[mythtv-users] hauppauge pvr-500 question

[Dave Sherohman]

On Tue, Nov 01, 2005 at 10:35:18PM -0500, jondz wrote:
> I currently have a hauppauge 350 working perfectly..ready
> to spring for a 500 with the dual tuner.  
> 
> Any problems I can expect with the tuner?  As I understand
> it it has 2 built in tuners and mpeg encoders.  

In theory, you should be able to drop it in and it will work fine
(since you already have ivtv working for your 350), just so long as
you remember that the card appears to ivtv to be two separate PVR-150
devices rather than a single device.  The practical upshot of this is
that you'll end up with /dev/video0, /dev/video1, and /dev/video2,
using only tuner0 on each device.  (Some people expect it to be
/dev/video1 with tuner0 and tuner1, which won't work.)

In practice, several of us have had trouble getting both tuners
recognized.  Some people only get the first tuner to show up, others
only get the second one.  Personally, I'm running on only the first
tuner, but I haven't put much effort into getting the second working
because I can barely keep up with the amount of stuff it records
now...

> currently using debian unstable + ivtv0.4.

I'm using debian unstable and ivtv-0.3.7k.  From what I've heard, 0.4
should have significantly improved/more reliable PVR-500 support.

> just making sure because it has the "MCE" label on it..

AFAICT, the "MCE" basically just means that it doesn't come with a
remote; there isn't anything else special about it.

-- 
The freedoms that we enjoy presently are the most important victories of the
White Hats over the past several millennia, and it is vitally important that
we don't give them up now, only because we are frightened.
  - Eolake Stobblehouse (http://stobblehouse.com/text/battle.html)