[mythtv-users] Which HD card?

[Jafa]

Brad Templeton wrote:
>> BTW - Check out the HDHomeRun: http://www.silicondust.com
>>
>> It plugs into your network so there are no issues with compatibility. 
>> The only requirement is that you are running the soon to be released 
>> MythTV 0.20.
>>
>> Nick
>>     
>
> That looks very interesting.   No QAM tuning then, just 8vsb?
>   
I am looking into the possibility of adding QAM64/256 support through a 
firmware upgrade. Out of the box it is 8VSB.
> One thing that's nice about an ethernet tuner is in theory any
> backend could suck data from it, though it would be a mess to
> try to manage allocation in a system like that.    Two tuners on
> ether for $169 does seem like a good value proposition, though.
>   
The two tuners can each be managed independently so you can use 
different machines or two different apps if desired.
Typically both would be allocated to MythTV and as long as MythTV isn't 
recording on both tuners at the time you can use another app such as 
VLC. If MythTV decides to record something on the tuner you are using 
with VLC then it will simply take over and VLC will stop.
> To kick it up a notch (I don't know how much of a microcontroller
> is in it) the next step would be to let it have a usb hard drive
> (or even internal) and be told simple commands like, "From 8 to
> 9 record channel X to file Y" or even to get simpler, "to blocks
> M through N on the drive".   This would allow you to have a box
> that records on its own, and the backend could actually power down.
> It would present a very basic block interface to the disk and leave
> filesystems to the smarter computer.   Not that filesystems are that
> hard, I guess if you can have linux on a cheap wireless AP, you can
> have it in a tuner box.
>   
It has a good processing power (250 MIPS) with high-performance hardware 
real-time threads. An internal hard drive would add to the cost of the 
power supply considerably. USB is interesting.
My MythTV box is always on and I do like having the big drives in one place.

Nick