Newbie: Hauppauge 350 and Satellite (DirecTV)

[paulplee]

Hello all, brand new newbie question:

I have a mini-ITX box (hush mini-ITX) and just got DirecTV a few days ago. I'd like to jump into the world of PVR and research points me to SaveTV.

It seems that the Hauppauge 350 is what I want (low heat, silent, mgeg2 decoder, well supported), but from their site it only mentioned "cable-ready". I did see here & there in the forum that people seem to be using DirecTV and 350, but I haven't found a definitive statement that "Hauppauge PVR 350 will work with with DirecTV!" Can anyone confirm that before I sink my ~180 bones?

Another thing is that I am thinking of buying a HDTV and getting HD channels. It seems that there's nothing out there is supporting HD very well. Has anyone done PVR with HD?

Thanks for being patient with this total newbie!

Paul

[mikejaner]

Hello paulplee,

Yes, you can use the 350 with DirecTv. The term "Cable Ready" is referring to the tuner built into the card for Coax Cable input, meaning you don't need a cable box for the channels up to MTV etc.. in most cases. Movie channels are another thing.

In your case, you would be using the Svideo or Composite output on the DirecTV box to the inputs on your 350. As a result you are going to need to control the DirecTv via a serial cable, if it's supported for your box, or an IR blaster device, like the USBUIRT. This is because, you need for SageTv to be able to tell the DirecTv box to change channels.

HD is not currently supported in SageTV, and very few programs have HD recording in them. I'm sure the demand will be the driving force for SageTV to start supporting it later this year, or next.