[mythtv-users] Plextor external USB capture device

[Nick Rout]

My understanding of the driver for the plextor usb units is that it does
not mux the sound in with the video, this being left to the user's
software to acheive. The sound is delivered as uncompressed PCM. This is
in contrast to the Hauppauge PVR 150/250/350/500  cards where the output
is muxed video/audio, albeit only mpeg2, not mpeg4.

This seems to imply two possible difficulties:

1. that there could be audio synching problems, depending on how good
the muxing is done in software; and

2. some of the performance gain in the hardware mpeg will be lost by the
need to compress [1] and mux the audio on the cpu,

Seems to me that unless you have a pressing need for USB, or hardware
encoded mpeg-4, then the PVR cards are a tried and tested formula.


[1] assuming you don't want the full uncompressed audio.

On Mon, 27 Mar 2006 22:23:24 -0500
Jim Minihane wrote:

> A couple of weeks. Hmmmm. Perhaps I'll return them and just get PVR-500s.
> Cheaper per encoder anyway. Heh heh heh. I'll try Mythdora and see what
> happens with the PVR-500 I have. Fun times!
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: mythtv-users-bounces at mythtv.org [mailto:mythtv-users-
> > bounces at mythtv.org] On Behalf Of Brian Wood
> > Sent: Monday, March 27, 2006 9:52 PM
> > To: Discussion about mythtv
> > Subject: Re: [mythtv-users] Plextor external USB capture device
> > 
> > 
> > On Mar 27, 2006, at 7:37 PM, Jim Minihane wrote:
> > 
> > > Yeah, That's what I thought was kind of weird. I've just installed
> > > FC4 on a
> > > machine. I had errors until I didn't create a partition as xfs or
> > > jfs. Now
> > > that I've updated it (yum), I'll try creating a partition as jfs or
> > > xfs in
> > > the remaining 38GB. It wouldn't recognize my onboard sound either.
> > > I'd just
> > > LOVE to find a distro that doesn't throw errors. Knoppmyth wouldn't
> > > install
> > > either. So here it is... Do the Plextors work with Mythdora or not?
> > > I'll
> > > switch to PVR-500's if I have to. Will they be recognized
> > > automatically? I'd
> > > rather not go through distro after distro. If no one lese has done
> > > this then
> > > I'll have to but I suspect that nothing I am about to try has never
> > > been
> > > done. I'd like to leverage previous knowledge.
> > 
> > At present the Plextors do not work with MythDora, I suspect, but do
> > not know for sure, that they will not work on any FC-4 system.
> > 
> > They did work for me on a Gentoo system and a Knoppmyth system, both
> > 0.18 and 0.19.
> > 
> > The problem seems to be related to the ALSA modules and the Plextor
> > drivers (go7007) not playing well together. If oyu are having sound
> > problems you will have to get that straightened out before any Myth
> > Distro will work.
> > 
> > I really believe that the Plextor problem will be resolved, and we
> > will all laugh about how stupid the problem really was. I would be
> > surprised if it takes more than 2 or 3 weeks to get it figured out,
> > but I have been surprised before :-)
> > 
> > The 500s should work on any recent distro using recent IVTV drivers.
> > They should be automatically recognized but not as a 500, I think
> > they get recognized as 2 150s (which is what they really are).
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> 
> 
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-- 
Nick Rout <nick at rout.co.nz>