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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."
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.