On Wed, Dec 30, 2015 at 12:13:41PM -0500, D. Hugh Redelmeier wrote:
This is an excellent question.
Rogers is dropping analog a bit at a time. At our house, they've dropped all channels above 20 except for 26 (old NewsWorld) and several things below 20.
We have no analog channels left at all.
Rogers really wants you to use their PVR. Inferior to MythTV is so many ways.
No thanks. I am sticking with mythtv.
Some people use IR blasters to let MythTV switch channels on Rogers set-top boxes. That always seemed nasty to me, mostly because it seems unreliable. Because it is "open loop" the computer has no way of knowing if it worked.
Lennart's MythTV setup used to use firewire with Rogers boxes, but that became encrypted or worse, so he stopped. But I suspect that it could still be used for more reliable channel changing. I just never got around to investigating.
I only stopped recording through firewire, I still tune through it and it reports status and is VERY reliable. The recording is now through an HD-PVR (not the HD-PVR2 that is now available since it does not have linux drivers last I checked). My new box that uses an ir blaster has so far been reliable. I use the ir blaster that is in the HD-PVR.
At some point we may drop Rogers and just go "over the top". Since we are pretty careful to only do authorized things (i.e. no piracy), we'll still be subject to the indignity and inconvenience of arbitrary platforms.
Where you live you should be able to get reasonable amount of stuff over the air (HD Digital, no DRM). Not an option for us.
-- Len Sorensen