Capture Card Quandry

[Blrfl]

Hey All...

I've been watching MythTV and LMCE for some time and have decided to build a LMCE box to replace my TiVO S1, which is so old it isn't funny.  (Although it does have a lifetime subscription, so I'm in no huge rush here...)

Anyway, I have what I think is a pretty good Core/MD system planned out but am at something of an impasse about capture cards.  I'd like to capture analog video from both of my satellite receivers with hardware encoding on a card or cards that have good support.  My system has two PCI slots and one PCI-E slot, all of which are available.  If I do two cards, I'd like for them to be the same make and model.

Hauppauge's cards seem to be well-regarded and have good support, so I'd like to use one of their products if I can.  The WinTV-PVR-500 or a pair of 150s would fit the bill perfectly, but with the DTV conversion underway, they're hard to find.  (There are some used ones on FleaBay, which I haven't ruled out.)  The current model that looks like it would do the job is the HVR-1600.  I'm a little fuzzy about whether or not LMCE supports it since the MythTV site says the card works with 0.21, but The release notes for 0710 aren't clear about what version of MythTV is included.

Could I get some thoughts on whether I should...

• ...forge ahead with a pair of HVR-1600s
• ...find an old PVR-500 or a couple of 150s
• ...wait for the next version of LMCE
• ...look at some other capture hardware

Thanks.

--Mark

[tkmedia]

Go with the Pvr 150's or 500 for now.


hdpvr support hopefully will be next release.

[tschak909]

The HDHomeRun is also available for unencrypted channels. I will be using one in tandem with an HD-PVR.  fantastic quality.

-Thom

[golgoj4]

i know its a pita, but i would recommend the pvr-150 or the external one. I see very bad picture quality from my pvr-500 most of the time, whereas the 150 looks as great as analog can. Just my experience. using both. The do make a pvr-usb device as well, may want to check that out.

Just a sidenote, the reason I found in more than 1 forum was that the 500 was susceptible to interference from other components.

-hth
golgoj4

[Blrfl]

Thanks for the pointers.

I'm not really interested in recording off-the-air, but that might change in the future.  150s it is.

--Mark