Erin Sharmahd wrote:
On Thursday (Feb 16), we'll show off some of the features of MythTV
and let it show you why you want it. We'll discuss its capabilities
and limitations and explain how it works and how it's designed. We'll
also cover recommended and optional hardware requirements. It will be
a great meeting for non-technical but easily-impressed friends.
It turns out I won't be able to make it due to a scheduling conflict.
But I wanted to report that I just successfully installed an ATI HDTV
Wonder in my MythTV box. The off-the-air reception is better than I
imagined! I don't subscribe to cable, so I've been hobbling along with
a PVR-250 connected to an indoor antenna. The new card, connected to
the antenna that came with the HDTV Wonder, provides beautiful
reception, just in time for the Olympics.
The drivers for the card are included in Linux 2.6.15; Kirk Lapray
deserves credit for this, I presume--thanks! My system has an Athlon 64
3200+. It performs well on the "SD" (standard definition?) channels,
even though my video card is only a GeForce4 MX 4000. However, my box
struggles to display high definition channels, so I might decide to
upgrade the video card.
I found good instructions here:
http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/ATI_HDTV_Wonder
Those instructions were easy to follow, but once I was finished, MythTV
still wouldn't tune to digital channels. I went in circles for a long
time until I realized that even though zap2it provides the channel list
for MythTV, I still have to tell MythTV to scan the full spectrum so it
can discover the frequencies for those channels. Apparently, digital TV
has new layers of indirection, and that seems to be the main reason it's
harder to set up than analog TV. But the improved reception is worth
it, IMHO.
I was surprised to learn there are actually more digital channels in the
valley than analog channels. KBYU alone broadcasts 5 digital channels.
I bought the card (with antenna and remote included) for a little over
$100. It was out of stock everywhere--I suspect it's a really hot item
now that it works in Linux.
I haven't succeeded in making the remote work. The Remote Wonder Plus
is an RF remote that transmits to a USB gadget called an "X10 Wireless
Technology, Inc. X10 Receiver". But my keyboard works fine, so I'll
take my time to figure out the remote.
Another incidental nugget I learned: ivtv version 0.4, the driver for
PVR-[123]50 cards, is not going to be compatible with Linux 2.6.16.
(Symptom: the tuner type detection sequence fails, so you can't change
channels.) The author of ivtv says that version 0.6, not yet released,
will be required for Linux 2.6.16.
Shane
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