[mythtv-users] Nova-T vs V-Stream XPert?

[Hamish Moffatt]

On Sun, Apr 03, 2005 at 05:52:31PM +1000, Andrew Herron wrote:
> I'm in Brisbane, Australia and about to set up a MythTV box.  After
> reading a few of the old threads on tv tuner cards my decision has
> come down to the KWorld V-Stream XPert or the Hauppage Nova-T.  The
> Nova-T is A$120 more at Aus PC Market, so I was wondering if someone
> could detail the differences between them.  I don't mind paying more
> but at almost double the price there has to be a good reason for it
> :)
> 
> So far I've been able to pick up that the KWorld card is
> multi-function with some analog inputs and what appears to be RF
> pass-through - which makes me wonder all the more why it's so much
> cheaper than the single-input Hauppage.  The Aus PC Market site claims
> it only supports SDTV recording, not HDTV; that may explain it but
> does MythTV suffer the same restrictions when using this card?

I've got a DPANDA card (from dpanda.com.au; $239) which is pretty
similar to one of the older Nova-T designs. It works well. It was the
first card I bought before the cheaper cards became available.

I also have two of the KWorld cards bought in the past couple of months.
They work just fine too. Just as good as the DPANDA card, which is to
say that all of them work flawlessly for me.

The Nova-T has changed a bit over time. The latest version has the
cx2388x chipset, which is the same as the KWorld.

I had to replace my Avermedia 761 recently because I had some many
problems with the bt878 chipset onboard. I considered buying a couple
more of the DPANDA cards or Nova-Ts because they work so well, but
gambled on the KWorld instead. No regrets. I can't think of any reasont
to pay more because the KWorld works perfectly for me.

My KWorlds always report zero bit error rate. I'm not sure whether
they're super-sensitive or the error rate measurement is not implemented
in the driver! I live in a strong signal area so I can't compare the
cards in a marginal environment.

> And on an unrelated note what is the general recommendation for linux
> distros to use for MythTV?  I've been running Debian on my firewall
> for 4 years now, but I've heard good things about Fedora Core for
> running a PVR.

I use Debian; works fine. Everything is available packaged from
third-party repositories.

Hamish
-- 
Hamish Moffatt VK3SB <hamish at debian.org> <hamish at cloud.net.au>