[mythtv-users] NTSC USB tuners: which ones are out there?

[James Miller]

On Sat, 29 Aug 2015, Gary Buhrmaster wrote:

> I think I may have mentioned this previously, but the HVR-1950's suffer
> to two well known issues.  Their POS power brick generates high ripple
> and you get "flaky" after a few months/years (I suspect they were cost
> optimized designs, which means they are cheap crap), and the devices
> themselves run hot, and can become "flaky" (usually they lock up, but
> other strangeness happens).  This may be because it is summer, or you
> do not have adequate ventilation in the location you have them.  I know
> that when I had (about) 5 of them placing one sitting on top of the other
> that was a really bad idea for stability.
>
> I believe I ended up replacing every Hauppauge device power supply I
> ever had with high(er) quality switching supplies from one of the
> usual suspects (usually Delta) which resolved a number of failures
> back all those years ago when I was using Hauppauge devices.

I do recall reading/hearing about overheating and power supply issues with 
these tuners Gary, but thanks for reiterating that and adding some further 
detail. These do have good passive ventilation--both the units themselves, 
as well as their power supplies: the units sit side side-by-side (close, 
but not touching) on top of wire shelving, as do the power supplies. The 
metal of the shelving can act to some degree as a heat sink, and air flows 
freely around all units and their power supplies. I think the only way I 
could ventilate them any better would be to turn a fan on them.

That said, here's a kernel message I end up seeing a lot:

pvrusb2: Giving up on command.  This is normally recovered via a firmware reload and re-initialization; concern is only warranted if this happens repeatedly and rapidly.

This doesn't appear to happen rapidly, but it does happen repeatedly. I'll 
consider further the option of replacing power supplies with 
better-quality ones rather than ditching the HVR-1950's for comparable USB 
sticks.