[ale] MythTV/similar hardware recommendations

[Alex Carver]

On 2016-03-31 09:05, Scott Plante wrote:
> Perhaps I'm missing something, but you're talking about recording the s-video or 
> composite output from your existing satellite receiver--so are you planning on 
> manually setting the channel you want to record, say before you leave the house, 
> and then your "DVR" would just come on and record the show during the time you 
> set? Technically that would still be a digital video recorder, but when people 
> talk about DVRs, usually a key feature is that it knows when the shows you want 
> to record come on, and at that time they record the appropriate channel, and 
> save it in a list by show name. One of the main features the Homerun would add 
> is the ability to programmatically set the channel to record, but maybe you 
> don't care about that. I'd say you're missing maybe the primary benefit of a DVR 
> though. Still if you only want to record a couple of shows a week I guess you 
> could get by that way. The first gen Tivo had a little "IR Blaster" that was at 
> the end of a thin cable that you could put in front of your cable/satellite box, 
> so it could change the channel on the box at the appropriate time. I'd say it 
> worked about 95% of the time :-/

I am aware of the features that many people expect in what they would
call a DVR but not really concerned with predictive scheduling usually
because DirecTV's schedules are slightly off anyway (I usually get both
east and west coast showings of the same show three hours apart) or, in
some cases, the show that is on is not what is listed in the schedule at
all.  I don't think any of the DVR software will ever quite figure out
their scheduling except for the DirecTV DVR directly from them would
probably do it since it can read the guide that is transmitted through
the satellite (and even then if the guide is wrong, it still won't
work).  Basic scheduling is more than sufficient in this case.  I'm
calling this thing a DVR for its pure definition, a literal digital
video recorder.

Separately I could put an IR transmitter on the box and simply set up a
cron/at to change to the appropriate channel.  I've done that already on
other systems so this wouldn't be hard (in fact the box currently has a
transmitter in front of it so it can be controlled from another room).
If the backend could control an IR transmitter (or at least send a
message to an external program that could) then even better but it's not
critical.  The box itself also allows scheduling channel switches, too,
so I could always program the box to change channels on its own and then
the DVR can simply record at the appropriate time.  Barring all that I
could just park the box on a channel and let the recorder fire off when
needed.

There may be the rare case when I'm out and remember that a show is
coming on  that I forgot to schedule in advance so in those cases I
would VPN in, send the channel change command and then fire off the
recorder.  But that doesn't really affect the scheduler itself, it's
just an access and manual control issue.