Home Automation

[Lars Rasmussen]

On 2/21/07, Brandon Beattie <brandon+plug at beatties.us> wrote:
> > Digital cable or satellite can require more tweaking with MythTV than I
> > was willing to do.  IR output sounds like a pain.
>
> Myth does support firewire ripping from a few cable and satellite settop
> boxes.  No IR blasting, down scaling or other quirks.  It's also not
> widely known that cable and satellite companies, by law, must give you a
> firewire enabled box if you ask for one.  Some companies happily hand
> them over and some you have to fax sections of the fcc mandate and
> threaten to turn them into the fcc before they'll give you one.  Some
> come with firewire disabled and you have to read online how to enable
> them.  Or you can pay a few companies to add firewire to them, but
> that's a little extreme to me.

Brandon, can you elaborate on this a bit?  I didn't know that cable &
satellite providers could be compelled to do much of anything.  Are
there additional costs?

What's the reasoning behind having a firewire-enabled receiver?

As one who gets most of his publicly broadcast tv shows via BitTorrent
downloads, I'm unfamiliar with many of these issues.
--
Lars