[mythtv-users] Hauppauge PVR-150 standard def tuner card: That was easy

[Rod Smith]

On Wednesday 10 October 2007 11:01:46 Royce Souther wrote:
> I have an older version of MythTV that would not use my PVR-150. Can
> someone tell me what version of MythTV added support for the ivtv chip set
> as used in the Hauppauge PVR-150?
>
> I yanked out my PVR-150 out and moved it to a different system just to
> record shows and put an saa7134 in my MythTV so now I can watch any channel
> I want and let my other system record shows. This works but I realy must
> aggree with you Todd the picture and sound quality of the ivtv is much
> better then the saa7134. That and the PVR-150 has a much nicer remote make
> me want to buy another and some how get MythTV to use it.
>
> I need to know what version of MythTV started supporting ivtv chip sets
> because I want to dump the unstable Ubuntu and switch back to the reliable
> KnoppMyth. KnoppMyth is a few versions behind the newest MythTV release.

Others have already posted some answers; however, I want to emphasize that, to 
the best of my knowledge, MythTV per se doesn't support the IVTV chipset; 
that's the job of the card's drivers, which in the case of IVTV devices are 
in the IVTV driver, located at http://ivtvdriver.org. I don't actually own an 
IVTV card, so I've not followed this driver very carefully, but I believe 
this driver isn't yet incorporated into the mainstream Linux kernel, so 
you'll need to install it separately or use a distribution that installs it 
by default. What MythTV *DOES* support is MPEG-2 encoder devices, which 
deliver MPEG-2 streams via an appropriate device file. To MythTV, all these 
cards look pretty similar, whether they're IVTV-based Hauppauge PCI cards, 
CX88 Blackbird cards, or even a USB-interfaced Hauppauge PVR-USB2. This isn't 
to say there aren't differences (I know of a few), but the basic MythTV 
configuration will be similar for all such cards.

Since you say you want to switch from Ubuntu to KnoppMyth anyhow, this 
information may be irrelevant to you, but a check of my own Ubuntu system 
reveals that there are several IVTV-related packages: ivtv-firmware, 
ivtv-source, ivtv-utils, and libvideo-ivtv-perl. I didn't notice any obvious 
IVTV binary driver package, so either the Ubuntu people expect you to compile 
it yourself or it's included in Ubuntu's binary kernel. (If you've compiled 
your own kernel, though, you'd lose any Ubuntu-specific additions.) Note that 
I'm using Ubuntu 6.10, which is now a little out of date; it's conceivable 
that newer (or older) versions have different IVTV packages.

-- 
Rod Smith
http://www.rodsbooks.com