Question: What equipment should I buy/how to use it?

[Jonathan987]

Hello all!

I'm new to this forum and hope to one day use the gbpvr on a laptop of mine as a PVR solution

I'm currently looking at buying a PVR input device which I can use to feed my digital box receiver into my computer which will then be recorded using a PVR software and outputted onto the TV.

So if I understand everything correctly...

1) there is no way to surpass my digital receiver (set top box) with some computer component? The digital cable receiver gets an encrypted tv signal over my cable connection and unencrypts it, which gets fed to the TV.
It seems that there are Cable Cards, but in Canada non of the cable providers offer them: CableCARD - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
furthermore cable card 2.0 specification hasn't yet been implemented which supports Switched Digital Video

2) this means that the all feeds that would go to the PVR would have to be intercepted between the HD receiver (set top box) and the TV.

3) The way I see it I could buy either the Hauggauge WinTV-HVR-1950 or the HD-PVR. Are there any other good products out there worth looking at?

4) If I were to use the WinTV-HVR-1950, I would have to connect the HD receiver unit to the TV connection on the 1950. That would mean you go from component output (connected on HD receiver) to coaxial TV cable (for 1950 input). Would this work? Would there be quality loss in either video or audio if you go from component to coaxial? I don't think it would...since it's coming in initially in through this connection...but I'm not sure.
The computer would then output to the TV from VGA to composite (for CRT) or DVI to HDMI(for LCD TV).
The HD receiver is this one: Rogers Digital Cable Explorer 4250HD HDTV Cable Terminal Box DTVSA4250HD in Canada at TigerDirect.ca

5) For non-HD channels you don't need a HD receiver box for your TV. You can get channels 1 to ~58. So this means I could also input another feed into the HVR-1950's RCA (composite) input connectors on the other side of the 1950 unit. Can gbpvr/the 1950 device use two inputs at once? Could I stream the this second input over the UPnP mediaserver? I could then watch non-HD channels in the rest of my house without affecting HD shows that are recording?

Thanks for your help!

Cheers,

Jonathan

P.S. One last question: Does the scheduling in gbpvr support my cable company's channel schedules so I can record? My cable company is Rogers Cable in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

[Captcol]

To answer the questions that I am able to...

1. If the signal is encoded then you must use your set top box to decode the signal and pass it on to the computers capture device.

2. Yes all signal would go through your stb to get to the capture device, you can use some software with different remotes to allow you to control your stb from within the pvr software.

3. I am unfamiliar with either of these cards and from my understanding laptops are not idea for the purpose of a pvr and that restricts your choices to usb capture devices which can suffer from heat issues.

4. From component to coax will definately lower quality, the ideal is dvi or hdmi to hdmi, next is component, then svideo, then composite, then coax as far as i understand it anyways - as for usb capture cards for this purpose no idea.

5. You are correct that in if you can recieved the channels without a stb then a capture device would be able to tune directly. As for dual tuners for usb and the ability to view/record more than 1 channel at a time it would be dependant on the individual tuner. In the case where you are able to use multiple tuners you can stream live tv to other clients such as other computers with gbpvr/pvrx2 installed, Hauppauge mvp's or PopcornHours

Hope that helps