PVR's

[Colin McGregor]

--- Paul Mora <paulmora-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> On 12/19/05, Merv Curley <mervc-MwcKTmeKVNQ at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> 
> > Staples had Haupp. 150 cards on sale this week, 
> but it seems spending a
> > bit
> > more would be worthwhile.  Like much more
> reasonable than the $800 for
> > some
> > of the commercial units that are available.
> 
> 
> Building a PVR on MythTV is not necessarily cheaper,
> but definetly more
> fun.  Also, you can do so much more with it than a
> dedicated PVR appliance.

Very true, if you want to build a MythTV box with
100's of terabytes of storage, able to record from 8+
video sources at once, MythTV will let you do it (for
a price). When I was writing my article on MythTV I
found you could easily get used Tivo on e-Bay for
under $100 (U.S.) about what you would pay for one
PVR-150 card (without remote). Granted said used
Tivo's would be without the TV listing services (which
would add a few $/month), and you would be limited to
the 40G hard disk included with the unit. So, if
anything you should expect a MythTV box to cost you
more up front than a Tivo, the reason people go for
MythTV are:

- You don't have to pay any fees for listing services.
- You don't have to worry about the Digital Rights
Management @#$%.
- You can build the box with as much storage as you
kernel, your hardware, and/or your budget will allow.
- You can put in as many tuners as your CPU/hardware
will support.
- You can make the box look the way you want (and
there are some very nice looking cases out there).
- You can customize the look/feel of the front end.

Bottom line you pay a bit more up front, you spend
less on operating costs and get a more flexible box.

> When looking for cards, keep in mind how you want to
> display the output to
> your TV.  Some video cards have S-Video and
> composite outputs on the card,
> but they may be more difficult to get working under
> Linux.
> 
> In my MythTV PVR, I use two cards; the Hauppauge
> WinTV PVR 250, and the
> 350.  The 350 does hardware encoding/decoding, while
> the 250 only does
> hardware encoding.  The result is that I can use a
> low-end machine as the
> PVR.  If you use cards that do not decode in
> hardware (like the 150, I
> believe) then you need a faster CPU.  The
> disadvantage is that the 250 and
> 350 are fairly expensive.  But, you may find a cheap
> one on eBay.

The PVR-150 and the PVR-250 are for all but the most
intense low-level hardware hackers the same. The only
reason I would pick between a PVR-250 and PVR-150 is
price (and as the PVR-150 was intended to be a lower
cost replacement for the PVR-250, you should assume
the PVR-150 will normally win that fight...).

Now, I have a PVR-150 for my MythTV box, and I paid
under $100 for it at one of the clone dealers near
College & Spadina. Keep in mind that there is more
than one version of the PVR-150 out there, mine (and
part of the reason it was the price it was) did NOT
come with a remote, so pay attention to what is/isn't
included. Nothing wrong with needing to handle the
remote via other means (or another card), just know
that is what you are getting yourself in for.

Beyond that, you do want hardware on a card to do as
much work for you as possible. I am not as keen on the
PVR-350 as I gather Paul is, as you can get a fanless
nVidia 5200 series video card (that will do fine for
MythTV) for around $50...

Other stuff, if you want to do the HDTV stuff, the
talk of the PVR series cards is irrelevant, you are
going to need a HDTV tuner card(s) and while I know
MythTV does support (some) HDTV cards, I don't have
any direct experience here...

> It's all in the FAQ at the sites Colin referenced.
> 
> Another source of information is the presentation I
> did a few months ago for
> NewTLUG.  You can access it here:
>
http://www.mora.ca/node/3.<http://www.mora.ca/node/3>
> 
> Good luck!
> 
> pm
> 
> --
> Paul Mora
> email: paulmora-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org
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