Switching from Cable to Satellite questions

[xj-boonie]

So I'm thinking of switching from Comcast cable to satellite, either Dish or DTV. My system specs are:

MSI K9N Platinum Socket AM2 Nvidia nForce 570 Ultra MCP
AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ (65W) Windsor 2.0GHz
ARCTIC COOLING Freezer 64 Pro
MSI NX7600GT-VT2D256E HD GeForce 7600GT PCIe w/ Arctic Cooling AVC-NV6 rev. 2 VGA cooler
CORSAIR XMS2 1GB (2 x 512MB) 240-Pin DDR2 800
Uneed X11 rev. 1 case w/ VFD&IR & rev. 2 HD cage
Seasonic S12 380W PS
Mitsumi floppy w/ USB 2.0 card reader built in
Seagate 160GB (OS/docs) IDE hard drive w/ Rosewill IDE to SATA mini bridge
Seagate 300GB (videos) IDE hard drive w/ Rosewill IDE to SATA mini bridge
Seagate 320GB (videos) SATA hard drive
NEC N3500A DVD Burner (reflashed to be region free)
PVR-500 MCE, DVICO FusionHDTV Lite, and Vbox Cat's Eye 150 pci tuner cards

I'm running XP Pro w/ SP2 and SageTV version 6.2. I've got nvidia 91.47 drivers, and purevideo decoder 1.02-223. I'm watching this via a Westinghouse 32" LCD via DVI, with the sound going via SPDIF optica to a Pioneer receiver.

I've got comcast going to the PVR-500, and OTA HD to the FusionHDTV and Vbox 150.

I've got a Saberview 2020 that I may try out to see if the picture is better than the PVR-500, and also picked up a Aver M780 to have 3 SD and 3 HD tuners.

My question is what changes would I need to get Satellite SD and HD content?

Thanks,
Mike

[Steve52]

No changes really for SD. Just connect the s-video output of the Sat box to the PVR-500 (I assume the PVR-500 has an s-video in). You will need to use an IR blaster or serial control device to change channels, and make the Sage guide changes for the sat service you choose. As far as HD from sat, your options are not good. You can't at this time use Sage with Directv to get HD. You can with Dish if you use the R5000 option (do a search for this and you will find lots of information), but it is not cheap and does not have as many HD channels available as DirecTv. A lot has been written about this HD from Sat issue here, so you might want to search for that also.