ATI Theater 550 Pro TV Tuner a good choice for XP+Vista(Ubuntu)

[presbp]

I have heard that the ATI Theater 550 Pro TV Tuner is really good but if I get one I want to be able to use it in both Ubuntu and XP Pro and later when I "upgrade" to either Vista Home Premium or Vista Ultimate.

I have an X360 so I can stream the recorded videos and watch them on my other monitor that the X360 is hooked up to while I am doing something like playing a game or surfing the internet on my PC. Question: is there a way to get the X360 to stream from Ubuntu.. seeing as my videos will be on an external drive?

I was also wondering about this card. It says operating system supported are XP home, XP pro, XP Media Center Edition and ATI Certified - Windows Vista™ Premium Ready.
http://shop.ati.com/product.asp?sku=3055145

Thanks.

[rsambuca]

The card will not work with any linux distro that I know of.

And PLEASE quit making multiple threads asking the same question. I am getting sick-and-tired of wading through all of these threads.

[presbp]

nobody answers them or else I would stop.

[rsambuca]

I had an ATI 550, but switched it out to a Hauppauge 150 when I started playing with linux. The 550 definitely has a superior image, but there are no linux drivers:(

The Hauppauge 150 cards are decent hardware encoders and are easy to set-up with the ivtv drivers.

And maybe just bump your posts instead of these multiple threads.

[presbp]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16815116625

I have Windows XP Pro (SP2) and will be upgrading to Vista Ultimate or Vista Home Premium near the middle of Fall. I also use Ubuntu sometimes.

The prodcut got a 4/5 review at Newegg out of 125 reviews- the only problems people had are:
1) while the box says WinTV-PVR-150 Hauppauge is phasing out the WinTV-PVR-150s so a bunch of the WinTV-PVR-150 boxes actually have HVR-1600 cards in them which is actually a better card, but lacks Linux support.

2) The software that come with it is not great. There is a little bit of lag between switching channels but overall the software does do what it needs to do. Picture quality is grainy, but all you have to do to fix that is set your monitor at a 640x480 resolution (closer to a TV resolution)

I would like to be able to use my TV card with Linux but if I order this and get an HVR-1600 I can still use it in Windows.

Would this be a good product to purchase seeing as how my only goal is just to be able to record my TV shows (I have multimedia editing software if I need to edit anything)?

[rsambuca]

Yeah, that is similar to the card I am using. I happened to get the white box version with the FM tuner as well. It works fine with XP and linux. From what I have been hearing, though, almost all the cards being shipped now have the new chipset, which would mean it won't work in linux.

For XP, you could use virtually any program to record. I have been using Windows Media Center, but if you don't have that I have also had good success with GBPVR.

Is there a specific reason you are switching from XP to Vista? I personally don't think it is worth it, and certainly right now in the multimedia department it doesn't work as good as XP. Lots of driver issues still, although I expect them to get fixed soon. I would recommend waiting until at least SP1 or even SP2 before switching to Vista as there is no real benefit to doing so yet.

[presbp]

I am only upgrading to Vista for the DX10 games.. that and that only. If I did not play the popular commercial games.. bye Windows.

[rsambuca]

I found a blogsite that shows how to stream content to your 360 from a non MCE computer using WMP11. I have no idea if it works, but it is worth a look.

Link (http://www.alexbarnett.net/blog/archive/2006/09/04/Xbox-360_2C00_-music-streaming-and-libraries.aspx)