[mythtv] Semi-OT: Which HDTV card to buy for Myth?

Cory Papenfuss papenfuss at juneau.me.vt.edu
Sun Jan 30 09:22:18 EST 2005


>> 2) Which card has a better chance of being able to capture unencrypted
>> hdtv over cable streams (QAM?) in the future?
>
> Air2PC - 100% chance.  I have just gotten this working tonight.  I will be
> putting my post on linux-dvb for the driver changes tonight.  I have done some
> preliminary work on support in Myth (quite small changes mind you) tonight and
> am watching my local pbs station now in HD while I am typing this email.
>
 	I hadn't heard much about the Air2PC card.  I had assumed that the 
pcHDTV card was the only one supported under Linux.  I've looked a bit for 
specs on the Air2PC card, but haven't found much to indicate that the 
-ATSC-PCI (or USB for that matter) version is capable of supporting QAM.

 	It looks from the marketspeak literature that it uses the FlexCop 
chip?  Is that correct?  Is the support a reverse-engineered hack, or is 
there actual real information going into the driver?  I looked through the 
kernel dvb source (vanilla 2.6.10), and I see lots of references to the 
chip in b2c2/skystar2.[ch].

 	I must say that if this card is truly "supported" (or at least as 
supported as linux device is), it might be the better choice.  The pcHDTV 
card is great and built out of comodity parts, but from what I understand, 
the Oren MPEG demodulator chip doesn't have real support.  The driver just 
dumps a bit pile of bytecode to it to fire it up.  I've never seen 
anywhere where that code comes from, so modifying the important parts will 
be difficult/impossible.

<flame suit armed>...

-Cory

*************************************************************************
* Cory Papenfuss							*
* Electrical Engineering candidate Ph.D. graduate student               *
* Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University 			*
*************************************************************************



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