Linux TV

[Colin McGregor]

On Fri, Feb 3, 2012 at 10:18 AM, Russell Reiter <rreiter91-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> I'm looking for advice on current digital tv tuners. I'd like to find
> a local shop, but I have a hard time sorting through the sites only to
> find they don't have much of what we are looking for.
>
> Just installed Fedora 16 for a friend and they want to try a digital tv tuner.
>
> I saw this one on Frontier Direct
> Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-1250 Hybrid Video Recorder
>
> Anyone experienced with this or similar cards they purchased locally.
>
> Looking to spend $100 or so.

I've got an HVR-1250. Solid basic, single tuner PCI Express card. On
paper it can do analog and digital, but last time I checked the Linux
driver for analog wasn't up to stuff, so, this card should be seen as
a digital only card. Cost at Canada Computers $69.99 and at the time
this message was being written some of Canada Computers Toronto area
shops do show the card as being in stock :
http://canadacomputers.com/product_info.php?cPath=44_562&item_id=019081
.

Bottom line in all this, a good budget TV tuner card, very usable with
a TV antenna, and useless with Rogers cable (all Rogers digital
channels are encrypted (an encryption the HVR-1250 can't deal with),
and Rogers has announced plans to drop all analog service here in
Toronto). Depending on your antenna, location in the GTA, etc., this
card should get you about 20 different local over the air TV channels.

The other digital card I bought locally was a Hauppauge HVR-1600 which
is a dual tuner card (one analog only tuner and one digital only
tuner). Depending on how you plan to deal with the end of Rogers
analog service,  or if you want to be able to feed analog material in
from say an old TV camera this might be a better (or worse) choice
than the HVR-1250. With the HVR-1600 you can watch/record two programs
at the same time. Both the analog and digital sides of the HVR-1600
are supported under Linux, and while I got my HVR-1600 as part of a
clearance sale, I see they are still available locally, for $109.99 :
http://canadacomputers.com/product_info.php?cPath=44_562&item_id=012995
.

Hope this helps.

Colin

> Thanks in advance.
>
> Russell
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