Which TV capture card to buy?

[Dieter]

> > > > > The driver for the cx2388x appears to work,
> > > > 
> > > > Cool, so you have NTSC working?  Is the driver available for beta testing?
> > > 
> > > With all the programming here available over ATSC (and it looks and
> > > sounds SOOOO much better than NTSC), I haven't even bothered/attempted
> > > to do NTSC...
> > 
> > Some PBS stations have different programming on NTSC and ATSC, so
> > we need both.
> 
> Ours too, but if you have a pvr (I have my own working backend), you
> can get the same programming at another time in digital...

A pvr/dvr is the only reason I'm going the computer tuner route
rather than a STB ATSC tuner.  A STB would be much easier.
But some programs are only broadcast on analog, never on digital,
(not even weeks/months/years later at 3am) other programs are
only broadcast on digital, never on analog.  Not to mention the
pile of tapes that might want to get digitized someday.

So a driver for the cx2388x would be great.

> HD Jeopardy

HD Jeopardy... sounds like writing drivers without documention.  :-)

> I can see how NTSC could be better than some of the SD addon broadcast,
> but my analog reception is poor enough that even the low bitrate is
> better than the snow and regular interference...

Did you ever get a directional antenna?

> So, I'm getting data from the PAT, the PMT and both the video and audio
> streams, along w/ padding packets (8191), and the TVCT (8187)..  So, if
> it's doing any filtering, it's doing statistical filtering which isn't
> very useful...

Okay never mind, just an idea.

> > > The Linux driver also has a bug in that they don't consistantly keep
> > > two registers that control serial or parallel mode for the digital
> > > video input, and the linux-dvb list completely ignored the report...
> > 
> > Perhaps the Linux driver for a different card with the same chip
> > would have different bugs?
> 
> The ATI HDTV Wonder card is the only cx2388x one that has the nxt200x
> demodulator on it..

There are other cards that use the cx2388x and have more or less working
Linux drivers.  If there are other cards with the nxt200x there might be
useful clues in the drivers.

> Anyways, the tuner/demodulator takes a lot longer
> to tune/sync than the LGDT3303...

Which would be annoying for channel surfing, but should be okay
for recording.