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 Post subject: Tuner card opinions!
PostPosted: Tue Dec 30, 2008 12:38 am 
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Joined: Tue Dec 30, 2008 12:15 am
Posts: 2
New to all of this – Been reading for a week It’s still clear as mud.
I’ll be setting up either MythTV or KnoppMyth

Linux skills: 7 out of 10
Location: North America – USA – Midwest
Cable: Charter Cable
Computer: Dell gx260 (or 270) ~ 2.8ghz – tuner card in PCI slot.


Need: Cable NTSC and digital,
Want: OTA NTSC and digital

It would be nice to bring along HD, in case I get a HD capable TV, or can use content on my other computers.

** I would like to watch one channel while recording another ** (need two cards?)


So here is the $64,000 question :?: : Which tuner card gets me the most for the least $?

Initial searches yielded these, but I am open to others:

    ADS Tech Instant HDTV PCI
    pcHDTV HD-3000
    pcHDTV HD-5500
    Silicondust HDHomeRun
    Pinnacle PCTV HD Card (800i)
    ATI HDTV Wonder ???


Am I on the right track here? I think I am almost ready to buy hardware, but I am still very fuzzy on a few things. I would really appreciate some comments

Thanks!
- Dan


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Wed Dec 31, 2008 8:49 pm 
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Joined: Wed Mar 07, 2007 9:51 am
Posts: 173
Location: Uniontown, PA
Dan,

You say that you want 'digital.'

Digital from Cable would be QAM.
Digital from OTA would be ATSC.

I'm OTA only. but if you are really looking for QAM, you'll need a ATSC/QAM tuner card. There are no QAM only cards that I know of.

Any analog tuner (with mpeg2 encoding, if you want it) will work fine for the NTSC feeds.

I'm searching the web for some solid answers on replacing my old Air2PC ATSC only cards with something that has a MUCH better Digital tuner. OTA signals here are VERY weak, and I need all the tuner power that I can get.

Folks will say get a HDHomeRun, and that's a good choice, but I'd rather use a PCI card (NOT PCI Express). I have OTA antenna feeds to my MBE and SBE, so I don't need another box, power supply and ethernet cable. The HDHR does NOT support NTSC, so consider that.

Pass on the ATI. Why buy their tuners when we can't use their video chips?

pcHDTV cards. They were great/good, but they are showing their age for ATSC signals. QAM/NTSC support should be excellent, but they do not MPEG encode NTSC signals.

It seems that the Pinnacle 800i has the best tuner chip (XC5000) so far, so I may try that. Maybe not, since my systems are still running R5F27. It's one of those "If it ain't broke..." situations.

IF this XC5000 chip is the equivalent to a 6th gen ATSC chip, I'm getting one. Can anyone confirm/deny my assumption??

I'm rambling on... Hope I clarified a few things. Ask if you need some more info.


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Thu Jan 01, 2009 3:26 am 
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Posts: 1206
Location: Silicon Valley, CA
First, be aware of the problems recording from cable. If you hook a digital recorder card directly to your cable, you'll only get the unencrypted stations. Basically the same stations you'd get over the air -- no Discovery, History Channel, etc. Thank your cable company and the FCC for that.

To record "premium content" you need to digitize the output of your regular cable box. That means recording its analog signal (for non-HD stations). The Hauppage PVR cards are good for this because they perform MPEG2 conversion in hardware.

If you want HD shows, you will likely need the Hauppage HD PVR, which performs the same task for HD component video sources. It is still somewhat "bleeding edge" in Myth, so expect problems if you are an early adopter of this path. A few weeks or months will help greatly in the stability of this approach.

HD cable boxes (not satellite) are mandated to offer a Firewire output for consumers who request one. The encryption is usually present on the firewire output as well, but some cable plants may not encrypt it. YMMV.

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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Thu Jan 01, 2009 6:43 pm 
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Joined: Sun Apr 30, 2006 9:06 pm
Posts: 59
Location: Das Hoosier State
The HDHomerun is a great choice. Dual tuners and it keeps your PCI slots (and the pci bus) open for other stuff like one of the mpeg2 encoder cards you're looking at for grabbing up the digital cable from the analog output of your digital cable box.

Plus, the HDHR does ATSC and QAM. Its firmware is upgradeable, and they are still coming out with updates for it.

Another thing I really like is that it works with just about any PVR software out there. MythTV, MediaPortal, Sage, etc. So, if you ever want to experiment with another flavor of htpc, it'll work.

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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Fri Jan 02, 2009 12:08 am 
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Joined: Tue Dec 30, 2008 12:15 am
Posts: 2
Thanks Guys, I appreciate you input. I get the clear QAM idea - They will mostly be duplicates, but the quality will be better. That's the only reason for digital at the moment.

No set-top-box here. I have "Basic Cable" and less that 2 dozen channels. I am not a big TV watcher, and I am mostly interested in PBS for the kids, a few network channels for my wife, and the digital public access channel for myself. Anything extra is either gravy or spam.

I looked at the 150 and 500, but they lack the digital tuner. I could (and may have to) go with more than one card, but I though it would be nice to get everything in one package if I could. I don't think that will happen.

I am narrowing my search. I am considering an hdHomerun, and a prv-150.

Reading up a bit on the PVR-150, I see that certain chipsets have problems. Should I be staying away from the the Mpeg II encoder cx23415/6 chipsets? It seems that way, but then again, it seem to only be a problem with certain hardware.

The HDHomeRun does not do analog. Everyone loves them, but they are $130 used. I am now looking at the pvr-150 again, and saving the digital content for later.

I have serious doubts about all of this. I could keep the Tivo for under $150 next year, and save a lot of time. Adding up the rest, I get:
$75 university surplus 2.8ghz dell computer
$40 pvr-150
$50 graphics card with TV out
$25 IR remote interface
$10 misc

that's $200 minimum if everything works the first time, and I don't even get digital or the ability to record while watching a different channel. That price is dwarfed by my time - that's already gone way over the $200 mark. (digital - minimum $50 extra with an 800i, extra analog signal is another $40)


For as little as we use the TV, Tivo is contending as the top option. Then again there is the geek factor and the promise of lots of new options that really keeps me going, and the fact that I can deduct a $150 the Tivo would suckup, and I'm not in much deeper.

Then there is Wife factor. I hope scheduling program recording is similar to Tivo - just pick a show, not each time slot....

*sigh* much to consider.

Thanks for your input. I am learning a lot.

- Dan

PS.
larrybpsu
Thanks for the input on the pcHDTV cards. I didn't realize that these other "modern" cards would not encode mpeg II. I've got to relearn how to spell assume. I would like to keep as much load off the CPU as possible, so I'm going with the IVTV stuff - probably the pvr-150.

You are right on the Pinnacle PCTV HD Card (800i). It's the closest I've seen to what you are looking for, and something I am considering. That, or the HDHR.


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Sat Jan 03, 2009 9:23 am 
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Joined: Sun Oct 15, 2006 6:46 pm
Posts: 5
I'm in a similar situation. I plan on using knoppmyth for ease of installation, and the fact that I've only played with Linux a little... on a scale of 1-10 as afar as understanding/experience of Linux, I'd say I was around a 2 or 3 -- only because I have some experience with a similar unix-like system (OS-9... 8-bit, NOT Mac!), but from many years ago. I've been playing with MEPIS a bit, but not enough to say I'm more than "familiar" with it.

I haven't set up a computer to use a TV signal yet. I have MEPIS running on an AMD Athlon 1200 box. From what I gather it should be sufficient to record and watch TV at the same time. To that end I bought a PVR-350 card with hardware decoding.

Digital cable has me stumped though. Looks like I will have to connect the output from the cable box to the computer, which effectively cripples MythTV. That would basically turn it into a hard drive based VCR, only capable of recording the channel being watched. That's not too bad, as there are other features that would come in handy, like the photo viewer and jukebox. Right now this is the option I'm considering.

My understanding so far is that there are no digital signal capable cards with hardware encoding/decoding. A standalone hardware encode/decode card might be available though (any recommendations/sources?). From what I've been reading, there is no tuner card that would replace the cable set-top box currently available, especially none that would support HDTV signals. If I'm incorrect on this please let me know!


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Mon Jan 05, 2009 1:23 am 
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Posts: 2659
Location: Whittier, Ca
farna wrote:
Digital cable has me stumped though. Looks like I will have to connect the output from the cable box to the computer, which effectively cripples MythTV. That would basically turn it into a hard drive based VCR, only capable of recording the channel being watched. That's not too bad, as there are other features that would come in handy, like the photo viewer and jukebox. Right now this is the option I'm considering.
No, this doesn't kill MythTV. You'll need a "IR Blaster" to control the cable box is all. This would hook up to the computer either via serial, USB or it may come with your tuner card. MythTV would then control the cable box.
farna wrote:
My understanding so far is that there are no digital signal capable cards with hardware encoding/decoding. A standalone hardware encode/decode card might be available though (any recommendations/sources?). From what I've been reading, there is no tuner card that would replace the cable set-top box currently available, especially none that would support HDTV signals. If I'm incorrect on this please let me know!
The Hauppauge PVR 350 does have an encoder and a decoder. This however is only good for SD. If you have the appropriate video card (cough cough nvidia chipset based), you can use XvMC or in the future VDPAU which will offload the decode to the video card. No, there are no cable card tuners that work w/ Linux.


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Mon Jan 05, 2009 4:10 pm 
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Joined: Sun Oct 15, 2006 6:46 pm
Posts: 5
Just looked at an IR Blaster site. So I use the remote that came with the Hauppage card, and the IR Blaster plugs into a serial or USB port and controls the cable box. So I can use one remote, but still can only record and watch the same channel. Myth should be able to change channels and record if programmed to do so though.

So the TV card in my case could be a simple frame grabber with no tuner or decoder since I have to use the cable box, especially if I use an Nvidia video card (I have one now, 256MB). I'd just need a video card with TV out or use a TV with PC or HDMI input (with a DVI video card).

So the PVR-350 won't really help me out at all, I might just need to get a bigger processor.


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