[Sussex] MythTV Card Recomendations

[Richie Jarvis]

Matthew Macdonald-Wallace wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I'm looking at building my own PVR using MythTV and there's quite a 
> few cheap cards going on eBay.
>
> Can anyone recomend a particular chipset/brand?
>
> Cheers,
>
> Matt

It all depends on whether you wish to record analogue, or digital.  
Personally, I use DVB-T digital cards - specifically, the Hauppage 
Nova-T Model 909 card.  This card uses the conexant chipset, which I 
find very reliable, and also allows me to record digital perfectly - 
Digital broadcasts are MPEG2 anyway, so no compression/conversion is 
necessary.  If you wish to record analogue, then the PVR-150/250/350 is 
the way to go, as they have built in MPEG2 encoders onboard (and the 350 
has a decoder onboard.), but you only end up with 4 channels to record 
(assuming you are on the heathfield transmitter, which doesn't have 
analogue channel 5.)

Avoid anything which does software compression, as it will eat CPU, and 
restrict the number of tuners you can put in your system(s)

Cheers,

Richie