Hi all,

Be nice, this is my first post and yes, I'm a newbie....


I am about to venture into the world of KnoppMyth and am pretty excited, but I want to be certain I get the right h/w from the beginning.

My question is easy, I hope: I want a card that will work on today's analog cable as well as the new digital TV standards that are soon(ish) to be launched in the US, as that's where I'm based. I also like the idea of having a capture card and TV Out (HD, SD, whatever) in one card although that is not a high priority.

Honestly right now I don't have a HD TV and I'm not going to get one within the next year or two, but eventually I will and I would prefer not to be switching cards for that or when my cable goes digital.

Thanks a lot!

Paul

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Paul O'Flynn

Any of the HD capture cards will work fine for pulling unencrypted channels from cable.
Some are digital only, some are digital/analog.
You'll find that "soonish" is here already though. You'll have DTV/HD versions of NBC, CBS, ABC, FOX, PBS and others, "in the clear" on cable (providing that they're not in a war over money with the company that owns the local affiliates, but that's largely cleared up now). Other "digital cable" stations will show up too, in standard-definition digital.
You may find that you don't actually need to bother with the analog portion of the card. But if you do, I think the PCHD5500 and K-World 110 (maybe replaced now by the 115) will do the trick.
The K-World is tricky to set up, look for threads here in the forum, including Marc Aronson's new thread about the 115. It's an unbeatable deal, often for $30 AR. I think that's what I paid for mine.
I've got a PCHD3000, Air2PC 5000, and KWorld 110 in my box, all recording OTA (antenna) DTV. On a typical thursday night, I'm recording about 8 hrs of primetime HD programming. I have no need for cable. Myth/KnoppMyth rules.

Good point regarding OTA, I have considered dumping my cable completely. I have heard though that reception isn't great where I live (Dublin, CA) due to the hills around me.

Anything that's 'tricky' to set up I will be skipping I'm afraid, I have bare bones linux skills and not much time. Will look into the PCHD5500 though, thanks!

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Paul O'Flynn

I was able to get the Kworld going without much hassle and I still don't know much about linux. (Thank goodness for the linux tips page on the wiki.) The Air2PC cards can be found on ebay regularly, that's where I got mine and it works as good as the Kworld. The Air2PC only does OTA where the KWorld is supposed to do QAM as well (but I haven't tried).

If your looking for a SD & TV out card, look into the Hauppauge 350, it might fit. Just do a search on the forum and you'll likely find all the info you need.


As a footnote, I noticed that the Kworld-110 wasn't on the wiki (what card do you use), so I added it. Others might want to add to it as they see fit.

Yeah, this was top of my list purely because it seemed it would probably be the easiest/quickest to get working, but am I losing anything by not having QAM etc?

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Paul O'Flynn

You don't really know what you can get OTA until you try. You can look at antennaweb and see what you might get.

I don't use QAM yet, but am looking into playing around as soon as I can get the cable co to come and 'survey' my property (that's another story). But you'd be surprised how many TV programs you can accumulate just OTA. If I could just get FSN OTA I'd be a happy guy...

I have a Hauppauge 250 card and its been "ok" with SDTV. I haven't been thrilled watching NHL hockey compared to my DirecTV TIVO.

I thought the 250 was cheaper than the 350, is the 350 better?

John

The 350 is more expensive and adds "best of breed" dedicated SDTV output, however, his doesn't really cut it if you're looking for a "future-proof" solution since it's limited to SDTV resolutions.

Yeah, I realized this after comparing the kworld with it. Although I don't have a HD TV yet it's probably only a matter of time so I might just try to get to Frys & grab the KWorld, along with some other, plain & cheaper TV out card..

Thanks for the replies folks,

Paul

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Paul O'Flynn

Rather than a tv-out card, I'd recommend just going DTV/HD for capture, and output via s-Video to a TV, or VGA/DVI to a widescreen computer monitor. A $200 widescreen monitor 20" or so, makes a decent "poor-man's HDTV". And when you're ready for a big TV, use the monitor on your computer.

If you use the kworld card (110 or 115), there is a myth wiki article that explains how to set it up -- http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Kworld_ATSC_110

Somebody commented that they weren't certain that the Kworld supports QAM. It does. The SD / Analogue recpeption is OK -- if interested, see my notes on this at http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic. ... 8558#88558

Marc

I did buy the KWorld 115 as it seemed too good a deal to pass up. Unfortunately I didn't get past the first line in the wiki -
cd /[kernel source directory]/Documentation/dvb/

I don't believe I have the kernel source; I just burned the KnoppMyth CD and installed just that, nothing else, I think it doesn't come with the source, right? I even did a ls -R for get_dvb_firmware or whatever that script was and it doesn't seem to be anywhere on my HD

Also, one other question: In the knoppMyth setup should I be creating a 'Capture Card' entry and then doing the modifications in that wiki or should I not define any capture card via the menus and only do what's in the wiki?

Thanks,

Paul

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Paul O'Flynn

I should probably clarify a bit. That wiki is for a generic mythtv install. There are several steps you can skip since you are using knoppmyth. In R5D1 do the following:

1. shutdown the myth backend

2. Execute steps 4.1 & 4.2 from that wiki article.

3. Run mythsetup (ALT-s) to create the tuner card and assocaite it with a source.

4. exit setup

5. restart backend

Unfortunately, on your next reboot one of the drivers you need will not load automatically. To fix this edit the file /etc/init.d/KnoppMyth-tv and add the following lines towards the end of the file


The line that reads echo "} Done" is already present in the file -- I incldued it to show you where to place the additional lines.

I added the lines as specified, now at least the card seems to be recognized ("dmesg | grep firmware nxt" gets results as expected in another thread) plus I can select "Watch TV" although it fails to get a lock (used to not even get that far).

One question: Which card type should I select? pcHDTV, DVB or what? Those and others list "KWorld 110" under "probed info".

Last question: When I do a channel scan they all timeout, however, I do get a high signal strength % which I never got before so I'm guessing it's "hearing" something. Right now I have comcast digital cable, what "Frq Table", "ATSC Modulation" etc options should I select on the channel scan screen? I have tried most variants w/o success

Thanks all! I have made some progress thanks to you all.

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Paul O'Flynn

1. Use card type of "DVB".

2. The kworld 115 has two coax input connectors -- I had to use the bottom one to get it to work for digital cable.

3. I don't have that channel scan screen because I am on R5D1 -- hopefully someone else will jump in with a good answer. When I did my frequency scan using the external scan utility, I used the configuration file named "us-Cable-Standard-center-frequencies-QAM256" -- perhaps that will help?

4. Probably worth looking at this list of working cable layouts before you go to the effort of building your own: http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Wo ... ble_layout

Hope this helps.

Marc