[Tfug] MythTV hardware encoder advice

[John Gruenenfelder]

Hello TFUG,

I've finally decided to upgrade my MythTV machine to handle HD recording.
Currently, I'm still using the original Hauppauge WinTV PVR-250 MPEG2 encoder
card I started with many years ago.  As a consequence, I'm also still using an
old standard def DirecTV set-top-box.

I'm not too concerned with the new STB since there are multiple ways of
communicating with them to set channels and such.

I'm actually going to replace my somewhat aging desktop gaming PC, so it's
guts will become the new MythTV machine.  But that upgrade will come sometime
after I've successfully completed this one.

I am seeking advice on what hardware encoder card I should purchase.  I've
been doing a lot of Googling and reading of mail archives for answers, but the
big problem is that it is very hard to find *any* document that is current for
the latter half of 2015.  Driver support and models offered change so
frequently, and I want to be able to purchase something current that is well
supported.

>From what I've read, it looks like perhaps the Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-2250 might
be what I need.  The problem is that I've read multiple descriptions of what
it contains across the web.  It has two analog tuners and two digital tuners,
and it encodes MPEG2, or maybe MPEG4... not sure.  Since I can't use HDMI
because of stupid HDCP, I need a hardware encoder than can take the component
output of the DirecTV STB and re-encode it.  I would like a card that can
output an MPEG4 stream since it will be of better quality at a lower file
size.  It is hard to tell from pictures online what connectors the 2250 really
has.  I can definitely see two analog coax inputs, and I'm assuming one of the
others is a component input?

I know there are some other TFUG members out there who use MythTV.  If you
were going to put together a new HD capable Mythbox, what card would you
choose today?

I've tried subscribing a couple of times to mythtv-users, the logical place to
ask, but so far I'm not having any luck getting Mailman to respond to my
requests.

If there is any other pertinent information I can offer, please let me know.
Thanks!


-- 
--John Gruenenfelder    Systems Manager, MKS Imaging Technology, LLC.
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