Anyone use MythTV? Got a cap card rec?

[X_Digger]

Been looking to build a new MythTV box, wondered if anyone's got recommendations for a hardware capture card w/ s-video/audio input (seems the Hauppage PVR-x50 line has been discontinued due to FCC pressure).

[RoyGBiv]

1. pcHDTV ...

Does not honor the broadcast flag.

http://pchdtv.com/

OnEdit: I should add I don't currently have a MythTV box set up, but I do use this for video capturing, and this does work with MythTV. There's a Wiki for it somewhere ... it's linked on the company's website.

[X_Digger]

2. Cool

I always thought that card was for OTA HD only. I use a cable box with a serial port to change channels, so what's really important to me is hardware mpeg-2 encoding so that I don't have to have a beefy CPU.

[RoyGBiv]

3. The older ones were ...

The oldest model only had RF inputs.

Regarding mpeg-2 encoding, this card doesn't do it. I guess I should have mentioned that. It relies on the abilities of your graphics card to do that. Same result, but you have to make sure you have a decent graphics card to release the burden on the CPU.

[X_Digger]

4. Ahh.. been looking at the latest from Hauppauge..

.. I confused myself. Going to have to go trawl the mythtv-users archive and see what folks are using for hardware mpeg-2 encoding.

I have one server for recording, then I have lightweight frontends around the house (3x mini-itx fanless, and I used to have two gen1 xboxes loaded with linux & mythtv.)

[Syrinx]

5. I've never used MythTv, but I've got a question about it

I read not that long ago that the MythTv people had been cut off from the program listings that they had been using. I forget the name of the company involved. Was that ever resolved? I'm talking about the service that gave users a program-guide like listing (like TV Guide) that allowed for MythTv to find programs based on topic, actor names, etc.

Thanks.

[X_Digger]

6. Sure did!

The MythTV guys founded a non-profit company and worked directly with Tribune Media. It's not free anymore, but the cost is minimal. ($20/year, if I recall.) http://www.schedulesdirect.org/

[Syrinx]

7. thanks!

That was something I curious about. I've considered setting up a MythTv box before, but it seems that it would be cheaper to buy or rent a dvr.

[X_Digger]

8. It is, if you're just after a DVR..

But MythTV can serve as a media server for photos, can rip, store, and serve both movies and music, even manage / download your netflix queue. And unlike Tivo, things just don't magically disappear because the content producer decided that you could only keep the recording for 'X' days.