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

[Bob Cunningham]

On 01/23/2010 09:25 AM, Henry Hartley wrote:
> 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.
>

Please take a moment to search this forum for posts about this card for 
the past year or so.

In summary, I found the following with the pair of pcHDTV HD-5500 cards 
I tried:
1. Nice digital reception.
2. So-so analog reception.
3. Spotty software.

I sent my cards back after finding driver issues that took far too long 
to resolve.  There is equal or better hardware available that has better 
drivers.

I decided to go with USB tuners for several reasons.  First, there is 
the flexibility: I can move tuners between my FE/BE and BE as needed 
without opening any cases.  Also, it is much easier to run a USB cable 
to a PC than bulky stiff coax!  And I can grab a tuner when I 
occasionally want to use one with my laptop.

Second, using USB peripherals allows me to use a tiny living room PC: I 
chose the awesome (and inexpensive) Acer Aspire Revo AR1600 (I'm using 
it for this email - no need for computer glasses!).

Third, depending on the system, there can be signal quality issues with 
internal cards: Power on the PCI and PCIe bus can be quite noisy, which 
directly degrades analog quality and can make digital lock fail for 
faint signals.  I use an external USB hub that gets separate power from 
a very clean supply.  I also got an extremely clean +15dB wide-band RF 
amp to feed my tuners.  The greatest limitation with USB tuners is the 
2.5W power limit (500ma at 5V) on the USB bus, which generally precludes 
beefy internal RF amplifiers.

Third, USB hardware continues to evolve at a rapid pace, and I expect 
the most innovation to happen there, especially as PC cases shrink.  And 
I do expect to get more tuners, though I doubt I'll ever get more PCI or 
PCIe slots.


-BobC