[mythtv-users] [Fwd: Re: What HDTV capture card has the mostsupport?]

[John Welch]

My opinion is slightly contrary to what others have posted, although my
viewpoint might be slightly different because I'm only doing QAM-256
tuning.  I've been using a pcHDTV HD-3000 card for about a year now.  The
pcHDTV cards are specifically designed for Linux, if not for MythTV.  It was
a little bit of a pain to setup because the Myth QAM channel scanning wasn't
really working when I first set up the card, and also because my cable
company strips out the channel information from the streams.  So, it was
very much a manual process to figure out what channels I could receive, and
to get them configured in Myth.  But that's not really the fault of the
HD-3000 card, and since I got it going I've had great luck with it.
Excellent reception, excellent picture and sound quality.  I've also got a
PVR-150 and a few other PCI cards, and I've not experienced any interference
issues or anything like that.

On the other hand, I added a HDHomeRun to my setup at the beginning on the
year and had a few problems getting it going with Myth.  First there was an
issue with the Myth QAM channel scanner for this device, which forced my to
upgrade 0.21 trunk to get a fix (I prefer to run the stable release over the
development release).  Jarod Wilson has since gotten the necessary updates
into the fixes branch, but it was too late for me.  After I got that issue
resolved, I ran into another mysterious problem where I could not do
anything at all, related to the HDHR or not, on my Myth front-end box while
recording from the HDHR or I would end up with "corrupted" recordings.  (see
thread in archives from a few weeks ago for details.)  With the help of
people on this list I finally tracked the problem down to my onboard NIC.  I
still don't really know why it was a problem, but putting in a PCI card NIC
solved the problem.  Now that those problems are solved I'm pretty pleased
with the picture and sound quality of my recordings.  I would also point out
that with the HD-3000 card I consistently get mid-to-upper 90% reported for
signal strength within Myth; with the HDHR I would only get mid-to-upper 70%
for signal strength, until I recently added a cable signal booster to my
setup.  One final point.  While the HDHR seems to have been designed with
Myth in mind the only support for the device is through the online forums.
I've gotten the impression that there is only one "official" person, Nick
(jafa on the forums), responsible for answering questions posted to the
forums.  Yes, other users try to help out, but Nick's time to answer all the
questions posted seems to be stretched thin.  Just one person's opinion.

I don't want to discourage the original poster, or anyone else for that
matter, from getting the HDHR.  I love the fact that it has open source
software, and specifically supports Myth.  The device is still relatively
new, and I think going forward it has tremendous potential.  For ease of
physical setup it can't be beat.  Plug in a network card and connect up an
antenna or cable source and you're pretty much good to go.  Just wanted to
offer my experiences with a couple of different options.
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