I am thinking of getting a digital TV card for my computer so that I can record programmes for viewing later on my television using a DVD player. I already have a DVD R/W drive on my computer ( 2 x 1.3 MHz CPUs ). I'm using a 2.4 kernel and don't propose moving to 2.6 in the near future.
I'm planning to use what I believe is called Terrestrial digital broadcasting and NOT satallite broadcasts. I've borrowed someone's set top box for a short time and was able to get BBC1, BBC2, BBC3, BBC4 and Channel 5. This was using an ordinary pre-channel 5 aerial so I'm hoping that a proper digital aerial will give more channels.
According to freeview.co.uk I can't get any digital channels for my postcode, BBC tells me that I can get only BBC channels and dtg.org tells me I can get all of them. Ain't the web wonderful?
This raises lots of questions and the more research I do the longer the list of questions seems to grow.
I'm thinking of an Hauppauge WinTV-Nova-T PCI as I understand it works with Linux. Is it going to be difficult to set up? Any suggestions/ recommendations for other PCI cards? The specification for this says that it accepts UHF input only but what I want to know is can I plug my tv aerial lead into it and expect it to work?
What Linux software is available/needed? I don't understand a lot of the terminology and don't know what to search for. I run Debian Sarge/ Testing.
How easy/difficult is it to create DVD discs with, for example, 2 hours of recording? What about file sizes greater than 2 GB?
Do I need to take the different DVD formats ( DVD-R DVD+R ) into account when using a DVD player for playback?
Watching the only DVD disc I have (Life on Earth - BBC), which came with a packet of cornflakes, I see that moving objects are noticeably blurred. Is this a function of my video setup Matrox Millenium AGP.
Any comments and advice would be appreciated at this stage. I feel like someone who's learning to fly for the very first time in dense fog!
Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain