[mythtv-users] NTSC USB tuners: which ones are out there?

[James Miller]

On Thu, 26 Mar 2015, Saul wrote:

> I think I saw your post on Gentoo forums. You did not enable all
> drivers for your tuner, so it is not working.
> Or you got it working and you do not like it?

Thanks for your response, Saul. I have posted on the Gentoo forums, yes. 
And no, I did not yet get the KWorld USB ATSC TV Stick working, if that's 
the hardware you're referring to. But my issues with getting the KWorld 
USB ATSC TV Stick UB435-Q V3 working are NOT what has led me to conclude 
that I likely bought the wrong tuning hardware: rather, it is to the 
HDHR4-2US that I also bought and that seems to be fully operational, that 
I refer when I speak of having bought the wrong hardware. Let me explain.

It looks as though I got clear QAM and NTSC confused as I went about 
determining what hardware I would need to bring in certain cable 
broadcasting that we still care to watch. There are a few SD stations on 
cable (TWC--NatGeo, History Channel, Animal Planet and maybe a couple 
others) from which we wish to record, and the HDHR4-2US does not pick them 
up when I do a channel scan. On subsequent reflection, I believe it won't 
pick them up because they broadcast in NTSC (which the HDHR4-2US does not 
handle, as I understand it) rather than in clear QAM--the latter of which 
the HDHR4-2US does handle.

All these differing broadcast standards are supremely confusing to 
me--even more so when you drag in the encryption factor--and I may well be 
wrong in my understanding of what is at issue. But if I have it more or 
less right, then it is true that I bought the wrong hardware when I 
purchased this HDHR4-2US. The KWorld USB ATSC TV Stick UB435-Q V3 should 
perform its intended function just fine once I've gotten things tuned 
right in the OS, but it was bought for the purpose of bringing in ATSC, 
OTA broadcasting. So I currently do NOT believe I made a mistake in 
purchasing it. It should serve my needs acceptably once I've gotten issues 
with its detection and initialization sorted out. No mistake there, I 
believe.