[mythtv-users] USA recommendations for Digital Over the Air Capture Card

[Brad DerManouelian]

On Nov 17, 2008, at 12:20 PM, Eric Mesa wrote:

> I'm thinking of giving Comcast the old heave-ho.  Most of the TV I  
> have time to watch nowadays is Network Tv.  The only TV shows I  
> watch on Cable are The Daily Show, Colbert Report, and (the wife  
> watches) South Park.  The first two are available on Hulu, so if I  
> can watch them by setting the browser in Myth to Firefox, then I'm  
> fine.  South Park is also available streaming elsewhere.
>
> So, that taken care of, I was curious what recommendations other USA  
> OTA myth users have.  I've been happy with my Hauppage 500 and I'd  
> like to get something equivalent if it exists.  I've done some  
> research on the MythTV wiki.  It appears, from the way that the wiki  
> is written that the 2250 is the only Hauppage card that has 2 ATSC  
> tuners.  All the other cards appear to have 1 ATSC and 1 NTSC  
> tuner.  I'd really like to be able to record 2 shows at once OTA.
>
> Also, I've noticed that it appears that ATSC cards don't have  
> hardware encoding.  Is this because of something inherent in the way  
> that ATSC is transmitted?  Is it already encoded or something like  
> that?  I mean, I think I've read that ATSC is MPEG-2, but I thought  
> cable was as well.  So is this something I should watch out for?  My  
> CPU is only a P4 since I've had hardware encoding on the PVR-500.
>
> Also, it was a real PITA to get the PVR-500 seated in my shuttle- 
> like case.  So if there's one that you guys recommend that has two  
> onboard tuners, but is not as long, that would be AWESOME.  I don't  
> think, if I remember correctly, that the height was an issue with  
> this case, I think it was the length.
>
> One last bit of tidbit for those giving recommendations - I only  
> have one PCI slot and it's PCI 1x - or whatever it is the PVR-500  
> uses.

HD HomeRun. Connects via Ethernet so you don't have to use up a PCI  
slot. It even gives you two tuners like your current PVR-500. Correct  
in that the data is already encoded so there's no need to process the  
video any more.