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HDTV Reception Now Available on Linux

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the build-your-own-pvr dept.

-tji writes "A new company, www.pchdtv.com, has just released the first digital TV receiver card for Linux. Along with the Linux drivers, they have also modified xine to support HD playback and add XvMC support for MPEG2 hardware acceleration with some video cards. This has great potential for integration into PVR apps, like freevo and mythtv. There is also another project to reverse engineer drivers for the Teralogic TL880 based DTV cards. The one active developer has done a great job, but could use some help."

7 of 166 comments (clear)

  1. cool by wolrahnaes · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Now if we get support for the HDTV outputs on the Radeon 9800, I will have the perfect DVR to go with my 61" HDTV!

    Site's already slow....
    Probably won't survive the /.ing...

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  2. Outstanding! by YetAnotherName · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I tell you, it's darn difficult watching things in standard definition once you've gotten used to Jennifer Gartner on Alias in her glorious 1920 by 1080 pixels with a full color gamut.

    Timeshifting her is the hard part. For that, I've resorted to the MyHD card with its Windows drivers sitting on a system with an IDE-based RAID array. Yes, it works. But it's Windows. Need I say more to a Slashdot crowd? ;-)

    1. Re:Outstanding! by steve_bryan · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Since Alias is on ABC doesn't that make it 1280 x 720? Still plenty of Garner pixels but they are all honest progressively scanned pixels. What may surprise many is how good even 480i and 480p programming is compared to NTSC. The local FOX affiliate was showing episodes of Fastlane in upconverted 720p widescreen (presumably from 480p source) and the picture was amazing (not as good as real 720p or 1080i if you did a screen capture, but still remarkable).

      If you enjoy any program on OTA (over the air) TV this sort of product will enhance it immensely. I don't know for sure that this board supports it (the site is properly slashdotted) but the other significant enhancement is 5.1 surround sound. Let's not forget the other advantage is that the programming involves no monthly bill and with the right software it can be recorded to your hard disk (about 9 gig per hour).

  3. 90 day warranty? by Torp · · Score: 5, Interesting

    http://www.pchdtv.com/faq.php#faq0000007

    Isn't that a bit low for the average piece of hardware in a PC? I bought an ancient (used) ISA sound card for an even more ancient PC and I still got 180 days of warranty for it...

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  4. Digital Cable Card by TornSheetMetal · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Do any cards exist that can decode digital cable tv without having to go through the digital cable tv box? I'm not looking to get channels I'm not paying for. I just want a PVR that can act like my VCR did when I had analog cable. I used to be able to easily record shows on different channels. Tivo solves the problem by changing the channel on the Digital Cable TV box which isn't the optimal solution and prevents me from watching one show and recording another.

    1. Re:Digital Cable Card by adpowers · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Because he wants Digital Cable, not DirecTV.

      I looked around the DirecTV website and din't find a digital video recorder that supports HDTV.

      If you did get a Tivo one, you are limited by what they let you do. They can remove 30 second skip at well or make you watch advertisements. Stuff like MythTV has lots of features with no advertisements and it doesn't track what you record (and send it to some master database at HQ). Plus, MythTV-like programs allow you to do a bunch of other stuff like play ROMs, DVDs, look at your pictures of the network, listen to mp3s, check your weather, etc.

  5. TL880-based Card Driver by i_am_nitrogen · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Hello, I'm the developer of that TL880 driver linked to in the story. It would be really nice if everyone who owns such a card (MyHD, HiPix, WinTV-HD, AccessDTV) came on over and subscribed to the mailing list, and played with some of the software for a few minutes. The latest effort is to map the card's registers. A preliminary map that has nearly every register listed, but only detailed descriptions for enough registers to get the card displaying color bars, is located here. Also, as -tji mentioned in another post, ATI's set top box division is unwilling to provide any help to anyone not buying a minimum $25000 annual volume. So, if everyone who owns such a card could e-mail their card's manufacturer (i.e. Hauppauge, Telemann, MIT), as suggested on the How To Help page, asking them to try to arrange for help with the I2C-connected chips on the card, it would be great.

    Thanks.

    As for the PCHDTV, I just ordered an upgrade for my sytem from an Athlon XP1800+ to 2600+ with 333MHz FSB, and a Geforce FX 5200 for motion compensation, and I'll probably be ordering the PCHDTV soon. The useful parts of the code for the TL880 driver are the Oren VSB demodulator interface and the modified tuner.c which includes support for the dual input Philips NTSC/ATSC tuner. It's really annoying that the tuner and msp3400 modules in the kernel only attach to bttv drivers, rather than providing a generic interface that any new driver can hook to.

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