Slashdot Mirror

I built a little Freeview PVR year or two ago system using an Epia motherboard, Gentoo Linux, MythTV and a Hauppage Nova-T card. MythTV is a fantastic achievement but sadly is not in the "It Just Works" category. I dont see why a product like the NZ box - with carefully selected compatible hardware and all the driver headaches solved for you - shouldn't work though.

Main deal breakers are (a)Slow and fragile channel changing in LiveTV (at least on my system) (b) No DVB Radio (c) No DVB Teletext and (d) No luser-friendly DVD recording.

A friend has a Topfield and swears by it and claims that it passes the Significant Other test for usability. There are various third-party add-ins to improve the EPG functionality. You can also use a re-flashed Linksys NSLUG as an ethernet interface, Radio Times scraper and "season pass" system - but that is getting hacky again.

There are plenty of PCI and USB DVB-T cards for windoze systems - This one seems to be one of the more featureful (and AFAIK works under linux).

In the UK, digital TV is widely available over the air with both free channels and a small number of subscription ones. There are now several cards which can capture the MPEG2 stream directly from the broadcast, meaning no encoding and no quality loss. One such company selling these is Nebula Electronics.

I had a quick poke around their support site and found this, along with some instructions on using it with the LinuxTV.org drivers here.

Hopefully the quality of the card itself will mean more people developing for it over time. It's also nice to see the manufacturers promoting development for this card too.

I had a quick poke around their support site and found this, along with some instructions on using it with the LinuxTV.org drivers here.

Hopefully the quality of the card itself will mean more people developing for it over time. It's also nice to see the manufacturers promoting development for this card too.

While I must admit that I'm new to the whole built-it-yourself PVR box scene, I started off by buying myself a stand alone TV card, just to see what kind of quality I'd get, and also because I couldn't find a standalone box that was open enough.

I chose the Nebula DigiTV card, and I have to say, I cannot recommend it enough. 110UKP gets you a PCI card, remote and a bundle of good software that covers pretty much everything - including letting your PC become a TV server on a network. The best bit about the card though... It's got a built in Freeview decoder.

Yup, the quality of the recordings is absolutely amazing - read cable quality - and the PVR software easy to use and if you don't have any special requirements it could be the only software you need.

All in all, incredibly chuffed - especially after some lacklustre forays into more mainstream TV cards a few years ago. Now all I have to do is build another PC to put it all in.

I prefer buying the CD, so I can do what I like with it.
And also using my Nebula Receiver to record and then burn TV programs to DVD.
No BS DRM :D

"Then why do people keep using TVs, DVD players, stereos, watches, telephones, ...?"

Because convergence is happening now - it's evolutionary rather than revolutionary. Along the way, some companies will get it right (cameras in phones, although I have yet to find a use), and some will get it wrong (Bluetooth in DV cameras - what was that about?).

Granted, single devices are much easier to use, but they are bitches to get to interact with each other if you need/want them to. Here in the UK we don't get TiVo, so I bought a Freeview box with a HDD recorder in it. But can I get that video off it? Hell no. So I've just invested in a Nebula DigiTV card for my PC; Freeview, PVR, Teletext, recording in MPEG format and a remote for £120. The key here is that these are the right kind of converged functions I'd like to see. The downside - as you rightly say - is that I have a damn PC attached to the back-end that makes the process way too complex... stick all this is a cheaper consumer box and I'd snap it up.

I hate to say it, but much as Bill Gates wants to solve the problem of the 'digital home', he's also perpetuating it. The best way to take Media Center PC's would be to stick Windows CE in them and make them consumer boxes without the Windows OS proper in them, but as this is their flagship product, convergence for the masses looks like it's going to be overcomplicated - and crippled by proprietary standards - for so time to come.

Personally, I also wanted DVB as well. When you throw DVB in the mix, then there is only one option....
http://www.nebula-electronics.com/products/product s.asp?class=digitv

Get the Nova-T version instead, it already has LinuxTV support, including full multiplex capture so you can record the original 4/5 MPEG2 channels with in the transport stream.

The Nebula board is also going to get Linux support pretty soon apparently.