[mythtv-users] PVR250 and PAL

[Michael T. Dean]

Nick Tan wrote:

> I am thinking about getting a PVR250 card for use in my mythbox, but I 
> just want to make sure that the tuner works for PAL as well as NTSC.  
> (I'll be buying it in the USA, but using it in Australia).
>
> Would anyone be able to confirm that the tuner on the card supports 
> PAL signals?

As of Aug 28, 2004, Hauppauge had used at least 95 different tuners with 
their PVR cards cards.  Not all of them made it into production, but the 
point is, you won't know which tuner you get until you have the card.  
There are a couple of "ALL standards" tuners (i.e. a quick scan of the 
list at http://www.poptix.net/ivtv/Aug-2004/msg00459.html shows idx = 
73, LG "Mini" tuner TALN-Z200T; idx=77/78 Silicon TDA8275C1_8290), but I 
haven't seen a single user with those cards (so they may not have made 
it into production--although, I'll admit to not having seen all users' 
tuner types ;).

It will be very difficult to determine the tuner type before buying.  
You might have better luck finding a signal converter (I'm just guessing 
that they make them).

> Also, am I correct in assuming that the hardware MPEG-2 encoding will 
> be a lot better, quality wise, than the software mpeg4 or RTjpeg that 
> myth uses?

The quality is more closely related to the source than the tuner.  
However, hardware encoders allow you to use higher resolution/bitrate 
settings than you might otherwise be able to use on a given system 
configuration because they offload the processing from the CPU and much 
of the bandwidth from the PCI bus.

Mike