[mythtv-users] PVR-250 MCE hardware reliability?

James L. Paul james at mauiguru.com
Tue Sep 7 04:41:26 EDT 2004


Aloha, in the past year (since September 2003) I have replaced 3 PVR-250 
"freestyle" MCE cards due to what appears to be tuner failure, and now it 
looks like I'll soon be replacing a fourth one. The symptoms are similar each 
time, broken or rolling video that gets progressively worse over a couple 
weeks until the streams are basically unviewable and start causing backend 
crashes when viewing or commercial flagging. The video inputs work fine, it's 
only the tuner input that goes bad.

I've bought my cards from several sources, and they are all the same model 
number (48432) and no two have failed at the same time. (I've had 3 cards in 
my MythTV box since last October.)

I'm wondering if anybody else has had problems with these cards failing. At 
this point, it's the singe largest downside to my system, having to pump 
$250+ into it each year to replace cards isn't exactly ideal. :)


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