Component encoder card?

[SLR_65]

Hi Guys,

My old GBPVR box has been chugging along nicely but now that we've upgraded to widescreen hdtvs the recordings coming from my PVR-150 & 500 aren't cutting it. There are many shows that I would like to record in hd widescreen. I thought about a hd homerun but several of the channels I want to record are digitally encrypted on our system. Our cable boxes do have component red/green/blue outputs though and they do work as i hooked them up to one of our tvs just to be sure.

I'm now thinking I would like to get a cable box just for the htpc and use an ir blaster to control it and an r/g/b encoder card to record from it . . . does anyone have any suggestions for appropriate encoder cards?

Thanks!

Steve

[pBS]

just one, the HDPVR, it's only one i know of that records component in hd formats...
there is an Aver one, but it's software compression, and needs quite the system to use..
hdpvr is usb too...h264 recording so looks great and small files..has hauppauge ir and remote too..
i just got one and it works great w/pvrx2 and npvr i'm sure is better with it but i haven't upgraded yet..

[steveum]

Hauppauge also announced a new one called Colossus. It sounds very similar to HD-PVR, but it is a internal card rather than an external device that works with usb.

[smajor]

Another vote for the HD-PVR. The blaster gave me some trouble, if your STB supports it and your computer has Firewire, channelchanging via firewire has been 100% accurate for me since the day I set it up back in '08. sub mentioned some tweaking in NPVR to get around the blaster problems, so it's probably better than when I used it with GBPVR.

There is also a Blackmagic Intensity Shuttle USB3 device that looks amazing in capability and offers component input for $199, but I have no clue if NPVR supports it. Maybe sub will wander in this thread and let us know.

[sub]

There is also a Blackmagic Intensity Shuttle USB3 device that looks amazing in capability and offers component input for $199, but I have no clue if NPVR supports it. Maybe sub will wander in this thread and let us know.

No, that device wouldnt work with NPVR. Sorry.

[SLR_65]

I checked - our stb does have a firewire port on it. Our box is a Motorola DCH6200 and our service provider is Charter. According to the Charter web site firewire is active on the boxes and according to the user manual for the box it provides audio/video. I dunno if it allows channel control or not - any idea how to test that?

It says it provides audio and video but the boxes on screen graphics do not show up on the firewire output (which would be great for recording). I have an Asus M2NPV-VM motherboard in the htpc and it has a firewire port . . . is it possible to use the firewire input as a tuner? If so does it work well with GBPVR or do I need to upgrade to NPVR? (it's just been working perfectly so I'm hard pressed to mess with it unless I have to, but if I could gain input from the encrypted digital basic services it would be worth the effort to me).

Thanks!

Steve

[mvallevand]

For firewire recording you need GBPVR and the GraphRecorder Plugin. However I wouldn't hold my breath, the restrictions on firewire make it unlikely that the stations you want will be unencrypted. It is not one-to-one with clear QAM but close. Search for 5C and firewire for you provider.

Martin

[SLR_65]

Hi Martin,

I've been surfing and playing tonight and it's hard to sort this all out.

Setting the box to Discovery or History Channel and entering my box's Diagnostics page D11-Interfaces it says my firewire is active and under 5C it says No and the copy mode is set to copy freely. When I go to the D06 Channel Information page I get:

CC1 = 0x00 -> this is the 5c copy protection control flag? And 0x00 means icopy freely?
APS = 0x00 -> Dunno what this is
RC Flag =0x00 -> This is the broadcast flag that's not used any more?
CIT = 0x00 -> Dunno what this is
DRM = 0x01 -> This is 01 on encryptred digital channels and 0x00 on clear qam channels
RS = Forever -> Dunno what this is

With the CCI flag at 0x00 it should be available over firewire?

[mvallevand]

Sorry I don't know, but it looks promising. This can of course change at any time, I don't think all the providers have worried too much about copy freely before but I think with cablecard devices now they might. Probably you should just get a good cable and try assuming you use a 32bit Windows.

You have a secondary decision on whether you should be planning for limiting yourself to the unsupported GBPVR "line" at this point. My experience with firewire wasn't great. SD was pretty good, but I rarely had HD transfers that didn't have several bad areas of pixelization or hang my recording session and even the PC. If you are serious about this I'd recommend MythTV or even EyeTV on a MAC, because they have more stable firewire support.

Martin

[SLR_65]

Hi Martin,

I use XP Pro SP3.

I've done a lot of surfing and it seems hit or miss with my channel info - it seems that many with the CC1=0x00 and DRM=0x01 settings can indeed still capture video, but yet there are cases where users had those same settings and could not so it appears the only viable way to know is to do as you suggested and simply give it a try so it looks like I need to find a good cable.

Yeah, the secondary decision is whether to upgrade to NPVR or not. Basically everything is working so I'm not inclined to just at this point as if it's not broke I can't see fixing it. But . . . if I'm going to start doing hardware upgrades I may be forced to, but that's OK if I gain the use of the hardware I want.

Most of the programming I want is from the networks and PBS and is available on clear QAM. I tried an HVR-1600 a while back but it was a joke, it just never worked so I gave up on it and that didn't bother me much as I hadn't moved to widescreen hdtvs yet, but now that I have I'd prefer to have as much programming in widescreen as possible (I have rear projection crt units so I don't want to burn the crts by viewing too much full screen material). Soooo, I'm thinking my first upgrade may be to move to a silicondust hdhomerun dual tuner. Then I may move to an HD-PVR as I would like to be able to record from NatGeo, Discovery, and History Channel however it's not imperative. If I could just firewire to the cable box though and not have to buy the expensive HD-PVR that would great though.

I think the hdhomerun would work fine with my current GBPVR setup, correct? The HD-PVR with the graphrecorder plugin also works fine with GBPVR or would either of them work better if I just bit the bullet and upgraded to NPVR?

THANKS for the input - I really appreciate it!

Steve