Author Topic: Some suggestions  (Read 5631 times)

rever

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Some suggestions
« on: March 29, 2007, 04:43:28 pm »
Good Morning ALL,
  I have just purchased an new 57" HDTV with 1080p resolution. I plan on installing Ubuntu and Linuxmce onto a spare machine and set it up with my TV. What is the best HD TV Tuner card for linux that will give me the best picture. Also will my DVD be upconverted  when I play them? I am no an expert so I am not sure if that is even needed if I set my resolution to 1920 × 1080 which is 1080p. I ask only because I have heard you need an upconverting DVD player to get the best picture on a 1080p TV. Any and all suggestions are welcomed and extremely appreciated. This system I will be installing to is an AMD XP2500+ 2Gb of DDR 400 Nvidia Soundstorm (X-FI if drivers ever come available) and Nvidia 7800G2 256MB.


Thanks

Rever

cckrobinson

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Re: Some suggestions
« Reply #1 on: March 29, 2007, 06:25:19 pm »
I'd recommend the HDHomeRun. It's a network based dual ATSC/QAM tuner.  I don't have one yet, but I will soon.  It's well supported in Linux, and the best part is that it doesn't take up any PCI slots in your PC.

Yes your box will upconvert DVDs.  If you set your video card to output 1920x1080 then DVD playback will occur at that resolution.

Hugolp

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Re: Some suggestions
« Reply #2 on: March 29, 2007, 09:42:22 pm »
I'd recommend the HDHomeRun. It's a network based dual ATSC/QAM tuner.  I don't have one yet, but I will soon.  It's well supported in Linux, and the best part is that it doesn't take up any PCI slots in your PC.

Yes your box will upconvert DVDs.  If you set your video card to output 1920x1080 then DVD playback will occur at that resolution.

It looks like an interesting product but I have some questions. If I understood well you cant conect it to the tv without a computer, right? And if it only have 100Mbit Ethernet, how does it transmit an HD video signal?

Hugo

rever

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Re: Some suggestions
« Reply #3 on: March 29, 2007, 10:28:31 pm »
Yeah I agree that product looks really interesting. Heck for $170 you get 2 HDTV Tuners thats a very good price. Also from the reviews I read it looks like a winner of a product. My only question would be on the network bandwidth. I would imagine it would be pretty high but then again I think the mpeg file is about 20Mbps so on a 100Mb switch that is not to bad. I have a Gigabit card so maybe it is time to upgrade the switch.

cckrobinson

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Re: Some suggestions
« Reply #4 on: March 29, 2007, 10:40:37 pm »
The HDHomeRun sends an MPEG-2 transport stream to your computer over the 100Mb ethernet connection.  100Mb is plenty of bandwidth for HD.  LMCE\MythTV knows how to handle the transport stream.  When you want to change the channel LMCE will send a request over the network to the HDHomeRun.  Since the box is not tied to a particular PC you technically have access from any computer.  Handy if you want to open up VLC on your laptop and watch a ball game.



« Last Edit: March 29, 2007, 11:01:25 pm by cckrobinson »

Thraxius

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Re: Some suggestions
« Reply #5 on: March 30, 2007, 12:11:14 am »
I am very familiar with the HDHomeRun it is a very good tuner. If you have any issues the community for the hdhomerun is very active.