[mythtv] New QAM compatible HDTV card

Joseph A. Caputo jcaputo1 at comcast.net
Thu Aug 19 11:18:48 EDT 2004


On Wednesday 18 August 2004 15:00, brian weatherill wrote:
> There's a new CX23881 based card that perportedly supports QAM64,
> with QAM256 support in the future.. (Unencrypted of course).. Details
> available at :
> http://www.digitalconnection.com/products/video/fusion3qam.asp
>
> I'm happy to buy a card and have it shipped to a developer from the
> Myth community if it will help speed development of a ATSC/QAM/NTSC
> driver for said chipset that can be used with Myth.. I have no
> programming skills of my own, so the provision of a card could be the
> best way for me to help..
>
> Is anyone interested?
>
> Remember that development has to be completed (or at least
> functional) by the time the Broadcast flag mandate comes in to effect
> to avoid nasty legal problems :P

A few notes on this:

- There's a review of this at:
http://www.amdpower.com/sections.php4?op=viewarticle&artid=112

- This is not news; it's been discussed before.  Apparently, Dvico is 
willing to provide the necessary information if anyone is interested in 
writing a Linux driver.  However...

- IMHO, this is somewhat of a waste of time.  The card is only capable 
of decoding unencrypted QAM channels.  Many providers encrypt all of 
their channels, whether they're premium channels or not. (cf. the 
reviewer from the above link; the only unencrypted channels he got were 
the PPV-preview channels).  I think a better use of time would be to 
develop FireWire support for Myth (for FCC-mandated FireWire-enabled 
cable boxes), as this is likely the only (legal) way we'll be able to 
get digital cable content into Myth in the forseeable future (without 
going through an analog step first), and even then it'll only be 480p.

Just my $.02.

-JAC


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