[mythtv-users] HDTV Tuner Cards - Please catch me up a few years

Brian Foddy brian at fodvo.org
Mon Sep 13 02:28:31 UTC 2010


On Sun, 2010-09-12 at 17:11 -0500, William Powers wrote:
> On Sun, Sep 12, 2010 at 1:22 PM, Brian Foddy <brian at fodvo.org> wrote:
> > I've been a long-time myth user and built 2 multi-system households, but
> > all with either HD 3000/5000 or Air2PC era cards; all OTA HD in the US.
> > They generally work good, but still about 1 in 8 recordings will be
> > blank and no kernel or myth upgrades have ever fixed em.  I've seen it
> > discussed here before.  Anyone ever found the cause?
> 
> I ran a slave backend with a couple of Air2PC cards in it for about
> four years and I don't think I had more than one or two missed
> recordings the entire time.
> 
For some reason, the cards just don't lock in.  Happens frequent enough
to be a pain, but not to the urgent level.

> > 2.  The HDHomerun, when they came out, I remember there were some
> > touting they had superior HD reception.  Is that still true?  Any other
> > cards of equal reception quality?  The network connection of the Homerun
> > is doable, but not trivial.  I'd have to put a second network card in
> > the backend machine or buy a higher end board with 2 networks.
> 
> I get excellent reception from my HDHomerun, but then I'm only 25
> miles from the main Houston, Texas antenna farm with an eight bay
> Channelmaster bowtie antenna.  I honestly can't say which cards /
> tuners would be better.  I'm not sure what you are driving at with
> your comment about the network connection.  My HDHR just plugs into
> the same network switch as backend box.  You can even assign it a
> static IP if you don't want to go to the trouble of setting up a DHCP
> server for it.  After years of occasional ivtv driver stability
> issues, I've become a big fan of the remote, network tuner concept.
> 
I'm only 17 miles away, but this house has never had perfect tv
reception.  Trees surround the house, aluminum siding, the line-of-sight
to the towers goes straight though the neighbors 2 story house, etc.
Just one of those deals.

The challenge with the network is the backend tuners are in the
basements with only a single network cable down to them.  It is the only
place in the house where network and antenna cable meet.  So either I'd
have to put a second network card in the computer, or a remote slave
switch (gigabit), or some other not-so-pretty solution.

Brian



More information about the mythtv-users mailing list