[mythtv-users] USA recommendations for Digital Over the Air Capture Card

[Eric Mesa]

I'm thinking of giving Comcast the old heave-ho.  Most of the TV I have time
to watch nowadays is Network Tv.  The only TV shows I watch on Cable are The
Daily Show, Colbert Report, and (the wife watches) South Park.  The first
two are available on Hulu, so if I can watch them by setting the browser in
Myth to Firefox, then I'm fine.  South Park is also available streaming
elsewhere.

So, that taken care of, I was curious what recommendations other USA OTA
myth users have.  I've been happy with my Hauppage 500 and I'd like to get
something equivalent if it exists.  I've done some research on the MythTV
wiki.  It appears, from the way that the wiki is written that the 2250 is
the only Hauppage card that has 2 ATSC tuners.  All the other cards appear
to have 1 ATSC and 1 NTSC tuner.  I'd really like to be able to record 2
shows at once OTA.

Also, I've noticed that it appears that ATSC cards don't have hardware
encoding.  Is this because of something inherent in the way that ATSC is
transmitted?  Is it already encoded or something like that?  I mean, I think
I've read that ATSC is MPEG-2, but I thought cable was as well.  So is this
something I should watch out for?  My CPU is only a P4 since I've had
hardware encoding on the PVR-500.

Also, it was a real PITA to get the PVR-500 seated in my shuttle-like case.
So if there's one that you guys recommend that has two onboard tuners, but
is not as long, that would be AWESOME.  I don't think, if I remember
correctly, that the height was an issue with this case, I think it was the
length.

One last bit of tidbit for those giving recommendations - I only have one
PCI slot and it's PCI 1x - or whatever it is the PVR-500 uses.

Thank you so much!

-- 
Eric Mesa
http://www.ericsbinaryworld.com
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