Watching and Recording analogue TV

Analogue TV viewing uses tradtional analogue TV signal with a PC based viewing card to display TV on your output device (Monitor, TV, plasma). There are two main types of cards in this market.

The 1st card is simply a decoder, these cards are often based on the BT878? chipset with the bttv drivers and have fairly good support in linux (e.g. The PCTV card by Pinnacle). This card takes care of TV viewing only, any recording done from this must be done in a separate software application (e.g. mencoder).

The 2nd type of card carries a mpeg2 encoder as well as the decoder, the most popular use the Conexant CX23415/CX23416 chipset with the IVTV driver (e.g. the WinTV-PVR-250 from Hauppauge). This means the same device will take care of TV viewing and recording for you using it's own hardware. It will record a file to the mpeg2 format and from reports produces very good results.

The infomation below will give details on the specific configuration necessary.

Important: Freevo uses other programs in order to provide the user with the content they requested (dvd, mp3, photo, tv). In the case of TV viewing freevo uses mplayer, tvtime or xine. Before you continue with your setup please ensure that you are able to view TV using these apps on their own.

• Configure freevo: Configuring Freevo for analogue TV (basic configuration)

• BTTV cards: Information on configuring Freevo for BT878-based cards (popular example?)

• SAA713X cards: Information on configuring Freevo for SAA713X-based cards

• cx88 cards: Information on configuring Freevo for cx88-based cards (Leadtek Winfast 2000XP Expert)

• IVTV Cards: Information on configuring Freevo for CX23415/16 based cards (PVR-1/2/350)

• Multi Cards: Use of multiple TV cards

• Frequencies: Use of channel frequencies (alternative config, not requirement)