Hauppauge WinTV Nova TD-500 On MythTV
Overview
I was scouting for a new TV capture / tuner card for MythTV ever since I moved out and got MythTV running using the roof antenna. The PCI-E stuff is nice but not mature enough in Linux. From my understand Hauppauge is the best support TV cards in Linux and therefore I wanted to stick with them.
Picking TV Card
I waited to see if I could get Digital Freeview before splashing out an analogue again which are few and far between since the Digital switch over is coming soon. The website Freeview website stated I could get only channels 1-5, the normal terrestrial channels over the air. This didn’t fill me with much confidence.
My brother had a spare Freeview box which I borrowed off him and was happy when more than 5 channels were picked up in the scan. I ended up with more than 15 working channels in total on the box.
It was time to head to Google to do research. After finding out you needed one tuner per computer watching live TV e.g one master server with one front end connected to the TV in the living room and one front end on the computer you will need 2 TV tuners to watch live TV from the living room and on the computer at the same time. This does not affect recorded shows.
Few hours / days later I had my eye on Hauppauge WinTV Nova T-500. I wanted to stay on Ubuntu 8.04 LTS because it was supported for 2 years and ideally I would get it set up and leave it alone and not bother with the latest releases.
Nova T-500 Or Nova TD-500
During my research MythTV wiki had a great article on the Nova T-500. It states which hardware is truely a T-500 whether the box says so or not. I have found the original T-500 hard to come by but the things to look out for on the box are:
Ubuntu 8.04 & Nova TD-500
8.04 kernel was just one or two versions out when V4L drivers included TD-500 support in their DVB drivers. This means you have to patch or compile the kernel to include the driver. This also meant you had to do this every time a new kernel update came out from Canonical. This would not be a problem for me except I did not manage to patch / build a module that worked with this version. I did not want to go down the route of compiling a new kernel so I gave up.
Ubuntu 8.10
My DFI Infinity NF4 supposedly has a BIOS bug which does not show in Ubuntu 8.04. I have tried turning things off like acpi, apic, etc, etc but no luck. Also I tried removing compiz and not install the nVidia drivers. I did manage to get through a MythTV install and get it up and running to see it was working out of the box.
I have the latest BIOS update from DFI but no luck. I even went to the lengths of downloading and installing Mythdora 10 but that failed to start up X.
Ubuntu 9.04
I hoped this release would have been better but it was going along the same route as 8.10. I tried it and it had the same problems so I left it as that. I’m looking to either replace my motherboard or look into replacing the internals of the computer.
Summary
I wish the Ubuntu folks would update the kernel but from the feedback I got in the forum it’s not likely to happen. The best route would be to re-compile the kernel or figure out how to get the module working.
It’s not looking good for me to get this TV card working. The only option is to get a new motherboard but for an aging socket 939 is not going to be easy but will be the cheapest option with no 100% gaurentee.
Another route I can take is to scrounge enough parts to partially rebuild the PC. I do remember having enough bits but not sure if they all still work especially the graphics card.
The last option is to build a new PC for the sole use as a MythTV server. Whilst this has been brewing in my mind it’s not something I can commit to financially right now especiall when the current Linux box is aging and looking as though it will not handle another release by Ubuntu.
MythTV Article On Hauppauge WinTV Nova T(D)-500
Hauppauge WinTV Nova TD-500 Product Page
