I thought maybe a few might be interested in what linux does with video and TV cards.
Bought one these to try out after checking what chipsets the V4L part of the linux kernel can handle these days:http://www.softwareandstuff.com/CRD10186.html, nice people there, service isnt super fast sometimes but they reshipped a new card to me when the idiot mailman left it at my door so it got stolen
Installed it a Duron 800mhz system with 384mb RAM and an nvidiaGFmx400 vid card,ATA-66 hard drives.
The kernel saw the card right away, and slackware also picked up its presence and loaded the bttv module on its own.Open rexima and changed my soundcard mixer settings and was good to go.
Software I tried:TVtime, mythTV,XawTV, and Mplayer.
TVtime:
easy to use, picture quality decent, doesnt record though, full frame rate on screen though
mythTV
killer app, too much for this machine though to run properly unless just watching only
XawTV
not bad, GUI is a little dated looking but it works, records too in a couple formats, only 320x240 resolutions though for recording
mplayer
best all around even if its comand line, records in any resolution the card supports, best this machine could handle while encoding into mpeg4(divx) and mp3 AVI's is about 320x240 though, tried in another machine (XP1800) and it does any resolution with power to spare
Also, the picture was much better in mplayer than anything else, crystal clear but a little finicky about the signal than the others
incidentally the card under linux will run at full hardware max supported by the card, under windows it does not
thoughts:
Not bad, I like it, it works for ripping VHS tapes quite well, straight into mpeg4 just like ripping a DVD LOL, for $20 im not gonna complain
Bought one these to try out after checking what chipsets the V4L part of the linux kernel can handle these days:http://www.softwareandstuff.com/CRD10186.html, nice people there, service isnt super fast sometimes but they reshipped a new card to me when the idiot mailman left it at my door so it got stolen
Installed it a Duron 800mhz system with 384mb RAM and an nvidiaGFmx400 vid card,ATA-66 hard drives.
The kernel saw the card right away, and slackware also picked up its presence and loaded the bttv module on its own.Open rexima and changed my soundcard mixer settings and was good to go.
Software I tried:TVtime, mythTV,XawTV, and Mplayer.
TVtime:
easy to use, picture quality decent, doesnt record though, full frame rate on screen though
mythTV
killer app, too much for this machine though to run properly unless just watching only
XawTV
not bad, GUI is a little dated looking but it works, records too in a couple formats, only 320x240 resolutions though for recording
mplayer
best all around even if its comand line, records in any resolution the card supports, best this machine could handle while encoding into mpeg4(divx) and mp3 AVI's is about 320x240 though, tried in another machine (XP1800) and it does any resolution with power to spare
Also, the picture was much better in mplayer than anything else, crystal clear but a little finicky about the signal than the others
incidentally the card under linux will run at full hardware max supported by the card, under windows it does not
thoughts:
Not bad, I like it, it works for ripping VHS tapes quite well, straight into mpeg4 just like ripping a DVD LOL, for $20 im not gonna complain
