Firewire Question - HD Only?

[Eckwell]

I have tinkered with firewire and I have gotten the channels to change and a signal to come through (although not at the same time) but I was wondering if someone could clarify for me...

Should I be able to see ALL the channels via firewire, or just the ones in HD?

Thanks!

I have a motorola DCT6200 box.

[soulprops77]

You should see all of the unencrypted digital channels if I'm not mistaken.

-Chris

[ke6guj]

It depends on what channels your Cable company send out unencrypted. But if lucky, you could see all channels via firewire. That would include HD and SD digital, and even your SD analog channels off the firewire as well. You just have to mess with it and see what you get.

The Motorola boxes can output the SD analog channels out through the firewire port in digital format. I'm not sure if it actually encodes the analog into digital, or if there is a simulcast digital broadcast of the analog channal that it sends out. The Scientific Atlantic boxes don't do that, so I'm told.

[Humanzee]

The point of fire wire for me was to get all the channels that I pay for. And taht worked for me up till last week when our cable provider turned off the Clear QAM channels for some reason over firewire. I bought a hauppauge 1600 to get those channels back.

[Eckwell]

it seems as though I can only get some of the HD channels. none of the other channels come through teh firewire, unless I am doing something wrong. Perhaps I need a different .GRF in order to see the non-HD signals?


Any thoughts to that idea?

[ke6guj]

That may be all the channels that the cable company is allowing out of the firewire port unencrypted. The encryption is known as 5C.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/forumdisplay.php?f=45 is a good forum to find local info about your cable company and may have info on what channels are availalbe unscrambled through QAM and what channels are non-5C'ed via firewire.