[mythtv-users] PCI-E Analog Card

[Brian Wood]

On Friday 22 January 2010 05:47:20 pm Frank Merrill wrote:
> This thread seems to have gone off course based upon what the OP
> originally indicated and asked about:
> 
> "our new Dell server only has PCI-E slots."
> 
> He already has a server.
> 
> And:
> 
> "We started looking at different cards, but a lot of them don't seem
> to be supported in Linux or maybe only the digital side is.  What we
> would really like is a dual tuner analog card, but those have started
> to get scarce so we could work with any card that took analog as long
> as it works in Linux and MythTV."
> 
> Again, he only has PCIe slots.

Thanks, I missed that.

That doesn't mean that USB and firewire solutions (if there are any that fit 
here) shouldn't be topical, and the general requirements for a 10-channel 
machine are germain.

It might turn out to be cheaper in the short term to try and find PVR-500's on 
Ebay, and spend $300 on a server machine that can use them, at least until the 
PCIe options get better, or at least more numerous. Might actually cost less 
than ten channels worth of new PCIe capture cards.

I think USB isn't usable, at least not for more than 1 or 2 channels. I'm not 
sure if Firewire is an option, I certainly read about a lot of problems with 
it here, but if the cable provider eventually goes all digital, as most of 
them are, and you need an STB for each channel anyway...

I agree with what was said here earlier, I'd check to see what's on the wire 
in QAM format before proceeding much farther, I'd also try to get some sort of 
long-term commitment from the cable company, you wouldn't want to buy a lot of 
analog hardware only to have it become useless.