Good TV/VHS card for Fedora Core?

[Scot L. Harris]

On Sat, 2006-01-07 at 14:31, Florin Andrei wrote:
> On Sat, 2006-01-07 at 09:47 +0100, dondi_2006 wrote:
> 
> > I *might*, some time in the future, use the same box for
> > recording analog and satellite TV shows, but that is quite
> > unlikely, so it's not required. Right now, all I need is a
> > card that gives no trouble with Fedora, has coax or SCART
> > input and HW (PAL) video encoding to copy my movies faster. 
> 
> > Hauppage Win-TV PVR 250
> 
> WinTV PVR250 works fine on FC4, either standalone or with MythTV - the
> latter is recommended. It captures in an MPEG2 format wich only requires
> minimal processing to become compatible with DVD. Also, since all
> encoding is done by the card, the CPU load is very low.
> 
> If you also plan to play back the movies from the computer to a TV or a
> VCR, I recommend to purchase the PVR350 which also has a video output
> which is higher quality SDTV (standard definition TV) than anything you
> may devise with a regular video card.
> HDTV is another matter but we don't discuss that now.
> 

I use PVR350's for output as well and the result is great on the TV. 
You can use many of the video cards that are available for the same
job.  The PVR350 provides mpeg2 decode which off loads the main CPU.  

But the PVR250 will handle the encoding just fine for your VHS
conversion and can later be used to record TV later on.  Mythtv is great
for recording and playing TV content.  The commercial skip capability
alone is worth setting up a dedicated system as a DVR system.  I have
found that having at least three encoders eliminates most recording
conflicts.  I don't watch live TV anymore.