[kwlug-disc] Future of [Rogers] PVR (wrt HDMI)? Black boxes? MythBuntu?

[Daniel Agar]

On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 18:20, Andrew Kohlsmith (Mailing List Account)
<aklists at mixdown.ca> wrote:
> On September 15, 2009 12:01:08 pm Daniel Agar wrote:
>> I've had success getting content from my rogers provided scientific
>> atlanta 3250 through firewire to my myth box. It doesn't work for all
>> channels (or at all times), but generally it can be used to capture hd
>> content from citytv, ctv, global, abc, nbc, fox, but not cbs, cbc (of
>> all things??), pbs, discovery or any premium channel.
>
> I had no success with the SA4250HD (I think that's the box I tested with; it's
> their current non-PVR HD box).  If you have any tips or tricks or URLs which
> detail what it is you did, I would certainly re-try my testing.
>
> However, as you stated, it's up to Rogers to just flip a bit and suddenly
> nothing works again.  I've also heard rumour that this can change with the
> same channel in different areas of the same city; the Broadcast Flag is not
> uniformly implemented within even the same cable company.
>
> Now mind you, I was just using the firewire test utils, and did not set up Myth
> with a channel list or anything to that effect. That may have been the trick,
> but it was lunchtime and I was at a friend's house with my laptop.  :-)
>
> -A.
>

It requires a bit of trial and error as there isn't a channel scanner
available for these. It can be very finicky until properly set up. For
instance, if I try to access a channel utilizing the broadcast flag
I'll get absolutely nothing output through firewire, and if I don't
change back to a valid channel within a few seconds the firewire
connection craps out and I have to hard reset the SA3250 to
reestablish a connection.

That's why I'm also currently investigating an antenna solution. I'm
getting really tired of my recordings of Lost or The Office failing
randomly because someone decided to flip the broadcast flag this week.
If you're serious about recording from a rogers HD box, you should
look into getting a Hauppauge HD PVR.