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I've been searching some, and haven't found a conclusive answer - can mythtv be used to backup vhs tapes to vob or avi? It sure sounds like it can from many of the things I've read, but I haven't found anything that says "BACKUP YER VHS WITH MYTHTV" anywhere. I have at least 150 vhs tapes I really want to backup before they become too decroded to view. I imagine that a tuner card should be able to take a feed from a VCR, but then that's just me trying to tie logic to reality, not any info that I have. Does anyone have info for sure?

Of course you can backup your video tapes. It depends on your capture card. I backed up a bunch of old home videos when I had a Hauppauge 350 card. You just need to switch the input from the tv tuner to the video in port. You can select the input in MythTV. Once the video is captured you can export it to DVD. It's been a while since I did this but I'm sure there's a how-to out there.

Do you know if macrovision is still an issue, or can that be taken care of in software? A 350 is what I was looking at in any event.

Snarkout wrote:I've been searching some, and haven't found a conclusive answer - can mythtv be used to backup vhs tapes to vob or avi? It sure sounds like it can from many of the things I've read, but I haven't found anything that says "BACKUP YER VHS WITH MYTHTV" anywhere. I have at least 150 vhs tapes I really want to backup before they become too decroded to view. I imagine that a tuner card should be able to take a feed from a VCR, but then that's just me trying to tie logic to reality, not any info that I have. Does anyone have info for sure?

In my experience yes you can but whether it's worth the effort with mythtv is another story. It's probably easier to just capture it outside of mythtv and then put it into your mythvideo directory afterwards.

You are correct that it's just a matter of of running video/audio out of the vcr into the capture card. Most likely svideo and rca for audio. You will probably need a y-adapter for the rca cables cause the hauppage cards usually just have a single mini jack in for audio.

It can be a pain to setup in mythtv because you have to first find out which svideo or composite setting is the correct one. Then there are issues with channel and guide data. It can be done but you will have to decide if it's worth it.

OK, cool - thanks for that post. Looks like I was going down the wrong track there. It looks like any hauppauge card ignores macrovision. Any votes on cards? I'm thinking 250 or 350 - they both look good.

Snarkout wrote:OK, cool - thanks for that post. Looks like I was going down the wrong track there. It looks like any hauppauge card ignores macrovision. Any votes on cards? I'm thinking 250 or 350 - they both look good.

In terms of the capture quality the cards are equal. It's really just a matter of whether you want the extra features the 350 offers. I have both a 250 and a 150. I can tell you that the 250 runs Very hot. I wouldn't recommend the 250 in a case trying to be quiet by minimizing cooling or fans. The 150 runs much cooler than the 250.

How is the 150 working for you? Do you have any linkage on good places to study up on this stuff? I've looked at both the mythtv site and mysettopbox.tv and really need more documentation that deals with hardware specifics.

Snarkout wrote:How is the 150 working for you? Do you have any linkage on good places to study up on this stuff? I've looked at both the mythtv site and mysettopbox.tv and really need more documentation that deals with hardware specifics.

http://www.shspvr.com/

That site is very windows centric but you should be able to find hardware info there or in the forums. The 150 works fine for me and if I were to buy another card I wouldn't hesitate to get another.

Last I checked the 250 and 350 used the same chip. The 350 just offers the video out hardware decoder and fm radio. The 150 is cheaper than others and uses a different chip. From what I've read the quality is basically the same but improvements in the manufacturing process allow for the lower cost. Then there is the 500 which is basically just two 150's on one card.

I was just reading the mythtv mailing list. It appears none of the devs use the 350's hardware decoder so they don't spend any time fixing issues with it. So while it works now it may eventually become non functional in mythtv. Something to keep in mind.

Yeah - at this point I'm leaning towards a 150 since they can be had so cheap and apparently run much cooler than the 250s. I liked the 350s ability to decode though. In any event, I think I'll get a card, and start fooling with it - that's really the only way I'm going to learn anything.