On Sat, Jul 2, 2011 at 11:15 PM, Raymond Wagner <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:raymond@wagnerrp.com">raymond@wagnerrp.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
<div class="im">On 7/2/2011 18:36, James Pifer wrote:<br>
> Good suggestion. I'm in Charlotte, NC in the US. Cable provider is Time<br>
> Warner. No set top boxes, basic cable. Only HD is tuned by digital<br>
> tuners in my TVs. It's "regular" coaxial connections and I assume atsc.<br>
<br>
</div>If you're currently using analog cable, don't expect to be able to<br>
continue using that in the long term. Cable providers are all switching<br>
over to digital to free up bandwidth for additional channels and<br>
internet. Start planning an upgrade for your frontends to support HD.<br>
For digital broadcasts (ATSC) and unencrypted digital cable (clear QAM),<br>
you're looking at MPEG2 at up to 18Mbps. Any desktop AMD64 or Core2, as<br>
well as most mobile processors of those architectures, should have<br>
plenty of power to handle that content.<br>
<div class="im"><br>
>>> Are there any low priced, non-PCI options for replacing my Hauppauge<br>
>>> cards?<br>
<br>
</div>As a non-PCI replacement to those cards, you want to look into the<br>
HVR-2250. It has two tuners that can either be used for digital or<br>
analog, an MPEG encoder for each, and uses a PCIe x1 slot. The<br>
HVR-1800/1850 is also available, however there is a bug in the driver<br>
that prevents that card from being used for analog capture within MythTV.<br>
<div class="im"><br>
>>> I also run a pretty powerful xen server and I know I could put<br>
>>> mythbackend on there, but I can't use the PCI cards. I would have to<br>
>>> replace the tuner cards. I could pass through some USB ports.<br>
<br>
</div>Unless you need to run multiple different operating systems<br>
simultaneously, or need to ensure complete isolation for testing or<br>
debugging purposes, it's best to avoid virtual machines and just run<br>
directly on the base system.<br>
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</div></div></blockquote></div><br><div><br></div><div>In regards to your possible hardware problems, I would be VERY suspicious of the Hauppauge PVR-350 card you have. I had the PVR-350 in one MythTV system and experienced random lockups, video corruption, etc. After I took the PVR-350 out of the system, all was well! As it turns out, there are known DMA bugs with certain Hauppauge cards (mine was one of them -- I don't remember which specific cards were affected, but I'm sure you could find this on the IVTV website and/or in the IVTV mailing list). The IVTV drivers do their absolute best to workaround the DMA bug, but it isn't perfect. There is definitely a chance you're experiencing the same issues I did.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Good luck,</div><div>David</div>