Media PC

[LoTech]

I've been toying with the idea of converting an old computer I have to a media pc. Does anyone know of a good tuner card that can receive DVB-S2 and 8PSK for a moderate price? Although not a requirement, I would prefer one that will work with a Linux MythTV setup.

-LoTech

 

[1ADAM12]

I've been toying with the idea of converting an old computer I have to a media pc. Does anyone know of a good tuner card that can receive DVB-S2 and 8PSK for a moderate price? Although not a requirement, I would prefer one that will work with a Linux MythTV setup.

-LoTech

Offtopic but I tried to download Mythtv and the file size is 589Mb's. Is that correct. I thought Linux stuff was smaller more powerful.

 

[pendragon]

The Prof 7301 performs very well compared to previous generation cards and the Linux drivers are now in workable shape. There are other newly released cards, but you will need to verify the drivers work properly. Linux can lag uncomfortably in this regard. The TT S2-3200 card has been essentially obsolete for the better part of a year, but only recently have the repositories offered a barely usable driver.

 

[zamar23]

LoTech

You could find more advice by moving your question to PC DVB forum section, and also looking through the threads there.

 

[guapoharry]

How old of a computer?

How fast of a processor? How much RAM? How big of a hard drive?

 

[LoTech]

How old of a computer? How fast of a processor? How much RAM? How big of a hard drive?

Athlon XP-2400 with 1 GB PC-133 and 256 MB Sapphire graphics card. The HDD is not an issue right now because I'm not going to use it for HDD recording just yet.

 

[tamuin]

Athlon XP-2400 with 1 GB PC-133 and 256 MB Sapphire graphics card. The HDD is not an issue right now because I'm not going to use it for HDD recording just yet.

Just out of curiosity, what happens when you try to view this site with that machine and you are not logged in? Do the ads just bring the machine to a grinding halt?

You may not need the fastest machine but you proably need something a bit faster - there are a lot of inexpensive used machines out there. There are some good benchmark at Tom's hardware:

Charts, benchmarks CPU Charts 2004, PCMark 2004 - CPU

I have been using the prof 7301 with dream dvb and WinXP and I like it, my only complaint is that dream dvb calculates the wrong angle for goto x.x (it sends the correct diseqc command for the angle that it calculates but unfortunately the angle is wrong), so I had to store my satellite positions in the motor and use the stored positions.

 

[LoTech]

Just out of curiosity, what happens when you try to view this site with that machine and you are not logged in? Do the ads just bring the machine to a grinding halt?

On that machine I'm using Debian Lenny and KDE 3.5 with Firefox. This page loads just fine logged in or not. As a matter of fact web pages, Flash, Java, and the like load much faster on that machine than on my Dell 3 Ghz with 2GB RAM with Windows XP.