Matto Marjanovic wrote: > Hiya, > > I'm trying to get a handle on weighing the options for a new ATSC tuner > card; I've looked looked through the list archives and haven't quite > found an answer to these questions. (Perhaps, if they get answered > here, the answers could find their way into the ATSC_cards page in the > linuxtv wiki? Can anyone add stuff to the wiki? If so, I'd be happy > to do it.) Anybody can add to the wiki... Please, feel free. I enjoy writing code better than documentation. (dont we all) .... SO, go for it! > The DVICO Fusion HDTV5 Gold, HDTV5 Lite, and Airstar HD5000 all appear > to work under linux now - fantastic! But why use one over the other? > Here are some questions that come to mind: I don't know as much about the Airstar HD5000, but I can tell you that it is not yet supported without Tyler's patch. You neglected to mention FusionHDTV3 cards... These use a slightly older tuner/frontend combo, but they work well too, and have the same capabilities as the FusionHDTV5 cards. > o Is a dual-card/dual-tuner setup possible with any of these? Don't know about airstar, but it is working well for me with the FusionHDTV cards. Airstar *should* work also. > o Do the linux drivers support recording from analog broadcast? Airstar does not support analog. *ALL* of the ATSC/NTSC FusionHDTV5 and FusionHDTV3 cards DO support this. > o Do the linux drivers support recording from composite/s-video input? > (I believe only the HDTV5 Gold has such an input, right?) FusionHDTV3 Gold-T, FusionHDTV5 Gold and FusionHDTV5 Lite all have s-video, composite, NTSC and ATSC. I'm not sure if the GPIO for FusionHDTV3 Gold-Q is correctly programmed for s-video / composite. Mac Michaels has that card, and I do not know if he has tested those inputs. > o What kind of closed-caption support do these cards have? Closed-caption is not yet supported in the cx88 driver. So, if you need this support, I'd recommend the FusionHDTV5 Lite. > o The HD5000 can do TS stream demultiplexing in hardware, correct? > What kind of impact does this have on its performance (i.e. what > kind of difference does this make, and when)? IDK, probably less CPU strain... > o [A non-linux related question, for the heck of it:] > I believe the RF frontend on all these cards is the same; do these > three cards work equally well in pulling in an HDTV signal, in > multipath rejection, etc? (How about analog broadcast signals?) The following does NOT answer your question, but: AFAIK, airstar doesn't receive analog broadcasts at all. If this question applies to linux, then I would say: cx88 driver is less mature than bttv, and bttv deals with analog television broadcasts *much* better than the cx88 driver. Also, in my experience, I have gotten more of a steady stream from the bt878-based FusionHDTV5 Lite as opposed to the cx88-based Gold models. So, overall, the FusionHDTV5 Lite is my favorite among these cards, but I have not yet tried the AirStar 5000. Hope this helps, -Michael Krufky
