The original singer tuner nova-t cards required firmware to be loaded on the card each boot up which meant that, on a machine which turns itself on and off for recording, after several months the flash on the card would die a slow death taking longer to load each boot. Eventually dying completely with it just erroring unable to write at all and the card was useless. I had this happen on 3 cards I owned and also 2 a friend had.
<br><br>The second version of the nova-t change some chipset on the card and didn't require firmware loading, I still have these cards working fine today (got the originals replaced with these).<br><br>So being that the nova-t 500 requires firmware loading does that mean it will have the same problem? or was the original problem something like a kernel bug that used to kill the cards somehow?
<br><br>Ash.<br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 4/23/07, <b class="gmail_sendername">Ben Lancaster</b> <<a href="mailto:lists@benlancaster.co.uk">lists@benlancaster.co.uk</a>> wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<br>On 23 Apr 2007, at 22:53, Nick Morrott wrote:<br><br>> On 23/04/07, Frank Mckinney <<a href="mailto:krush_groove83@yahoo.com">krush_groove83@yahoo.com</a>> wrote:<br>>><br>>> Hi all, soon-to-be new user here...
<br>>><br>>> I'm building up a system and in an enthusiastic impulse eBaying<br>>> spree I<br>>> purchased a Nova-T 500 tuner card without doing a lot of research<br>>> if it will<br>>> work or not. In doing much reading after I got the card I've found
<br>>> out the<br>>> 500 is from an older generation of cards, and the preferred<br>>> Hauppage card<br>>> seems to be the PVR 350 or 150. So basically I'm just checking of<br>>> the Nova-T
<br>>> 500 will be okay, relatively easy to set up, etc.?<br>><br>> There have been many recent threads on this and the linux-dvb lists<br>> about problems using the Nova-T 500 which have hopefully been ironed
<br>> out now (USB disconnects) - you need to ensure you use the very latest<br>> kernel for your chosen distro, and follow (and read the archives of)<br>> these two lists closely. I'm not certain if all the problems have been
<br>> fixed - perhaps a Nova-T 500 user could chime in here :)<br><br>Nova-T 500 user chiming in!<br><br>I've been using a Nova-T 500 for a few months now, and now that the<br>USB Disconnects problem is fixed, I'm very happy with the card indeed
<br>and considering a second already. It tunes quickly, and because it's<br>two-tuners-on-one-board, you don't get the signal strength dip that<br>you get from splitting your signal into two for two cards.<br><br>
>> Not truly impressive specs but everything apart from the CPU and<br>>> tuner card<br>>> was free (yay Freecycle!). I'm hoping to make the MythTV box a<br>>> backend and<br>>> use an Xbox system as a frontend. Which brings to mind my next
<br>>> question for<br>>> another post...<br>>><br>>> Anyway, I'd really appreciate if anyone can point me to a guide,<br>>> walkthrough, etc., about using the Nova-T 500, or just tell me
<br>>> simple 'yes,<br>>> it will work' :)<br>><br>> I can't provide a specific guide, but the card should be set up like<br>> any other DVB card in Linux (use correct drivers etc), only you
<br>> configure it twice in MythTV because it's a dual tuner.<br><br>Make sure you're using a recent 2.6.20 (2.6.20-3 and above I believe,<br>or more specifically 2.6.20-1.2300 or higher on FC based systems)<br>
kernel as they contain the USB disconnects fix. You'll also need a<br>firmware for the card, in this instance dvb-usb-dib0700-01.fw, which<br>you need to drop into /lib/firmware/ - a bit of googling will help<br>you find that. The good news is that it seems the firmware is under
<br>active development, so you may well see improvements with new Kernels<br>as time goes on, although personally this is the best card of the few<br>I've tried so I'm not sure that there's really much room for
<br>improvement.<br><br>>> If it matters, I'm in the UK and planning to connect everything to<br>>> either a<br>>> Freeview aerial (one reason for the Nova-T 500) and/or a Sky<br>>> digibox...<br>
><br>> Either way is possible - DVB is easiest because you don't need another<br>> capture card (you'd need an analogue card such as a PVR-150 to record<br>> from Sky) and you can also get your listings over the air using the
<br>> EIT program listings.<br><br>I've found EIT to be a little slower and less reliable on this card<br>in the past when compared to my Compro DVB-T300 card, but that might<br>be related to the (now fixed) USB Disconnects issue that you've heard
<br>about. DVB Radio and MHEG (interactive TV) also work well and are<br>nice and responsive, although I don't know if that's a software/<br>driver thing as opposed to a hardware thing.<br><br>Interested to hear how you get on using it on Ubuntu - piece of cake
<br>on Fedora.<br><br>Ben<br><br><br><br>_______________________________________________<br>mythtv-users mailing list<br><a href="mailto:mythtv-users@mythtv.org">mythtv-users@mythtv.org</a><br><a href="http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users">
http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users</a><br></blockquote></div><br>