recommendation for best tv video card?

[david]

On Thu, 2005-04-14 at 20:55 -0500, William F Pearson III wrote:
> I'll have to agree that the Wintv Cards are good I had the Wintv DBX,
> that's the stereo version. The PVR cards are a little more tricky to
> get working with linux and they record with mpeg2. If you're big on
> open standards mpeg2 probably isn't going to appeal to you. ATI has a
> new HDTV Wonder card out that isn't supported in Linux, no kernel
> modules available last time I checked. In fact most of the terrestrial
> HDTV cards aren't, otherwise I would snatch one up immediately. If you
> are thinking of ever trying an HDTV card and live in the United
> States, you need to finde one before this July to avoid the dreaded
> broadcast flag that will prevent you from recording some shows.
> 
> On 4/14/05, bnutting <ulist at gs1.ubuntuforums.org> wrote:
> > 
> > I have a Hapenauge WinTV-Go and it works great. It has been found in
> > every Linux dist that I have tried.
> > 

The thing that governs whether a device is Linux compliant or not is the
chipset therein.
I have a WinTV card and it it complete crap. It's never ever worked
under Linux. I get black, white grey and green pictures that can't be
tuned and no audio except white noise.
It has the cx8800 chipset.
When I bought it I did some research first and found mention after
mention of the WinTV cards and thought "great, here we go...". However
the original chipset was the btXX chipset and some few weeks prior to me
buying this card Haupauge changed the chipset to connexant.
Connexant chipsets aren't very nice.
I've had similar experiences with other non-tv card devices and the same
chipset maker crops up every time.
So.
Be careful and make sure the chipset (which probably won't be mentioned
on the outside of the box) is really supported by Linux. ie, that you
can find several accounts of people using the same chipset with success.
A TV card and weeks of heartache is more expensive than a 2nd hand
portable telly next to your pc.

regards

nux