[mythtv-users] PCIe analog capture card recommendations

[Karl Newman]

On Tue, Feb 10, 2015 at 11:00 AM, Karl Newman <siliconfiend at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> It appears that one of the tuners/encoders of my (9 year old!) PVR-500 has
> given up the ghost (recordings are all 0 byte). I could replace it with an
> eBay version, but given that those are going to be a similar vintage, and
> the fact that I had to search around for a MB with PCI slots last time I
> upgraded, I want to go to PCIe for better compatibility. I only need analog
> SD capture. I can't use digital at all--cable has been encrypted for years
> and I'd probably need about a 300 foot mast to pick up any ATSC broadcasts.
> I don't need any IR support. I noticed the HVR-2250 was listed on the Wiki,
> and it looks like this supports dual analog capture which appeals to me as
> a complete replacement for my PVR-500 (who knows how much longer the other
> tuner/encoder will last). So, anybody using this card for analog? Or any
> other suggestions for cards (stability is the utmost concern). Ideally it
> will support tuning RF NTSC that my DTA box is putting out, because I don't
> know if that part is still working on the PVR-500 (the functional tuner is
> using composite+stereo). I could use a single tuner card as long as I can
> continue to use my PVR-500 as well (I know about stable device naming with
> udev).
>
> On a related note, I'll need to get a new case to accommodate this card.
> I'm currently using a low profile Silverstone LC-11M with a PCI riser card
> that turns the cards sideways. I no longer have the height constraints that
> I did when I bought that case, so my options are a lot broader. Silverstone
> or Antec or ??? Just looking for something black/dark that will blend in to
> the living room. Doesn't necessarily need a LCD display--I hardly look at
> it now--but it would be nice I guess. Needs to accommodate a microATX
> board, 3x 3.5 inch HDDs and a BluRay drive. My current case is relatively
> noisy with fans but it doesn't really bother us much, however quieter is
> always better.
>
> This failure is actually not all bad--it was overdue for a replacement,
> it's still partly functional (I was surprised I didn't have more conflicts
> when I removed the bad tuner) and this will get me on a path to my planned
> future setup with a single analog card tied to the STB so we can record the
> premium channels and eventually a CableCard Ethernet tuner (*still* waiting
> on the transcoding model SiliconDust...)
>
> Thanks,
>
> Karl
>

Ha! Well, it looks like my wallet will be staying closed for now. It
appeared that my remaining single tuner recorded programs successfully
today, but when we went to watch them it had recorded the wrong channel. A
quick check of LiveTV showed my IR blaster was not firing. Further
investigation showed a failure in my channel change script--running it on
the command line revealed that suddenly .5 was not a valid real number for
a delay and I had to change it to 0.5. I traced it back to a "routine"
package upgrade Sunday evening that upgraded perl from 5.18 to 5.20 which
was suddenly more picky about argument format. I use the same script (with
different config files) for both inputs, but the reason it only caused one
of them to fail is that one was calling the script directly, which returned
the failure to mythbackend (No error mentioned in the log at all, by the
way...) whereas the one that was still "working" had its error swallowed up
by the wrapper script I use with it to work around an audio bug.

Thanks to all for your input. Maybe if/when a reliable HVR 2255 driver
comes out I might make the leap.

Karl
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