[mythtv-users] PVR-350 - PAL-I Variant, for use in Ireland?

[Lorcan Hamill]

Hi All,

First post from a MythTV newbie, so go easy on me. :)

I've just bought a Hauppauge PVR-350, with the intention of
bulding a Myth-based PVR.  But it looks like I may have made
a really dumb mistake, and bought the wrong version...

I live in Dublin, Ireland, and I want to use the card with
the local NTL cable service.  I bought the card over the web
from a company in Germany.  At the time, I thoght that was a
reasonable thing to do, since Germany and Ireland both use PAL,
right?

Well, now I can't get the card to work.  As I installed it,
I noticed that the card has a label on it that says:

   "PAL-B/G  48134  Rev J347"

I think that "PAL-B/G" is the problem - it's PAL-I that we use
in Ireland, it seems - at least according to this list of
broadcast standards by country:

  http://www.datapro.net/techinfo/WorldVideo.html

(Wish I'd seen that *before* I bought the card.)

I tried installing the card anyway, and installed the Windows
software under Windows98 (It's a dual-boot setup, with Win98SE
and RedHat 9 at the moment.)  The Windows channel-scanning
application found 15 channels on my NTL Cable connection, which
is correct - but when I try to view  them, all I get is
a black screen.

So far, I haven't started installing the ivtv driver or any
other Linux software.  But when I run "lspci", the output now
includes this, all on one line:

00:0e.0 Multimedia video controller: Internext Compression Inc
   iTVC15 MPEG-2 Encoder (rev01)

So, I've got lots of questions:

   Am I right in thinking that this card is a version
   that works in Germany, but not in Ireland?

   Is it possible that there's something I can do in software
   (or firmware) that will make this card work with PAL-I?

   Does a PAL-I version of the PVR-350 exist, and where
   would I buy one?  (I've seen the PVR-250 in stores here,
   but never the 350.)

   Has anyone got a PVR-350 (or 250) working with NTL's
   cable service (the basic analogue package) in Dublin?

   Does anyone want to buy a PAL-B/G PVR-350, as new?  :)

Any answers would be *very* gratefully received.

Thanks in advance!

Lorcan Hamill