[mythtv-users] Best hardware to build dual tuner? (HD(QAM) + Analogue, but run out of slots)

Patrick Wagstrom patrick at wagstrom.net
Tue Feb 20 21:34:29 UTC 2007


> This is my first post to this forum, so hopefully it makes sense and there is 
> someone out there that can help me.
> 
> I have a MythTV system which I have been building for a few months now. I 
> started out by buying two Airstar HD5000 PCI capture cards. This worked great 
> for HD which I could receive using clear QAM, however I was only able to get 
> four SD channels. Subsequently I discovered that these are on free trial and 
> are unencrypted. The rest of the SD channels are transmitted as encrypted 
> digital or analogue NTSC (unencrypted).
> 
> My aim was to build a dual tuner HD+NTSC(analogue from cable) system but now I 
> have a problem as my Airstar cards take up one PCI slot each and I only have 
> two PCI slots on my Asus M2NPV-VM motherboard. I have no slots left to add an 
> analogue capture card.
> 
> I am trying to find a solution which will allow me to capture simultaneously 
> using all combinations of the two tuners, i.e. SD+SD, SD+HD, HD+HD
> 
> The only options I can see are to add a HD Homerun for the HD and have a couple 
> of analogue capture cards in the PCi slots, but then I end up having four cable 
> connectors to hang on my cable and also my Airstar cards would be redundant.

Have you considered using an external USB or Firewire device to do some 
of the capturing?  Plextor makes a line of external tuners that work 
well with MythTV.  Some of Hauppauge USB stuff also works, the HVR-950 
provide ATSC and analog support however I don't think that analog is 
working with MythTV right now.

--Patrick


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