ATSC and MVP will this model work?

[jorm]

I dont really care about HD signals. I have 5 MVP's throughout my house. And am trying to get rid of my monthly bill.

The below solution would seem to work. Has anyone tried it?

Buy an external ATSC tuner about $100 (anyone know any that are compatible with the hauppauge 150 ir blaster, or support a serial interface)

Take the output off the tuner and plug it into the hauppauge 150.

The hauppauge will store the signal in a mvp compatible format.

I should still be able to stream it and get all my local stations for free.

[sub]

Yes, you should be able to do that.

I cant advise which ATSC tuner boxes will be compatible with your PVR150 IR Blaster, but hopefully someone else that has been doing it will be able to let you know.

[flyswatta]

Here's a link of (older) Direct TV satellite tuners that will allow you to receive OTA ATSC without a satellite subscription. I see a number of these on Craigslist between $40-$100 in the Dallas area, but YMMV. I've also seen them on Ebay, but I don't remember the price range.

http://home.att.net/~roashru/Directv.html

I'm doing exactly what you are talking about:
Roof antenna signal into the receiver - receiver downconverts the s-video signal to a 480 signal and outputs it into a PVR 150. Works like a champ!

[mvallevand]

I read at one time that in the US you could get a rebate on these devices. I figure this will mean they will be cheap and easy to get on ebay as time goes on for when we need them here in Canada, however if you are planning on buying new it's something else to look into.

Martin

[jorm]

flyswatt,

which one of the directv receivers do you have? (so I know that the blaster will work)

[flyswatta]

Oh, I'm not using the PVR150 blaster - I have the PVR150MCEs which don't have the blaster. I am using a serial blaster with winlirc which only works about 75% of the time. I just ordered a USB blaster, but I plan on using that with HIP. The idea with HIP and winlirc is that you record the remotes ir keypresses, and the software "plays it back" (blasts) the device as if it were the remote. I don't have any experience with the 150 blaster - sorry.

The receivers that I have are the HUGHES HIRD-E86 (works nice, but it generates a LOT of heat - in fact, the first one was "burned". Fortunately the guy let me get a different one from him. If you get one, make sure they hook it up and run it for a good 20 minutes to see if works good when warmed up) and a Sony SB200 (this one is NICE - not much heat and lots of output options, the downside is that it's a pretty big unit). I also picked up a Sony HD250 which is a DVR (DVR only works with a subscription but it has a buggy software rev which causes it to reboot all the time - there's a newer software version for it which fixes the problem, but I'll have to hack the box to update it since it's not an active DirectTv box. I got it for free, so that's been a back burner project...)

[zed]

You might also look for standalone ATSC tuners. They might cost a bit more than the DirectTV boxes, tho. I used an RCA ATSC-11 that I picked up on eBay with good results. There's also an ATSC-12 (or is it -21?) that also does analog. Samsung also makes a couple models as do a couple other manufacturers. EBay is a good source. Or check craigslist.

[Torque]

You might look into the HDHomeRun. Has dual tuners and connects to your PC via ethernet. The picture quality is much better than piping the video thru the PVR150.

Then you wouldn't have to worry about blasting the signal to change channels and you get two tuners.

[zed]

I believe he wants something that will downconvert HD to SD so he can view it with an MVP. The boxes mentioned above will do that. If he uses an HD tuner card he'll have to do downconversion on the fly not to mention all the extra disk space taken up by the HD recordings. In my experience, downconverted HD fed into the svideo inputs of a 150MCE looks really good.

[jorm]

I am actually surprised that none of the hd card manufactures have a way to do this. I would gladly buy new HD cards for my computer if it had an option of saving it as SD. Transcoding on the fly is not worth it if I dont need the HD and it will take up more space.

Thanks for the info I will find a stand alone atsc tuner.