[mythtv-users] Hardware databases

Gareth Glaccum gareth.glaccum at btopenworld.com
Thu Jan 29 18:20:25 UTC 2009


>  Yes, the "I can do it therefore everyone else can" approach.
>  This breaks down far too easily, especially in a user community
>that may be comfortable with assembler, C++ or SQL.

Yes and no, here. We need to try and make sure that the information in the 
wiki is clear.
I just looked at the wiki for the cards I have. Took me a couple of minutes 
to find my card, partly due to the layout, partly due to the name of the 
card I have.

First block of text says they work well from 0.19.1
    Great, now if only I (thinking as the kind of person who needs this 
information the most, a complete newbie) knew what version of Myth was the 
latest for my OS

Then I read through what was said. It was very confusing. Ending up giving 
me the impression that the card is only 50% likely to work. This isn't 
really true any more. The first, very old revision does have a minor bug, 
but so long as you don't have that firmware revision (not listed on the wiki 
it seems) then the card is great.

Also, if a link is no longer valid (giving a 404 not found, and someone 
states it hasn't been working for a long time) then how about removing it?
There were no instructions (as a newbie would require) of what to do with 
the file that you were meant to download even if you did manage to find it.


BUT, that is from the viewpoint of someone who already has a working system, 
and doesn't need new hardware. Recently, I wanted some new hardware, outside 
of my current knowledge area. Having a matrix with a list of cards, with 
ticks/crosses/numbers against the following columns would have been so much 
help. As a newbie comming to that hardware page, how do you know which 
Vendor to buy from? Some vendors have a lot better support than others. 
Sometimes a card can have a slightly different name (Is GS the same as GE?) 
in which case, some vendors will be a much better option if  you accidentaly 
get one which isn't quite on the known good list.

Card name
Supports DVB-S (these 3, perhaps marked out of 5 for support level)
Supports DVB-T
Supports DVB-C
Number of users
Firmware links (I understand that the myth wiki shouldn't really have the 
firmware itself if it is closed-source, merely a link to it?)
Manufacturer
Interface (AGP, PCI-E, PCI-X, USB)
Sound output: (yes no)
SVideo output (yes/no)
Composite output
DVI out
VGA out
HDMI out
Accelerators (H264 etc.)

Hmm, a lot of columns, but it would be a start.
Gareth 



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