I'm in research phase for a MythTV box for my home theater.

Here's my situation:
• Mitsubishi WD-52627 52" DLP 1080p HDTV rear projector with CableCard (full specs here)

Specs: dual HDMI inputs (1 also compatible with VGAXGA/60Hz), two FireWire (DTVLink) ports (input/output), 1 HDTV Air/Cable (ATSC/QAM) tuner, 2 Analog Air/Cable (NTSC) tuners,

• I also have (but not hooked up) a HDTV cable box, Motorola DTC6200 which appears to have built-in FireWire, DVI, USB, and Ethernet. If benificial, I may use this instead of my CableCard.

• Comcast Digital Cable (with HD stations and internet)


My goals are as follows:
• Focus on use with my theater... perhaps add a second front end for my bedroom later.
• Be able to watch and record at the same time. Multiple channel recording fine, but not required.
• Digital Cable content recording required, HDTV desireable but not an absolute must.

I am mainly looking for suggestions as to what video capture/tuners are best suited to my situation and my hookup options, I can for the most part determine the required PC specs after knowing that.

While I have enough extra equipment to build a non-HD machine (P4 1.4GHz, GeForce3 with TV/DVI out, etc...), but not sure if I even want to go that route. I may just use it for the "bedroom" front-end.

I already understand that for HD I would want at minimum a 3GHz CPU and other good performing components.

Any suggestions or pointers greatly appreciated. If you want more details or this is too vague, let me know.

Thanks!

Jeff

You can use the Motorola 6200 as your capture tuner for mythtv by connecting it to a firewire port on your mythbox. There are some posts in the forum and knoppmyth wiki on this.

Marc

Marc, thx for the response.

So does that mean that I wouldn't have to buy any tuner devices to get started? Simply have a machine with FireWire and KnoppMyth loaded hooked up to the 6200? If so, sweet.

Jeff

You'll want a decent video card. Check for success stories over in the Tier 1 & 2 hardware recommendations as well as under this topic. Pay attention to what drivers were required since you amy have to install them yourself. The video card doesn't have to be an expensive one, just one that's known to work for HDTV output. Looks like your TV will do either component or DVI so whichever of those is easier.

Does the FireWire output on the Moto 6200 only stream out the HD channels? If so, I'd have to get a capture card for the regular channels.

(FYI I have been reading up on the other forums, faqs, wiki... just a lot to wade through)

The firewire port of the 6200 will stream out any channel that it can tune it. On my system that includes the SD as well as HD channels. Having said that, I always record SD through my Hauppauge PVR-250 because I can get the quality level I want in half the space that the 6200 capture would use.

TJC is correct about the video card. I use the FX-6200 with nvida driver 8756 because I can get very reliable XVMC playback, which gives great quality and cuts CPU utilization significantly.

Marc

Very cool, good to know.... I want to just get it working first so that will be great. My wife supports it, but if I showed her it all working for essentially zero dollars she'd love it even more.

Right now (spare box) I have a GeForce3 Ti 500 with SVideo and DVI out... I'll try that first and buy something better if needed.

Just a caution on firewire. Comcast in my area encrypts virtually all the digital channels except what you get OTA (broadcast channels). I confirmed this by running the firewire directly into my TV. For reference I live in the Portland, OR area. I've heard others have had more success so YMMV.

I'm in the same boat as jakep, let's go storm the comcast office

Thanks for the heads up jakep. So, what do you do to get around it or don't you do anything?