Linux Which DVB-T2 card? UK
#1
I'm looking to add PVR functionality to my setup at my new house, which has both a cable (Virgin Media) option and a DVB freeview option.

I know the DVB antenna works as it's currently hooked up to my TV directly, there is a bit of breakup when viewing freeview HD though - is this likely to be the antenna? What about cable? What free to air channels are there via cable from Virgin and is there a HD option there as there is via freeview??

The bulk of my question comes with reference to which TV card to buy? There are several on the market which flout themselves as 'new' and I want to make sure of compatibility - as far as possible - before I purchase. I'd like a minimum of two DVB-T2 capable tuners using an internal PCI type slot over USB is preferred though not required.

The card will be most likely used within a VM environment on Arch Linux or CentOS. I'm fairly comfortable with compiling a kernel so if that's required for a card then it's not the end of the world.

Then the final question comes in the shape of which backend is currently the best? I dabbled a year ago with TVheadend using a DVB-S2 card and found the results to be OK in XBMC but some basic features were lacking, such as timeshifting and comskip. Now that could easily have been my idiocy with setting it up back then, but it would be great if someone could just summarise in a few sentences TVHeadend vs MythTV vs VDR as they all are TODAY. It's so hard finding up to date relevant information!

Thanks in advance...
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#2
I use a tuner from Digital Devices myself, it's been absolutely rock solid. They recently added a C/T/T2 expansion card to their line-up, so to cover all your needs you could get a Cine CT v6 and a Duoflex v3 expansion kit (http://shop.digital-devices.de/epages/62...s%2F091307). That way you'd have four discrete tuners that can handle C/T, two of which also handle T2.

Another option is to get a Cine CT v6 for your cable and terrestrial needs and something like the TBS 6284 (http://www.buydvb.net/blog/tbs-announce-...-6284.html) for T2.

All of these cards are modern and I can at least vouch for Digital Devices. All of these cards need out-of-tree drivers though which means manual compiling. If you're going to be using them in VMs you'll need a hypervisor that can passthrough PCI devices, though you probably knew that already.

Regarding software, tvheadend supports timeshifting these days and I think it supports comskip, though I've never used that feature so I can't say for sure.
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#3
Great info, I use xen ATM with passthrough for a GPU to my windows VM and I intended to utilise that same pass thru tech for the VM for TV.

I've seen a dvbSKY tuner here which looked promising.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B00EUVCF9E

I'm only interested in using the dvb-c signal if it gets a comparable freeview HD lineup to dvb-t2. Could you elaborate on that aspect for me?
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#4
That card should work, there was some guy posting a success story about it on the tvheadend forums quite recently.

I can't comment on C vs. T2, I'm not from the UK.
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