[mythtv-users] Anyone successful with HD3000 DVB andPVR-150/500's?

[Greg Woods]

On Tue, 2005-09-27 at 14:59 -0400, Folashade Adeyosoye wrote:
> I am beginning to think I might have chosen the wrong card, I am not looking
> on upgrading my Comcast cable anytime soon to digital.

In that case, if you have analog cable connected to your HD-3000 card,
then just use the V4L drivers. Worked for me, avoids the conflict with
IVTV drivers.

> I wonder what the ratio of HD-3000 is to the PVR-500 out there, and which
> one would one consider the better card.

Well, I started my whole trip into MythTV land by buying an HD-3000 card
because I was worried about the broadcast flag stuff. I was afraid that
if I didn't buy one before July 1, those cards would become illegal in
the US unless they had a lot of onerous DRM stuff. Turns out the US
Supreme Court postponed implementation of the broadcast flag rule, but I
already had my HD-3000 so I set about using it. It worked OK, but the
more I learned about all of this stuff, the more I realized it really
isn't the right card for analog cable. If you aren't actually receiving
HD signals, then the PVR-500 is far superior. The PVR cards have
hardware encoding. With the HD-3000, your CPU has to do all the work.
The PVR-500 also has TWO tuners, a big win on a MythTV box. So I ended
up switching to the PVR-500 on my master backend, and I have a slave
backend that has a PVR-150. I don't even use the HD-3000 any more, I
will maybe try to use it one of these days for getting OTA HD channels,
but we only have a small handful of those in our area and I don't have
an HD-capable TV yet anyway.

I think, if you are just using analog cable, that you are way better off
with a PVR card than an HD-3000.

--Greg