[mythtv-users] Having Trouble Finding The Right TV Capture Card

[Bill Williamson]

On Sun, Sep 20, 2009 at 10:49 AM, Tom Purl <tom at tompurl.com> wrote:
> I've been looking at the hardware section of the wiki for an hour now,
> but I'm still having problems.  Any help that anyone can give me would
> be greatly appreciated.
>
> I have been using the PVR-150 with analog cable (in the US) for a
> couple of years now and have been very happy.  However,  I'm going to
> be ditching cable soon and switching to antenna-only TV soon.  I don't
> think that the PVR-150 support ATSC, so I need a new card.
>
> Here are my requirements:
>
> * USB or PCI (NOT PCI-E) interface
> * ATSC tuner
> * Hardware-based encoder
>  * My computer has a 1.8 Ghz Sempron processor, 512 MB of RAM, and a
> 9-year-old Riva TNT2 video card.  I therefore don't believe that I can
> get by with a software-based encoder.
> * Very solid LinuxTV and MythTV support.
>
> I know, a lot of you are going to tell me to RTFM (W for wiki?), but I
> did and didn't see one that fit all of these requirements.  I found a
> few ATSC cards with hardware-based encoders, but they have a PCI-E
> interface.  I found a few cards that meet all of my hardware
> requirements, but I have never heard of the manufacturer.  A few years
> ago, it seemed that the only cards that "just worked" were made by
> Haupphauge.  Is that still true?
>
> Is anyone else out there using a similar hardware configuration?  If
> so, then what card works for you?
>
> Thanks in advance!
>
> Tom Purl


Part of the reason you're not finding anything is because there is no
such thing as an ATSC "hardware" encoder.  ATSC is a digital standard,
so any ATSC card will simply present the raw stream (usually mpeg2) to
the OS.

Your best bet is likely the HDHomeRun, which is a network presented
atsc and clearqam (in the US, elsewhere DVB-T) tuner with support from
every OS.