[Sussex] MythTV Hardware - Help Please

[Steve Dobson]

Fay

Fay Zee wrote:
> MythTV: What hardware is needed?
> What are the best buys?

Which cards you need will depend upon which TV sources you are 
connecting to.

Sky's digital service using a bastardized version of MPEG.  I'm not 
aware of any PCI cards/USB dongles than can support this standardization 
so there you will need a MPEG encoder card.  This means that you are 
re-encoding an analogy video stream that has only just been unencoded 
which is kind of silly.  By it's the setup I use and I don't notice any 
real loss of quality - by them I'm not HDTV capable on my TV set.

If you live an area that is getting FreeView then there are PCI cards (& 
I guess USB devices) that can take the digital feed (which is standard 
MPEG) and provide directly to the MythTV system.  I've seen Richie's (if 
you remember him) set up and that works well.

> Anyone who has successfully got a MythTV or similar set up, please
> tell us your stories.

There are many stories of different setups (including Sky and FreeView) 
on the MythTV forums - bet place to check.

Steve