Plextor PVRs Now Support Linux

planetjay writes "Plextor PVRs now support Linux with an open source SDK for their ConvertX PVR external USB TV tuner/encoder This is great news for Linux PVR users who want to use an external device with hardware based MPEG-2 and MPEG-4/DivX encoding in their MythTV or Freevo homebuilt PVR. "Plextor is strongly committed to supporting the Open Source Software movement with free development tools that help speed the creation of next-generation Linux-based video software," said Dirk Peters, director of marketing, Plextor."

Comments

Tivo?

[Manchot]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't all Tivos already Linux-based? And didn't they just recently come out with an SDK for third-party users?

Hats off to Plextor

[dmouritsendk]

Now this is class, not only are they the first company to release drivers this kind of product for linux, they way they are doing it is truely awesome.

Released under the GPL(this will probertly be included in the kernel pretty soon i guess?), V4L2 support and code samples.

I can hardly wait for gstreamer (and it's v4l2 source element) to get a bit more stable/functional, and stuff like gstsharp gets included in the mono stack. I imagine we'll start to see a hole bunch of neat video applications.

as opposed to Hauppauge's lack of support

[jbr439]

Plextor gets two thumbs up for this. Hauppauge gets thumbs down for not only not providing open source drivers for their PVR-x50 cards, but for not even supplying proprietary drivers. It's due to what can only be described as amazingly valient work on the part of the IVTV developers (and users) that Hauppauge's cards are usable on Linux systems.

Luckily for Hauppauge, there is currently nothing to worry about with the Plextor PVR having a MSRP of $199. But if that price ever comes down ...