[PLUG] TV tuner card experiences/recommendations?

[Dwight Hubbard]

That's strange.  When I rebuilt my MythTV backend with a new kubuntu install
all I had to do to get mythtv working was:
aptitude install ivtv
aptitude install mythtv
mythtv-setup

I didn't have to do anything else to use mythtv with my PVR150 card.  On the
other hand the other tuner (cheap bttv card) never seems to work out of the
box with mythtv :-(

On 9/26/07, Rogan Creswick <creswick at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 9/12/07, Rogan Creswick <creswick at gmail.com> wrote:
> >  I just ordered a pvr-250.  The pchdtv
> > forums and mythtv wiki seemed to indicate a fair number of problems
> > with that card -- a poll showed less than 50% success :(.  It also
> > looks like the pchdtv card(s) don't do any hardware encoding, which
> > seems like the place you'd want assistance.
>
> I just thought I'd check back in with a quick summary of my mythTV
> adventure.
>
> The PVR-250 works great, but I would classify setting up mythtv as
> "non-trivial".  Since I already have a very functional media pc, I
> didn't want to start over with a Myth-specific distribution.  If
> you're not comfortable compiling kernel drivers and moving files
> around as root, then I'd strongly suggest starting with MythBuntu,
> Mythdora, or something similar, and then turning that into a more
> general media system.
>
> My only other real nugget of advice is that if you've been watching HD
> tv regularly, then spend a good chunk of time looking into the HD
> options.  I didn't realize there was such a difference, having watched
> very little non-HD in the past. (I've only owned a television since
> January, so my experience is biased towards HD.)
>
> There are also apparently no free xmltv listing services any more,
> since DataDirect stopped hosting their feed early in September of this
> year.  That service became SchedulesDirect -- a non-profit service
> that just recently turned profitable (and is scaling down rates to
> account for that).  They offer xml listings for $20 / 6-months, and
> their goal is $30 / year.  You don't have to have a listing service,
> but I highly recommend it.  The alternative is to manually enter all
> the start/end recording times, titles, etc.
>
> Setting everything up was a nostalgic pain in the ass ;) it brought
> back memories of upgrading glibc by hand on Slackware in '99.
> (Thankfully I didn't end up going back to Windows for two weeks this
> time.)  The experience made me realize how far linux has come, and how
> little I've noticed it's progress.  I expect things to work much
> better now, forgetting how much of a pain these things used to be.
> Then again, programming a vcr has *never* been straightforward ;)
>
> --Rogan
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-- 
Dwight Hubbard (RHCE)
dwight at dwighthubbard.com