[mythtv-users] re: DRAFT of proposed new FAQ (or HowTo section)

[Gerald Britton]

On Wed, Jun 25, 2003 at 02:20:15PM -0700, Bruce Markey wrote:
> Gerald Britton wrote:
> ...
> >I have a tv capture card with a mono sound jack, they do exist.
> ...
> >Ones that advertise stereo have stereo tv audio decoders in them,
> >the mono cards are only capable of grabbing the mono broadcast
> >audio out of the air even if they might have a stereo minijack and
> >send the output to both channels.
> 
> This is what I'm unaware of. Can you pass along a make/model
> that passes only mono audio through the patch cord? Or a
> reference to a URL that details a card that works this way?
> I can speculate on how this might be the case but every
> card that I've tried that is not marked stereo has, in fact,
> passed both tracks to the sound card.

The original Hauppauge WinTV card was mono only, the card I have is a
Miro PCTV card (which predates Hauppauge's WinTV series).  The older
WinTV-Go cards also (the newer ones might also lack it, but they aren't
compatible with the bttv driver also).  These cards don't include any
audio decoder chip, so there is no way for them to extract the stereo
signal out of the air.  I don't think Hauppauge even sells their original
WinTV card anymore (the WinTV-pci card includes a stereo decoder chip and
does provide stereo audio).

I also have a dirt cheap, $40 bttv compatible card (it's a no-name brand),
it includes an msp34xx stereo decoder chip and does spit out stereo audio,
it also is very noisy and provides a 15khz hum on the audio (this is the
hsync frequency in NTSC video), so I decided you really do get what you pay
for with these cards.

				-- Gerald