[pvrusb2] Functionality Questions

[Mathew Brown]

Great.  Thanks for your very informative reply Mike.  Just one final question before I rush off to buy it that I would be very happy if you would kindly answer.
  1) Does the unit draw power from the USB connection or through a seperate adapter?  If it's the later, is it universal (110/220)?

Thanks for your help and the work you've put in on this driver.

On Thu, 29 Jun 2006, Mike Isely wrote:

> On Thu, 29 Jun 2006, Mathew Brown wrote:
> 
> >  Hi,
> 
> >  I've been thinking of purchasing a Hauppage for quite some time now, 
> > but since I just got a laptop, I was looking for something that can run 
> > on both my desktop and my laptop machines, depending on which one I'm 
> > using.  So I came across the WinTV-PVR-USB2 and in search for Linux 
> > drivers for it, I came across your site.  I still haven't purchased it 
> > and was wondering if you can help make my decision by answering the 
> > following questions:
> 
> >  a) how would you compare the driver for the WinTV-PVR-USB2 with that 
> > for something like the Hauppage PVR350 in terms of features / maturity?
> 
> The WinTV-PVR-USB2 device is roughly comparable to a PVR-250 or a 
> PVR-150, with the difference being of course that the WinTV-PVR-USB2 is USB 
> hosted while the others are PCI.  The PVR-350 adds a video output with 
> hardware mpeg decoder compared to the PVR-250 and PVR-150.
> 
> In terms of maturity, the ivtv driver is far larger and more mature.  It's 
> been around a lot longer and has to support a larger variety of devices 
> (the PVR-350 in particular involves additional effort on the driver's 
> behalf).  I've only been maintaining the pvrusb2 driver for about the 
> past year.  I was not the original author; I took it over when the original 
> author disappeared.  The pvrusb2 driver is quite stable.  There are still 
> missing features, but there's certainly enough to make a good PVR system 
> with it when combined with, say, MythTV.
> 
> There is some complexity in setting up the driver, being that it's 
> out-of-tree, requires a number of support modules, and you have to 
> extract and install a bunch of firmware.  The same is true of the ivtv driver. 
> However the situation is improving with time.  In both cases, the 
> needed support modules are all in the kernel now, and in the pvrusb2 case it 
> appears that the driver itself will be in the kernel starting with 
> 2.6.18. 
> The ivtv driver will probably appear in the kernel in the 2.6.19 
> timeframe.
> 
> 
> >  b) What exactly is the difference between the "WINTV-USB2" 
> > (http://www.hauppauge.com/pages/products/data_usb2.html) and the 
> > WINTV-PVR-USB2 
> > (http://www.hauppauge.com/pages/products/data_pvrusb2.html)?  I get the 
> > feeling that they are both basically the same with the USB2 being 
> > slightly less expensive.
> 
> The biggest similarity is the name; beyond that the two devices are 
> considerably different.  The "non-PVR" device does not include a 
> hardware mpeg encoder.  It is essentially a dumb frame buffer capture device 
> conencted by USB.  Its internal architecture is considerably different 
> (beyond just not having the mpeg encoder).
> 
> If you are just interested in watching TV, then the non-PVR device might 
> be the better choice - no need for an mpeg decoder anywhere in the 
> path.  On the other hand if you want to set up a PVR type of arrangement where 
> you actually want to store the video somewhere, then you need to 
> compress the video somewhere.  In that case you're far better off with a device 
> that can do mpeg encoding in hardware, i.e. use the "PVR" version of 
> the device.
> 
> 
> >  c) Is it fully integrated with V4L so I can do thing such as set a 
> > program to record at a given time, etc.
> 
> The pvrusb2 driver is V4L compatible to the extent that any 
> mpeg2-native device can be V4L compatible.  This means that any V4L app
> which can decode mpeg2 data (e.g. MythTV, xawtv 4.x) should be able
> to work with this device.  I suggest you look at the usage page on 
> on the web site where you'll see specific information about various 
> apps that can work.
> 
> Questions regarding setting a recording time etc are not a driver 
> issue. 
> That is a feature of the app, like MythTV.
> 
>    -Mike
> 
> -- 
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