What to get?

[bcjenkins]

Hi all,

The community I live in is currently a currently a closed cable system that is included in the HOA fees. This will be disappearing at the end of the year. It is unclear if the county cable provider (Comcast) will have services available shortly thereafter.

My current Sage setup consists of 4 analog tuners (PVR-500) and 2 OTA HD tuners. I would be comfortable with subsisting on 2 OTA tuners for a few weeks while Comcast comes in to the neighborhood. The boys may miss Nick and Disney, but I'll still get my shows in prime time.

I am interested in opinions on all service options and how well they may work with SageTV. I prefer to not have to pay a box rental fee, nor do I want to setup up IR blasters, etc. However, I realize the only viable option for that is analog cable. Although I understand FiOS TV offers some of that too. I have no idea how many channels though.

I am also keen on knowing if any boxes support firewire control, how well they work, etc.

TIA,

B

[lobosrul]

FIOS is the wave of the future. Of course it might be 2050 before my market (Albuquerque) sees it.

[Fluffdaddy]

2055 before Philly sees FIOS
My in-law who works for the Phone company told me small to mid-size towns will see FIOS way before HUGE big old dirty cities get wired. Easier to run fiber cable

[Jesse]

Hi,

If you are getting your HD via OTA then Directv is a good option. You can get serial control boxs on ebay for around $20.00. That will give you svid input for your pvr500's and eliminate the need for ir blaster control. They will charge you $5 for each additional tuner, so 4 tuners would be $15 over and above your programming package price. As a new customer you should be able to get them to provide the first box, the dish and install for nothing (other than a one or two year commitment).

My .02

Jesse

[Polypro]

Don't forget that you'll have to install the daughter brackets for the 500's if you go S-Vid or Composite. Got space?

P

[Kev]

All of the options have there advantages and I can comment on both Vios and Comacast from my experience.
The advantage of comcast is that they offer all of there basic stations as analogue signals and are not encrypted. So you can directly plug the cable wire from the wall split and into your tuners. With Vios, you only get the local stations (basically what you would get on an antenna tv) as the rest of them are either only digital or encrypted or both. For any other stations you will need to get seperate cable boxes for each tuner input. Then it gets even more complicated because you will need a way for sage to interact with them, which means a IR blaster (which can be undependable from what I hear, and interfere with each other on multiple box setups) as the current Fios boxes do not have any hardwired interfaces for changing the channels (there is a serial connection but per the users manual it is inoperable).
The advantage of Fios is that the picture is significantly clearer (for me anyway).
I am currently investigating any further options for changing the Fios cable box channels and would appreciate any feedback. I think my only option is a IR blaster, and also any feedback on there dependabillity would be appreciated. I only have a single tuner, so the IR blaster method may work?