using ubuntu and a BT878 capture card as a hdd recorder, doable?
 

i was wondering if there was any software for linux that enabled a bt878 capture card with tuner to be used as the input into an ubuntu linux box acting as a tv hard drive recorder other than myth tv?

Maybe. Here are the promising-looking entries from 'apt-cache search tv' in Debian:

aatv - A program to watch TV in a text-based console
dvr - Digital Video Recorder
kdetv - TV viewer for KDE
ttv - tty TV application
tv-fonts - X11 fonts for TV applications
tvtime - A high quality television application
v4l-conf - tool to configure video4linux drivers
vdr - Video Disk Recorder for DVB cards
vdr-dev - Video Disk Recorder for DVB cards
vdr-plugin-examples - Plugins for vdr to show some possible features
wmtv - Dockable video4linux TV player for WindowMaker
xawtv - X11 TV application
xawtv-plugins - plugins for xawtv and motv
xawtv-tools - Miscellaneous tools distributed with xawtv
xmltv - Functionality related to the XMLTV file format for TV listings
xmltv-gui - Graphical user interface related to the XMLTV file format
xmltv-util - Utilities related to the XMLTV file format for TV listings

Sorry, I'm not using any of these so I can't recommend one, but since Ubuntu is related to Debian, these should all work with little or no extra effort.

VDR is my favorite, try it.

http://www.cadsoft.de/vdr/
http://www.linuxtv.org/vdrwiki
http://www.linuxtv.org/vdrwiki/index.php/Xine-plugin

Mythtv is a comprehensive set of nuts, bolts, glue and duct tape to make a very nice full featured set top box dvr solution.


Dissect it a little, and you will learn that its really just linux. no different than your favorite distro. Its Debian, with custom packages to tie everything togeather. Just figure out what components make your hardware tick, and pull them into your distro without all of the myth specific packages.