A short review of the Hauppauge 274

Well I just got my first real, minor PVR setup going today. I opted for the Hauppage 274-PVR, it was cheap, very cheap even. It ran me 53$ from newegg. there really isn’t much to review… I mean it just worked and does what it’s supposed to, quick install. the card is _tiny_ so I had no problem wedging it under my passively cooled monster of a graphics Card (Biostar Nvidia 7300GT 256mb) IVTV, which comes stop with ubuntu, including the needed firmware picked it up first restart, no self compiling, it just worked. I easily set up the card in MythTV (Selfcompiled from SVN, easy stuff, long build though…) and within minutes I was watching and recording my favorite shows. The picture quality to cost ratio is amazing, I get the quality of standard rips you would see around the net with damned near instant hardware encoding. I have basic non digital cable anyway… so perfect picture was not much of a concern. My only real problem is on gutsy, with the latest nvidia drivers (tried with glx-new as well) and compiz fusion going, running myth frontend crashes X… a but of a pain, but no real bother. I wrote a short script to kill compiz and run metacity, while killing avant, cairo clock, etc. All nicely called /usr/bin/mythprep I’ll finish up with some screens of my myth install.

Welcome PageMy Recorded ShowsMy Lineup

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OH HAI I HAS A WEB 2 OH BLOG NOW (and an Apple blog.)

Well, in the spirit of things, I’ve decided I’m going to keep my more Ubuntu oriented postings here, but move my other content to other places.  Nah, I’m not going to quit authoring on FriedCPU, I just feel that you Ubuntu users out there shouldn’t have to be subjected to reading about Apple, or any of those ‘web2.0′ services I’m writing about when what you really want to hear about is the latest Ubuntu gossip, articles, and news.

If you’re likin’ my more web2.0 posts though, you can continue to read them here.

EDIT:

If you’re interested in more Apple posts from me, try The Brainchip.

A day too late, but…

It’s no secret that I pretty much pine after Apple’s computers.  I love the design of them, the simplicity, they appeal to me in a way that no other brand does.  It’s also no secret that they’re pretty expensive, regardless of that fact Apple’s new iMac line makes me want to drop $1500 right now and get that midrange 20-inch iMac.