Linux distro for Hauppauge PVR-250

[nordloewelabs]

i was wondering if there's any distro out there in which the Hauppauge PVR-250 is recognized, installed and configured automatically (as the rest of my hardware usually is)? it would be ideal to get the card to work from the LiveCD (for testing purposes), but i recognize that's too much to ask for, so i'd be happy to get the distro fully installed in a dual-boot setup.

if such a Hauppauge-friendly distribution is unheard-of, can anyone suggest a distro in which the card setup is the easiest? i'm not looking for a full-blown HTPC experience.... i just want to be able to watch, record and pause TV like i can do under Windows.

any suggestions? thanks in advance

 

[Bateluer]

I honestly don't know, but perhaps Mythbuntu?

http://www.mythbuntu.org/requirements

The PVR-250 is listed under the supported cards, for what thats worth, but you'll probably have to do some configuration and driver installation manually.

 

[QuixoticOne]

I concur about using mythbuntu, but --
wait for some short time after April 24th whenever they make the final 8.04 release available.

The current 8.04 release candidate has a few kernel issues that I hope they'll sort out by the time they do the final release in a few days.

Then again your card is a more mainstream model than mine, so maybe you'd be fine with using the presently available RC version. Then again why run a pre-release when you can get the full release in 4-5 days.

 

[nordloewelabs]

Originally posted by: Bateluer
The PVR-250 is listed under the supported cards, for what thats worth, but you'll probably have to do some configuration and driver installation manually.

and that is the problem.... i tried mythTV on Kubuntu yesterday and -- not surprisingly -- i couldnt get it to work. i kept getting an error about the backend server not found.

 

[nordloewelabs]

i just tried MythTVOS, which is based on PCLinuxOS. the configuration was easy and required no installation of codecs, drivers or programs. recognized my PVR-250 automatically. only configuration needed was the changing from the European TV defaults to NTSC. i stumbled upon a few little issues though and i wonder if anyone here knows the solutions.

1) the picture quality when watching MythTV is fuzzy....under my WinXP setup pic quality is great.... i wonder if the IvyTV drivers are to blame...? i played around with some settings (the De-interlace one made some difference), however the current result is still inferior to what i'm sused under WinXP.

2) is it possible -- from inside Mythubuntu, KnoppMyth or MythTVOS -- to use a *windowed* media player (such as XMMS, MPlayer, Gxine, etc) to watch TV, instead of using MythTV? when using WinTV under XP, i always keep the TV window sized small and placed on the top corner of my screen. this this way i can work on the PC and also keep an eye on the news. once in a while, i click on the TV window and make it fullscreen. i tried that kind of setup with MythTV and, even though i can set the size of MythTV to 600x480, i couldnt make the window switch to fullscreen without going back to settings.... i did try ALT+ENTER. 😛