Linux TV

[Colin McGregor]

On Fri, Feb 3, 2012 at 12:09 PM, D. Hugh Redelmeier <hugh-pmF8o41NoarQT0dZR+AlfA at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> | From: Colin McGregor <colin.mc151-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org>
>
> | On Fri, Feb 3, 2012 at 10:18 AM, Russell Reiter <rreiter91-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>
> | > Just installed Fedora 16 for a friend and they want to try a digital tv tuner.
>
> As Colin points out, digital TV tuners are ONLY useful in Canada with
> an antena.  Digital signals from cable companies in Canada are all
> encrypted in a way that forces you to use a cable-company settop box.
> Bell signals are actually worse in theory (only one channel's signal
> gets to you), but that isn't any worse in practice.

Not that simple, some (strong emphasis on the word some) Non-Rogers
cable companies do offer some (again emphasis on the word some)
digital channels without encryption. So, if you are in a non-Rogers
area, a digital tuner MIGHT be useful with the local cable TV company
(you would have to do some more research). In Rogers cable areas, then
the only value to a digital tuner is with an antenna, and the number
of channels you can get with the antenna will depend on several
factors...

> If you are forced to use a STB, you can only capture the analogue
> output.  And your card doesn't get to tune -- the STB does.  For
> capturing you can use one of a bunch of cards.  Common wisdom is that
> you want ones that do hardware MPEG encoding to cut down the load on
> the computer; this may not matter now because CPUs have gotten more
> powerful in the last 10 years.
>
> Hauppauge even makes a box that can capture component video, an
> analogue HD output available from some STBs.
>  <http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/data_hdpvr.html> Sometimes
> NCIX or Dell has these on sale at a noticeable discount.  There is
> also a PCIe version of this called the Colossus.  I don't even know if
> it works under Linux.
>  <http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/data_colossus.html>
>
> So: for more focussed advice, you should tell us where the TV signal
> is coming from.  And where it might come from in the future, if that is
> likely to be different.
>
> Note that there is a MythGTA mailing list.  It is described at the
> bottom of <http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists>

Colin.
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