Member Avatar for mikeandike22

Hey im making a MythTV box and the biggest concern that I am having is whether or not the capture card will work so I thought someone might know here. Im thinking about putting it ontop of ubuntu first off mainly because I want a full operating system and knoppmyth just seems to be the mythtv frontend. So anyways I want a reasonable PCI card that will capture tv in mpeg 2/4 with good quality somwhere around $75-140. And then for video out im not sure what to do, the motherboard has some onboard ati video but I dont know if it can do svideo (im also going to need a svideo to coax converter). So I will probably stick and Nvidia 5200 in there, but havent seen anything about compatibility. Now Nvidia in my experience works well with linux but again im more worried about the tuner/capture card and the quality of the display.

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Dani AI

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After chose a Hauppauge PVR and pointed out the connector issue, a few practical checks will save time and money. Verify the bracket labeling or the card manual first: many PCI capture cards present S‑Video/composite as inputs only, not TV‑out. If the card is input‑only you will need the GPU’s TV‑out or an external RF modulator to get video to the TV.

About formats: that class of Hauppauge PVR cards does hardware MPEG‑2 encoding on the card, so recordings are efficient and require little CPU while capturing. If you want MPEG‑4 you will typically capture to MPEG‑2 and then transcode with MythTV postprocessing or a tool like ffmpeg/HandBrake — there aren’t many cheap, older cards that do native MPEG‑4 hardware encode.

For the display path, using an Nvidia GPU for TV‑out is a standard approach. Expect to install and configure the Linux driver and enable TV‑out (set standard NTSC/PAL, mirror/clone the desktop, tweak overscan). Passive S‑Video-to-RCA cables sometimes work but reduce quality; to feed a TV coax/antenna input you need an RF modulator — a passive adapter does not create an RF channel.

Quick checklist to follow now:

  • Confirm the card’s connectors from the manual or silkscreen.
  • Install the ivtv driver for PVR devices and verify it is loaded (lsmod | grep ivtv, dmesg | grep -i ivtv).
  • Test capture and local playback before wiring the TV.
  • Decide whether you will live with MPEG‑2 or transcode to MPEG‑4 afterward.
    These steps will make it clear whether the PVR + an Nvidia 5200 gives the output path you want or if you need the GPU TV‑out or an external modulator instead.
Member Avatar for mikeandike22

ok I went with a Hauppauge PVR 350 which has an S-Video out on it so I can just get an S-Video to RCA or Coax (if they make it?) converter and plug it in to the tv for the display.

Member Avatar for montanaro2006

ok I went with a Hauppauge PVR 350 which has an S-Video out on it so I can just get an S-Video to RCA or Coax (if they make it?) converter and plug it in to the tv for the display.

The svideo on these hauppauge is an input, same as the component. and yes s video can be converted to rca

Member Avatar for mikeandike22

Ok so I will just stick an old Nvidia in there and do svideo to rca from there.

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