i been using Debian Sqeeze for a while now and it is ever so sweet, the Debian developers have done an excellent job (Kudos to them)

i have just bought this Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-1250 card (dual tuner Analog & Digital) (no FM radio) i hope it has a Linux compatible chip on it (bttv) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16815116024

anyhow...

the question i want to ask all the people that have TV tuner cards is: what is the good application to use with it? mythTV? , or maybe mplayer or xine?

Depends on what you want to do with it. If you want the PVR (video recording software) than MythTV, freevo, or XBMC are good options. If you just want to watch TV, there's several lighter applications like tvtime, me-tv, mplayer, etc.

Here's a pretty large list. You may also need to subscribe to schedules direct to get downloadable programming info (i.e. TV listings). I think it's like $20 per year.

I'm using DVB-S Conexant Systems, Inc. CX23880 chip on PCI card which had full kernel support for a while now. Picks up all unscrambled channels from Astra 23.5E satellite.
After trying out lots of apps, KDE's Kaffeine is the best GUI player, really easy to set up and scan channels with couple of mouse clicks. It is using xine as backend and KDE libraries, which, depends from with angle you look, is pro's and con's of the player.
mplayer is another player - has lots of bonuses as it runs in terminal. Although needs external programs like w_scan to create channels.conf list. mplayer with threading support - mplayer-mt, even manages to play HD-TV streams... on a good day.

Kaffeine in action on my desktop

This PCIe TV tuner card has a hybrid tuner, so far the Linux kernel recognizes it as a cx23885 and bttv loads on a modprobe, i tried me-tv and it wont find either digital or analog channels (i have terrestrial basic cable with mostly analog cable and a few digital channels),

http://www.hauppauge.com/site/suppor...ml?tab=6#linux

"Preliminary support for the HVR1250 in ATSC mode only is available from http://linuxtv.org/hg/v4l-dvb " = (which is over the air digital)

hopefully the Linux developers will have this card working fully 100% within a year, i have neither the expertise or the time to do it myself. thanks

I went with a silicondust. Almost everything can run with it.

yup jefro (and others), i should have done my homework and hunted for a fully Linux compatible TV card, but like a numbskull i went with whatever was the cheapest online and now i regret it, it would have been worth paying twice as much for the better card that would fully work in linux 100%...