> > 1) TV tuner hardware. What are people using successfully today? We've > been looking at ADS Tech, preferably their USB 2.0 solutions to allow > moving the hardware around more easily if necessary. Has anyone had > any success with something like Instant TV USB? If not, what hardware > are you using? Hauppauge? Something else? What sort of quality are you > getting for both picture and sound?
I have a hauggauge 250, quality is as good as regular cable. I definitely suggest getting a card with an onboard mpeg encoder, though u'll want a cpu fast enough to reecode them to mpeg4 to save space. And fast enough to play live tv, which my P3 450 128mb doesn't quite accomplish. If you plan on having multiple tuners, so u can watch/record more than a single show at a time, the hardware encoding is going to be an even bigger help. Also with that u'll probably want to have a good storage set up to deal with all the concurrent reading and writing. If I were to buy again I'd probably go for the pvr350 and get the tv out and hardware mpeg decoder, its worth the little extra money in my opinon. Or you could look into the new VIA mini-itx boards that have mpeg decoders on them. I've looked at them a little and they are attractive, but I'm unsure of the linux support for them. If it does support them I might look at getting one. Anyone know? I haven't heard great things about usb tv tuners, but I never looked very hard. > 2) What PRV app are you using? It seems from the forums that either > MythTV or Freevo are the preferred apps? Is that the case? > I use myth, it works fine for me, it has its issues, but mostly related to the computer being old and feeble. Mythweb is great, I probably do more with it than directly through Myth. While I have never tried any other software, I would definitely recommend myth. -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
