Full-screen TV on a low budget
Gadgets make the world go round. I have no empirical evidence, but it does make sense. Otherwise, why would acquiring some new toy bring that rush of pleasure; there’s probably genetic coding. Anyhow, this weekend I made the impulsive purchase of a TV tuner for a laptop. The USB stick kind, as recently reviewed in Linux Journal. There were a couple in stock at our local “Store For Tomorrow”, and the price (a ferry wharf, aka the Borden) didn’t elicit a gasp across the table, so we were customers.
The model for today is the Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-950 (the company makes a few different models, so the precision is necessary. Otherwise, you could find yourself trying to squeeze a PCI card into your DVD tray, and that isn’t going to work very well). The USB 2.0 format will do until something faster and snazzier comes along. The box includes the device, a CD of software, a USB extender cable, a tiny antenna, some hydra-headed media cable and a couple of sheets of quickstart (Windows only). There’s no dire warning about installing software before hardware, so if you are the kind that has to plug a device in as quickly as possible then you’ll avoid the agony of one registry hack too many.
Installation under Windows works. It’s as simple as that; within minutes I had tuned in the local fortypack of cable channels, and the For Sale channel was trying to prove that virtual flea markets are really a great way to pass the afternoon (not). The USB stick has a standard cable antenna connector, and we’d picked up a piece of coax at WallyMart, so all was as intended. The software allows screen captures, recording programs in a couple of formats, scheduling and some other stuff that I haven’t explored yet. The only caveat is that if you tend to randomly plug things into your many USB ports, you’ll have to install the drivers for EACH ONE. Somebody was asleep at the switch on that little idiocyncracy. We now have visions of watching CBC on a picnic table during summer vacation.
Under Linux, things weren’t as smooth. There are a collection of sites that are trying to cover this device as the path to a cheap home media centre, but after copying scripts and reinvoking the great god of Sudo, I have managed (only) to see the device using lsusb. The MythTV software disavows any knowledge (think Mission Impossible here). Likewise for Kaffeine, VLC, Mplayer. I’ll try some others real soon now, but my kitchen schedule interferes with spending the whole afternoon in fruitless endeavours. Maybe I’ll reread the article from LJ – why else would they have bothered adding it to the issue? The only tip that I can include is that the Hauppauge is the functional equivalent of the Pinnacle, if that means anything to you.
There’s no pressing need for a laptop PVR, but since I lost my bid on eBay for an old HF transceiver, I’ve been fidgety.
