[vox-tech] ripping video: wierd interleaving effect on fast motion

[Rob Rogers]

On Wed, 15 Oct 2003 16:22:10 -0700, Ken Herron wrote:

> One nice feature of tivo (and replaytv) is that they can be set to 
> control an external cable/satellite converter instead of using their 
> internal tuner for everything. They come with a little ifrared LED that 
> sticks onto the converter's IR port. The tivo/replaytv sets its own 
> tuner to channel 4 (or uses a composite video input) and changes 
> channels by sending remote-control commands to the converter. This way, 
> you can record from scrambled channels and so on.
>
> Do any of the convert-your-PC-into-a-tivo products have anything like 
> this?

MythTV does support this via an "IR Blaster"...an IR transmitter that 
connects generally via a serial port. Any blaster device supported by the 
lirc driver will work. I've even seen schematics with RadioShack part 
numbers included that you can put together for a few bucks.

Some cable/satellite systems also have some sort of data port on the back 
of the unit, often RJ-11, but also commonly as a 9pin serial port. The 
unit can be controlled via this port also (well, most units anyways. The 
protocol varies depending on manufacturer) and more reliably than via IR.

I used MythTV pretty heavily for a while, but I currently don't have a 
card with TV-Out, so it became more trouble than it was worth. Watching on 
a 17" monitor in the computer room isn't nearly as comfortable as watching 
a 32" from the couch. :) I haven't used it since July (around the 0.10 
release) but it was pretty rock solid back then, and it looks like a lot 
of new features have been added since then. Development is quite fast 
paced. I was using CVS and rebuilding at least a couple times a week to 
get the new features.