Merging cable box and PC?

acruxksa · Posted: Wed, 05 Oct 2005 19:11:09 Post Subject:

NP,
I'll PM you with the basics of what I did to get firewire working.

Spire · Posted: Wed, 05 Oct 2005 20:51:39 Post Subject:

Good information, I will have to check that site out in more detail, thanks!!!

acruxksa · Posted: Thu, 06 Oct 2005 11:09:12 Post Subject:

here's the original link to the information on AVSForum As I mentioned before this method is kind of crippled in it's implementation and is essentially a hack, but it is still pretty nice to be able to get video off the cable box on occaision.

It seems some people have had luck getting the Motorola DCT6200 to work with recent versions of MythTv so that is what I'm working on at the moment. Knoppmyth doesn't seem to work with firewire though, so I'm going to have to try one of the other ways of installing MythTV.

Spire · Posted: Thu, 06 Oct 2005 20:27:37 Post Subject:

Tons of information... I actually have a Dual Tuner DVR Motorola 6412 and it looks like at least one person was able to pull RECORDED programs off the HDD and send it over to the PC, but much more reading is necessary.

acruxksa · Posted: Thu, 06 Oct 2005 23:34:08 Post Subject:

You should be able to use the method from the link I posted in this thread to grab video from your 6412. I believe it is pretty similar to the 6408 except w/ dual tuners. They have the 6412's available up here for testing right now, but the second tuner isn't activated yet.

MythTV still seems like it holds the most promise. There is even supposed to be a program that can change channels on the 62xx's over the firewire connection. All the documentation is for the 6200 though, so maybe I'm outta luck with the 6208. Keeping my fingers crossed.

acruxksa · Posted: Fri, 07 Oct 2005 02:55:44 Post Subject:

Well,
I've been following This Guide to MythTV and managed to get things to the point where I can pull video off the DCT6208 via the command line and I know the channel changing feature works, because everytime I fire up the backend it changes my cable box to channel 652 (the channel I set it to go to in the MythTV setup). Getting closer. Still can't get the "watch tv" option working in mythTV, but I think it's a configuration problem on my part.

acruxksa · Posted: Fri, 07 Oct 2005 13:37:29 Post Subject:

Just FYI,
I've successfully got MythTV working with the firewire connection on my Motorola DCT-6208 HD Cable Box. This system functions exactly like a true HTPC. I have been able to schedule programs for recording and it is successfully recording them and playing them back.
HDTV playback is a problem though, I am going to try using my NVIDIA Ti4200 to see if XvMC hardware decoding can help with my 1080i content playback. My A64 3500 isn't quite up to the task, but info on the net says that XvMC hardware decoding should lower the CPU load and might just be enough to get smooth HDTV playback.
Still have to figure out what modelines to use so I can eventually connect everything to my HDTV.

acruxksa · Posted: Tue, 11 Oct 2005 22:03:34 Post Subject:

Another quick note, HD playback with my GF4 Ti4200 and A64 3500+ is using about 40% of the CPU so it's definitely better than what I was seeing with my R9800pro. I didn't even have to enable XvMC which as I understand it come with it's own set of problems. I'm still getting massive amounts of overscan when I try to output to my HDTV, so I've put that on hold for now.

I'm going to try getting the "burn to disc" (I think it's called nuv2dvd or something like that) module for MythTV working next. I Recorded 4 1hr. episodes of "Warships" off PBS HD (HD video is uses about 5gb/hr of disk space) for testing and want to burn them to DVD.