[wplug] pcHDTV-3000 cards for MythTV

[Patrick Wagstrom]

Drew from Zhrodague wrote:
>> That was more than two years ago when I ordered the cards, and
>> while I did order 24 of them, they all went to happy WPLUGgers.  As
>> far as picking one up now, you can get a pcHDTV-5500 from 
>> http://www.pchdtv.com/ for $129, which is about what we paid for
>> the HD-3000 cards back then.  I would advise the 5500 over the 3000
>> as it has a better tuner and is less sensitive to noise in the
>> power supply (I had to replace my power supply to get my cards to
>> work).
> 
> How about some of the off-brand HDTV tuners? I'm just starting to 
> look into these, as I've been quite happy in the Land of Analog
> Tuning.
> 
> Zap2It shutting us off made me mad, and so I'm trying the FTA thing 
> -- two tuners and two dishes. Any experience with satellite?

Right now I think that by definition everything is off brand. Most folks
have pcHDTV or Dvico Fusion cards, although the HDHomeRun is fast
becoming the solution of choice. Because it's a network based device,
you can put it off in some closet somewhere and not worry about the
extra PCI slots in your frontend (and the associated power, heat, and
noise issues). When it comes to TV Tuners Hauppauge are really the only
"name brand" I'd trust, and their HD cards don't work with linux.

I don't have a HDHomeRun but am strongly considering picking one up so I
can get rid of the HD3000 cards in my box and switch back to a smaller
and quiter power supply.

>> However, you may want to consider paying about $169 and getting an
>>  HDHomeRun, which is an external dual HDTV tuner that connects via
>>  ethernet.  It's much easier to setup, has better support, and is
>> more isolated from issues that could muck up your HD reception.
> 
> Interesting. How does this integrate with MythTV?

It shows up as two digital tuners to MythTV. They go into your pool of
tuners and get queued up juts like any other tuner would.

> Have you noticed that Channel 3 (which carries Mission: Impossible at
> 11:PM) did not ever have guide data from Zap2it? Do you know if that
>  channel provides EIT for those shows?

I'm not entirely sure which channel you're talking about as the comcast
lineups differ from location to location. For my location, channel 3 is
always leased access. What you may be referring to is WBGN, which I've
never been able to figure out the "real" channel for on Comcast, so I
can't contact schedulesdirect to tell them to fix the problem. Yes, they
do transmit EIT schedules.

> I've been looking, but I cannot figure out how my folks' Panasonic 
> DVR is able to get guide data. Any suggestions?

If it's not connected to anything other than a cable line, it's most
likely through EIT. This is doubly likely if they've only got a few days
of schedules available.

> Ah, yes -- they increased the time duration. This might actually tip
>  the scales for me. Not sure yet. Since I used a scraper, I may just
> use that for a while. I really enjoyed just watching tv, and not
> screwing with it so much!

I'd recommend getting EIT working first. It's probably going to be more
reliable than trying to muck with scrapers in the long run. The fact
that MythTV works with XMLTv makes it really easy to hook in other
scrapers if you're into that. For me, the $15 was a small price to pay
for very high quality listings that had all the data I needed, included
episode ids for tracking reruns.

Another nice thing about schedules direct is that as they reach their
subscriber plateaus they upgrade everyone. For example, when they hit
the point that they could have the price, the upped everyone so their
final day would be sometime in march. This was doubly nice because it
was 3 months free, but they also made it so the days you already used
were free (in reality this was probably to ease with the sql statement,
it doesn't much easier than "update subscribers set expiry='2008-03-18'
where expiry > '2007-09-30'"

--Patrick