I was mulling a switch to Comcast and would like to get as much digital recording as possible. At first I thought the above might be my solution but I guess it is not the silver bullet I thought it might be as it will only pass "copy freely" shows to Myth (see link below). Now, these shows could be encrypted and thus unavailable to my current QAM tuner but how many extra channels/shows does that really translate to? I suspect not many

I live in the east bay of San Francisco (Dublin to be precise) - if you live in the bay area, I would be interested to hear your experiences of what comcast transmits in clearqam & what extra, if any, may be encrypted but labelled "copy freely". Also, I see any "copy freely" shows are also transmitted via firewire so maybe this is a cheaper option?

Thanks all.

http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Silicondust_HDHomeRun_Prime

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Paul O'Flynn

Paul, I've been recording via firewire for a while and the firewire interface also honors the "do not copy" flag. I documented my experience at http://mythtv.mlaronson.com/comcast-cable

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Marc

The views expressed are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer.

Thx for the reply. So in answer to my original question it seems that there are in fact quite a few SD encrypted channels that would be unencrypted by the new HDHomerun Prime (or the new Ceton card). That's cool and very good to know. It makes MythTV worthwhile with comcast when I was thinking it might be a bit useless. Even so, the HDHomrun & Ceton cards are $250/$300 respectively, not cheap. Alternatively one could go the firewire route as you did but what is the rental on that Motorola device, $10/mnth or similar?

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Paul O'Flynn

Paul, it will make available the vast majority of the encrypted SD and HD channels you have subscribed to and are paying for.

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Marc

The views expressed are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer.

These guys just did a review on the Prime with Mythtv if your interested.

http://patdavila.wordpress.com/2011/09/09/silicondust-hdhomerun-prime-review/

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LINHES 8.6.1 BE/FE - MSI K9N6SGM-V with AMD A64 X2 4600+, 4GB Ram. 1.5TB WD. HDHR Prime. Nvidia GT210. MCE remote.
FrontEnd - Dell Vostro 400 3.0GHz Core2Duo NVidia GeForce210. MCE Remote

So which is the best with Comcast; Firewire, Ceton or HDHomeRun? Does it merely boil down to cost? I kinda like the idea of the HDHomeRun as it seems to be fairly future-proof (my recording backend is an old P4 that only has PCI altho I could upg it, the HDHomeRun seems like it could work with any media-type system fairly easily...). Firewire also limits you to recording one channel at a time (I guess you could get a firewire card and another STB but now your monthly costs are rising...).

Thoughts? Opinions?

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Paul O'Flynn

That's kind of an apples-to-oranges comparison - Firewire would require an STB from <whomever, Comcast in your question>, assuming you already have one your cost is a firewire cable plus the monthly STB fee. The Ceton and HDHR Prime solutions have multiple tuners built-in, no STB required for them but they do require a cablecard from your cable provider (for whatever monthly fee).

So it depends on what you are trying to do. You can actually utilize both technologies, I have one of my frontends setup as a SBE that records via firewire through my cable company's STB. In addition I could easily configure an HDHRP or Ceton product for additional tuners on either the MBE or SBE. Keep in mind that none of the 3 options can record programs marked with the CCI flag set to "Copy Once", and the Ceton/HDHRP solution may have issues with those you would normally get as clear QAM. See http://www.pantz.org/software/mythtv/, scroll down to "The first run in with digital copy protection" and be sure to read the next section "The second run in with copy protection".

Interesting read on that link, thanks for sending it. I was already aware of most of those issues tho (well, except for the second "hit" that needs to be sent by tier 2 support to your card, sheesh, give me a break). That guy's experience is of course the whole reason for the decline in use of MythTV.

Anyway, firewire is fairly obvious, maybe I should be asking which is better, Ceton or HDHRP. I am leaning to HDHRP myself, just wondering if anyone else has any opinions.

Thanks,

Paul

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Paul O'Flynn

Yeah, anything they can do to cripple our Myth boxen... We've actually ended up using it more for music and not as much for OTA recordings, the firewire recording I setup was more of a "Let's see how difficult this will be" kind of thing (and very easy, BTW).

Regarding the Ceton vs. HDHRP question, I don't know. I've read good things about both, I believe the Ceton solution was a bit pricier when I last looked but that was Ceton's 4 tuners vs. HDHRP's 3.

This looks nice: http://www.silicondust.com/products/mod ... 3-6cc-3x2/ but we don't record that much OTA content and at $500 USD MSRP the cost recovery period is extended too far for me to consider it practical for our use.

Basically it will come down to your requirements and your pocketbook (isn't that always the way? )

Ceton is $300, HDHRP $250. $500 is way too much, you'd want to be a serious TV junkie for that. Plus, I think I had read somewhere that you can't record too many HD streams at once as your network won't be able to handle it (or maybe that just applies to 100mbs, I dunno, I have gigabit and wouldn't be recording more than 2 HD streams at once).

I'm a bit like you actually, I did consider going to a stand-alone media player and just watching streaming content and some ripped DVDs. Still, the little bit of TV I record I'd miss. I have an HDTV antenna but my neighbor has huge redwoods and I doubt I'd get much of a signal. Another option is comcast using my existing ClearQAM tuner & just taking what I can get that way...

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Paul O'Flynn

I purchased a PRIME over the weekend from newegg for $169 + $7 shipping. I haven't had a chance to pick up a cable card yet, but it is working fine as a clear QAM tuner using 6.04. I hope to pick up a cable card tomorrow and try it out -- will post any updates.

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Marc

The views expressed are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer.

How did you get it for that price! I'm jealous. Also, it shows OOS now Do give us some feedback on your experiences, I'm thinking of making this my holiday project.

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Paul O'Flynn

It showed up on slickdeals over the holiday weekend. Bummer is that I jumped on it too fast -- 2 hours later Amazon dropped their price to $169, but no sales tax. Still can't complain.

I picked up the "M-Card" cablecard from comcast today. I've inserted it into the box and called them. Now I need to wait "10-30 minutes" for it to go live. We'll see what happens...

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Marc

The views expressed are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer.

There were a bunch of "Black Friday" deals on the SiliconDust HDHomeRun products. The HDHR3 was going for $79.99, and I'm irked at myself for missing the chance to replace my lightening damaged HDHR at a bargain price.

Well, let's all agree, if anyone sees deals like this again please post them!

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Paul O'Flynn