TV Tuners on Leopard OSx86 : WinTV PVR500 any solution ?

[rohitkpatil]

Hi,

I heard Happuage is bringing a PVR USB stick TV Tuners.

Is there any way to get the PCI TV Tuners working, like Happuage WinTv PVR500 Pro (Which i have :) )

Its showing with the string "iTVC16 (CX23416) MPEG-2 Encoder"

Any software + driver to get it work ?

Any one has success with same / similar / other PCI TV Tuners ??

[delian7]

Hey guys,
rohitpatil thanks so much for creating this thread!! I also wish to get my tv tuner (Happuage HVR 1600) to get it to work with my mac! That will be the best if someone can get it to work.

[rohitkpatil]

Yeah...but no one is replying here, i guess no body is interested in TV Tuners on Mac :)

[gaz919]

I think you will find it hard to get card specific drivers for tv tuner cards. Plus you also need tuning software which is not in leopard. Many USB tuners will work with elgato eyetv, if you are lucky yours might work. I bought a elgato USB tuner and it works very well, but for the best tv experience you should use vista media center to watch and record tv, with a bit of effort I got the epg in media center that will do simple recording and also automatically record shows whenever they are on. The epg in media center kicks ass on the eyetv epg. To make up your own mind you would have to try both.
Eyetv has some cool features though I would recommend getting the full remote as I only have the mac remote and it sucks compared to the media center remote.

Good luck, sorry to say I don't think you will find and drivers for pci tuner cards as companys that make them just don't support mac as tuning software is needed too.

[rohitkpatil]

I am already running vista home premium and my card is dual TV tuner perfectly compatible with media center. But when i am working on Mac, sometimes i would like to put on TV for quick cricket or any other sport's score or say any movie...thats why i would like to know if i can use it in any way with Mac.

Eye TV not recognising it. First need driver Kext.

[Voyn1x]

As far as I know usb is the only option until either, someone ports the window drivers, or vmware fusion/parallels somehow allow windows direct access to the underlying hardware.

[gaz919]

in vista in vmware you cannot use media center even if you can install the tv card, because media center needs more dedicated graphics ram and vmware only gives 256 which is not enough. Running media center just gives an error.

[rohitkpatil]

gaz919:in vista in vmware you cannot use media center even if you can install the tv card, because media center needs more dedicated graphics ram and vmware only gives 256 which is not enough. Running media center just gives an error.

I am not running Leopard in Vmware, This entire community is running Leopard in Native mode. Dual boot with other OS.

So i have complete 2 GB Ram and complete 512 MB GPU memory.

[gaz919]

I never suggested anyone was running vmware in vista, if you actually read my post I am explaining that running vmware in leopard and installing vista as a virtual machine has its limitations. It matters not how much ram you have or what graphics card you use, in vmware the virtual machine will only ever have a 256mb shared memory virtual graphics driver meaning you cannot use media center or do many other graphics intensive tasks as the virtual graphics adapter in vmware does not take advantage of your actual graphics card potential.

[rohitkpatil]

gaz919:I never suggested anyone was running vmware in vista, if you actually read my post I am explaining that running vmware in leopard and installing vista as a virtual machine has its limitations. It matters not how much ram you have or what graphics card you use, in vmware the virtual machine will only ever have a 256mb shared memory virtual graphics driver meaning you cannot use media center or do many other graphics intensive tasks as the virtual graphics adapter in vmware does not take advantage of your actual graphics card potential.

I dont want to run Vista in Leopard. Its like running native OS inside hacked OS. :P

[gaz919]

I think you would find running vmware on a unix (leopard) system, even if its hacked is just a bit more stable than running vmware in xp or vista.
The downside being the lousy virtual graphics driver which stops the use of media center.
If it all worked fine I would happily run vista in vmware so media center could keep recording my shows.
As media center is 100% better than any leopard alternative.
Sadly we are stuck with eyetv to record which is a pain to use with the remote.
Media center with remote and net epg is really a step up in tv watching. Its the closest to a tivo a computer can do.
although in myth tv on linux you can set it up to auto delete ads from your recordings.
As a note my media center plays all file types including divx mkv ogg and so on, all from the remote.
whereas eyetv will only play divx, and you cannot play the files direct from the remote you must use the mouse.
Things to think about if your interested in tv on the pc.
I just setup the autodownload free epg in eyetv but its still only half as good as media center.
I watch alot of manga which can be all different file formats, and watching show after show from my couch is alot better than having to use the mouse to start each new show.