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

Awesome

[SealBeater]

What's nice about this to me is that, since it's USB2 (tech specs aside), you
can take the space that a pci card would have, put a usb2 card in it's place,
and have multiple tuners, since mythtv has support for multiple tuners, case
space considerations are no longer such a factor.

Now, we just have to see if it's any good.

SealBeater

Re:Awesome

[lakeland]

Or just buy a card with multiple tuners. My pvr500 has two, but I've heard of cards with four! That way you don't have to have an ugly USB device outside the case.

Not to take away from what Plextor has done though, this looks like it might be the solution for some people.

Only NTSC tv tuner

[rar]

The sad thing is that the built-in tv-tuner only supports NTSC, so this product is obviously not targeted for europe...

Re:Only NTSC tv tuner

[lutchann]

There are three models of the TV402U: North America, Europe (PAL) and Japan. The difference is the frequency bands that the tuner can receive. Only the NA tuner is supported currently but we'll add support for the PAL and Japan tuners in the next couple weeks.

The M402U is just like the TV402U but without a tuner, and it's also supported in Linux. Both of these devices can accept NTSC or PAL baseband inputs on the S-Video and Composite ports, regardless of the frequency bands the on-board tuner supports.

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?

Re:Tivo?

[enrico_suave]

" 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?"

They do use linux as the base part of the TiVo, but all the juicy stuff is propietary AFAIK.

The SDK is for the home media option only, i.e. to develop applications that reside outside the tivo on a PC, and add functionality over the network... which is pretty cool and people are doing cool stuff already with it, but it's not a full blown access to TiVo's innards...

*shrug*

e.

What's the easiest?

[Kozz]

...or is there no easy way to BYOPVR? I mean, I've heard about MythTV and Freevo and all sorts of hardware, etc, and as much as I think Linux can be a great tool, sometimes it's a royal FPITA to get thing configured & compiled right, make everything work. I'm not a kung-fu master sysadmin, just a guy who's done his fair share of ./configure, make && make install.

If I don't want to fuck around with making sure I've got all the right hardware pieces just perfect, what're my options for buying something pre-built that will work well, no monthly subscription fee, etc?

Re:What's the easiest?

[mjh]

Try KnoppMyth. I don't know if it crosses your threshold of "easy", but it's definately easier than building myth from soruce.

Wishful thinking

[hashts]

Too bad none of the HDtv cards out there can decrypt signals from Satellite or cable. Of course thats due to the providers forcing you to buy/rent their own PVRs.

I'd be all over this device if it would work with an HD feed from satellite.

Re:gee

[enrico_suave]

"I read recently (sorry lost the link) that we can't record HD signals from cable or satellite since they are encrypted. The amount of information from an HD feed is huge and with current technology would take a 6GHz CPU to decrypt in real-time."

Well not ALL satellite traffic is encrypted. There's a ton of FTA DVB satellite signals out there... even hidef ones (ok they are pbs, but still... mmmmm NOVA...

There are a few HDTV cards that CAN decode unencrypted QAM signal via digital cable, but that depends on your cable company not encrypting which is hit or miss...

There's also the possibility of pulling the HDTV content over firewire (and controlling the STB via firewire) and I believe the latest mythtv .17 has some preliminary support for such an arrangement, again depending on if your firewire port is enabled and some other factors on your particular STB (although I'm confused as whether they have to have the firewire port be unencrytped or not, or what the regs are, to be honest...)

*Shrug* so I guess you're basically right, but it's not out of the question, but there's not a good legal way to decrypt digital cable (or directV/dishnetwork) like using a CableCard in some HDTV's now...

e.

500gb media center.

[bullterror]

I've been using Windows Media Center edition and I'm going to drop it. First off, it's unstable, having to reboot your TV once or twice a week isn't fun especially when if you don't do it you come home to find it missed your shows. Second, the DRM is really a pain in the neck. MS-DVR isn't hard to convert to a better format but it is time consuming because there's always that extra step of making it into mpeg-2. Saving a show off windows media center is actually harder than ripping a CSS encrypted DVD. (I hate to do the typical MS-bashing but I really have been having a lot of trouble with my media center recently.)

I have been planning on buying one of the plextor units for a while, I like the idea of hardware encoding directly to mpeg-4, and I like plextor products, the have made the most reliable CD burners I've ever owned. I like the linux option, that seems like a good idea, but whatever I do I simply want it to be as versatile as possible, and Windows MCE is not versatile.

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 ...

They have donated one of these to the Myth Creator

[dcgaber]

They donated one of these boxes to the myth creator, and perhaps even more to other developers. They are smart, they want to get to get widespread support out there for their product, and I will maybe add one of these to my next mythbox.

No, it's something totally different

[lutchann]

The encoder is the WIS G07007SB and the board is based on a WIS reference design with improvements made in-house by Plextor. Both the hardware and the Linux drivers are quite stable.