<html><head><style type="text/css"><!-- DIV {margin:0px;} --></style></head><body><div style="font-family:times new roman, new york, times, serif;font-size:12pt"><div>Thanks Brian, that is what I was afraid of, once the cable company goes all digital it will be encrypted and I will need their basic set top box in order to watch TV. So in that case, if I use a STB I can use any card including analog and won't need a digital card. So if I can get my hands on a PVR-350 I should get it and another STB. Thanks everyone for your help.<br></div><div style="font-family: times new roman,new york,times,serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br><div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">----- Original Message ----<br>From: Brian Wood <beww@beww.org><br>To: Discussion about mythtv <mythtv-users@mythtv.org><br>Sent: Friday, September 5, 2008 6:11:51 PM<br>Subject: Re: [mythtv-users] completely new and have questions before
I buy hardware<br><br>
Quenten Griffith wrote:<br>> I am looking to setup my first mythtv box and have zero experience with<br>> tvtuners and the different types of broadcast signals. I have a few<br>> quick questions that may be easy to answer for some of you experts.<br>> <br>> I live in the US and analog is going to go away in 2009. I was going to<br>> purchase a PVR-350 card, however you can't find it any where since it is<br>> analog. If I find this card, and just hook it up to coax (not the<br>> Timewarner box), will it still work after February 2009? <br><br>Probably. The Feb. 2009 changeover date only applies to over-the-air<br>broadcasts. Cable systems are free to continue to transmit analog,<br>though most of them will probably changeover to all digital eventually,<br>due to the smaller bandwidth requirement.<br><br>> If I get a<br>> digital based card (does anyone have recommendations that play well with<br>> Linux)
will it work hooked to coax and not going through a cable box? <br><br>There are many options for a digital capture device, but if you connect<br>it directly to a cable system (no STB) then you will receive only the<br>unencrypted channels, usually only the local off-airs and perhaps things<br>like CSPAN. To receive the encrypted channels you will have to go<br>through the cable operator-provided Set Top Box.<br><br>There is at present no solid solution to capture high-def channels from<br>a cable system, with exception of some set top boxes that output<br>firewire. The Hauppauge HDPVR-1212 looks very promising, but the drivers<br>are very experimental at this time.<br><br>> The CPU I plan on using is rather old it is a Athelon 64bit 3200, so I<br>> was looking for a card with the decoder/encoder built on the tvtuner<br>> card, however it appears only analog cards come with this feature, do<br>> the digital cards not need this?<br><br>The
digital cards capture the already encoded digital stream, and so you<br>need to decode the stream to play it back. The CPU you mention can<br>probably handle standard-definition, but not hi-def stuff, without help.<br><br>If you get a video card that supports XvMC you will get *some* help in<br>decoding an mpeg2 stream, but it will not help with mpeg4. Hardware<br>decoding of mpeg4 seems to be on the horizon, but is not here yet.<br><br>But if you want to play back HD without problems you will almost<br>certainly need a faster CPU.<br><br>Check out the MythTV WiKi for more information.<br><br>beww<br>_______________________________________________<br>mythtv-users mailing list<br><a ymailto="mailto:mythtv-users@mythtv.org" href="mailto:mythtv-users@mythtv.org">mythtv-users@mythtv.org</a><br><a href="http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users" target="_blank">http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users</a><br></div></div></div><br>
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