[LUNI] OT: Linux-friendly TV Tuners for sale

[bradbosch at comcast.net]

Michael Labowicz writes:
 > On 6/11/07, Andrew Close <aclose at gmail.com> wrote:
 > >
 > >
 > > no, i don't. they didn't even warn me (that i know of).  one day i
 > > turned on the tv and it was just snow. :(  i've debated upgrading to
 > > the digital box, but i really don't want to rent one more thing.  and
 > > even if i did rent their box my Mythbox wouldn't be as useful as it
 > > had been since you'd need a separate digital box for each tuner card
 > > you had.  so no more recording three programs at the same time.
 > > of course, you can pay a little more in your monthly rental fee and
 > > get a Comcast dvr without as many features...
 > > --
 > >
 > 
 > According to this article (
 > http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6432144.html) you should still be able
 > to get 34 channels of analog goodness... has that been your experience?

My guess is that most of these same 34 channels are the ones
available in unencyrpted QAM ATSC format on Comcast.  There are
several MythTV supported digital tuners which can be used to receive
these channels.  Many people don't realize that you don't generally
even need to subscribe to digital service to receive these channels
with a digital tuner card.

I have a 4 tuner HD MythTV setup with two analog MPEG2 encoder tuners
and two different digital tuners.  The analog tuners and one of the
digital tuners are connected to Comcast basic cable (QAM-256 ATSC).
The other digital tuner is connected to an antenna (8-VSB ATSC).  I
get roughly the same programming on the cable and antenna digital
tuners.  I have not investigated the cable card or FireWire cable box
path which I assume *might* some day have a small chance of grabbing
the encrypted programming for use by MythTV if one subscribes to
digital cable.

Luckily, most of the programming I actually watch comes from the
traditional broadcast networks which, it seems, will be freely
available on both cable and OTA in digital form for the foreseeable
future.

Neither I, nor my kids, would want to give up our MythTV life style.
:-)

--Brad