[mythtv-users] Good tuner card?

[CHRIS KOTTING]

I'm a Myth newbie, but I've been camping out comparison-shopping the 
hardware available.  What card you want depends on what you are doing.  

The 150 is the price leader, and gives hardware MPEG-2 encoding.  You will 
be using Myth software for decoding (or your video card, if it has a 
hardware decoder).

The 250 is similar in functionality from the 150, but seems to be better 
supported (being the earlier model introduced).  I think it has a differnt 
software bundle, but that doesn't really matter, since it is Windoze 
software.

The 350 has both hardware encoding and decoding, which makes it the choice 
for those with fewer slots, or less robust hardware.
 
The 500 is (in effect) 2 150's, giving you the ability to record 2 channels 
at once, while only taking up 1 slot.

Note, if you're after the card doing both encoding (recording) and decoding 
(playback) it's the 350 you want.

Hope that helps...

Chris K.

On Thu, 3 Nov 2005 13:26:27 -0700, C. R. Oldham wrote
> Greetings,
> 
> I've been lurking for a while and getting ready to build my first mythtv
> system.  It seems like the PVR-500 is a good choice for 
> tuner/decoder cards because of the dual tuners, enabling 
> simultaneous recording and watching of live tv.  However, it doesn't 
> seem that a lot of people are using it--preferring instead the PVR-
> 150 or -250.  Is there something about the -500 that I'm not aware of?
> 
> --cro


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