Getting started w/ MythTV [was Re: Tivo vs MythTV]

[Ben Scott]

On 11/8/06, Thomas Charron <twaffle at gmail.com> wrote:
> The cost diference between, say,
> the PVR-150, 250, 300, 500, etc, is the inclusion of hardware based
> encoders.

  That's what I expected, but it's confusing as hell.  Their marketing
department needs to work on product differentiation on their website.
I finally found this:

http://www.hauppauge.com/pages/compare/compare_pvr.html

which explains some things.  The PVR-150 is the same functionality as
the -250, just with new and cheaper parts.  The -350 adds a
decoder/TV-out.  The -500 adds a second tuner/encoder (but no
decoder).

> Happauge cards are generally a safe bet, as nearly all of them with the exeption
> of the 'WinTV' cards are supported.

  Now I'm more confused.  Pretty much *all* of their products appear
to have "WinTV" in the name.  ???  :-)

> A 600 Mhz machine can easily recoder 2 channels when a dual input
> board with hardware encoders.  By contrast, a NON hardware encoder based
> solution would require 1.6 Ghz processor to handle it.

  That much, at least, makes perfect sense.  And if the hardware is
well supported, I'd much prefer to do the video encoding and decoding
in dedicated hardware.  That general strategy usually works a lot
better anyway, even if you've got CPU to burn.

> Other then that, you WILL USE MUCH MOOCHO HD space, as it is VERY easy to
> simply save and forget, and soon get 'HD full' messages.  ;-)

  This I can also attest to!  The 240 GB in my TiVo is adequate, but
I've still filled it on occasion.  And that's at standard definition
with somewhat lossy compression.  At high def, I think I'd have about
30 hours.

-- Ben