Signal source

What kind(s) of TV signal do you receive? You can select more than one.

• Antenna (over-the-air): Television signals broadcast from transmission towers, and received with an antenna at your house (e.g., rabbit ears, roof-mount Yagis, etc.). Often abbreviated "OTA". TV the old-fashioned way.
• Cable box: Sometimes given as "set-top box" (although the box may be under or even beside your TV). The cable company gives you a piece of equipment to decode the cable signal. You use the cable box to change channels.
• Cable without box: You have cable (pay TV), but you just hook the wire right up to your TV.

High definition

If you are planning on recording or viewing High Definition (HD) programming with MythTV, check this box.

This works fine for OTA (over-the-air/antenna) feeds, and can work even if you have cable, too. If you have only cable, the situation can be a bit more complicated; see "Digital cable" below.

Digital cable

If you have digital cable (High Def or otherwise), and you want to use it with MythTV, check this box.

Note that the media cartels don't like you being able to record digital and/or High Def programs, so the cable providers make this situation tricky. See the GNHLUG MythTV page for more on this.

Capture device

A capture device is the piece of hardware which sucks a TV signal into a computer. These will generally include a "tuner" (used to pick out one station from many), and maybe also an "encoder" (which converts the signal to a more suitable form). There are quite a few products on the market, but not all of them work with MythTV. We are trying to limit the event to the hardware we know works well.

Video output device

The video card (AKA display adapter) is responsible for generating a picture for you to view. Again, we need to know what to expect, and we are also trying to limit the event to hardware we know works well.

On a normal PC, this will be attached to a "monitor". You can do the same with your MythTV box. If you have a TV with VGA or DVI inputs, you can also attach your MythTV box to that. Getting any kind of TV-out working (composite, RF, S-VHS/S-video, component, etc.) is beyond the scope of this effort.

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