[mythtv-users] Tuner recomendation for trial system

[Justin The Cynical]

allene222 wrote:
> I want to see if my P4-2.4G can do OTA HDTV.  I was thinking of an HDHR but a
> little steep for a trial system in case it doesn't work out.  I do not need
> QAM as this is an ATSC only system.  I see Air2PC cards on ebay for not much
> and pvr-150s for somewhat more.

 From my experience:

P4 Northwood core 2.26, overclocked to 2.8
MSI nVidia 6200 AGP fan less with component out
Crappy SiS chipset based Matsonic motherboard
Air2PC ATSC tuner
pcHDTV HD-3000 tuner

The P4 you have will be enough to playback OTA HD streams, but only if 
you have XvMC running with the video card.

When I was still experimenting, I was able to playback the local 720i 
broadcasts using a MX440 on a 1 GHz T-Bird core AMD on a very stripped 
down, heavily optimized Linux from scratch install.

As for the Air2PC cards, it would seem that ATSC tuner cards have become 
popular (imagine that!) and they are going for more than previously (I 
got mine for around 10 dollars US, shipped).

Air2PC Good things:

-They do work, and according to the Linux-TV wiki, they are one of the 
few cards that has hardware PID filtering, which means that the cards 
usually consume less PCI and memory bandwidth than the other cards 
because they have a hardware PID filter[1].

-They are still less expensive than many other cards, I think it's 
because they are old, and we all know that old kit isn't any good. ;-)


Air2PC Bad things:

-They take a small amount of time to become usable after a reboot (they 
just refuse to do anything but use a slot and power)

-They run very warm, if not a bit on the hot side.  I don't know if it's 
because of the generation of the chips used, or if it's because they are 
5 volt cards, or a combination of the two.

-Because of the age, they also are not the best at dealing with 
multipath signals.

-They do not deal with QAM (digital cable) or NTSC broadcasts.  But IMO, 
so what if it doesn't?  I got mine for OTA alone.


For a test system, I don't see any problems with getting one.  They do 
go cheap enough, just keep in mind that if you have a lot of buildings 
around you, it may effect the ability of the card to receive a broadcast,

I have no complaints on the HD-3000.  My kernel saw the card and Just 
Worked(tm).  It was/is more expensive than other cards, but at the time 
I wanted to support a company that actually actively supports Linux and 
the myth project, and I had the extra cash to spend.


[1] See http://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/ATSC_PCI_Cards