[mythtv-users] Is the hpHDTV 5500 right for me?

Henry Hartley henry at dotrose.com
Sat Jan 23 17:25:12 UTC 2010


I'm considering starting down the MythTV road and have read the FAQ and 
the documentation but have a couple questions, just to be sure I 
understood what I read. So, here's what I have:

First, I do not have cable and don't expect/plan to any time soon. So, I 
have an antenna on the roof and that feeds converter box (Lasonic 
LTA-260) via a coax cable (oh, I live in the USA). There is another coax 
out from that which I could send directly to the TV but instead send to 
a switch (Radio Shack 4 Way RF Modulator). I also have a DVD player and 
a combination DVD/VHS player plugged into that. It accepts up to four 
devices using either a single S-video or three RCA type plugs each.

The output from the switch goes, via coax to the back of my old TV, 
which ONLY has a coax jack, nothing else. Yes, it's old, having been won 
on Wheel of Fortune by a friend, back in 1986 or so. Anyway, this all 
works fine. The Lasonic also has three RCA jacks which I have going into 
the VCR so I actually have the signal going through the Lasonic, VCR, 
and Radio Shack switch to the TV most of the time.

OK, that's what I know. Now, if I understand this (and I guess this is 
my first question) that means that I have an ASCP signal coming into my 
house which is converted into NTSC for the rest of the journey to the 
TV. Is that right?

What I want to do is set up MythTV (both front and back ends) on a 
machine in my computer room (in the basement). I have a AMD Athlon 64bit 
dual-core processor, which should be plenty and 2 GB RAM running Fedora 
12 but I may switch over to CentOS 5.x, which is what I run on my 
production machines. I don't have a huge amount of drive space but 
figure I can put a largish SATA drive in easily enough and dedicate that 
to video. I will plan on watching TV on the computer's regular monitor 
for now. Eventually I'd consider a small front end machine to go on the 
TV but that's a question for a later date. Any problems with any of that?

As for video going into the machine, I need to know that I'm getting the 
right device for the signal I have. The pcHDTV HD-3000 is mentioned a 
few times in the MythTV docs but it looks like the pcHDTV HD-5500 is the 
"current" model and also costs about $70 less. So, is this (or either, 
really) card is going to do what I want? If my signal is ATSC, as I 
think, then this should be able to be attached to a splitter on my 
antenna without needing the converter box in the circuit, meaning I can 
leave my current set up as it is for now. Is that right? Or is there a 
better choice for receiving video into my machine?

Thanks for your time and for a cool piece of software.

-- 
Henry


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