USB TV tuner?

[cybertron]

Are there any well-supported USB tv tuners for Linux that don't cost $175? I'm thinking like one of the < $100 ones. I'd like to use my laptop as a PVR because I got some movie channels thrown in with my cable internet and they require that you go through the cable receiver, which is far, far away from my desktop (which for various reasons still doesn't have a working PCI tuner card yet either :mad: ). I was thinking I could just drop my laptop behind the couch, split the output from the reciever, and use the web interface to myth or freevo to control recording.

My problem with this is that I can't seem to determine whether any of the USB tuners are actually well-supported in Linux. I see there is a driver for the Hauppauge WinTV 602 USB, but it appears to be a pain to setup or change if you decide you want a different resolution or whatever. I have also noted a few mentions of that and others in the kernel docs, but I assume that the kernel driver must not support it or there wouldn't be another driver, right?

So, to sum up: Is there a budget USB tv tuner that will work in Linux with a relative minimum of effort (think maybe a little more complicated than a BT878-based PCI card would be). Personal experiences would be helpful if anyone else has tried this. Thanks.

Edit: One other thing, I think the cable from the receiver to the TV is actually composite video, so could I just get a video capture version without the full tuner? Are they any better supported than the tuners?

[je_fro]

When I was looking into it, I did hours of research and got a hauppauge-pvr350. with tv-out, it's a great card. Perhaps the pvr-150 is what you need..I believe it still uses the bttv driver. Even if it doesn't, ivtv works. I got mine setup with mythtv in a couple of days. It's PCI though.

[cybertron]

When I was looking into it, I did hours of research...
I know what you mean. :eek:

Unfortunately a PCI tuner isn't a problem. I've already bought two WinTV Go's which should be supported under bttv as well (according to the MythTV hardware database wiki). On one I think the guy stiffed me, which will teach me to buy from people on other forums 780 posts or not. Haven't heard back from him in a long time. The other one arrived and had a number of fairly deep scratches on the board and connector and appeared to have been smashed, as some of the pointy things (technical term) had been bent over on the bottom. I was hoping it would still work, and it is recognized but it behaves as though the cable is disconnected all the time (green screen with some static at the top). That one's getting sent back since it was supposed to be a new bulk package card. They were kind enough to include an audio cable for it, so I hope they'll replace it for me.

Nuts, now I've gotten off topic on my own thread. So, back to my original problem, I would like something that I can use with my laptop because moving my desktop to the living room isn't really a viable option. If it's not possible I guess I'll live with recording basic cable as I can get that to my computer, but it would be nice to have the movie channels too since I'm paying for them.:)

[je_fro]

In that case you'll want something with an onboard processor.

[cybertron]

Woohoo! I found out that the second PCI card I got wasn't defective after all because it worked in a friend's Windows computer, so I went back and got it working. Just needed to configure xawtv and apparently everything else uses its settings. Anyway, I think I have plenty to record for now anyway, so I'll just leave the movie channels, laptop, and USB tuner alone for now.

I think I'm going to get hooked on this being able to pause TV though, so I'll probably be building a PVR in the relatively near future anyway.:) Then I won't need a tuner for my laptop at all.

BTW, how's the picture-quality on your 350, je_fro? On the cheap WinTV Go it's not particularly good, but then regular TV isn't intended to be run at 1280x1024 either. When I shrink it down it does look okay, and for $18 it's great.:D

[je_fro]

This is the only tv-card I've ever had so I don't have anything to compare it to. It looks fine though. In small screens it looks about as good as mplayer can get, and at fullscreen it looks fine too.

[cybertron]

Good to hear that since I'll probably use a card more like that if I do build a PVR. Mine sometimes looks like poorly encoded video on high-motion scenes, although I did find the Myth de-interlacing settings last night and they seemed to help a lot. It was late and I didn't have much time to watch though. Maybe I'll post a screenshot and then you'll have something to compare with (and laugh at how much better yours looks:)).

[cybertron]

Well, for anyone who comes across this thread, USBVision (http://usbvision.sourceforge.net) might be worth looking into. Looks like they support some of the major cards. Too bad my laptop's wireless if flaking out on me so I don't feel comfortable spending any more money to try this out, but I figured it might help someone else.