glitch this week) but it has typically been very stable.

I am not sure what you are saying about the Canadian TS experience, my ATSC, QAM, HD-PVR and firewire captures are perfect.

My NPVR, HD-PVR, channel.exe firewire and single channel HD STB (no PVR) experiences have been great, for livetv and recordings, I think I went a month with them in the closet until this week. I put my PC to sleep everyday and there are no power management issues.

Martin

[zehd]

Thanks Martin....

Well if you're not capturing HD through Firewire, then how do you get the programmes from the STB/tuner to your computer? What's the path? I suppose it's the HD-PVR?

And I think you're a pretty smart cookie, so I'll bet you explored the idea if accessing both PVR tuners simulateously... (?)

I guess I meant that I read some people were still having TS playback problems... But I guess that it was similar to other issues not playing well on a sub standard system

And what about using firewire to access recorded Transport Streams directly from the PVR's harddrive...? I heard that it was possible, though encryption can be an issue...

[mvallevand]

My STB's will be different (Scientific Atlanta 8300 and 4350HD) but the firewire capture out is like video output it all comes from the live or recorded broadcast being watched. You can't grab any recorded show like plugging in a USB drive. Yes I use the HDPVR component to capture everything.

Martin