[Cialug] MythTV Sound card recommendations

[Matt Stanton]

There is a half-height nVidia 210 card that has an HDMI port and is fanless for silent use in an HTPC for sale at newegg for $25:
http://newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121443

It is apparently supported by the snd-hda-intel kernel module, according to this xbmc wiki page (see the entry for the Asus EN210 card):
http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=HOW-TO_set_up_HDMI_audio_on_nVidia_GeForce_G210,_GT220,_or_GT240

If you are using the HDMI port with an audio/video receiver, then it looks like you could use this card.  I'm not at all sure if you will have to go through those instructions to set up ALSA if you are using pulseaudio or if mythtv requires the same hoops to be jumped through that they seem to think you'd need for xbmc.  The card will not give you any gaming abilities... it looks to be very similar in specs to my nVidia ION onboard gpu in my foxconn nt330i htpc, but that little box plays supported codecs in full 1080p without a glitch, even on an intel atom 330 cpu running at 1.6ghz.

I've been rather happy as an nVidia fanboy, even when it comes to Linux.  I use the proprietary drivers that nVidia makes available.   The HDMI port for the ION chipset in my htpc supports 5.1 channel audio in Ubuntu 10.04 and later (and probably earlier, but I've only had the box since the 10.04 days). I'm not sure what AMD is doing with the FOSS community, but someone else who follows the Radeon cards might be able to fill you in.  I'm sure the AMD cards support video codecs about as well as the nVidia cards do.

-- Matt
Sent from my Viewsonic gTablet

-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Standfest <michael at standfest.org>
To: cialug at cialug.org
Sent: Tue, 13 Sep 2011 7:58 PM
Subject: [Cialug] MythTV Sound card recommendations

For some silly reason, I tried upgrading my mythbox a few weeks ago.
I was still running mythbuntu 8.0.4.1 beta 3 and it worked, but I
couldn't get mythtv frontends on other boxes to connect since my
backend was so far out of date.  And I have been having issues with
the sound drivers since the new install (this was also a major issue
when I first installed it two years ago).  Apparently, this is pretty
common for the Realtek ALC1200 since it is a closed source card and it
is pretty rare to the get the spdif optical sound thingie to work,
never mind that getting it to work at all can be quite a chore.  I
eventually got the sound to work with alsamixer to an extent, (PCM and
Main volumes are set to 100, and everything in alsamixer is set to 99;
the sound on my audio receiver is also set at the maximum) but it is
still pretty quiet.  I can hear it if the room is quiet, but with four
children, the room is never quiet.

Anyway, I'm wondering if anyone could recommend a sound card.  I would
like it to be 5.1 capable.  Otherwise, it just needs to fit in a
mini-itx case.  I have one PCI and one PCI Express available.  I am so
out of the loop on hardware, I have just been looking at newegg and
then comparing the sound card in the ALSA SoundCard Matrix and haven't
had much luck finding something that is well supported.  I also
wouldn't be opposed to getting a different video card if it had hdmi
output that supported sound using a flavor of mythtv.  But I'm
wondering if this would be more along the lines of getting a new
motherboard?!

This is what I have:
Western Digital 500GB SATA HD
Samsung SATA DVD Burner
ASUS M3A78-EM AM2+ 780G/SB700 Motherboard -
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131324
CASE IN-WIN|IW-BT611T.300SL (probably not a concern)
AMD A64 X2 5200 2.7G AM2 65N
8 GB of RAM
1 pchdtv 5500 tuner
1 SiliconDust HD tuner

I would normally shop by what the developers have, but that part of
the mythbuntu page appears to be down:
http://www.mythbuntu.org/developer-hardware

Thanks for the help in advance.
Michael
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