[mythtvnz] Freeview hardware advice sought

[Robin Gilks]

> Hi all,
> I have a Via EPIA SP13000 system with a Hauppauge PVR-150 running MythDora
> 10.21 (a Fedora 10 based distro with Mythtv 0.21).  Mythtv is running as a
> backend and frontend on the box.  It works well with my current setup.
> I'm thinking about replacing the PVR-150 with a DVB board for Freeview.
> My question is what would the list members recommend?
> My EPIA system is low powered but the PVR-150 does its encoding in
> hardware so I would think a DVB board would need to do the same.
> I have no preference between satellite or terrestrial but I doubt my
> system would handle terrestrial HD.
> I would be interested to find out how much processing power is required
> for a DVB.
> Thanks in advance
>

I'm running a SP13000 as a frontend only but since the overhead for
recording from a PVR150, a DVB-S card or a DVB-T card is about the same,
the main question is the playback side of things. In this, the DVB-T high
def stuff is way beyond what the Via board can handle - the DVB-S you will
find to give near DVD quality and works well on the SP13000 even without
XvMC VLD acceleration!

A 2 slot riser card with a pair of DVB-S cards in it will allow the
recording of any or all Freeview channels from the two satellite
multiplexes.


-- 
Robin Gilks