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Television Media Software Linux Business Hardware Linux Entertainment

Plextor PVRs Now Support Linux 172

Posted by timothy from the excellent-news dept.
planetjay writes "Plextor PVRs now support Linux with an open source SDK for their ConvertX PVR external USB TV tuner/encoder This is great news for Linux PVR users who want to use an external device with hardware based MPEG-2 and MPEG-4/DivX encoding in their MythTV or Freevo homebuilt PVR. "Plextor is strongly committed to supporting the Open Source Software movement with free development tools that help speed the creation of next-generation Linux-based video software," said Dirk Peters, director of marketing, Plextor."
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Plextor PVRs Now Support Linux More

Plextor PVRs Now Support Linux

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  • Kudos (Score:4, Insightful)

    by michaelhood ( 667393 ) on Tuesday March 08, 2005 @09:43PM (#11884107)
    I keep loving seeing these companies lately who are Doing The Right Thing (tm). Here's to hoping clue is contagious.

    • Re:Kudos (Score:3, Funny)

      by LarsWestergren ( 9033 )
      Here's to hoping clue is contagious.

      Clue IS contagious, but scientists recently discovered that ignorance is radioactive and kills clue every time, I'm sorry to say.

  • gee (Score:1, Redundant)

    by ginotech ( 816751 )
    wow, now i actually might go buy the necessary equipment and start using my linux box as a pvr
    • Ofcource I've yet to see a company make something compatable with my satalite service. So, in the meantime I'm stuck with the DVR in my Sat Receiver.

      • Re:gee (Score:4, Informative)

        by enrico_suave ( 179651 ) on Tuesday March 08, 2005 @09:53PM (#11884200) Homepage
        " Ofcource I've yet to see a company make something compatable with my satalite service. So, in the meantime I'm stuck with the DVR in my Sat Receiver."

        you basically can use almost any DVR with an external satellite set top box. You just route the video/audio output of the STB to the DVR/encoding card and use an IR blaster or serial cable to control the STB (i.e. change the channels at the appropriate time)

        The only rub really would be if it's an HDTV satellite service, as that's a different wrinkle =)

        e.
        • I read recently (sorry lost the link) that we can't record HD signals from cable or satellite since they are encrypted. The amount of information from an HD feed is huge and with current technology would take a 6GHz CPU to decrypt in real-time.

          Here's to hoping there will be a solution in the near future but don't hold your breath.

          • Re:gee (Score:4, Informative)

            by enrico_suave ( 179651 ) on Tuesday March 08, 2005 @10:18PM (#11884358) Homepage
            "I read recently (sorry lost the link) that we can't record HD signals from cable or satellite since they are encrypted. The amount of information from an HD feed is huge and with current technology would take a 6GHz CPU to decrypt in real-time."

            Well not ALL satellite traffic is encrypted. There's a ton of FTA DVB satellite signals [planetdvb.com] out there... even hidef ones (ok they are pbs, but still... mmmmm NOVA...

            There are a few HDTV cards that CAN decode unencrypted QAM signal via digital cable, but that depends on your cable company not encrypting which is hit or miss...

            There's also the possibility of pulling the HDTV content over firewire (and controlling the STB via firewire) and I believe the latest mythtv .17 has some preliminary support for such an arrangement, again depending on if your firewire port is enabled and some other factors on your particular STB (although I'm confused as whether they have to have the firewire port be unencrytped or not, or what the regs are, to be honest...)

            *Shrug* so I guess you're basically right, but it's not out of the question, but there's not a good legal way to decrypt digital cable (or directV/dishnetwork) like using a CableCard in some HDTV's now...

            e.

          • Re:gee (Score:3, Interesting)

            by Nik13 ( 837926 )
            Well, most HDTV sat programming (in NA) went to secure encryption (nagravision 2) not long ago, so you can't record it (unecnrypted) as easily as before.

            Decrypting actually isn't so CPU intensive. I used to record/decrypt HD off sat (DVB) easily with a lowly Athlon XP 2000+, and cpu load was rather low. I think memory speed/latency and such might be more of a concern. (AFAIK, some cards can also do the decrypting itself in hardware, you just send it the proper keys)

            As for decoding, you don't need so much

        • Re:gee (Score:1, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward
          That defeats part of the purpose. One nice thing about DSS based PVR's (at least the TiVo units integrated with DirecTV) is they record the bit stream directly so there is no digital-analog-digital, and shows with 5.1 sound are not downmixed to 2 channel analog. In short, there's zero quality difference between live and recorded TV.

        • What do you mean stuck with your PVR sat receiver?

          IMHO, it beats all other PVRs hands down. No loss of quality - both for video and audio. I don't know if people using the analog counterparts are blind, don't care about quality or what, but there is NO way I'm putting up with the quality of the analog captures. With sat, I also keep digital sound (AC3 5.1 if present). Even the difference between analog captured audio (even with good card/cables and all) and basic mpeg audio recorded as is (not captured) is

          • Re:gee (Score:2, Insightful)

            by enrico_suave ( 179651 )
            there's a lot to what you are saying... it's absolutely true that the satellite PVR, takes the digital stream and writes the digital bits right to the local disk and there's no loss of quality.

            BUT there are other reasons to build a PVR... There are satellite cards out there, and if the satellite companies allowed you to legitimately use your subscription access card with one of these cards, it would be a moot benefit.

            Look, the reason to roll your own PVR has little to do with economics. If you can get a D
            • No it's not just about economics. But the Pc based PVRs are also way too much of a PITA and time consuming to setup.

              As for the DVD burning feature, like I had mentionned before, I can't imagine bothering with that. If you watch on PDA/phone or such (especially since recordnig quality hardly matters then), then I guess that can be handy for you. Even if I don't do that or never seen anyone even mention that (other than online), I'll still grant you that.

              As for movie times, comisc, rss feeds and all those e
          • True, but at least with the PC based PVR I can move my caputure to my laptop or better yet burn to DVD for later viewing.
          • You may not be a geek. You are definitely a gadget guy. One does not necessarily equate to the other. I like to build things for the fun of building them. Even if the end result *MIGHT* not be as good as a pre-packaged product, I always get this let down/cop out feeling when I buy something I know I could have built. I also don't like it when I get a closed system of some kind and mods are nearly impossible. Of course, I don't realy consider myself a geek since most of the geeks I've interacted with o

  • Awesome (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SealBeater ( 143912 ) on Tuesday March 08, 2005 @09:45PM (#11884124) Homepage
    What's nice about this to me is that, since it's USB2 (tech specs aside), you
    can take the space that a pci card would have, put a usb2 card in it's place,
    and have multiple tuners, since mythtv has support for multiple tuners, case
    space considerations are no longer such a factor.

    Now, we just have to see if it's any good.

    SealBeater

    • Re:Awesome (Score:5, Informative)

      by lakeland ( 218447 ) <lakeland@acm.org> on Tuesday March 08, 2005 @11:43PM (#11884907) Homepage
      Or just buy a card with multiple tuners. My pvr500 has two, but I've heard of cards with four! That way you don't have to have an ugly USB device outside the case.

      Not to take away from what Plextor has done though, this looks like it might be the solution for some people.
      • Ah, I wasn't aware such existed, awesome.
      • You have a PVR500 working with linux and mythtv? Has it been stable?

        • Re:Awesome (Score:3, Interesting)

          by lakeland ( 218447 )
          Yeah, I have it working. I downloaded a patch to ivtv from somewhere (first hit on google) and it works. Too soon to say if it is stable, because I've only just put it in (to replace a cx88 based tuner).

      • Re:Awesome (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Sketch ( 2817 )
        > Or just buy a card with multiple tuners. My pvr500 has two, but I've heard of cards with four!

        But does your Myth box have enough CPU power to simultaneously record/encode 4 MPEG4/DivX streams? As far as I know, the Hauppage cards only do MPEG2 which is going to require much more disk space. The Plextor devices encode to MPEG4/DivX in hardware, so you should be able to handle a lot more tuners on one lower-spec box.

        However, USB I/O is rather CPU intensive from what I've seen. I wonder how many you
      • That's great if you only have 2 or 4 channels, but I have over 400 TV stations that I want to record every one of them 24x7 in order to watch later.
        • LOL! Most MBs don't have many USB hubs. Mine has three, but I understand newer machines have four. Say you can fit four of these devices to a USB hub before saturating it, I think I'll be limited to sixteen channels simultaneously. Oh, and you'll have to have a decent RAID setup for recording them all. Aren't you lucky mythtv supports slave servers? :-)

          PS: Crazy as recording 400 channels is, it seems much less crazy now than it did a few weeks ago. I run mythtv for my family to potentially three clie
    • How many USB2 tuners could you concievably hook up before you use up all the USB bandwidth?

      The Hauppage 500 has two tuners, for less than the 250, I've been waiting patiently for it to be fully supported by the ivtv module (it was close a month ago when I checked)

      Too bad theres no way to do it with USB 1.1, an xbox + usb tuner would make a kickass (and cheap) myth box.

  • Skip Commercials? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    If it can do that.....I'll buy it.

  • Only NTSC tv tuner (Score:4, Informative)

    by rar ( 110454 ) on Tuesday March 08, 2005 @09:51PM (#11884189) Homepage
    The sad thing is that the built-in tv-tuner only supports NTSC, so this product is obviously not targeted for europe...

    • Re:Only NTSC tv tuner (Score:2, Informative)

      by bjerre ( 154876 )
      Have a look at the NorthQ 6600 instead.
      http://northq.com/products/tvvideo/nq6600.html [northq.com]

      Same product just cheaper AND it features PAL!

      I have it running on my RedHat at home // chris

      Linux driver and manual is found on their support pages:
      http://northq.com/faq/ [northq.com]

      PS If you're attending CeBIT this week they are in Hall 24, Stand B16

      • Re:Only NTSC tv tuner (Score:2, Informative)

        by JanneM ( 7445 )
        Um, that one doesn't seem to have a tuner at all. Note that the Plextor can use both PAL and NTSC signals as well; it only has a tuner for NTSC, though.

        Interesting piece of kit anyway - thanks for the link.

    • Re:Only NTSC tv tuner (Score:5, Informative)

      by lutchann ( 857818 ) on Tuesday March 08, 2005 @10:59PM (#11884664)
      There are three models of the TV402U: North America, Europe (PAL) and Japan. The difference is the frequency bands that the tuner can receive. Only the NA tuner is supported currently but we'll add support for the PAL and Japan tuners in the next couple weeks.

      The M402U is just like the TV402U but without a tuner, and it's also supported in Linux. Both of these devices can accept NTSC or PAL baseband inputs on the S-Video and Composite ports, regardless of the frequency bands the on-board tuner supports.
    • "he sad thing is that the built-in tv-tuner only supports NTSC, so this product is obviously not targeted for europe..."

      Will this work?

      European version of Plextor ConvertX [plextor.be]
      TV Tuner PAL/SECAM
      Video Capture PAL/SECAM (720 x 576, 352 x 576, 352 x 288)
      NTSC (720 x 480, 352 x 480, 352 x 240)
      Video Input S-Video or Composite (RCA connector)
      Audio Input Stereo audio (2 x RCA connectors)
      TV Inputs RF/Coaxial
      PC Interface Hi-Speed USB 2.0
      Power Supply 100 - 240 V, 50/60 Hz
    • http://www.plextor.be/products/px-tv402u.asp?choic e=ConvertX%20PVR%20PX-TV402U

  • Tivo? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Manchot ( 847225 ) on Tuesday March 08, 2005 @09:52PM (#11884192)
    Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't all Tivos already Linux-based? And didn't they just recently come out with an SDK for third-party users?

    • Re:Tivo? (Score:5, Informative)

      by enrico_suave ( 179651 ) on Tuesday March 08, 2005 @09:58PM (#11884215) Homepage
      " Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't all Tivos already Linux-based? And didn't they just recently come out with an SDK for third-party users?"

      They do use linux as the base part of the TiVo, but all the juicy stuff is propietary AFAIK.

      The SDK is for the home media option only, i.e. to develop applications that reside outside the tivo on a PC, and add functionality over the network... which is pretty cool and people are doing cool stuff already with it, but it's not a full blown access to TiVo's innards...

      *shrug*

      e.

  • What's the easiest? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Kozz ( 7764 ) on Tuesday March 08, 2005 @09:59PM (#11884219)

    ...or is there no easy way to BYOPVR? I mean, I've heard about MythTV and Freevo and all sorts of hardware, etc, and as much as I think Linux can be a great tool, sometimes it's a royal FPITA to get thing configured & compiled right, make everything work. I'm not a kung-fu master sysadmin, just a guy who's done his fair share of ./configure, make && make install.

    If I don't want to fuck around with making sure I've got all the right hardware pieces just perfect, what're my options for buying something pre-built that will work well, no monthly subscription fee, etc?

    • Re:What's the easiest? (Score:5, Informative)

      by mjh ( 57755 ) <mark@ho[ ]lan.com ['rnc' in gap]> on Tuesday March 08, 2005 @10:09PM (#11884289) Homepage Journal
      Try KnoppMyth. [mysettopbox.tv] I don't know if it crosses your threshold of "easy", but it's definately easier than building myth from soruce.
    • well there's knoppmyth [mysettopbox.tv] mythtv installer that makes it pretty easy. Pair that with a pvr250 and a nvidia video card and you should be in great shape (I'm reasonably sure in the near future the knoppmyth project will add support for the plextor convertX - I hope)

      If you go to the dark side (windoze) it can be pretty easy... shameless plug check out some of the articles on byopvr.com [byopvr.com] for some good diy background, recommendations, etc..

      e.

    • Re:What's the easiest? (Score:3, Informative)

      by bwcarty ( 660606 )
      I'm going to risk saying something positive about Microsoft and say that Windows XP Media Center edition is easy. It's not necessarily cheap, but it works.

      You need a compatible TV tuner (Hauppauge PVR-350), a video card with TV and 64MB or more memory, a software MPEG decoder, a DVD drive, a sound card, and a compatible remote ($35 from pcalchemy.com)

      XP MCE OEM is available from Newegg, the official MS remote is available at pcalchemy.com.

      That's about it. PVR works, the FM tuner on the PVR-350 works, D
      • I think you meant the pvr250, as I don't think MCE 2005 supports the PVR350 and it's hardware mpeg decoding TV out.

        I mean you might be able to use the pvr350 with mce 2005, but the 350's tv out will lay fallow which is kinda a waste.

        The hauppauge wintv pvr150MCE is a cheaper option, also the ATI e-home wonder is around the same price and MCE2005 certified.

        e.
        • I'm just starting on a MythTV box and I got a pvr 350 for my birthday for it.
          Is that a waste over the 250 as well?
          Also, how low can I go on my lying around machines (would a 400mhz work?)

          • a P2-400 might *work* as long as you're using the 350's TV-out (so that you're using its hardware decoding as well). I've read that Myth has early support for this, but it's not fully functional just yet. The 350 uses its own frame buffer from what I understand, so anything wanting to support it has to write its OSD and other visuals directly to this.
          • With the PVR-350, and KnoppMyth, I think the recomendation is to use an 800 mhz processor, but you can find out more at

            Following the FAQ on the left it appears that people have made a 450 mhz processor work with a PVR-350, but he doesn't consider it an out of the box 'just works' solution.

            This doesn't mean that you couldn't build your own platform from the ground up with some other distirbution. However for 'ease of build' I strongly recomend KnoppMyth. That is at the very least based upon my own experie
    • What're my options for buying something pre-built that will work well, no monthly subscription fee, etc?

      It's called a TiVo. And you pony up the extra $300 for lifetime guide data.
      • Remember however, that it is the lifetime of the unit, not your lifetime. If it dies, you sell it, or TiVo decides to EOL the hardware, you get to pony up another lifetime subscription for your next device.

        Works for many people however.
    • Dead easy - buy a Hauppauge Winpvr card. The 250 is pretty cheap. Buy a big-ass hard drive (also cheap) and a DVD burner.

      Run it in Windows with something like SageTV, or whatever your favourite Linux app of the same type is. I've had Sage running for a while now on my Windows box and it does just about everything a dedicated PVR would do, and if I really want to see something on the big TV I can burn it off onto a DVD easily.

      Works fine, and the whole setup cost a couple of hundred dollars.

    • Re:What's the easiest? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Cylix ( 55374 ) * on Tuesday March 08, 2005 @11:31PM (#11884859) Homepage Journal
      Just go fetch a DVD Recorder with HD built in.

      They have on screen guide data and schedulers.

      You also get the added benefit of being able to record a dvd in realtime.

      I did a good bit of research on them some time ago and there are some nice models out there. Some of the units are really pricey, but you can get a smaller HD model for 600$.

      Besides pricey, the real drawback to a pre-built, ready to roll-out pvr like some panasonic units is they use EPG (Electronic Program Guide) data. So your guide stream has to be sucked out of the video stream. (I'm not sure if its compatible with PSIP (Digital Television guide data protocol).

      However, it's been months since I've done any investigation and I'm sure things have changed a bit. I'm sure a casual google search will reveal something for you and I do believe there are a few places selling pre-built media boxes with myth and freevo. *I've even seen shuttle controls, but no one sells them that way*

      If open source isn't your thing, you can always go the windows route and try out BeyondTV. However, for all of its features, it only ships with WM9 support for mpeg4 now. (Though I wrote a python script using mencoder to work with BTV to compress using divx) (There was also something off about width/height issues if you weren't using DivX pro)

      Having used BTV and MythTV extensively I can say that MythTV really does a great job competing with a commercial app such as BTV.

      I like both of them a great deal, but I've currently switched to MythTV and probably will remain a mythtv user for a long time.
    • There are some companies that will sell you a fine box 100% set up with mythtv for you. To pick one I like, solarpc.com. But if you want to sacrifice an existing box, then have a look at KnoppMyth, which will make installation almost as simple as putting the CD in the drive and hitting install.
    • If you want to go the Windows route, get a Hauppauge PVR-150 and a copy of GB-PVR [gbpvr.com]. GB-PVR is not open source, but it is free, and even supports the Hauppauge remote right out of the box (the PVR-150 comes with a remote, the PVR-150-MCE does not, so stay away from that unless you're running Windows MCE and therefore have a remote already). I installed this, a 300 gig HD, and the GB-PVR software on Tuesday. I was going in 15 mins tops.
    • I tried out MythTV, but, as you would have predicted, it indeed proved to be a FPITA. I also tried out Freevo, which was similarly painful.

      However, what I found was that it was pretty darned easy to write my own pvr app. I use the Hauppauge PVR-250. I can't recall if I needed to install a driver -- seems to me the driver came with my Mandrake. On bootup, you get /dev/video0. Use a utility to set the channel, then try cat'ing that to a file, and you'll get something you can play with mplayer:

      $

  • Wishful thinking (Score:4, Interesting)

    by hashts ( 583541 ) on Tuesday March 08, 2005 @09:59PM (#11884220)
    Too bad none of the HDtv cards out there can decrypt signals from Satellite or cable. Of course thats due to the providers forcing you to buy/rent their own PVRs.

    I'd be all over this device if it would work with an HD feed from satellite.
    • Actually the Air2PC card can decode cable HDTV. Assuming they're unencrypted of course. Supported by mythtv [mythtv.org].
    • Apparently there's experimental support for the PCTV HD-3000 [pchdtv.com] card. This card supports NTSC, ATSC, and QAM. Unfortunately there's not much you can do with the encrypted signals. Apparently Comcast transmits all digital channels as encrypted except for the local stations. I have not personally tried the QAM support since it's currently a set of experimental patches against the latest driver code. -Aaron
  • Article title got it right, link got it wrong. Incidentally, this exact same error is on a billboard outside my house -- there's a sports star prominently featured, with the text "MVP's [whatever-his-name-is] and Dahill Industries".

    I suppose that if folks who are paying tens of thousands of dollars for billboard space can't get it right, why should I expect /. editors to do any better?
  • I actually own the ConvertX PVR from plextor. It's very nice actually and I would recommend it to anyone. It's now time to hookup a linux box PVR system, hazah!

  • 500gb media center. (Score:5, Informative)

    by bullterror ( 412884 ) on Tuesday March 08, 2005 @11:01PM (#11884681)
    I've been using Windows Media Center edition and I'm going to drop it. First off, it's unstable, having to reboot your TV once or twice a week isn't fun especially when if you don't do it you come home to find it missed your shows. Second, the DRM is really a pain in the neck. MS-DVR isn't hard to convert to a better format but it is time consuming because there's always that extra step of making it into mpeg-2. Saving a show off windows media center is actually harder than ripping a CSS encrypted DVD. (I hate to do the typical MS-bashing but I really have been having a lot of trouble with my media center recently.)

    I have been planning on buying one of the plextor units for a while, I like the idea of hardware encoding directly to mpeg-4, and I like plextor products, the have made the most reliable CD burners I've ever owned. I like the linux option, that seems like a good idea, but whatever I do I simply want it to be as versatile as possible, and Windows MCE is not versatile.

    • Re:500gb media center. (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      WEll it's going to take a bit for it to get working in Mythtv, but it shouldn't take long since it already uses proper Linux-specific standards.

      V4L2 (video for linux 2, is the re-done video input thing for Linux 2.6 and provides a standard API thingie for applications to latch into) and Alsa sound stuff.

      So it shouldnt' take long.

      If you want to try out Mythtv ready made check out
      http://wilsonet.com/mythtv/fcmyth.php

      They have pre-made packages and you use yum/apt to install it over the internet. Makes thi

  • Hats off to Plextor (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dmouritsendk ( 321667 ) on Tuesday March 08, 2005 @11:06PM (#11884719)
    Now this is class, not only are they the first company to release drivers this kind of product for linux, they way they are doing it is truely awesome.

    Released under the GPL(this will probertly be included in the kernel pretty soon i guess?), V4L2 support and code samples.

    I can hardly wait for gstreamer (and it's v4l2 source element) to get a bit more stable/functional, and stuff like gstsharp gets included in the mono stack. I imagine we'll start to see a hole bunch of neat video applications.

  • as opposed to Hauppauge's lack of support (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jbr439 ( 214107 ) on Tuesday March 08, 2005 @11:07PM (#11884730)
    Plextor gets two thumbs up for this. Hauppauge gets thumbs down for not only not providing open source drivers for their PVR-x50 cards, but for not even supplying proprietary drivers. It's due to what can only be described as amazingly valient work on the part of the IVTV developers (and users) that Hauppauge's cards are usable on Linux systems.

    Luckily for Hauppauge, there is currently nothing to worry about with the Plextor PVR having a MSRP of $199. But if that price ever comes down ...
    • Hauppauge sort of has its hands tied, because one of the Conexant chips used on the PVR-x50 boards has no open documentation (you have to order a development kit from Conexant for an exorbitant fee, and you're still bound by copyright not to share that documentation).

      • Hauppauge could provide what NVidia does and break the driver into two parts - a closed source part that contains the "brains" of the driver, and an open source part that provides the "glue" between the kernel and the closed source code.

        Unless there is a valid technical reason for not doing this, I can only assume that Hauppauge does not care about the Linux market. Hence, two thumbs down.
    • Definitely. I'm ramping up to build a mythbox for myself and I'll definitely support the guys putting out open source.

      Besides, I can spell Plextor!

  • what about the broadcast flag? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 08, 2005 @11:26PM (#11884830)
    I was about to buy some pvr cards now rather than later so I don't end up with cards with a broadcast flag prematurely enabled in the cards. Don't be so sure that the manufacturers will wait until the deadline to enable the broadcast flag. They may decide to enable the flag during scheduled downtime rather than wait until a date deadline when they may have no deadline (and orders for different hardware to be built on the same equipment).

    What is important is to be able to discern whether this pvr hardware or any of the other pvr hardware has the broadcast flag enabled so you know which ones to avoid.

    One of the things that worried me was the pvr pci cards themselves. I'm no expert on pci technology, so the concern is how long before the cards are obsolete? I have some older computers that use the old slot technology (ISA?), and those cards are now useless. Ended up having to buy new cards. From what I've read, the PCI Express slots are smaller and use serial technology, so they are incompatible with the current pci cards. And after PCI Express? PCI-X?

    What happens to all the pci pvr cards when the motherboards start including PCI Express? They are already adding the slots. It looks like they are mixing the PCI Express with the regular PCI slots, similar to what they did with the old transition to PCI. The irony is that the pvr cards would benefit tremendously from PCI Express. I've been thinking of buying two over-the-air digital cards, one the air2pc and the other the 3000 card (can't remember the rest of the name right now) so that I spread my risks. I've also planned to buy two pvr-350s, for a total of 4 cards. I already am figuring that the limitation with recording from the 4 total cards simultaneously would be the pci bus (raid would eliminate the hard drive i/o bottleneck).

    The reason for sticking 4 cards in one backend for mythtv would be to keep electricity costs reasonable. One of the things I've noticed that many people ignore is the cost of running a computer 24/7. This is the problem with multiple backends for mythtv (and seti@home). If one backend can be used for recording and playback, that keeps the electricity costs at a minimum. Add a second backend and electricity costs double.

    I've been watching the mythtv user list recently, as well as the irc channels for mythtv and knoppmyth so I can figure out where is the best place to buy all of the cards, the air2pc, the 3000, the pvr-250/350. It looks like some places are out of stock on them from time to time. And pricewatch is no help. Being out of stock brings up the original worries, that the cards sell out as they are made without a large stockpile, which makes it more likely that the broadcast flag will appear in cards sooner than the deadline because of the reasons I outlined above and because there is no old stock to work off.

    The card listed in this post would be better than the pci cards if the hardware has all the functionality of the pci cards. The reason being that the connection, usb, would be more likely to outlast pci slots which are being obsoleted by the pci express. As for whether the bandwidth of usb 2.0 is an issue over a pci slot, I can't speak to that. But it keeps the pvr hardware working when the motherboard/computer becomes obsolete and finally fails.

    Thanks, Hollings, and the rest of the Senators for pushing for the broadcast flag. Hope you choke on your campaign contributions and honorariums.

    A list of stores to purchase the pvr-250/350 and air2pc and 3000 cards would be greatly appreciated. More than one reliable source would be appreciated as well. And the ir blaster also.

    Comments about bandwidth requirements on the pci bus would be welcome also. Thanks.
    • The broadcast flag is only for hdtv. This plextor thing is not an hdtv card, just plain old tv. The hauppage cards aren't hdtv cards either.

      The only hdtv card that will work with linux (and, therefore, with mythtv) is the pcHDTV HD-3000 [pchdtv.com]. There are just two problems with it, a little one and a big one. The little one is that they won't be able to sell it after this summer, once the broadcast flag rule takes effect. The big problem is that it can't decrypt cable or satellite signals, so all it's good
      • There's also the Air2PC card [mythic.tv], which will do HDTV and is supported under Linux.

        I recently bought a pcHDTV [pchdtv.com] card, and I must say I'm disappointed so far. I don't yet have HDTV capabilities (haven't decided between buying an antenna or paying the $5/mo extra for the HD decoder box from Comcast), and the NTSC tuner is piss-poor. The picture is fuzzy, and the colors are all off (and I still can't get it right, even after hours of tweaking the color settings).

        Note that the Air2PC and the pcHDTV (with driver
    • The broadcast flag does not apply to analog capture cards, like the Plextor PVR. You might want to worry about Macrovision and CGMS/A, though. I don't think hardware vendors have much incentive to tell you the truth about DRM "features" in their hardware.

      An analog PVR PCI card uses about 1-2MB/s. An HDTV PCI card uses about 3MB/s. PCI has a capacity of 133MB/s shared among all the cards. USB 2.0 has maybe 40-50MB/s of usable shared bandwidth. You do the math.

    • Note that the Hauppauge PVR-150 is coming out at the end of the month, which appears to be nothing but a reengineered PVR-250.

  • They have donated one of these to the Myth Creator (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dcgaber ( 473400 ) on Tuesday March 08, 2005 @11:35PM (#11884879)
    They donated one of these boxes to the myth creator, and perhaps even more to other developers. They are smart, they want to get to get widespread support out there for their product, and I will maybe add one of these to my next mythbox.
  • this happens 7 days after I ordered a Hauppauge PVR-350. I'd rather spend my money on someone who actively supports Linux.

    Oh well, that's life.
  • Of course, the PCHDTV [pchdtv.com] guys offer an OTA HD TV solution for Linux.

    The drivers can be tricky to install, but once working, the display is faultless.

    Check out this link to see one in action. [pchdtv.com]


  • This support sounds very good. I want something that supports both Windows and Linux, so this might fit the bill.

    When it says mpeg4 encoding what does it mean? I thought mp4 was just a container format?

    I guess if I'm going to be encoding TV into mp4 then it would be good to find a video card with TV out and hardware mp4 decoder? Any suggestions?
    • MPEG-4 Visual is a video codec. MP4 is the container for MPEG-4 Visual data.

      I think hardware MPEG-4 decoding is a waste of time, but a VIA chipset supports it [linuxdevices.com].
      • Why is hardware MPEG-4 decoding a waste of time?
        From my reading of MythTV docs it seems that hardware encoding and decoding would allow me to get away with a much lesser PC.

        Also, you mention the MPEG-4 video codec. I thought that MPEG4 could use one of several video codecs? And where does XVid fit in? I thought it was one of the MPEG4 codecs?
        • My impression is that even low-end processors today have no trouble decoding MPEG-4 in software. But I have a G5 and an Opteron, so what do I know?

          There are only two codecs in the MPEG-4 family: MPEG-4 Visual (aka part 2 aka plain MPEG-4) and H.264 (aka part 10 aka AVC). XVid is an implementation of the MPEG-4 Visual standard.
  • The jack layout is similiar to that of the Pinnacle PCTV USB Deluxe. In many regards the PCTV is a total POS, with a high rate of failure. But when it works, the output is actually decent. There is indeed linux drivers, and they do work sometimes (kudos to the author of them). We used a few of them at Defcon to dump all of the video to disk. Upon looking at it, one of them dumped nothing but reptitive block of gibberish.

    The PCTV USB uses the same chipset that the new Tivos do. That is, the Broadcom KFIR-II

  • Leanware (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 )
    I tried using Pocket IE and Pocket media player on my iPaq. I couldn't get Shoutcast streams to play. Not with any combo of PocketPC SW. So I installed Familiar, and everything's groovy. It's amazing that MS SW can't get the horsepower out of HW designed to run it, but Linux can do the trick.
  • Does this thing come with a stereo PAL tuner? The spec sheets does not say, and neither does it say anything about text tv support, which is usually a big warning about a cheap mono tuner.

    • Re:Stereo pal tuner? (Score:3, Informative)

      by lutchann ( 857818 )
      Yes, the PAL model will do stereo (A2, NICAM, etc), I just haven't written the support for it yet. Similarly with VBI, although it's also coming. (Incidentally, teletext support has nothing to do with stereo reception in the audio decoder other than the fact that they're both "fringe" features that are often omitted from cheap products.)
    • Thanks that sounds great. How about PDC support then? That would be the last missing piece to be able to anything a good video and TV will do.
  • See my sig.
  • How long before extensable PVR's kill Tivo? After all, they can be adding features (e.g. commerical skip) views want that TiVo is busy removing.

    I forsee the day when TiVo is nothing more than a program listing provider to many brands of PVR that contain a TiVo plug-in.

    Of course, I've also thought Apple should be an operating system provider to the most common hardware platform(s).

  • My question is whether or not they also have support for Mac OS X. This device could be a godsend for someone setting up a Mac Mini as an HTPC. There have been numerous questions and doubts about the Mini's computational prowess (founded or otherwise, I'm not debating that here), and something like this that can encode DivX on the fly and just throw it to the computer through USB2.0 would be great for the Mini. Anybody have any info on this?

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