[MEncoder-users] wintv pvr-500

[Joe Emenaker]

Jody Gugelhupf wrote:
> hi me again, I was wondering if anyone has some experience wit the WinTV PVR-500 on linux, how is
> the support for it?
I just got one last week. Linux sees it and I get two video devices 
(/dev/video0 and /dev/video1). The tuners, however, seem to show up as 
"Television" (not "Tuner0") and "Tuner1"... probably to make the first 
tuner look the same as single-tuner cards.

The one problem I'm having (which is well-known on the MythTV site) is 
that it (and possibly others in the Hauppauge PVR family) doesn't like 
the Via chipset in my Shuttle SK51G. So, the whole machine  often 
spontaneously reboots when the second tuner kicks in (although I did 
actually manage to get them both recording different stuff at the same 
time, once). I'm going to get a small ThinkCentre and try the card in that.
> i'm also wondering how the audio of the tv stations is recorded from the WinTV
> PVR-500, does it need to be connected to the sound card of the computer
Nononononononononono! That's why I got a PVR in the first place. I don't 
remember seeing any new audio devices detected in the syslog when I 
booted with the card, so I'm figuring that the PVR cards actually 
combine the audio into the mpeg stream that it then feeds to you through 
video0 or video1. If that's the case, then you get no audio/video sync 
problems... no matter how loaded your CPU gets during recording.
> if it is used for only recording 2 chans at the same time, what will be the
> expected RAM usage? i guess CPU usage will be 0? sorry i'm a noob..
I haven't looked at the RAM usage. CPU usage is pretty low (because 
MythTV just uses the MPEG compression that the card provides. If you're 
going to use mencoder for something additional, then all bets are off). 
In fact, even the disk usage is pretty low.

- Joe