pcHDTV HD-5500

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Tue, Apr 24, 2007 at 08:48:11PM -0400, Colin McGregor wrote:
> As I understand it the HD-5500 offers a number of
> options, none of them ideal.
> 
> - You can use the card as a regular analog BT-8xx
> series TV tuner (which is seriously ugly, it means
> your paying over $100 (US) for a poor performing type
> of tuner card the likes of which can be found locally
> for under $40).

Yes it requires recording the audio through your sound card's line in.
Video only through PCI.  PVR cards from hauppauge of course have mpeg2
encoders so they do all the work and include sound and video in a single
stream, which is much nicer.

> - Just connect it to you regular local cable co.
> (i.e.: Rogers), where you can get the regular analog
> channels and a handful of digital channels, in analog
> channel quality.

Interesting of course, but not sure it is worth the money for that.

> - Connect the card to an HDTV antenna (either the
> likes of rabbit ear style in-house table top antenna
> or the big external tower antenna), modest number of
> channels, but all in (excellent) HD quality.

If you have lots of buildings around you I suspect you need it at least
on the roof.  Of course this has long term use if you get it working as
more local stations go HD.

> - Connect the card to a Rogers cable HD (or other
> firm's satellite HD) boxes. Excellent quality, lots of
> channels, but extra $ on a monthly basis and you have
> to sort out how to control the external box from
> MythTV (can be done, but it can become very messy).

Connect it how?  If you use svideo, then you may as well use a regular
tuner card because you are only getting SD out of it anyhow.  I read
some people use firewire to connect to a rogers HD box (on those that
support it which apparently not all do), which mythtv can then receive
and control.  Unfortunately many channels have their broadcast
flag/encryption enabled so you can't record those by firewire.

> So, interesting topic and one I want to keep an eye,
> as CURRENT word is that come Feb. 2009 (read just
> after the next US presidential election...) analog TV
> will disappear from US airwaves. How long after that
> Canada will follow suit, and further how long after
> that the cable companies will want to drop analog TV
> support all makes for some interesting questions...
> 
> So, those of us interested in MythTV type boxes will
> need to pay attention to Linux supported HD tuner
> cards (of which the HD-5500 currently appears to be
> the "gold" standard).

Unfortunately with the state of cable and similar services in canada,
the customer has no rights what so ever, and the "service" provider
doesn't care one bit about what the customer wants.  If you want a PVR
rogers would like you to buy their $700 box so that they control what
you can do with it.

--
Len Sorensen
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