Thinking of switching from Cable to DirecTV (1 Viewer)

[darthbader]

I am thinking of switching from Comcast to DirecTV. I am not sure about making the switch because of some of the challenges with satallite and media portal. I was hoping someone out there with experience using Media Portal with directv could offer some advice.

The reason I am thinking of switching is becuase of the lack of HD channels available through comcast not to mention that the reception on the HD channels have lines running through and the non HD channels are not clear. Also I have had my Box changed by comcast 4 times in less than 2 years because they keep breaking. My equipment set up for my gameroom is set up below.


I have 1 Phillips HDTV in my Game room with xbox and xbox 360 hooked up to it. I have a PC running windows xp Professional with Media Portal and 2 TV tuners for recording live TV. I have a Hauppage PVR 150Tuner and an ATI E-Home Wonder Tuner in my PC. I currently have the PC hooked up to the HDTV through HDMI and I play back the recorded tv from the pc back to the Television.


PC specs: 3.0 Ghz P4 800 FSB
NVidia Gforce 4 with 256mb video ram
Soundblaster Audigy 2
1024 MB PC 3200 Ram
Hauppage Win-TV PVR 150
ATI E-Home Wonder VE
Asus Motherboard P4P8x

 

[Mangled Poly]

I use dish network. To answer all your questions:
HDTV- Now hdtv will only record in hdtv if you have a HDTV tuner card. If you dont you wont be able to do hdtv through media portal

Setting up for a satalitte wasnt to much of a channelge. My dish reciever doesnt have a serial port in the back.. so i had to do the whole IR blaster infront of the reciever to change the channels for me.

Setting up the channels is more of a time consuming issue then a challenge. You have to use svideo/composite then enter in all your channels through hand and set them to go through your settop box and svideo... Its not to much of a challenge and there are PLENTY of already started threads to help you through the way.

 

[darthbader]

What about tuning channels on the Computer? Do you have to view the channel that is on the TV or can you tune to different channels?
Meaning (watch one channel on tv and watch a different channel on the PC using media portal while only using 1 box).