Josh Wilson wrote:
I am thinking of getting a Hauppauge PVR card to do the capture and
encoding for my MythTV box. I have read the mailing list and have
determined that I want to get either a PVR-150 or PVR-250. I am going
to use a separate card for output to my TV. My question lies with the
difference between the regular PVR-150 and PVR-250 versus the
PVR-150MCE and PVR-250MCE. I know that the MCE is designed for M$, but
can you also use the MCE cards in a linux environment? I like the fact
that I can get FM functionality out of the 250MCE, but don’t want to
get it if that function will not work.
MCE has FM radio
non-MCE has remote
IvyTV supports both.
Also, what are the main differences between getting a 250 versus a
150? I see that I can get 2 PVR-150 cards for the price of a PVR-250.
Would I be giving up an special features going with the 150s over the
250?
150's are lower voltage, use one chip instead of 2, so consume less
power and generate less heat. Therefore, you'll be losing out on the
hardware-assisted heating provided by the 250's. If you have a
relatively modern heater in your house, it should handle the additional
load without a problem. ;)
250's are slightly better supported, but 150 support has progressed
pretty well in the 0.3.x series. If you're new to Linux, you might want
to get one 250 (to learn how to make it work), then get 150's for
additional cards (once you have some experience with Linux/IvyTV), but
if you follow Jarod Wilson's guide ( http://www.wilsonet.com/mythtv ),
you should be fine with 150's. Jarod also has a pretty good definition
of the "bleeding edge" you get with the 150's, so check it out (click
the link "Hauppauge PVR-150 and PVR-500 capture cards" in the HOWTO).
IMHO, the main drawback (lack of scaling support--meaning you have to
capture at full 720x480/576 resolution) isn't much of a drawback at all
since capturing at that resolution allows DVD creation without
re-encoding/scaling. (I used to capture at 480x480 and 640x480, but
4-8hrs of re-encoding and scaling per 42minutes of TV got to be far more
"expensive" than the little bit of disk space I was saving.)
Mike
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