One cable box for everything?

[ratskin]

I need some help from all you tech experts.

Right now I have GBPVR on the PC in the office and a MVP in the livingroom for the TV. I've recorded and watched shows and it runs nicely.

Since our house is wired with cat5e in every room, my ultimate set up would be a MVP for each room with a TV. With the right set up could we watch and record TV in every room via the MVPs and get rid of all cable set top boxes except the one feeding the PC with digital/premium channels and On Demand with iCONTROL?

All the cat5e and cable coax lines from each room go to a “box” in the office closet. The main cable line coming into the house is fed into a splitter which feeds all the other rooms in the house including the PC room. Can I insert a cable set top box into this mix by having the main cable line go to the cable set top box, then a cable line from the box to the cable splitter, thereby feeding digital/premium channels to all the rooms including the PVR-150 card in the PC? I'm only going to use 1 TV-tuner for now (PVR-150), but if this works, may consider another.

How would I manage changing channels?

If this will work, since I don't know much about tech gear or electronics I need someone to guide me through the steps, connections, and configurations if possible.

Tipstir, I tried to follow what you've done in this post http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php?t=13501, but I don't understand most of it and I'm not sure what parts are applicable to what I'd like to do.

Thank you!

[Koenie]

I am affraid you want more than what is technically possible. As far as i know most (digital) cable boxes contain only 1 tuner, hence they will output only 1 program at a time. Further the output signal from such a box is too weak to allow for any splitting without very very major quality loss.

My experience is that I started with 1 PVR 150 and now ended up with 3 of them.
I do not have a digital premium box, but I would buy only 1 of them, hook it to 1 of the PVR's and have the 2 others used for standard cable. My experience is that there are often several shows to be recorded at the same time but I assume seldom 2 in the premium channels. So I would add a PVR 500 (2 tuners) to the PC and equip the different rooms with MVP's.

My experience is that we hardly look at live TV any longer, but just the recorded shows whenever it suit us best.

[Koenie]

I did not read Tipstirs post before. In his reply he says that he basically does as I describe above. He only ads a trick to use the digital cable box with all of his 150's depending on which one is accidentally used for the recording.

SUB, I am not sure, but I think what tipstir does is not really necessary. The EPG is set up for every individual capture card, hence if the EPG is "attached" to the card which has the digital box (this one than has a larger setection of programmes) than GBPVR will chose the right capture card when a show is programmed which is only on the digital one? I think I rememer you telling that you added logic to one of the latest builds to make this work smoothly.

[sub]

GBPVR will chose the right capture card when a show is programmed which is only on the digital one?

Correct.

[ratskin]

I guess I was shooting for the moon!

I'll start by hooking up my digital cable box to the PVR in the office and try to see if I can watch/record the premium channels and On Demand with GBPVR. Then I'll try with the MVP in the living room. Next would be trying to figure out how to change the channels on the cable box from the MVP.

Any advice would be most appreciated. Thank you.

[Lucas_24]

some cable boxes have a serial connector on them, you can then use girder software to send serial commands to the cable box to change channels. Although I've never tried this.

When I was using satelite, I bought a USB-UIRT. It's a device that sends IR commands. Changing channels on the MVP really is telling the server that you want to change channels, the server the send the appropriate commands to the cable box through the USB-UIRT and causes a channel change.