homemade PVR questions

[Joe Auty]

On Mar 25, 2006, at 3:33 PM, Nicolas Blais wrote:

> On Saturday 25 March 2006 15:07, Joe Auty wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>>
>> I'm just getting ready to setup a PVR for myself on my FreeBSD
>> machine, but I thought I would run by my plans with you guys first
>> just to ensure that this will work.
>>
>> I have a satellite signal (Bell ExpressVu), it comes with a set-top
>> box that inputs and outputs a coax signal. I'm looking at the
>> Hauppauge WinTV PVR-250 and using the driver for this provided in the
>> ports tree with MythTV.
>>
>> Really, all I need this for is recording TV shows just like we used
>> to use a VCR for. If I can schedule, record, save to a directory,
>> I'll pick up this Hauppauge card.
>>
>> Are there minimal requirements for the video and sound cards, or is
>> all of this handled by the Hauppauge card? Any experiences doing
>> something similar to what I'm doing? Any general advice?
>>
>>
>> Thanks!
>>
>
> Hi, what you wish to attempt is possible, here's my experience:
>
> I have a WinTV card and I can record with transcode (also possible  
> with
> mencoder) but the problem is that whenever bktr (the wintv driver)  
> is opened
> for read, the TV audio that is fed from my WinTV to my sound card thru
> the "line in" port is heard.
>
> That means that I can record a show (audio/video) correctly, but at  
> the cost
> of hearing the audio while it is recording. Obviously annoying  
> unless I turn
> off my speakers, and I haven't found a way around (playing with  
> mixer to turn
> down the volume obviously turns down the recorded volume too).
>
> Playing with the WinTV in FreeBSD is tricky, but usually one can  
> fiddle around
> to make it work. Post your experiences in the FreeBSD-Multimedia  
> list if you
> ever attempt your project.
>


Well, I won't be using this setup to do any live recording at all,  
just recording stuff overnight on a machine that I usually just  
access over SSH. Sounds like your issue won't be an issue for me =)

Do I need to have a minimal sound/video card configuration for this  
to work, or is everything handled on the card already? Would you  
recommend using transcode, mencoder, or MythTV to schedule recordings  
like I plan to do?







-----------
Joe Auty
NetMusician: web publishing software for musicians
http://www.netmusician.org
joe at netmusician.org