[mythtvnz] Basic hardware help

[Hadley Rich]

On Fri, 14 Mar 2008 19:42:07 matthew pearce wrote:
> I was going to ask Jonathan's question. If I do get freeview will a
> 1.2Ghz hack it?

A PCI DVB card uses around the same amount of CPU as a PVR-x50 card - which is 
not a lot at all. A 1.2 will handle the recording fine, the playback is what 
will use the CPU.

> Also is it worth getting a internal PCI freeview decoder or should I
> use a "set top box"?

Get a PCI card, the main reason being that the path stays digital that way. If 
you were to use a STB then it's digital to analog to digital so lowers the 
quality. The second reason being that they're cheaper, you can pick up a good 
Linux compatible DVB-S card for $120. They're also easier to setup with 
mythtv rather than using an external box.

> Also do the freeview set top boxes work with the Hauppauge cards. i.e
> should I get a Hauppauge card and be safe in the knowledge that it
> will not be junk if I swittch to Freeview.

It will work fine with any input, so not junk but see my note regarding 
quality above.

> One last thing, is Prime ever going to be on Freeview?

No idea sorry, it's hard to say.

> Do you need to download the epg data from http://epg.pvr.geek.nz/ when
> you have freeview?

You need some sort of EPG. You can download it form there but if you have a 
DVB-S card then the tools are available to generate the same data you can 
download there. epgsnoop is used to generate the data there.

hads
-- 
http://nicegear.co.nz
VoIP, DVB and other Linux compatible hardware