TV card Gold PixerlView TV-Tuner

hi guys.

I'm think to buy a TV card named "TV card Gold PixelView TV-Tuner Radio/TeleText" because... It's cheap :-) only 35-40 Euro (here in Italy).

The shopper says this TV card isn't supported by linux (I'm using RH 9). But in the file Documentation/video4linux/bttv/CARDLIST I found 4 TV cards with the name "Pixel View". I don't know what kind of chip set is used by that card.

Do you think I can buy it? I wanna use it to record TV on harddisk.

Thanks for you help.

P.S.: What is the right forum section for this kind of questions?

Only 40 euro? That's quite good, I have to say.

In any case, almost all TV cards that are manufactured these days use a BTTV-compliant chipset, which automatically makes them Linux-compatible. There are millions of products that state that they aren't compatible with Linux although they really are. It's just that the vendor doesn't want to have to answer support questions related to Linux.

Of course, that doesn't mean that it's 100% certain that it will work with Linux; it's just very probable. However, if it doesn't work, can't you just return it for a refund? That's how I test most things I buy for compatibility. =)

Speaking along the lines of TV-cards, though, I think I should notify you in advance that the quality isn't always that good. The lack of quality in the TV signal doesn't show on a TV, since the TV CRT monitors are so poor that they "smooth out" all artifacts. In that regard, the lack of quality in TV monitors is a good thing. However, computer monitors don't do that, so the picture doesn't always look at all as good as you would otherwise expect.

Strictly speaking, this wasn't the right forum to post in. However, it's understandable due to the strange lack of a hardware forum here. We're currently merging with another forum though, so maybe we'll gain one afterwards. Questions like these are usually posted in the installation forum, though, so I'll move it there.

something else to note.
If the TV card does not have an AUDIO out socket on it, you will have a little trouble getting sound (bttv expects you to take the sound from the card and straight into your sound card via an external cable).

If you do not have such a socket, then you'll need to read up about either TVAUDIO (if your card has the right chips) or BTAUDIO (puts the sound onto /dev/dsp002 from where you need to use SOX to pass it onto your sound card at /dev/dsp001. If you read the BTAUDIO docs in your /usr/src... directories to read how to do it).

Have fun
Nerderello