santner Posted December 21, 2004 Report Share Posted December 21, 2004 I am very interested in using an extra computer I have for freevo, however I have no experience with TV tuner cards. So what I am asking is this: First off, which ones are linux compatible. Second, what should I look for when purchasing one? Freevo is a linux application used to pause/record live tv, play movies stored on your hard drive as well as music. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
devries Posted December 21, 2004 Report Share Posted December 21, 2004 Take the Hauppauge wintv pvr250/350 cards. They have good Linux support (look in the tips & tricks forum). Both do hardware encoding (and the pvr 350 decoding) and that is a good thing if you have a relatively slow PC. They come with a remote (look in the tips & tricks :) ). Freevo is a very good choise (I use it myself, look in the FAQs for an old HOWTO). Have fun buiding it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
santner Posted December 21, 2004 Author Report Share Posted December 21, 2004 I have a few more questions. Why would I want to buy the 350 over the 250? What is the decoding good for? Can you use Freevo to select the FM stations that the 350 receives? Does this work with satelite? I am assuming that it does, just wondering though. I have an Nvidia GeForce FX 5200 with 128 MB of RAM on the video card. Is this sufficient? I will also need to purchase a sound card, any recommendations? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
devries Posted December 21, 2004 Report Share Posted December 21, 2004 Decoding takes a lot of your processor. Just look at how much %CPU mplayer uses when you play an mpgeg2 file. It's not as much as encoding but you would certainly need a P4 or fast PIII to view without skipping. For encoding you need at least a P4 2.3/4/5 Ghz. FM stations: I've not tried that (me owns a pvr250 :) ) but webradio is not a problem. It comes with 30 or so pre selected stations (most of them in scandinavia and germany for whatever reason) and you can add your own. Videocard: that's more then enough. I use a mx440 64MB ram. Soundcard: something that will support surround sound would be nice. (if you want to play DVDs :) ). Look at the alsa site what is supported. (most soundblasters etcetc) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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