[mythtv-users] Newbie needs help choosing hardware for use in the UK

mythtv-users at fastdruid.co.uk mythtv-users at fastdruid.co.uk
Wed Jan 12 20:31:12 EST 2005


Alexander Wrote:

> Hello.

Hello :-)
 
> I had a little play with mythTV over the weekend and was very 
> impressed. Great work guys!  I was using an old Hauppaggue 
> frame grabber and no soundcard, but it did suffice as proof 
> of concept.
> 
> I'm now ready to take the plunge and invest in some proper 
> hardware.  I've got a base PC which I think will be good 
> enough and I plan to get a secondhand xbox to use as a frontend.

<snipola>
 
> Living in the UK, 2 DVB cards seem to be the way forward.  Am 
> I right in thinking that they all produce MPEG2 streams so no 
> encoding has to be done in software? 

Yes and no, yes in that the stream from the card is mpeg2 no in that
you might want to transcode the mpeg2 stream to mpeg4 for less disk
space.

> I've come up with a 3 
> card shortlist all available from www.scan.co.uk (where I'll 
> be placing an order for some unrelated stuff later this 
> week.) They are ...
> 
> Avermedia DVB-T PCI Card £64.44
> Hauppauge WinTV-Nova-T Freeview receiver PCI (909) £62.06 
> Vision + PCI TV Tuner - HDTV Compatible + Remote £46.06
>
> Do all these cards definately have suitable drivers?  

Google is your friend ;-)

> I think 
> I read somewhere that not all Nova-T's were the same.  I 
> wouldn't want to end up with an unsupported variant. Or 
> should I just go for the cheapest?  Shouldn't the outputted 
> MPEG2 stream be identical for each card?  The option to 
> receive some of the top-up-tv channels might be good too.  
> Has anybody got this working yet?

Sorry to be of no use in the answer to this but I want to know the same,
I've got my box set up working now with one pvr-350 and want to add
another
card, I'm planning to get another card (probably from scan!) and I _was_

at first thinking of a PVR-250 but that would only give me std
terrestrial[1]
so I was thinking of a DVB-T and route the set-top box via the video in
on
the pvr-350.

I'm going to do some googling but if you do find out which one
looks best please let me know!

> Since my MB only supports UDMA-2, I'm also thinking of buying 
> an addon PCI ATA card. 

You should actually be OK, what is more likely to be a problem is that 
the bandwidth over the bus could cause issues.

> I'm guessing I won't need any soundcards in a DVB only system?

Depends, if you don't want to play anything from the backend then no.

Druid 

[1] and cable through the set-top box/video in



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