TV Tuner Cards and Cox Communications

[Joe]

I know what you mean about trying different video cards. I have tried 
the following cards:

HVR-1800 - Digital only (PCI-E)
HVR-1250 - Digital only (PCI-E)
HVR-1950 - Digital and Analog. (USB)
PVR-250 - Analog only (PCI)

I had some other cards/usb devices the results were not to my liking. 
Hauppauge seems to make the best tuners.

For Digital channels, it means that you can pick up the clear QAM 
channels offered by Cox.
This link show what channels are available.

http://www.landlpcservices.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=748

Note that the only HD channels offered by Cox are the same ones you can 
get Over The Air.

The drivers for the newer HVR series from Hauppauge are not complete. 
You cannot get the normal analog channels at this time. I have tried 
everything just short of modifying the kernel drivers. They say it will 
be supported soon, and that was from 2007.

I just started playing with the HVR-1950  and it looks pretty good. It's 
a USB device and just put it into my system this last weekend. So give 
me a little more time to see if there are any issues and I can get back 
to you.

If you are going to set up a MythTV system, I found the best results is 
to get a card with hardware MPEG-2 encoding for the analog signals. 
Digital signals are already in MPEG-4 format. Having the stream in MPEG 
format reduces the load on the CPU and reduces drive space.

Mtyhbuntu is GREAT! It made configuring my hardware easy and getting the 
whole mythtv setup fairly painless.

Hope this helps.

Francis Earl wrote:
> I recall there was a presentation done about MythTV in one of the West
> Side LUG meetings, so maybe someone can help me with this?
>
> I have tried two different cards now - both via cx88 module
> coincidentally. Pinnacle PCTV HD and Hauppage WinTV-DVR-1250 are the
> cards, and of course I had similar results: I can watch TV via the
> S-Video signal via the cable box using TVTime perfectly fine - this of
> course makes DVR functionality rather difficult however.
>
> My question is, has anyone had any better luck with Cox and their TV
> Card? I only have around $80-90 to spend, else I'd go with the pcHDTV
> HD-5500, but even then it seems to only support unencrypted HD. I am
> unsure whether Cox even uses encryption as the tech support wasn't
> terribly enlightening, so I'm wondering what you all think?
>
> Have you had any luck using a TV card on Linux with Cox Cable? Can you
> make any recommendations for cards I should try that are within my price
> range?
>
> Any feedback would be much appreciate, and happy belated holidays  :)
>
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