TV-Card support in linux?
 

Hi!

I'm planning on buying a TV-card (ehm, u know, to watch TV on the computer) for my PC. I wonder which cards are supported?

I have set my eyes on a Hauppauge card (more precisely Hauppauge WinTV PVR-500MCE-Kit). Will it work in linux?

And if it doesn't, which cards will you recommend?

Thanks

Hauppauge are indeed officially supported in Linux.

I've got two, and neither of them have actually worked yet. But they *are* supported.

The card that you pick is a PVR or MPEG-1/MPEG-2 encoder card. You can watch TV but you need Video Lan Client, mplayer, or xine. I suggest non-PVR video capture cards based on SAA7115 or SAA713x for the highest video quality. Recently I did more homework and the SAA71xx chips are actually better in both reception and video quality than Conexant chips.

Besides my Lifeview Flyvideo 3000 which is based on SAA7133 chip. I have Hauppauge PVR-250 (model 980) that works well. PVR-500 should work with the latest ivtv software but you need to use kernel version 2.6.17.

So you mean that I can expect problems installing them?


But how bad is actually the quality on a PVR-card? The reason I chose it, was basically the price (it's damn cheap!). And if the quality isn't too bad, then it doesn't actually matter for my part.

Dunno - I know many people have had no trouble at all. I'm just not one of them :( A google for "video4linux" might answer a lot of your questions..

The difference in quality between my Hauppauge PVR-250 (based on Philips SAA7115 and Conexant MPEG-1/MPEG-2 encoder) and Lifeview Flyvideo 3000 (based on Philips SAA7133) is two fold. The FlyVideo 3000 produces a lot better quality. Both chips are equal at capturing video with 9-bit resolution but the SAA7133 contains hardware to hook up directly to a PCI bus. The SAA7115 is just a capture chip that needs to go to another chip.

PVR cards output lossy video so that is why I suggest buying a non-PVR card. If you still insist on buying a PVR card, I recommend a PVR-250 (model 980) instead of PVR-500. Most reviewers say that PVR-500 lacks good reception and stability of the system gets bad which could be the problem of the PCI to PCI bridge chip that Hauppauge selected. On my USB 2.0/IEEE-1394/1Gb NIC combo card contains a PCI to PCI bridge chip from HINT Corp. that does not effect my computer's performance.

Please excuse my n00b-ness, I'm not really into hardware.... But let me see if I got this correctly:SAA7115 just captures the video stream and sends it to the Conexant MPEG-1/2 encoder which in return sends the encoded stream furter to whichever app is using the device. While SAA7113 does both of these operations (capturing and encoding) in the same chip. Does this mean that SAA7133 is simply faster than SAA7115?

Or may be you mean that while encoding has an equal quality on both cards, the quality while watching TV differs? And that is because the SAA7133 has an additional ability to send the raw video stream to the system, while SAA7115 *MUST* encode it first?



And, do you know of any place on the net where I can find some video samples (or stills for that matter) taken by these (or similar) cards - just to compare the quality?

Thank you...

The PVR-250 or PVR-500 sends data as MPEG-1/MPEG-2 (lossy compression) while non-PVR cards sends data in RAW. Sending data as RAW provides a lot higher quality than any lossy compression. Lossy compression is the same as JPEG and MPEG-3 audio. PVR cards are great when you want to record TV shows, convert VHS to DVD, and transfer DV content to DVD. You can not use a PVR card as a web cam or store the data as a different format. You need at least a GHz processor with at least MMX to decode the MPEG video. With a non-PVR card, you can get by with a 500 MHz to watch TV with any program and output to any video format, but a processor with MMX does help to increase performance. Also non-PVR gives a possibility of using it as a web cam or for surveillance.

The Philips SAA7115 does not contain any hardware to connect to the PCI bus, so it needs extra components to relay its information to the PCI bus. The Conexant MPEG-1/MPEG-2 encoder does this.

The Philips SAA7130 through SAA7135 models contains hardware to connect to the PCI bus directly and it provides RAW data format for crispier pictures.

Wow, that has to be the first time I ever heard someone say that a non PVR card is better then a PVR card.

Everything I have just read is ass backwards.

PVR cards, are much, much better, the quality is better, the encoding is done in hardware, not software so the system requirements are actually lower, recording and creating video from a PVR card produces far better pictures, and as I just said the encoding is done in hardware not software, so the system just works smoother and far less cpu usage.

I have used tv tuners for about 10 years now, and have tried so many different cards it is hard to remember them all, but none has ever produced better pictures and higher quality recording then my Hauppauge PVR based cards.

I have PVR 250's and 150's, flat out incredible, using them through mythtv I capture DVD quality recordings of pay channel content and couldn't be happier. Non PVR cards just don't compare in quality, and use a hell of a lot more CPU and memory in comparison. With two tuners I can record from one, and watch live television on the other, or watch live television from separate computers accessing the cards in that one computer, all with very little cpu usage. Doing the same with non PVR based cards takes a serious hit on the CPU, and resources of the machine, and stuttering and or choppy playback can result.

The PVR 500 is known to work very well, the 150, and 250'''''s work flawlessly and I wouldn't even consider another card.

If you are looking to make a multimedia computer for recording of television content get PVR card, and you won't be disappointed. If you just want to watch tv in a little window in something like tvtime, then any budget card will suffice. Have a look at HTPC, Mythtv, and other forums regarding these cards, and you will find that most everyone will recommend getting a hauppauge PVR card for the reasons I stated.

IVTV drivers are needed, and the unassociated firmware.

BruceCadieux, The PVR-500 uses a PCI-PCI bridge to handle two PVR-150 on the same board but not every system will work. Most Windows and Linux users have trouble with the PVR-500. No, PVR cards do not have better quality than non-PVR. I think you are comparing the old BT878 cards to the PVR-250. The PVR-250 has a lot better video capture chip than BT878 chip.

Go to non-PVR and PVR Comparision and please be gentle or else I have to password protect the file.

I used the following command for the FlyVideo 3000 card that contains the SAA7133 to equal the temporal noise filter of my Hauppauge PVR-250 (model 980).

mplayer -quiet -identify -tv \
driver=v4l2:width=704:height=480:outfmt=422p:fps=59.94:input=3:normid=4 \
-vf scale=-1:-1:1:1:0.00:0.75:ntsc,swapuv,pp=ac,hqdn3d=4:3:6,yuy2,screenshot \
tv://

In the verbose messages for mplayer, it seems to leave out 240 lines. The picture should be a lot better and I think mplayer adds too much post processing. Tvtime displays the output better than mplayer but does not include temporal noise filter.

I change the source code for saa7134 to make the inputs human friendly. Input 3 is S-Video. The signal is NTSC.

The Hauppauge PVR-250 picture needs to be deinterlaced. I used Video Lan Client because mplayer crashes when /dev/video1 is used as the file.

I used a cartoon because cartoons are easier to show quality.

The PVR-150 or PVR-500 would not be as good as the PVR-250 or PVR-350 because the PVR-150 contains Conexant as the video capture that does not have the same quality as Phillips SAA7115 chip that is used in PVR-250 and PVR-350.

OMG, thank you so much for the comparison and your replies! I've caused a lot of work I see.... :o :o very sorry


I think that I first of all give the PVR-500 a go. If it doesn't work for me, I'll just buy another one. The reason is just that the 500 was surprisingly cheap (15$ or something - not sure 'bout the currency conversion though). And I can afford to loose that much if something goes wrong.

But thank you all for your replies!

I strongly recommend buying the PVR-250 instead of PVR-500 because PVR-250 is a lot better. Also the PCI-PCI bridge chip on the PVR-500 may crash your computer.

But you mean a PERMANENT crash? Like destroying other hardware and stuff?

Yeah, I understand, and thank you very much for the advice. But the thing is that around here (in Norway that is), it's not too easy to get hold of the different equipment, and since the other cards are far more expensive, this one seems to be an alright choice for me. The PVR-250 was not present in the online store I usually buy stuff in. Here is a list what they did have though (sorry for using the local currency, but it's there so that you can compare the prices):

Hauppauge PVR-500 -> 149 NOK
Sunsway ST Lab PCI-FM/TV7130 -> 295 NOK
TerraTec Cinergy 250 PCI -> 419 NOK
Hauppauge WinTV GO2 -> 449 NOK
Hauppauge WinTV PCI-FM -> 499 NOK
MSI TV@nywhere A/D -> 499 NOK

500 NOK for a TV card for my use is a bit too much, but if there are something extraordinary with them, I guess I can stretch my wallet a bit :D

I don't know, which cards would you recommend among these?

I just put them prices into Google and for ~$23 US the PVR-500 is a no-brainer to buy, if you can actually buy it for that price grab all you can and put them up for sale on Ebay that is at least a $150 card.

Yup, that's what I thought. But since Electro was so negative 'bout it I thought I would just wait and see...


150????? Really?? Now that's cool... Going to check it out now :D Thanks for the advice