[tlug] My first PVR project - advice will not be distained

[Joshua Eli Bearden <j3b@example.com>]

I'm about to leave Japan for a while - maybe five years.
I can't live without my wife, so she's agreed to come with
me. However she can just barely live without her Japanese
TV.  So I've promised to to my best to find a way for her
to get her favourite shows no matter where we go.  This is
the plan: a friend has agreed to host a PVR box of my 
design at his house.  The PVR box will be accessible over 
the internet so that I can schedule recordings and download
MPEGs. I am full of unwarranted confidance that I can 
finish this project in the next three weeks.

So far I've managed to install Knoppmyth on a PentiumIII-866 
with 768MB ram. 40GB HD.  (I believe the MB contains VIA 
chips which I've heard could pose a problem with certain 
Haupage TV tuners)

My first obstacle has been the V-gear Speed-TV tuner card 
that my friend gave me in a swap. Though it shows up as an 
SAA7133 Philips Semiconductor chip on lspci  and lsmod shows 
that an SAA7134 driver (which is supposed to handle all 
SAA713x chips) is loaded.  I cannot get any further response 
from the card.

Instead of hitting my head against this wall I've decided to 
try to find a card that is mentioned explicitly on a linux 
compatibility list

http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Hardware-HOWTO/other.html#AEN16431

The most likely candidate on this list I think is:
 Kworld/KuroutoShikou SAA7130-TVPCI
since I know they sell these at yodobashi camera.
http://www.yodobashi.com/enjoy/more/i/cat_38974453_8784994_628873/13240083.html


However I'm still curious about the Buffalo cards.  They are 
cheap and several come with on board MPEG encoding which I'm 
thinking might take the pressure off the CPU and perhaps 
keep the whole thing cooler and quieter - which is a concern 
since I don't want my friend to think better of agreeing to 
house this thing.

If anyone else has built something similar and has any 
suggestions or warnings I'd be very glaad to hear about it.  
In particular I'd be happy to hear reports about various 
TV-tuner/encoder cards purchasable in Japan for under 
ichiman en.

Cheers,
Joshua Bearden

P.S.  I'm going to miss tlug meetings quite bitterly.  
I only hope I can make it to one last tech meeting in 
July before leaving.