[mythtv] FYI: Cheap Stereo TV card with remote

[Emil Friis]

A word of warning...
I bought the Pinnacle PCTV with remote (not the Pro) at
CompUSA for $30 after rebates some time ago as a second
tuner card. It didn't take long before I yanked it out of
the machine again because I seemed to get a really lousy
picture. At first I thought it was interference between the
two cards and even tried moving them around in the slots,
but no improvement. On top of that it didn't seem to support
btaudio - or at least I couldn't get it to work.

Last night I tried it out again because of the "I want a
Clear Picture" thread and compared to my other card the
quality of the Pinnacle capture seemed horrible. So if
nothing else make sure you can return it if the capture
quality is not good enough for you.

My other card is actually the AverMedia AverTV Stereo - also
from CompUSA and it works really well at least when compared
to the Pinnacle card. My only problem with that card - which
took me most of a week to solve - was that even the newest
bttv driver (0.7.100) didn't autodetect the card correctly.
Because of the stereo capability the audio outout ended up
being the SAP channel. The key is to provide the correct
audiomux setting for the tuner and after a while I found
bttools in windows and that gave me the correct setting.

To get it to work correctly you can do one of two things:

1) When loading the bttv driver do the following:
    modprobe bttv audiomux=0xff44e
   For some reason I couldn't get it to work from
modules.autoload and had to do it manually, but that's
probably due to my limited Linux/modules knowledge.

2) This is what I ended up doing. The card gets autodetected
as a card 13. Download the latest (0.7.100) bttv drivers
from http://bytesex.org/bttv, untar and in the drivers
directory open the bttv-cards.c file in your favorite
editor. In the section for card 13 (approx. line 372 change
the first audiomux setting to 0xff44e. After that just
compile and install as per instructions.

Option 2 worked just fine for me and I'm happy with the
card. As for the Pinnacle card I guess I just bought a
remote and IR receiver for $30 minus whatever I can sell the
card for on ebay.

Lonnie Borntreger wrote:

> 
> CompUSA has a Pinnacle "PCTV Pro Internal PCI TV Card" with
> a remote for
> $49.99 after rebate (purchase by 12/18 to qualify).  This
is
> a Stereo
> tuner.  It doesn't say how many channels.
> 
> <a
href="http://mail.telocity.com/jump/http://www.compusa.com/products/product_info.asp?tabtype=pi&product%5Fcode=299099#moreinfo">http://www.compusa.com/products/product_info.asp?tabtype=pi&product%5Fcode=299099#moreinfo</a>
> 
> 
> They also have "AVerTV Stereo TV Tuner" for $49.99 (regular
> price). 
> This has a 181 channel tuner, but no remote.
> 
> <a
href="http://mail.telocity.com/jump/http://www.compusa.com/products/product_info.asp?tabtype=pi&product%5Fcode=292417#moreinfo">http://www.compusa.com/products/product_info.asp?tabtype=pi&product%5Fcode=292417#moreinfo</a>
> 
> I haven't used either of these and don't know what chipset
> they use, but
> thought I would pass the information on.  I will most
likely
> be
> purchasing the Pinnacle for my wife's Win2k computer in her
> office and
> craft room, since it will give her PVR software for Windows
> in the
> package - and is cheaper than buying a TV/VCR.
> 
> Lonnie
> 
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