Hello

Where I live I only get 2 digital tv signals and dont want to erect an antenna.

I have analog cable from comcast. I am happy with it. Do you guys know how long we will be able to get analog cable? I do not want to have to have digital cable boxes for tuners.

Is there a tuner card to tune digital cable?

Anyway my main question is I want to have a low power myth server so I want to use mobile cpus. Can you buy or build (rather buy) a dragon with a mobile chip like athlon xp-m 2800? How about a pvr-500 for analog dual tuning?

If not can anyone recommend a mobo good for athlon xp-m and mythtv? Maybe a barebones kit with a quiet case?

Thanks everyone!

It's not really clear, but keep in mind that a vast majority of US Households don't have sets cabable of doing digitial TV, so I doubt it'll go away in the next couple of years.



If by digital TV you mean stuff like premium channels then no, there is not. Microsoft has announced you'll be able to get a digital tuner with a 2.0 cablecard, but that won't be for another year and I have my doubts about the Linux community being able to hack a driver for it.

However, the HD3000 card does both ATSC and unencrypted QAM, so you could get HD signals for the broadcast networks from your cable company (assuming they are passing the HD signal).



My understanding from the Dragon folks is that it's a Dragon *because* of the parts used to build it. So if you put a mobile chip in it it isn't a Dragon anymore. Provided you can find a mobile chip that has the same socket, you could probably use the Dragon design specs as a template and substitute the mobile chip and a PVR500 for the ATSC tuner in the Dragon.

No guarentees, but it's a good starting place.

I've got a pvr-500 with comcast and am loving it. I want to buy another one soon so I can do 4 sources but I'd also like to hold out for more MPEG4 capable cards.

As for digital: I'm considering that too but if I go that way I think I may get the Moto DCT-6200 with the firewire port - the raw mpeg can be grabbed directly from there. I don't have HD but you can still record off the SD side of things.

I don't think SD will be going anywhere for another few years (I'm not in any hurry to drop $2500 on an HD. If I do go HD I'll just get a 17" LCD that is HD ready and only spend about $500

I haven't looked into the athlon mobile stuff so I can't say anything on that end of the spectrum

AC

Be aware that the FCC only requires the cable companies to pass unencrypted video over firewire for stuff on the "basic" tier and stuff you could get OTA. So your cable company may pass your, for instance, HBO HD over firewire, but the video will still be encrypted.

It will vary from cable company to cable company, but I suspect if you can't get it with a QAM card like the HD3000 you won't be able to get it off the firewire port.

Hi Will:

I can't say a great deal about HD, as I'm no expert there. However, I am currently
using an Athlon Mobile 2500+ for Standard Def. It works great with my two Hauppauge
tuner cards. I even borrowed a friend's tuner at one point and tried some 1280x720.
I believe with the right graphic card and a bit of work, you could probably do that mode,
especially if nvidia ever gets off their duffs and implements Purevideo in Linux.


Oh, BTW, I'm using it in an Abit NF7-S. Very nice board.


shplad

_________________
KnoppMyth R5C7
Abit NF7-S
Athlon XP Mobile 2500+
Hauppauge PVR-150 + PVR-150MCE
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Samsung Spinpoint SATA 120GB
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