Need your input!

[applejax33]

Scenario: I have 4 receivers in Los Angeles on Comcast cable. I am in Europe for the next 5 years.



Resolution:

1. Build a 4 TV collection system.

2. Download shows to my house in Europe.



Problem:

1. How do I control Comcast receivers?

2. what should I use to compress the shows?


Any input will be greatly appriciated.

[mrgrocery]

First thing I would consider is do you have somebody knowledgable and reliable to maintain the system while you are away, one crash and you are screwed. You can control the cable boxes with IR blaster but I suspect it might not be possible with 4 seperate ones. As far as compressing, my preference is DivX or Xvid and there plugins to do this automatically for you. This seems like a very complicated thing to do to watch your favorite tv shows, is there any way to get the channels you want locally in europe?

[applejax33]

Unfortunatly I am in Cyprus and it takes a 4.2 meter dish to get my US channels. lol. The lagest my building has is a 2 meter.

The machine is going to sit in my friends house so a reboot is some what easy. The biggest problem I think I have is the IR control of each cable box. If I buy the WinTV-PVR-150 it has an ir blaster. But will the sofware know that each has an IR blaster?

Or does anyone know of a card that can read all 400 channels on Comcast? Usually they only go up to 120 channels.

[nanook105]

Originally Posted by applejax33

Unfortunatly I am in Cyprus and it takes a 4.2 meter dish to get my US channels. lol. The lagest my building has is a 2 meter.

The machine is going to sit in my friends house so a reboot is some what easy. The biggest problem I think I have is the IR control of each cable box. If I buy the WinTV-PVR-150 it has an ir blaster. But will the sofware know that each has an IR blaster?

Or does anyone know of a card that can read all 400 channels on Comcast? Usually they only go up to 120 channels.

I've never seen a card that goes over 120 Are most of the channels that you want to record in the under 120 range ? If so, you could connect a couple of tuners directly to the cable and the two others to cable boxes. You should look at the USBUIRTs because they support mulitple zones (a single USBUIRT can change multiple boxes). Do a search on multiple zones and/or USBUIRT.

[mmmesq]

Originally Posted by mrgrocery

You can control the cable boxes with IR blaster but I suspect it might not be possible with 4 seperate ones.

IR Blaster conflicts can be avoided using serial cables to control the STB's.

However, I hear the ability to use these varies by cable box, even by units a given model.

I have two Motorola DCT 2000 boxes from Adelphia and control both with serial cables, one for BTV and one for TiVo.

As I recall, BTV has native support for serial control.

Regarding the good point about crashes and maintenance, if periodic rebooting is desirable to keep things fresh, and you are not recording or compressing 24 hours a day, you can use a scheduled task running the "shutdown" command with the "-r" switch to reboot (e.g., weekly or even daily).

[applejax33]

well I plan to record 5-8 shows on friday's but the scifi channel is channel 131 just out of the range of the cards so i get shafted. I guess I could set an extra reciever only on the scifi channel.

[mmmesq]

Keep in mind periodic power outages too.

A good UPS will help, keeping both PC and STB on it. If you use an STB (just setting the channel, without IR or Serial control), without a UPS, I think the channel resets to 2 when the power goes out.
Also, setting PC BIOS to, when power restored, either start or resume last state (i.e., ON), would be helpful.

[applejax33]

current build:

TrippLite SmartOnline 3000 RT3U UPS - 8 to 12 hour up time
Intel® Pentium® 4 531/3.0GHz-1MB
1 Gig Ram
4 - Seagate 300GB Serial ATA/150 8MB Buffer
3 - WinTV-PVR-500MCE
3 - Comcast Cable Digital Tunners for higher channels
3 - for channels 1-120
2 - SIIG CyberSerial 4S JJ-P45012 4-Serial Ports I/O Controller Card
1 - cheesy video card


Any thoughts?

[applejax33]

ahhhh well i got shafted do NOT use K8v Deluxe boards. Or anything with Promise raid