Recommended Setup for Satellite User?

[gamerscircle]

First,

I would like the thank 'sub' for his help with what I "thought" I could do, but was obviously wrong.

Currently I get my TV through a DirecTivo box, so that means that I am a Satellite subscriber.

I do understand that the capture card that I have PVR250 does not know anything about satellite signals. (thanks sub for explaining this)

Since I will need a directv reciever to get the signals and decode them, does anyone have a reccomendation on which reciver I should get? It would have have output to svideo and audio so that I can plug those into the capture card.

Are there any "tuner" cards for us satellite folks that work with directv?

[jorm]

you need to get either a 150 with an IR Blaster or a USBUIRT to control your satellite box. Then you use the composite inputs to pull in the signal from the back of the satellite box.

[gamerscircle]

Can I still use the 250 in the above setup?

[shacky]

Well, hello fellow DirecTivo user! I wanted to chime in on your discussion since I'm also new to GB-PVR and have just started adding PVR capabilities to my HTPC. You should really know what you are getting yourself into before investing any more into this HTPC.

First, your DirecTivo has two tuners internally which means you can record two different shows at the same time. With DirecTV, they don't charge you for this extra tuner since it's built into the DirecTivo. So you pay $5 for the Tivo service and that's it (since it sounds like you don't have any extra receiver in the house).

Now if you want to remove the Tivo subscription to save yourself the $5 you should understand what you are losing and what you will need to buy.

First you are going to lose the ability to record two shows at the same time. With satellite TV, you need to buy a tuner to watch TV. The DirecTivo is special in that you can get two tuners for the price of one. So you'll either settle with recording one show at a time (which also means you can't watch another at the same time) or you'll buy another tuner, pay $5 a month for the extra box to DirecTV, and figure out how to configure GB-PVR to control to IR-blasters at the same time. I had, and still partially have a hard time getting the IR-blaster to do what i want now. I have the IR-blaster working now, but there's some delay and some configuration of my tuner I need to do to make it more streamlined.

So if you want to get your PVR 250 working, you will need a IR-Blaster or serial controller. You can buy an IR-Blaster separately and connect it to a USB port (USB-UIRT) or get one that utilizes the PS/2 port or serial port. Either way you'll need to get some software to control the IR-Blaster and configure it to work with your remote control (do you have a remote for your PC?). As for getting the video/audio signal into your PC through the PVR 250, you can use the S-Video for better video, but you'll also need a RCA to Mini-plug cable ($4 to $8 at your local Radio Shack, Walmart, Circuit City, etc) to capture the audio at the same time. Or you can just use an analog signal by connecting the coaxial cable from the tuner into the PVR 250 card. This would send the video and audio into a fixed channel on the built in tuner of your PVR 250 but sacrifice a bit of video quality.

So is this worth the price? For me it is. With even a single tuner setup, you can now burn your shows to DVD, stream it to other rooms in the house through an ethernet line, and control it from other rooms using the MediaMVP. DirecTivo still doesn't support multi-room viewing and may never support it... officially. It's still a lot of work, and a lot of tweaking to get it working right. That's why I'll still keep my DirecTivo going which I can't do without.

Hope this helps

[linfor]

Is this what you want to do - you want to capture one of the channels from the Directv DVD DVR and record it to the computer? If so you do not need any additional receivers.
Just hook the dvr to the 250 card via the rca connectors. You would then need to either find a way to get thecomputer to do the channel change or set the recordings in the dvr and in gbpr so the dvr will autotune.
You will only be able to record the channel the dvr is showing at that moment. That would be the same case if you got a standalone receiver.