[mythtv-users] About to buy a tuner card that isn't well discussed, thoughts?

[Brad Templeton]

On Thu, Aug 10, 2006 at 12:44:15AM -0600, Chad wrote:
> > >I have been looking at alternative "hardware" encoding cards to the
> > >Hauppauge flavors.  There doesn't seem to be a 'good' document on any
> > >of the alternatives, so I guess I'm either on my own (buy one, try it.


Unless your goal is to experiment and write drivers, don't do it, no
matter how much money you save.   It's not worth it.  Really.  Trust
me, and the thousands of others you will find in the threads that
detail the troubles of getting things going even with the well
tried and tested cards.

If you're building a myth system from scratch, I strongly recommend you
use only the most widely tested cards, at least for your first
go.   That's wintv-pvr cards, pchdtv cards and nvidia video cards
(particularly 5200).  In addition, use a distro that's well used with
Myth, probably fedora core, debian or now ubuntu (debian) which is being
used by the Myth developers.  Yes, others work, and in fact there are other
well tested devices out there which qualify -- this isn't a comprehensive
list.   But at the same time as you build your system, you'll have a
better chance it works, and if you have a problem, a much better chance
that a web search will find other people discussing and solving your
problem.