[mythtv-users] Hardware capture card recommendations

Richard Houser rick at divinesymphony.net
Thu May 15 17:24:29 EDT 2003


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I admit to being an extreme newbie with MythTv (as in never got it
running on my system yet, failed AIMS bt848 card), but was wondering if
anyone could recommend a good capture card for me.  Viewing is not
really important to me as this eventually will be going in my server and
locked into the closet.  I want to capture to full DVD quality NTSC
format for use with a DVD-R drive and would rather not kill the CPU and
PCI bus in the process.

I have up to about $200 or so to spend.

I've heard a lot about the pvr250 (and I really could use a good remote
with this, but not required) and that it is about $150 retail (I live in
Michigan,USA).  Builtin sound capture is a must for me (not enough spare
PCI slots to be adding sound cards too -- all used for IDE controllers).
~   If the drivers need serious polishing, I can wait a little too and
even use another box with M$ Winblows to get my immediate needs taken
care of (capturing Farscape from VHS before I run out and have to start
recycling the tapes).

I can attest that the ADS Instant DVD is junk, even in Windows with
their drivers (over a two hour span, the audio sync drifted more than
20sec from the start), so this is going back ASAP.

Any other recomendations?  What about prices and recommended places of
purchase?  If online order, could the developers get a little back from
a referal?  I would prefer to stay away from an ATI capture card if
possible (bad experiences with the All-in-Wonders cards in the past).


Other hardware on the intended box is as follows:

Shuttle AK32 mobo (5 PCI slots, onboard 2xATA100, onboard sound)
AMD TB1700+ w/ a huge fan
2x 2 channel ATA133 controllers
Diamond V550 TNT1 w/ TVout (not important to me, is backend only)
Realtek 8139c NIC (will eventually be replaced with an Intel Gigabit)
2x WD 80GB ATA100 8MB cache HDD (/home as a swRAID 1 and /data as a
swRAID 0)
Fugitsu 11GB HDD (ATA66 with /boot, /var/mail, /)
LS-120 untested in this machine
ZIP-100 untested in this machine
Sony 40x CDRW
Vivastar DVD-R/RAM
Artec DVD-ROM

In case you did the math and realized I only have 6 master IDE
connections, the LS-120,ZIP,DVD-ROM,DVD-R/RAM are sharing two of the
channels, so no hard-disk speed degredation.
CPU usage idles at under 1%, but spikes a lot from the sw raid - nothing
severe.  I also plan to transcode some of the recordings to MPEG4 later
on with this same box as well as some purchased DVDs.

Thanks in advance.
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