Capture cards

[klovell]

Is anyone using a stable capture card with HDMI inputs?  What about components or S-video?  I'm looking to input a 1080P signal from my Cable box.  Is this available yet?  If so what capture card are you using?

[tschak909]

No. Such HDMI "capture" devices aren't supported on Linux at present, and there's a whole bundle of gotchas attached. Please do some research on this topic, as it has been discussed ad nausaeum; not only here, but in every single A/V related forum on the planet. DRM concerns make this currently infeasible by any stretch.

If your device has component output, you can use a Hauppauge 1212 HD-PVR.

-Thom

[totallymaxed]

Is anyone using a stable capture card with HDMI inputs?  What about components or S-video?  I'm looking to input a 1080P signal from my Cable box.  Is this available yet?  If so what capture card are you using?

Well there are some ways to achieve 'HDMI capture' but they involve converting the HDMI signal to another format like component first. We have customers using the HD-Fury ( see http://www.hdfury.com/) for example which will accept HDMI input and output VGA or Component. If you input 1080p it will output that same resolution too. This works really very well for component for example where you can then route the component signals into say an HD-PVR which MythTV supports. The HD-Fury has a few simple settings on it and thats it. Picture quality is excellent and in our experience it just works.

All the best


Andrew

[klovell]

I searched Linuxmce for "HDMI inputs", "HDMI capture card" and "HDMI" but nothing came up.  "HDMI" had results but were all about HDMI output, the one post about hdmi input and is it supported went unanswered.  With all the talk about using supported hardware and only use what's known to work with linuxmce, I’m surprised that I’m expected to search outside of the Linuxmce wiki and forum for compatible Linuxmce hardware. Weird...

I'll give the HDfury a try.  I just found and ordered an HD-PVR on Amazon.  Silly me for ordering first and asking later but I just noticed the HD-PVR is capped at 1080I.  For cable I don't really care as long as its 720P or above but I’d rather my blu ray come in at 1080P.  Currently it's hooked up directly to my TV and is separate from Lmce but I’d like to be able to watch blu ray from any room with an MD.  How do you input blu-ray at 1080P or is it not possible?  I know a blue-ray DVD drive won’t work in Linux without jumping through hoops; I’m talking about a standalone Sony or any other brand Blu-ray player.

FYI- I checked the capture cards section of the wiki. My 2250 is listed as plug and play but it's been the single most unstable part of my system leaving my faith in that section of the wiki shattered.  I want to hear about devices actively being used on people's system.

[Marie.O]

FYI- I checked the capture cards section of the wiki. My 2250 is listed as plug and play but it's been the single most unstable part of my system leaving my faith in that section of the wiki shattered. 

I hope you updated the wiki page with your findings, so other people have less broken expectations.

[Marie.O]

I searched Linuxmce for "HDMI inputs", "HDMI capture card" and "HDMI" but nothing came up.  "HDMI" had results but were all about HDMI output, the one post about hdmi input and is it supported went unanswered. 

Search in the forum can be quite picky. Make sure you are at the top level (i.e. you select home in the menu), when you do your search. I did a quick search for "hdmi input" and found numerous posts for example.

[klovell]

Now that I think about it, I did search while under the users section.  I don't really venture into other parts of the forum to often and I figured the search was global.

I didn't update the wiki but I could.  I'm not really sure where my problem is.   Linuxmce does detect my capture card on its own and I see all the inputs that it has on the list but it just doesn't work.  At first I thought it was because I didn't have digital cable and only the digital side of the card has driver support in Linux.  The weird part is I was getting 7 local channels, 3 were in HD, but sometimes it wouldn't work.  I then confirmed by calling the cable company that I had absolutely no digital channels coming to my house, I was on the analogue network... I know it doesn't make sense because the analogue side of the card doesn't work in Linux, but I’m getting HD channels.  So I upgraded to digital cable thinking that would fix things but instead it broke it even more.  Now I get no channels at all and when I try to select a channel it locks up the MD.  I then decided that since I now have a cable box from the cable company, I’d just connect the s-video output to the s-video input on my capture card.  That broke that system even more.  Now every time I try to do a quick reload I get a message that some mythtv plug in is busy do I want to force it.  This happened 2 weeks ago before I went on vacation.  I came back yesterday and tried a reload thinking this thing had 2 weeks to do what it was doing but I got the same message.  plus every 10 minutes or so I get this message about the mythtv database being populated and wait until I see Mythtv is ready... something along those lines.  I really don't know if it's a problem with just my system, my cable company, the 2250 not being compatible or something else.  I've gone through a few snap shots and the one thing that never seems to work properly is the tuner card although the core configures it on its own.  I was leaning towards the cable company being the problem since they assured me I had no digital signals coming to my house, the guy said it wasn't possible with my plan, but somehow my digital card was getting channels.   Now I see I can't even get the s-video ports to work so I don't know.  I honestly don’t have a clue how else to try and get this card to work so I don’t feel comfortable contradicting the wiki.  If my efforts are enough for you guys I’ll update the wiki anyway.   I just don’t want anyone flaming me for bad info, I’m not a Linux expert by any means.