New and would appreciate some help

[TheMatrix]

Hello-

Back in 2004 I happily used BTV for several months on my main PC. Then Comcast came out with their Motorola DVR boxes, and I abandoned BTV. But now I'm interested in using BTV again, so I can send recordings to my iPod, or stream them to my EVDO PDA.

As some of you may know, WinTV PVR-150's are on sale at CompUSA (with rebate) for $39.99. That makes them fairly cheap for a brick-and-mortar store. Is my best bet buying two of those, or going for something like the PVR-500?

Also, very few things in this world are more important to me than '24' - and the new season starts in January. I'd like to watch that in HDTV, but I'm not sure how that works. Does Comcast provide HD channels outside of their digital boxes? I know last year I was able to connect my Motorola DVR to my PC via FireWire and used VLC to watch HD shows (namely, '24'). However this was very buggy, and caused several BSOD's. Or can I only get HD programming OTA via an antenna?

Thanks.

-TM

[Striz]

Hello-
As some of you may know, WinTV PVR-150's are on sale at CompUSA (with rebate) for $39.99. That makes them fairly cheap for a brick-and-mortar store. Is my best bet buying two of those, or going for something like the PVR-500?

<snip> Or can I only get HD programming OTA via an antenna?


http://forums.snapstream.com/vb/showthread.php?t=33675 This thread is about issues with the PVR500 cards. Looks like the issue MAY be resolved, but I'd be cautious.

Other than that, good question. I went with the Nvidia DualTV for $149. I'm very happy with it. Assuming you have room for two cards, the only thing it seems you'd have to do is add another splitter to feed each card. Maybe buy the two for $80 and buy beer with the savings...:toast:

You'll need a HD card for HD content, whether it comes from a set-top box or OTA. It's my understanding that HD cards can do either SD or HD.

[tscales]

HD in BTV can only come over-the-air, not from your cable box. There is a workaround for firewire, but I cannot get it to reliably work. OTA, though, is rock solid.

[Striz]

HD in BTV can only come over-the-air, not from your cable box. There is a workaround for firewire, but I cannot get it to reliably work. OTA, though, is rock solid.

Really? I thought you couldn't get unencrypted [QAM] HD from your cable company, but if it comes in through a set-top box BTV would work just fine.

[cfaslave]

There is an alternative to HDTV OTA and HDTV via firewire.

Many with cable have access to unencrypted QAM channels. All cable networks have to provide unencrypted QAM for those local channels and many cable providers offer additional HDTV channels via unencrypted QAM as well - mine included (Time Warner KC).

Fonceur has updated his BTV Negotiator plugin to work in conjunction with VideoLan (VLC) to support QAM recordings (of unencrypted QAM channels) using the HDHomerun tuner by Silicon Dust (http://www.silicondust.com/zxc/content/view/5/26/). Several people have successfully scheduled and recorded HD via QAM (within BTV) using this plug-in. The setup works well. One downside to the current setup is that there is no LiveTV support as of yet. The plugin is being modified to also support on the Fusion HDTV card, but that is still in development.

For more information, see this thread:
http://forums.snapstream.com/vb/show...=34073&page=15

Brent