[mythtvnz] Help spending my brothers $5K on MythTV

[Steve Hodge]

On 2/23/06, Nick Rout <nick@rout.co.nz> wrote:
> Steve Hodge wrote:
> > If you're only recording from Sky Digital you don't need the tuner so
> > why not get a dumb video capture card instead of a PVR150 (e.g.
> > http://www.dse.co.nz/cgi-bin/dse.storefront/en/product/XH6594)?
> > Certainly 1GHz Athlon should have no problem recording and playing
> > back at the same time.
>
> I don't fully concur. The hardware conversion to mpeg2 would be a
> definite advantage on that system IMHO.

You mean in terms of CPU usage? I haven't actually tried recording
with a dumb capture card on anything that low-end, but my 2GHz Sempron
happily records from two dumb tuner cards and plays back at the same
time.

The only other advantage I can see is that transcoding is easier.
OTOH, you've got to deal with ivtv and that doesn't always seem to be
smooth (compared to the in kernel bttv drivers).

Steve