[tlug] Japanese HDTV

["Marcelo Martins" <mhtmartins@example.com>]

Hello everybody,

First of all, it is nice to know that there is foreign Linux interest
here in Japan. I arrived in April and have been enjoying my life in
Tokyo since then.

Anyway, enough babbling and let's go straight to my question.
Unfortunately my Japanese is far from good and I still don't feel
confident enough to ask this in a real store only to receive a massive
load of cryptographed gibberish as reply. Besides, from my experience,
the average BicCamera employee have zero knowledge about Linux.

Considering that analog TV signal in Japan will be completely gone in
a few years, I've been seriously considering setting up an HTPC box
using Linux. My first question is whether there is any PC HDTV capture
card compatible with Linux. I'm not talking about 1-seg crap, but real
full-resolution with all bells-and-whistles capture card. Since I
cannot find much information in English about this issue, may I ask if
one can use an HDTV card manufactured in the US or Europe to capture
digital content in Japan? (The answer is probably no).

If not, what about the common analog capture cards? Which one do you
guys recommend? I've seen that there some brands that are quite
popular here in Japan (e.g Buffalo, IOData, Logitec, etc.). How do
they compare to the Western ones (ATi, Nvidia, Hauppage, Pixelview,
etc.)?

Lastly, if there still isn't a Linux solution for Japanese HDTV, is
there at least a Windows one (argh...)?

Thank you for your cooperation.

Marcelo