From owner-freebsd-multimedia@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Feb 2 15:21:36 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-multimedia@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2B73C16A4CF for ; Wed, 2 Feb 2005 15:21:36 +0000 (GMT) Received: from freckleface.aedifice.net (adsl-209-233-30-172.dsl.snfc21.pacbell.net [209.233.30.172]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0928543D2D for ; Wed, 2 Feb 2005 15:21:35 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from myers@aedifice.net) Received: from [10.0.0.20] (dmz2 [192.168.1.2])j12FD9f07564; Wed, 2 Feb 2005 07:13:10 -0800 (PST) Message-ID: <4200EFF4.4080701@aedifice.net> Date: Wed, 02 Feb 2005 07:21:24 -0800 From: "David C. Myers" User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0 (X11/20050105) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Adam Maloney References: <20050201164641.E64418@atlantis.403forbidden.net> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit cc: freebsd-multimedia@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Hardware recommendations for MythTV/FreeBSD X-BeenThere: freebsd-multimedia@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Multimedia discussions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 02 Feb 2005 15:21:36 -0000 Adam Maloney wrote: > > That's kind of what I suspected...everyone is pretty sure it will work > fine, but no one wants to out-right guaranty it :) But unless I hear > any real negative feedback from others, I think my mind is made up on > the PVR-250. Mine's great. The latest version of the pvr250 port finally added support for my tuner -- I believe the driver now recognizes 17 tuner types. Be aware that the driver places some funny limitations on the output formats. It does not do DVD half size resolutions (352x480), even though this is a format standardized by the DVD Powers-That-Be. It does, however, do 480x480, which is not a standard resolution. The driver also hard codes limits on the encoder bitrate for each output size, and the limits seem to produce a somewhat more blocky capture than I'd like. Small complaints, though. It works well. I ended up wrapping some shell scripts around "at" to implement my "PVR". The gist of it is, "dd < /dev/cxm0 > output.mpg" with a timer that stops the process after an appropriate amount of time. Someday I might write some code that reads in XMLTV format to automate the scheduling of shows I want. Other notes... The MythTV/FreeBSD port doesn't compile cleanly, last I looked. And the author has released a patch that adds the Video4Linux ioctls to the cxm driver code, which itself already requires kernel patches to install. MythTV won't work without these ioctls. Patches upon patches... But the V4L hacked version is behind the official version in the ports tree, and thus supports fewer tuners. Oh, also, search back in the archives a few weeks for my question (and John-Mark Gurney's very helpful answer) regarding capturing over-the-air broadcasts. The driver always uses cable tunings, even if you tell it you have an antenna... -David.