Linux driver support
Note: For the answer, see HVR1110 working in Linux
I decided to get with the 21st century, and buy a Digital TV card, to use with MythTV.
Bitten before, I researched what cards were supported in the Linux kernel natively, and found out that the HVR 1100 by Hauppauge was in the kernel.
cd /usr/src/linux ; grep -ir hvr1100 *
So I nipped off to PC World, and bought one. £49.99. Couldn't go wrong, I thought.
So I took it home, and plugged it in. lspci didn't show it, apart from
00:06.0 Multimedia controller: Philips Semiconductors SAA7133/SAA7135 Video Broadcast Decoder (rev d1)
which wasn't at all what it was supposed to show. (I was expecting to see Conexant).
Hmm, I thought. I'll compile up the drivers anyway, and see if I can get it to work. No go.
I was on the verge of taking it back to the shop, and getting my money back.
Anyway, after much gnashing, I popped into #v4l on irc.freenode.net, and mentioned my problems to them. After taking photos of the device, they told me that it was a newer one that was actually a HVR 1110 - a completely new device that used different chipsets (saa7131 + tda10046), and not a 1100 at all. They said that there wasn't a driver for it yet, but if I hung around, they'd knock one up for me.
I'd say you can't get much better support than that.
Hauppauge are apparently very helpful to the Linux community, including providing new cards for developers to write drivers for. They try to get support for all their devices before they are released, but it seems that I beat the system.
It's nice to hear of big companies supporting Linux - too often they don't, but perhaps they're starting to realise that people running Linux don't want to gamble with binary drivers released when the manufacturer feels like it.
Now, if MythTV could just use Postgres, I'd be a happy bunny.
PS. The support you get for Postgres in the #postgres channel on the same server is amazing too. It's great when you can actually speak with the people that write the stuff.