Tvheadend

Tvheadend is primarily focused on Digital TV reception (DVB-C/T/S ATSC etc). Although it can support analog TV reception with capture cards that contain a MPEG encoder chip it has limited options and benefits compared to Digital TV. So if you want to switch to Tvheadend I would also suggest switching to digital TV reception.

Not sure where you are located and if digital TV is an option, but it would certainly something to consider doing.

Hein

Hello Hein,

No, digital TV is not an option. Here in Belgium, most digital channels on the cable require a proprietary decoder (Telenet). But as long as there is an EPG and I can program recordings throught a web interface, it's fine.

Just out of curiosity, what exactly are the advantages of digital TV, except for the higher resolution video?

Brecht

Are you in a "ex indi" area? There are a couple of unencrypted digital channels available via Telenet if that is true (at least, according to this forum: http://www.tik.be/forum/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=10086&start=75). Those should also be watchable with a DVB-C card in your PC then.

The biggest advantage is that your PC does not have to do the analog to digital conversion but it can directly store the incoming digital signal. So there is less problems with interference, out of sync audio/video, bad signal quaality. And an other benefit is that on one transponder there can be multiple TV services. So with one card, you can record 2 station at the same time if they are on the same transponder.

An other option is switching to TV Vlaanderen and use DVB-S :-)

Hein

i have PVR 500, all works perfect (PAL) - good buy

@Hein

I'm in Leuven. I don't think that's former Indi area. Also, I think I've read that Telenet has since locked the unencrypted channels again. But it's hard to find up-to-date information on what unencrypted channels are available where.

I've been looking at hybrid DVB-C/analog cards (in case more channels are unlocked - I suspect Telenet might do that once most people have switched to digital TV), but it seems DVB-C cards aren't particularly well supported under Linux yet (http://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/DVB-C_Devices). The Soltek MediaTV Pro looks interesting, but I think it doesn't have a hardware encoder for the analog channels, exactly what I'm trying to avoid.

TV Vlaanderen looks interesting, but as I'm only renting my place, I don't want to mess around with an antenna

RoboSK -

Thanks for the feedback. If you say it works perfectly, I assume you can record two programs simultaneously with the PVR 500?

Brecht

watch/record/...it is 2 independently tuners (2xPVR 150 with PCI "bridge")