I’ve had this tower PC all spec’ed out as a MythTV box for probably two years now. Its got a Hauppauge Nexus-S DVB-S satellite TV card and an AverMedia PVR-150 TV tuner card (a TigerDirect cheapie) in it as well as a 300Gig hard drive. All I could get out of it was some of the free satellite TV channels, and then only using command-line linuxTV applications to change channels. I could never get the TV tuner card to work, so the box sat mostly idle.
Today, though, I installed Mythbuntu on the PC and the latest Video for Linux (v4l) ivtv drivers. Boy, what a difference things make! Finally, I found v4l drivers which support the TV tuner card and now I have a working PVR system!
For program listings, I’ve signed up for a free trial to SchedulesDirect. Its supposed to provide television listings for an annual fee of $20: a bargain. For some reason the listings aren’t coming through, but considering the hardware hurdle I cleared tonight I expect the listings solution will be a breeze.