TV Card advice

[watercooled]

When it comes to TV tuner cards I know very little. I'm after one for use with Mythbuntu and after my research, I've learned some/lots don't play nice with Linux. Obviously the first place to check is the compatibility guide but, err, there's a few there. Any recommendations for good cards? If you need to know anything else, feel free to ask, I'm not really sure what's relevant.
Thanks

Edit: Oh and I should mention, it should preferably be a half-height card since it will probably be going in a flat HTPC case.

[Funkstar]

I know what I would recommend for MediaPortal on Windows, but no idea about linux these days, although I suspect it's a lot easier than when I last tried it.

The Nova-T 500 is a good card. Dual tuner, widely used because it is Hauppauge and half height. I have two in my box.

I would have recomended the Peak Dual Tuner that can be found on Amazon for about half the price of the Nova-T 500, but it isn't on that list.

[watercooled]

Thanks very much, I'll do some reading into those cards. I don't think that is a exhaustive list of cards, so the cheaper one might work.

[watercooled]

What's the deal with USB tuners? Something like this is half the price and apparently supported under Linux.

[blueball]

What's the deal with USB tuners? Something like this is half the price and apparently supported under Linux.

USB Tuners I have used (only a couple) had very poor image quality compared to PCI/PCIe cards. Maybe things have changed in the few years since I tried them but I run a PCIe Hauppage card now and the picture is much better.

[ehhhhhhh]

I don't know about linux compatibility but it's best to go with a higher end model.

The cheap ones tend to miss a lot of channels.

I had a Compro tuner which costs around 25 quid but I had many problems with it.

[watercooled]

USB Tuners I have used (only a couple) had very poor image quality compared to PCI/PCIe cards. Maybe things have changed in the few years since I tried them but I run a PCIe Hauppage card now and the picture is much better.

Apparently, the Nova-T is a USB tuner card with a USB-PCI bridge anyway.

[Funkstar]

That's right. This isn't a concern for Linux, but under Windows, a single PCI card cannot have more than one tuner, this is a limitation of the BDA driver system for digital TV cards. To get round this, Hauppauge stuck a USB controller on a PCI card and then attached two tuners via USB. That way the dual tuner card works under MCE and other Windows based media centres.

PCIe doesn't have this limitation as a single physical connector can be split into multiple logical cards, so a dual tuner PCIe card just pretends to be two single tuner PCIe cards as far as BDA is concerned.

Missing channels will be a result of a weak signal and a tuner that isn't very sensitive. You won't have individual channels missing, you will have entire MUX's (Multiplexes) missing.

[watercooled]

Ahh, interesting. I was wondering why they did that.

[blueball]

I also had a compro and it didnt like Win7 which is why I went for the Hauppage. I know you are going Linux but just FYI the card I have is this one.

[ehhhhhhh]

Missing channels will be a result of a weak signal and a tuner that isn't very sensitive. You won't have individual channels missing, you will have entire MUX's (Multiplexes) missing.

My TV and a happuage TV card has all the freeview channels and all of them are stable....the cheap TV card got only 6 CHs and the reception was very unstable