[mythtv-users] Mechanical cable splitter
lanas at securenet.net
Fri Nov 16 15:44:50 UTC 2007
On Friday, 16 Nov 2007 06:56:27 -0600,
"Carl Fongheiser" <carlfongheiser at gmail.com> wrote :
> There are certainly mechanical cable switches out there; cable
> companies have used them for years. However, most digital cable boxes
> also have a composite or S-Video output. That would be the best way to
> get the cable box output into your PVR500. Alternatively, if you've
> got an old VCR, you could use that to tune the output of the cable
> box, and feed the composite video from the VCR into the PVR500.
Thanks for the suggestion. I looked at the back of the digital cable
box and indeed there are both S-video and composite additional
outputs. I don't have a S-video cable at the moment so I connected the
composite out to the composite input of the PVR500 while keeping the
splitted plain cable on the cable input of the PVR500. I redefined the
inputs in mythtvsetup so that /dev/video0 is linked to the composite1
input and /dev/video1 to the tuner1 input. It works. Moreover, the TV
itself still has the digital box cable input so by selecting with input
on the TV it is possible to get the straight digital cable without
going through the Myth box.
I'm mentionning this because oddly enough, there are two differences
between watching digital cable out of the Myth box or straight from the
digital box. First, the picture from the Myth box is of less quality.
It has a slight trapezoidal form at the top. Second, and this is odd,
the digital box cable menu overlay (i.e. channel listings, etc...)
responds very slowly to the digital box remote when seen through the
Myth box. When a button is pressed for the menu, 4 seconds can be
easily counted before seeing a change on the digital bix menu. Now, if
the TV input is changed so that the direct output from the digital box
is used, the menu response to the digital box remote are almost
Any idea of what cause could that be ?
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