DVB-T vs analog receiver: need clarification please

[afilep]

Hi,

I am based in Australia where I am currently receiving free-to-air digital TV via a set-top converter connected to my wide screen Sony CRT TV. I am thinking about setting up a LinuxMCE box and would like to get clarification on the following:

1. If I decide to go with something like Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-150 which, based on what I have read so far, is pretty much guaranteed to work, will I be able to "feed" it analog signals out of my DVB-T set top converter? What I am trying to avoid is having to use a separate remote for the converter and LinuxMCE. Does anyone have any experience with this?

2. I suppose replacing my set top converter with a DVB-T receiver as part of the LinuxMCE setup would be better, however I haven't seen any reports of LinuxMCE compatible configurations. What's the recommended hardware for this kind of setup (HD DVB-T receiver with PVR functionality)? My current TV only supports SD but I would like to make my system HD 1080i capable so that everything is ready to go once I upgrade the TV.

Thanks for your input!

[nite_man]

LinuxMCE includes MythTV and VDR (under development) to provide PVR functionality. If I'm not wrong MythTv supports HD DVB-T - http://www.users.on.net/~jani/dvico-mythtv-11.html#ss11.2. so, have a look on it. Maybe it'll help make your decision.

[indulis]

Unless you have a really good reason, don't use an analogue tuner card for mythtv- many analogue TV tuners put an extra load onto the CPU to sample and encode the video, amd the quality is not as good as digital, you don't get digital sound (Dolby 2 channel with surround, the digital version of the original Dolby Prologic is transmitted in Australia).

In Australia, you can go to http://www.dtvforum.info/index.php?s=7281ed4ab8277f1668dca411079b53b7&showforum=9 for some information.

I am in Perth and use 3x Kworld Vstream DVB-T PCI tuners with Mythtv (currently on special as "HD" at Jaycar though the chipset in it can only go up to SD!).  Though they work you now have better options- I'd suggest the Technisat Airstar 2 as an HD tuner, from digitalnow (you can see posts by renura who owns this company) http://www.digitalnow.com.au/.  This is Linux supported, should be "out of the box" for recent Linuxes.

Also see this page for some more info http://www.digitalnow.com.au/dvb_setup.html

[afilep]

Thanks for the info. Looks like Technisat Airstar 2 is the way to go. From the MythTV Wiki:

"Stock 2.6 Kernels seem to support it beatifully (atleast in Fedora Core 4 & 5). No additional drivers needed. Specification from vendor seem to suggest that a 700Mhz processor is needed (in Windows).
Includes remote control and LIRC compatible serial dongle.
Card has antenna in and out connectors."

Thanks,
Alex