[TriLUG] Best HD/TV or Regular TV card for linux

[Aaron S. Joyner]

John Turner wrote:

> I gave up on HD playback using a PC before I even tried. But there 
> are options.
>
> I am currently using the I-O Data LinkPlayer 2
>     http://www.iodata.com/usa/products/products.php?
> cat=HNP&sc=AVEL&pId=AVLP2%2FDVDLA
> But there are many more options (hardware HD playback).
>
> The problem is that is doesn't talk directly with MythTV, so you have 
> to do something about that. The most common solution is to just link 
> to your Myth recordings. The LP2 gets its show information from a web 
> server (wizd and swisscenter are two Linux compatible servers).
>
> Also I was able to run Mythfrontend on my Intel Core Solo Mac Mini 
> and watch HD recordings and Live HD. This was a 512MB base model. It 
> worked better than I expected, but not 100%.

Can you elaborate a bit about Myth on the Mini?  Specifically, did you
tinker with the digital audio outs, and are they well supported?  When
you say playback was "not 100%", what do you think was the limiting
factor?  Was it CPU (ie. would a Duo solve the problem) or was it the
less-than-ideal onboard Intel video chipset?  Was it a bandwidth or
bottleneck from the backend server for some reason not the fault of the
mini's?

I'm currently considering platforms for my myth-frontend server.  My dev
platform for the front end is an Athlon 2100XP with a GeForce Ti4200
that I hope to get up and running some time this week.  It's too large
to be practical long-term, it's just for tinkering.  I had looked at the
mini and discounted it because of the single headphone jack out,
previously.  Then they released the Intel one w/ the optical audio out
which seemed so debian-friendly, and my heart went all a-flutter again.

My back-end is a P4 2.4Ghz w/ a big honking RAID5 array (around a
terabyte) for storing the video, with 1 pchdtv-3000 card and 1 hauppage
bttv card for capturing two streams, one hdtv, one not.  Primary source
will probably be qcam-tuned stations off the cable that I have in the
house, unless when I get an antenna hooked up things look good for
over-the-air reception in the SFBay area (not holding my breath in my
condo with an internal antenna).  So far, I have the drivers set up, I
can talk to the card, and I can scan for channels (which doesn't work
with out an antenna or the cable hooked up, of course).  I need to grab
another splitter this afternoon at the store before I can hook it up to
the cable (w/o disconnecting the cable modem), then I can test to see
how recording goes.  Once I have it working, I'll certainly report back
about my experiences with the pchdtv card.

So that's my excited two cents about Myth,
Aaron S. Joyner