mythtv and digital tv

[Dave Johnson]

Derek Atkins writes:
> The biggest difference is that cable companies can choose to
> encrypt their QAM, which means you either need a cablebox or a
> device with a cablecard.  As far as I know no device usable by
> mythtv directly can use a cablecard without having yet another
> Digital-Analog-Digital conversion.

The 2nd biggest difference is cable companies tend to re-compress the
heck out of their digital channels to squeeze as many channels into as
little bandwidth as possible.

Still, just 1-2 HDTV channels on cable is on the order of what is
devoted to Internet bandwidth (10-12mbps).  Imagine if the cable
companies dropped all TV (both analog and digital) and did only
broadband Internet over coax. Throw in some 20mbps+ IPTV steams
via multicast and it'd give FIOS some competition.

As mentioned before comcast at least does the broadcast channels
QAM unencrypted in both SD and HD which my pcHDTV HD3000 grabs
bit-for-bit off the wire just fine.  Way better quality then having
the SD cable box decode the QAM MPEG2 sent over horrible composite
video/RCA audio (stupid cable box doesn't even have svideo) into my
PVR250 which then re-encodes them back into MPEG2.

-- 
Dave