[mythtv-users] PCI capture cards on Intel Sandy Bridge

[Jelte Veldstra]

> I haven't found any mention on this list of any problems, or specific
> mention anywhere else of problems with Hauppauge dvb cards, so I'm asking
> here if anyone here is using PCI capture cards with a sandy bridge
> mother-board, and if any problems have been experienced doing so.
>

I have tried a similar thing on a SuperMicro X9SCA-F motherboard with
a Xeon E3-1220L CPU (~ 25W idle powerdraw with 2 DIMMs and a laptop
SATA harddisk). The gotcha with this setup was that that board is
equipped with 3.3V PCI slots. Until then I never realised there were
different versions of 32bit PCI slots. Now I do as my DVB-C card was a
5V one! I solved it using a PCI-e 1x to 32bit PCI converter. The VT-d
passthrough worked fine and a CentOS 6.2 virtual machine could access
the DVB-C tuner (KNC-1). I only did a handful of recordings and no
extensive testing and it seemed to work alright. I did not try more
with it as adding more tuners this way would require more PCI-e to PCI
adapters, which would not be very cost effective in my situation, plus
the box was purchased as a ESXi testlab and not a 24/7 host for MythTV
"production".