tv tuner suggestions

iBertus · 2006-09-19 23:34:48

I'm thinking of adding a TV tuner to my system so that I can get full use out of this 20" widescreen lcd. I'm new to the entire TV tuner idea and don't know which brands/chips are good for linux.

I'm not looking to break the bank here and a pretty plain solution would be just fine. No bells and whistles are necessary.

murffatksig · 2006-09-20 00:11:38

I have a home-built PVR that has a hauppauge pvr-500. It has built in dual tuners so I can record tv on more than one chanel at a time.

If you dont need the dual tuners, the pvr-150 is a similar product that has only one tuner.

Echo · 2006-09-20 00:25:56

I'll second the PVR-150.... good choice. It has hardware encoding so you won't notice a performance hit when it's recording.

If you have some "over the air" hdtv signals in your area you might try an air2pc card. You can get the older version (v 2) on ebay for cheap. I'm fairly new with this card but it records hdtv signals that can be played back with mplayer. The air2pc card (2nd gen) has been phased out but for the price it's fun to play with. Plus great picture if you can get the signals. This card won't work with a cable co. hook up.

You can check out what hdtv signals are available in your area at

www.antennaweb.org

sash · 2006-09-20 01:02:43

in case you don't care about hdtv (yet) and want to utilize your speedy CPU, there are always cheap tv tuner bt878 or bt848 chip based analog cards. Well supported in Linux for a long time. I still have 2 which I use every day with Mythtv.

FUBAR · 2006-09-20 10:24:14

Hah! I need this thread too! I need a simple card to watch some TV, preferrably in stereo and with Teletext. I think my AMD64 ~3800 is powerful enough to record and watch multiple channels at the same time. Is that possible with a cheap card or do I always need multiple tuners for that?

Echo · 2006-09-21 00:18:21

One tuner card equals one recording at a time. Although you can watch something previously recorded while recording something else.

Edit: Unless you have something like the PVR-500 which is essentially two tuners in one card as mentioned above.

murffatksig · 2006-09-22 14:48:31

I think the general rule is if you get a TV card with hardware encoding on it, then your processor doesnt have to be as beefy. But if you get a TV card with no encodeing then you'll want a better processor because it is doing the encoding.

Here's the specs of my PVR
P4 1.7GHZ processor
1.2 GB Ram
PVR-500 tuner (dual tuners built in)
128MB NVIDIA video card (DVI and SVideo out)
300GB HD
DVD Burner

All together, after doing some online shopping this cost me about $600. I use the Mythdora linux distro, and i love it. I dont use it for anything else but watching tv.

iBertus · 2006-09-23 00:34:34

sash wrote:

in case you don't care about hdtv (yet) and want to utilize your speedy CPU, there are always cheap tv tuner bt878 or bt848 chip based analog cards. Well supported in Linux for a long time. I still have 2 which I use every day with Mythtv.

I've searched and cannot find any specific names of cards using these chipsets. Can you give me an example "brand" of card using this chip?

byte · 2006-09-23 01:15:32

The "big" ones like Pinnacle/Miro or Happauge used to produce a lot of these cards, but nowadays it's more a Noname business because these chipsets are outdated.

iBertus · 2006-09-23 03:00:57

Ahh, I found a few of these bt878 cards for around $30USD on newegg tonight. I may pick one up for this price and see how slow it really is. I'm not really interested in multiple channels or even recording.

karsten · 2006-09-24 02:59:49

i picked up a bottom of the line avertv card with that chipset for $20 a while back and it works alright

iBertus wrote:

Ahh, I found a few of these bt878 cards for around $30USD on newegg tonight. I may pick one up for this price and see how slow it really is. I'm not really interested in multiple channels or even recording.

timm · 2006-11-15 20:39:56

I've been using a PVR-350 as a dvr but am building a new system. I originally got a PVR-500, but am very confused as to how to get the signal OUT to the tv, so for now it has my 350 in it as well (which I'm having problems with, but that's another story.) What's the process for getting tv out when you've got the PVR-500 bringing it in?

crouse · 2006-11-16 01:56:15

I have a "cheap" tv card....

[url=http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1580885&CatId=1427]
Leadtek WinFast TV2000 XP RM TV Tuner[/url]
It works fairly well...

I record tv shows to my hard drive with this bashs script I wrote... it's not fancy, but it gets the job done....

#!/bin/sh
# Crouse's TV recorder ...... TV to AVI.
read -p "What Channel do you want to record? : " channel
read -p "How many minutes do you want to record? : " minutes
read -p "What do you want to name the recording? : " aviname
seconds=60
rectime=$(($minutes * $seconds))
mencoder -oac mp3lame -fps 30000/1001 -ovc lavc -lameopts cbr:br=128 -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:mbd=2:turbo:psnr -tv driver=v4l:norm=ntsc:channel=${channel}:chanlist=us-cable:adevice=/dev/dsp:audiorate=48000:width=384:height=288 -af volume=-15 -endpos ${rectime} -o /disk1/${aviname}.avi tv:// #:audiorate=48000
kill %1

Arch Linux

#1 2006-09-19 23:34:48

tv tuner suggestions

#2 2006-09-20 00:11:38

Re: tv tuner suggestions

#3 2006-09-20 00:25:56

Re: tv tuner suggestions

#4 2006-09-20 01:02:43

Re: tv tuner suggestions

#5 2006-09-20 10:24:14

Re: tv tuner suggestions

#6 2006-09-21 00:18:21

Re: tv tuner suggestions

#7 2006-09-22 14:48:31

Re: tv tuner suggestions

#8 2006-09-23 00:34:34

Re: tv tuner suggestions

#9 2006-09-23 01:15:32

Re: tv tuner suggestions

#10 2006-09-23 03:00:57

Re: tv tuner suggestions

#11 2006-09-24 02:59:49

Re: tv tuner suggestions

#12 2006-11-15 20:39:56

Re: tv tuner suggestions

#13 2006-11-16 01:56:15

Re: tv tuner suggestions

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