[mythtv-users] pcHDTV HD3000 for standard broadcast also?

Alan Hagge ahagge at wbfa.com
Thu Apr 14 15:52:31 UTC 2005


Robert La Ferla wrote:

> John Friesen wrote:
>
>> Basically, at this point I don't have HDTV (signal or TV), and am 
>> wondering if I can use one of these as my only tuner, or if I need a 
>> specifically SDTV tuner as well.
>>
> Yes.  The HD3000 supports standard NTSC in addition to HDTV ATSC.  I 
> use it with tvtime for such but I still can't get it to work with 
> MythTV.  That may change for the better with kernel 2.6.12 in the next 
> month.  Also, with standard NTSC, the cx88 driver doesn't yet support 
> digital audio capture nor closed captioning.  I sincerely hope the 
> driver developers figure out how to implement these soon.

I also have an HD-3000 and can concur.  Works just fine with tvtime. I 
_have_ had limited success with MythTV in NTSC mode; however I've been 
unable to switch back & forth between the two modes.  If I start in NTSC 
mode, it (usually) works OK in that mode, but if I switch tuners (with 
"Y"), I get the blank screen and "waiting too long" errors from the 
frontend.  If I start in ATSC mode, it (sometimes) works OK (usually OK 
for recording, not so hot for "Watch TV") in that mode, but I can't 
switch back to NTSC.

BTW, I (naively) thought when I first purchased the HD-3000 card that it 
must have 2 tuners - one ATSC, one NTSC, and I was hoping that I could 
use them both simultaneously (PIP or record HD, watch SD).  It doesn't.  
You can use it in ATSC or NTSC mode, but either/or, not both.  Also, I 
hadn't heard of any plans to do digital audio capture on the NTSC side.  
I'm not sure it's possible, since there's no hardware MPEG-2 encoder on 
the NTSC side (actually, there isn't one period, it's just that ATSC is 
already MPEG-2 encoded by the broadcaster).

I'd be curious if anyone else has had success, and if so, with which 
drivers and which MythTV version.


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