[mythtv-users] Current wisdom on PVR-150/250/350/500

Brian Wood beww at beww.org
Sun Apr 16 01:04:47 UTC 2006


On Apr 15, 2006, at 6:34 PM, Sam Varshavchik wrote:

> Joe Votour writes:
>
>> --- Sam Varshavchik <mrsam at courier-mta.com> wrote:
>>> Brian Wood writes:
>>> >> The mpeg decoder is just one half of the story. The other half  
>>> is  >> the TV-Out.  That alone saves you the trouble of
>>> getting a VGA-to- >> composite converter.
>>> > > I haven't been able to purchase a video card
>>> *without* a TV output (S- > Video and composite) lately, even if  
>>> I wanted to
>>> for some reason.
>>> > > A 5200-based card can be had for under $50, and
>>> they all have TV-outs.
>>> I must admit that I haven't really been following
>>> the video card industry lately.
>>> Can someone recommend a video card that:  A)  Has
>>> TV-Out, and B) has native support in x.org, and does not require  
>>> to use
>>> proprietary binary drivers for basic functionality, and TV-Out.
>>> > _______________________________________________
>>> mythtv-users mailing list
>>> mythtv-users at mythtv.org
>>>
>> http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
>> With the criteria you've given, I don't think that
>> there are any.
>
> That's what I thought.  This was the situation the last time I  
> checked, I just wasn't sure that, perhaps, things have improved.
>
>
>>                 Well, the closest I can think of is
>> the Matrox G400, which is many years old.  Define
>> basic functionality.  :)
>> For modern ATI or nVidia cards to use TV-Out, you'll
>> need binary drivers.  I think that the R100 and R200
>> series (ATI) have open source drivers (don't know how
>> stable they are), and there's been some work done on
>> the later ones (up to R400 series).
>
> So the bottom line is that the PVR-350 appears to be the only way  
> to get TV-Out without using closed binary drivers.
>
> I do not see any possibility for either Nvidia or ATI to make  
> progress on releasing their drivers as free software, as long as  
> people continue to choose them over the free software alternatives.

I would *love* to use a free software alternative, unfortunately  
there are none.

None that work worth a crap anyway. Try running Celestia with the  
"nv" driver.

This not the fault of some very good developers, it is a miracle that  
they have essentially reverse-engineered something that is arguably  
more complex than the CPU itself, and certainly far less documented.

Can you imagine the state of things if Intel were to keep the  
instruction set for their processors secret ?

RedHat certainly didn't help the situation by shipping a kernel that  
would refuse to load the most widely-used driver module in the world,  
and when they "fixed" that "mistake", they still have a system that  
requires you to jump through hoops to get an nVidia driver installed.  
THEY certainly won't tell you how to do it, and they have made sure  
that the default paths are such that nVidia's installer will not  
work, and that the required headers are not installed by default.

This is *not* the way to encourage people to use free software.

Unfortunately we have the choice of FSF-unfriendly vendor A, or FSF- 
even-more-unfriendly vendor B, and they both know it.

Rant mode off.




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