Which TV card to buy ?

Which TV card to buy ?

Different TV cards are available on the market.

But what I don't read anywhere is how well they work under knoppix.

Can any of you add to this forum which card you've used,which knoppix version you use,how well it worked,and what you've done to make it work ?

I am talking about the livecd versions ,NOT the hd-installation !

Thank you very,very,very much for sharing you experiences in this matter.

Koen....

Koen,

I have been using the Pinnacle PCTV studio card (bought on ebay new for $35) and it works great with Knoppix. I have also heard good things about the Hauppage WinTV cards, but I have no experience with them.

I have used the PCTV card while running the live cd version of Knoppix. In fact, if I have to do a hard drive install, I usually boot up the live cd to the desktop, copy over my xawtv configuration file, and watch TV using the XawTV viewing utility while I'm installing knoppix to my hard drive. Try doing that with any other distribution! Makes me laugh everytime!

The big thing you will want to know with any TV card you purchase is if it uses the BrookTrout (bttv) chipset. AFAIK linux, and specifically video for linux, does not really care about specific models as much as it cares about that.

You will have to run a configuration utility to set up all the channels, but after you are done, it will create a configuration file you can save and use over again. For xawtv this is .xawtv, a hidden file in your home directory.

Hope this information is helpful.

Regards,

~paul

I have also used the cheapo ATI AIW LE and it works nicely. Knoppix is pretty incredible, you can actually watch TV on your computer while you are doing an OS install.

I use PCTV get it cheap on ebay $30 - $35, pretty good with xawtv, by default knoppix uses european TV setting, if you are in the US, U have to manually configure xawtv before you can watch TV.

My Hauppauge WinTV GO ($50 at OfficeMax) works great.
The default Europeon problem goes away with 3 clicks:
1 TV norm - NTSC
2 Freq. table - us-bcast
and, assuming you have a pesistent home
3 Save

I have a Pinnacle PCTV Rave card that I got for $15. It works great in XP, but when I choose to auto configure it under knoppix it finds no channels and then the system hard locks when it tries to run the tuner application.

I'm just curious if you used the auto configure settings for your pinnacle card. Mine's got a BT848akpf and the tuner is "Front end 4032 FY5 Temic 3X9 499"
(I've only tried it with knoppix 7.26.03 because I just got the card)

A picture of the card can be seen here:
http://www.matos2000.com/Cv/Tv/miro-...ages/carte.jpg

I tried some manual configuration of the card.
insmod i2c-core
insmod i2c-dev
insmod i2c-algo-bit
insmod i2c-proc
insmod videodev
insmod bttv card=39 tuner=6
The card is detected and tuner as well.
scantv
(all channels say that there was no station)
Finally it gets to t1, t2, t3 and the whole system locks up.
I tried in 2 different computers one laptop with docking station and a desktop system with a soyo sy7vca (via 686 chipset)

Just doing
modprobe bttv card=39 tuner=6

does the same thing.

Also having a similar problem with the card with rh9 but I got it to work twice. Just magically started working.