[mythtv-users] Re: M179 (PVR-250 clone) for $49.99 at SF BayAreaFry's

[Joe Votour]

I picked up one of those cards last night at the Fry's
in Sunnyvale (Arques Road).

After some manual compiling (brand new Slackware 10
installation), it seems to work just fine.

The packaging is the standard "white-box", with a
label identifying the card as an Avermedia M179 PCI,
with "Build-in Hardware MPEG2 Encoder".  The contents
of the box are the card, driver CD, Quick Installation
Guide and warranty registration card.

On the board itself (my particular card) is the text
"M179-D" (maybe a card revision?), and here is what
lspci -v says:
02:04.0 Multimedia video controller: Internext
Compression Inc iTVC15 MPEG-2 Encoder (rev 01)
        Subsystem: Avermedia Technologies Inc: Unknown
device a3cf
        Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 64,
IRQ 17
        Memory at ec000000 (32-bit, prefetchable)
[size=64M]
        Capabilities: [44] Power Management version 2

I'm using ivtv version 0.1.10pre2-ck93n, with the
21288 firmware (pvr48wdm_1.7.21288.exe), on top of
2.4.27-rc2 (testing out the new SATA backport).

If you're looking to put it in a quiet machine, you
might want to reconsider - there's a fan/heatsink on
top of what I believe is the Conexant chip.

Note: I'm not using it in my MythTV machine, I'm using
it in my regular PC - my plan is to use it for
capturing from VCR tapes that I have.

Just one data point, but at least some of these cards
DO work...

-- Joe

--- Tim Tait <t.tait at comcast.net> wrote:
> J. Donavan Stanley wrote:
> 
> > Tim Tait wrote:
> >
> >> So you have examined "these" exact cards in
> question and found them 
> >> functioning?
> >
> >
> >
> > Di you ever stop to consider that it's more likely
> than not firmware / 
> > driver issues causing people to have problems?  I
> can recreate the 
> > exact same symptoms as described using my PVR250s
> (two different types 
> > I might add) by using certain combinations of
> drivers / firmware.
> >
> > Ask yourself this:  Which is more likely?  The
> manufacturer sold a 
> > bunch of cards that didn't even come close to
> working as capture cards 
> > (but work for a lot of people) or some people have
> had software / 
> > cable issues and blamed it on the hardware. 
> 
> Of course I considered it. My point was the maybe
> there are some bad 
> revs, bad units, bad firmware who knows. It can
> happen. Some products 
> are known to have very poor quality control. I've
> experienced it before 
> - return them and the new one is fine. Or maybe it's
> compatibility 
> problems. The PVR350 uses the same chip and seems to
> have far fewer 
> problems. But just saying "mine works so it must be
> you" is not helpful. 
> Sharing driver configs, card rev info - that's
> helpful.
> 
> (all done on this thread)
> 
> Tim
> 
> > _______________________________________________
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> mythtv-users at mythtv.org
>
http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
> 


		
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