[mythtv-users] Tuner Card w/ Svideo Inputs & PCI Sound Transfer

[Joe Votour]

I do have a WinTV PCI card, but I'm in the process of
replacing it with a PVR-350 (having already replaced
another BT878 card with a PVR-250).  The audio and
picture quality are pretty good, and if you crank up
the resolution, it'll look great.

But, you won't be able to use all four of these cards
simultaneously with any CPU on the market that I know
of (well, maybe a high-end Athlon64).  Each software
capture card (of which the WinTV PCI is) requires 1GHz
of CPU power for capturing, according to the MythTV
FAQ.

If you're going to go with 4 PVR-250's, make sure that
you get a very good motherboard, since that will
generate a lot of traffic over the PCI bus, and lots
of DMA action.  The card handles the encoding, but
it's still a lot of data to pass.  Some VIA chipsets
can't handle it, although I haven't had a problem with
my KT400 board with a single PVR-250.  Other people
swear by nForce2 boards, but I tried one and had
stuttering in the video.

It's a lot of money to shell out, so make sure you do
your research...

-- Joe

--- Ian Neubert <ian at ianneubert.com> wrote:
> Joe Votour wrote:
> >Well, it doesn't have analog audio left/right, but
> the
> >Hauppauge WinTV card (model 401) supports S-Video
> in,
> >with a 3.5mm headphone jack input (stereo), and
> works
> >with btaudio (so no connection to a sound card is
> >necessary).
> 
> Thanks Joe. Do you have one of these cards? How's
> the video and audio
> quality?
> 
> Joseph A. Caputo wrote:
> >Also, I believe not all of the revisions of the
> WInTV-PCI 401 cards may
> >support btaudio.  I don't know if anyone has been
> able to reliably identify
> >cards that will support btaudio; certainly not
> without examining the chips
> on
> >the card, and even that is not always a guarantee.
> 
> Thanks for the tip. I'm leaning toward using a bunch
> of the newer PVR-250's
> as they don't need a sound card and they have an
> integrated encoder.
> 
> >4 analog tuners?  I hope the OP has an awful lot of
> spare CPU cycles...
> 
> Assuming I get the PVR-250's with onboard MPEG-2
> encoders, do you think an
> Athlon 2400+ could handle all 4 + a pcHDTV recording
> at once? In this setup
> the CPU shouldn't be doing anything with the video
> for any of the cards,
> just spewing everything to the hard disks. Is that
> correct?
> 
> Thanks for all your help everyone.
> 
> ..................
> ..................
> ............ian...
> ..................
> www.ianneubert.com
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: mythtv-users-bounces at mythtv.org
> [mailto:mythtv-users-bounces at mythtv.org]On Behalf Of
> Joe Votour
> Sent: Thursday, January 22, 2004 5:28 PM
> To: Discussion about mythtv
> Subject: Re: [mythtv-users] Tuner Card w/ Svideo
> Inputs & PCI Sound
> Transfer
> 
> 
> Well, it doesn't have analog audio left/right, but
> the
> Hauppauge WinTV card (model 401) supports S-Video
> in,
> with a 3.5mm headphone jack input (stereo), and
> works
> with btaudio (so no connection to a sound card is
> necessary).
> 
> The driver is fairly stable, and I don't see why 4
> of
> them wouldn't work together.  The trick though is
> making sure that the cards you get have the BT878
> chip
> on them, as I think some of the newer ones have
> newer
> Conexant chips that aren't fully supported.
> 
> -- Joe
> 
> --- Ian Neubert <ian at ianneubert.com> wrote:
> > I'm working on setting up a large MythTV backend
> > with 4 analog tuners and 1
> > HDTV tuner. To save on PCI slots & PCs I want to
> > load them all up in one
> > box.
> >
> > So the big questions: Are there any input cards
> that
> > have inputs for (at
> > least) S-video & analog audio left & right
> (ideally
> > audio would input from
> > an optical S/PDIF) and will send the stereo audio
> > through the PCI interface
> > to be recorded? And will this card work with 4 of
> > them in one PC?
> >
> > I'm trying to avoid needing a seperate soundcard
> for
> > each tuner, and
> > consolidate everything on a single server. Any
> > thoughts?
> >
> > Thanks!!
> >
> > ..................
> > ..................
> > ............ian...
> > ..................
> > www.ianneubert.com
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> > mythtv-users at mythtv.org
> >
>
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> 
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