It came today, my Hauppauge Win-PVR-350! It was quite a hassle to get it working, as the directions for installing the ivtv driver under linux wasn't that clear. It only took me about an hour and a half to get that part working. So my linux system recognizes it and I am able to pipe video from its input (/dev/video0) to its output (/dev/video16). To watch TV "live" (there is a 3 second delay after all) all I have to do is:

% dd if=/dev/video0 of=/dev/video16 bs=64k

and if I want it recorded I type

% dd if=/dev/video0 of=/var/some/path/file.mpg bs=64k

To play it back

% dd if=/var/some/path/file.mpg of=/dev/video16 bs=64k

Pretty neat isn't it?

Unfortunately I haven't gotten everything working, for some reason Xorg (the window display system) refuses to compile its driver to show on the output of the card. I was running 7.1 (the latest stable) but I have heard that going back to 6.9 should fix the problem. Once I can get X showing on the TV all I have to do then is recompile the libraries that pointed to Xorg 7.1, including Qt, and then compile and install MythTV. Once that goes off, I should be done... or at least have it usable.

On an entirely AWESOME note, I found out last night that the remote that came with the PVR-350 CAN be used to control MythTV! How awesome is that? Wooo!

Well, wish me luck!