Monday, February 23, 2004
Viewer Mail #1 - Digital Cable and PVR
As promised, viewer mail. In this first installment, reader Britain W. asks the following questions:
Middle caveat: Your cable box may be made to work with a MythTV system. See Section 11.4 of the MythTv.org documentation.
Long answer: BBC America, home to a favorite (favourite) show of ours, Monarch of the Glen. Of course, it would be easier for us to watch this show if we actually had digital cable ourselves - we tended to watch the show on PBS whenever they happen to show it. In 2001, when I had a a sweetheart of a deal from Charter Cable in Madison, WI for betraying my loyalty to SkyCableTV of Madison, WI, I had BBC America and didn't even know the treasure I had. Pity. In those days, I had a 25" Color TV by Zenith with a faulty ON/OFF switch donated to me by some good friends. The SkyCableTV and Charter packages both yielded me a converter box to turn their scrambled analog/digital signals into Channel 4 output for the old TV and actually provided a 120 VAC connection to turn the old TV on and off with the remote. These digital video cards don't work miracles, they just replicate the ability your TV has to see signals. If you need a box for descrambling analog signals or converting digital signals, your PVR will need a box as well.
Physics answer: For background information on television's and cable's inner technologies, look here.
I am wondering what TV tuner card you used, whether you have basic or digital cable, and -- if you have digital, like we do -- how many channels can you tune in? A couple of the channels we would be interested in, like BBC America and G4, are up in the 100s.Short answer: Digital cable outputs analog signals to televisions. If your TV can't see a signal without a box, the computer can't see it without a box either. From MythTV, "There are no known capture cards for digital cable. You must use the set-top box provided by your digital cable provider and capture the analog video output using either composite or S-Video."
Middle caveat: Your cable box may be made to work with a MythTV system. See Section 11.4 of the MythTv.org documentation.
Long answer: BBC America, home to a favorite (favourite) show of ours, Monarch of the Glen. Of course, it would be easier for us to watch this show if we actually had digital cable ourselves - we tended to watch the show on PBS whenever they happen to show it. In 2001, when I had a a sweetheart of a deal from Charter Cable in Madison, WI for betraying my loyalty to SkyCableTV of Madison, WI, I had BBC America and didn't even know the treasure I had. Pity. In those days, I had a 25" Color TV by Zenith with a faulty ON/OFF switch donated to me by some good friends. The SkyCableTV and Charter packages both yielded me a converter box to turn their scrambled analog/digital signals into Channel 4 output for the old TV and actually provided a 120 VAC connection to turn the old TV on and off with the remote. These digital video cards don't work miracles, they just replicate the ability your TV has to see signals. If you need a box for descrambling analog signals or converting digital signals, your PVR will need a box as well.
Physics answer: For background information on television's and cable's inner technologies, look here.
