[mythtv-users] Only two HD compatible cards: HD-2000/3000?

Daniel Kristjansson danielk at cuymedia.net
Sun Dec 18 18:02:53 EST 2005


On Sun, 2005-12-18 at 14:26 -0800, Jeremiah Jester wrote:
> I was reading on the myth website that there are only two HD  
> compatible cards/drivers with linux and myth. Is this true? It looks  
> like the HD-3000 only has HD software decoding....sounds slow. Anyone  
> have expereience?

There are still two cards being sold now which work well:
 * pcHDTV  HD-3000
 * AirStar HD-5000

The HD-2000 was pcHDTV's first card and should still work with MythTV,
while the Air2PC-ATSC-PCI was AirStar's first card and should still work
with MythTV. AirStar is the corporate heir to Air2PC. All the cards
are simple demodulators when it comes to HDTV, none of them do any
hardware decoding.

Hardware decoding for HDTV is pretty deficient at the moment, there is a
VIA motherboard chipset which some people have reported success with and
a nVidia 5xxx chipsets work ok with Chromakey OSD, while the nVidia 6xxx
and 7xxx chipsets are pretty sucky when it comes to HDTV playback.

You'll be much happier with HDTV playback if you get a processor running
at 2.8 Ghz or above and use software decoding. Make sure if you get an
AMD chip that it is not rated at 2800+ but is actually running at a
decent Ghz, something like a 4800+ will probably work.

As far as which one the HD-3000 or the HD-5000 to get... pcHDTV has
supported MythTV development, has analog-in as a bonus, and only costs
about a dollar more. Both decode 8-VSB and QAM-64/256 and both will
probably work just dandy for receiving HDTV.

-- Daniel



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