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<blockquote data-quote="gxtracker" data-source="post: 50288" data-attributes="member: 14004">A directTV Set Top Box (STB) is just like any other STB - meaning that there really is no way of directly communicating with it, with a couple exceptions: 1) if the STB has a serial RG-9 connection, sometimes you can hook up your STB to the the HTPC through the serial port and with community developed sotware communicate commands to the STB like volume up/down, channel changes, etc.. You will need to connect the output on your STB one of your tuner cards.2) if your STB has a IEEE 1394 (firewire) connection, then you can connect it directly to your HTPC's firewire connection and actually stream data to/from the STB. Again though, you will need independently developed sotware and to top it off, even though most STB's have firewire connections, many of them are disabled by your service provider. This options, if workable, will not even need a tuner card.Which then leaves us with the only other option; connecting your analog TV out (composite/svideo or RF) to one of your analog tuner cards and using an IR blaster to control channel changes on the STB.this method only works for analog broadcasts, because there are no HDTV tuner cards that can accept component/digital input signals - all the HDTV tuners on the market are Over The Air (OTA) and are all software based if I remember correctly - meaning no hardware encoding for recording TV shows. You will need a pretty beefy CPU while recording. Of course, please correct me if there is a hardware based HDTV card.so, to summarize:2 analog/hardware SDTV capture cards - one connected to your STB1 digital/software HDTV capture card - which will only be OTA, so ensure that there is broadcast of over-the-air HD in your area first.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="gxtracker, post: 50288, member: 14004"] A directTV Set Top Box (STB) is just like any other STB - meaning that there really is no way of directly communicating with it, with a couple exceptions: 1) if the STB has a serial RG-9 connection, sometimes you can hook up your STB to the the HTPC through the serial port and with community developed sotware communicate commands to the STB like volume up/down, channel changes, etc.. You will need to connect the output on your STB one of your tuner cards. 2) if your STB has a IEEE 1394 (firewire) connection, then you can connect it directly to your HTPC's firewire connection and actually stream data to/from the STB. Again though, you will need independently developed sotware and to top it off, even though most STB's have firewire connections, many of them are disabled by your service provider. This options, if workable, will not even need a tuner card. Which then leaves us with the only other option; connecting your analog TV out (composite/svideo or RF) to one of your analog tuner cards and using an IR blaster to control channel changes on the STB. this method only works for analog broadcasts, because there are no HDTV tuner cards that can accept component/digital input signals - all the HDTV tuners on the market are Over The Air (OTA) and are all software based if I remember correctly - meaning no hardware encoding for recording TV shows. You will need a pretty beefy CPU while recording. Of course, please correct me if there is a hardware based HDTV card. so, to summarize: 2 analog/hardware SDTV capture cards - one connected to your STB 1 digital/software HDTV capture card - which will only be OTA, so ensure that there is broadcast of over-the-air HD in your area first. [/QUOTE]

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