[mythtv-users] Hauppauge Help

Michael T. Dean mtdean at thirdcontact.com
Fri Jun 24 17:48:13 UTC 2005


Josh Wilson wrote:

> I am thinking of getting a Hauppauge PVR card to do the capture and 
> encoding for my MythTV box. I have read the mailing list and have 
> determined that I want to get either a PVR-150 or PVR-250. I am going 
> to use a separate card for output to my TV. My question lies with the 
> difference between the regular PVR-150 and PVR-250 versus the 
> PVR-150MCE and PVR-250MCE. I know that the MCE is designed for M$, but 
> can you also use the MCE cards in a linux environment? I like the fact 
> that I can get FM functionality out of the 250MCE, but don’t want to 
> get it if that function will not work.
>
MCE has FM radio
non-MCE has remote
IvyTV supports both.

> Also, what are the main differences between getting a 250 versus a 
> 150? I see that I can get 2 PVR-150 cards for the price of a PVR-250. 
> Would I be giving up an special features going with the 150s over the 
> 250?
>
150's are lower voltage, use one chip instead of 2, so consume less 
power and generate less heat. Therefore, you'll be losing out on the 
hardware-assisted heating provided by the 250's. If you have a 
relatively modern heater in your house, it should handle the additional 
load without a problem. ;)

250's are slightly better supported, but 150 support has progressed 
pretty well in the 0.3.x series. If you're new to Linux, you might want 
to get one 250 (to learn how to make it work), then get 150's for 
additional cards (once you have some experience with Linux/IvyTV), but 
if you follow Jarod Wilson's guide ( http://www.wilsonet.com/mythtv ), 
you should be fine with 150's. Jarod also has a pretty good definition 
of the "bleeding edge" you get with the 150's, so check it out (click 
the link "Hauppauge PVR-150 and PVR-500 capture cards" in the HOWTO). 
IMHO, the main drawback (lack of scaling support--meaning you have to 
capture at full 720x480/576 resolution) isn't much of a drawback at all 
since capturing at that resolution allows DVD creation without 
re-encoding/scaling. (I used to capture at 480x480 and 640x480, but 
4-8hrs of re-encoding and scaling per 42minutes of TV got to be far more 
"expensive" than the little bit of disk space I was saving.)

Mike


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