[mythtv-users] Dedicated TV-card vs AGP card with TV-out

[anders smith]

The pvr250 is an encoder card that sits in the pci slot and the video/tv-out
card would sit in the agp slot and if you are lucky also have mpeg decoding
so you actually need very little effort frm the cpu except whe fading the
oad and transcoding etc...

I've been using an Atmel based usb dongle for wifi and it works great under
rh9.0, so it's absolutely an option. If you on the otherhand want 54mb
802.11g it might have a harder time as I'm not certain af the current driver
status...

The pvr350 is also an option as it would give you both encoding and decoding
outside the cpu...

rgds
anders


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Micah" <fanmail at micah-wedemeyer.net>
To: <mythtv-users at mythtv.org>
Sent: Monday, May 17, 2004 3:13 PM
Subject: [mythtv-users] Dedicated TV-card vs AGP card with TV-out


> Hi all,
>
> I've been trolling the archives for a while, trying to get a feel for Myth
> and how it works.  I'm getting ready to upgrade my desktop system, and
> rather than toss out or sell the old parts, I'm planning to put together a
> dedicated Myth box with it.  The parts that I think I can re-use are:
>
> Athlon XP 1600+ (like 1.43 GHz or something)
> 512 MB DDR-RAM (forgot the specs)
> Epox 8KHA+ Mobo
>
> Now, the more I look, the more I like the small form factor PCs.  I
> especially like the Biostar iDeq line, since it has an integrated IR
> receiver.  Thanks to all the great postings on this list, I've learned to
> avoid the nForce2 version and look instead toward the Via KM400 based one.
> Unfortunately, there is only 1 AGP and 1 PCI slot on those motherboards.
> I'm thinking about going wireless eventually, which means the wireless lan
> card would take the PCI slot.
>
> So...this brings me to my questions:
> 1) Are there any reasonably priced (under US$100) AGP cards that can do
> hardware MPEG encoding?  If not, will my CPU be fast enough to encode a
> single stream?  Remember, I don't need any gaming speed or anything from
> this machine, only Myth.  Maybe some console emulation (which I have never
> done under Linux anyway, and is not a high priority)
> 2) What are the picture quality differences between dedicated TV-tuner
cards
> (like the PVR-250, which I was planning on getting) and AGP cards that
have
> TV-out as a feature?  I had a GeForce (2 MX, I believe) and I was very,
very
> disappointed with the TV-out quality.
> 3) Has anyone ever heard of a wireless lan card that uses USB instead of
> PCI?  I don't like the idea of plugging in a bunch of external USB
devices,
> but I suppose it would be an OK solution if I decided to use the PCI slot
> for the PVR-250.  I suppose I could even put it inside the case if there
is
> room and I can figure out how to do it.
>
> Thanks again for putting out all this great info for noobs!
> Micah
>
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