Hauppauge WinTV-PVR analog capture cards (Conexant cx2341x)
PCI tuner and capture cards built around Conexant's cx23415 and cx23416 MPEG-2 encoder/decoder chips, most famously the Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-150, 250, 350, and 500 series sold from the early 2000s. They were the go-to analog TV capture hardware for Linux personal video recorder setups like MythTV before digital tuners and HDMI capture took over.
recommendation
Worth keeping but documenting as legacy hardware. The supported Hauppauge PVR-150/250/350/500 cards are long discontinued and only show up in old MythTV-style home theater PCs today, but the code is not abandoned: real bug fixes landed upstream and were backported to stable as recently as October 2025. Annotating it as legacy makes the niche clear without disturbing the existing hobbyist user base.
repository signals
sources
- git.kernel.org
Kconfig identifies ivtv as support for Conexant cx23416/cx23415 based PCI personal video recorder devices, including Hauppauge PVR-150/250/350/500.
- lore.kernel.org
ivtv still received a targeted bug-fix patch in October 2025, indicating active upstream maintenance rather than abandonment.
- lore.kernel.org
ivtv fixes were also backported to stable in October 2025, showing the code is still considered worth maintaining.
- hauppauge.com
Hauppauge lists WinTV-PVR-150/250/350/500 as discontinued legacy products.
- mythtv.org
MythTV documents PVR-150 as ivtv-supported legacy analog capture hardware and notes these analog-only PVR cards were no longer shipped.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Real PCI media driver, not a helper library. Local source inspection via exec_command showed ivtv Kconfig targets Conexant cx23415/cx23416-based Hauppauge PVR cards. lore_file_timeline on ivtv-driver.c showed fresh 2025 linux-media and stable traffic; cited lore URLs came from that MCP tool and point to a real bug fix plus stable backports, with no removal thread surfaced in the sampled recent history. Web search found Hauppauge's legacy-products page and archived MythTV hardware pages showing the supported cards are discontinued analog-era products, so new deployments are low and mostly legacy hobbyist/PVR installations. Because the hardware is obsolete but upstream still fixes real bugs, keep the driver but annotate it as legacy rather than deprecate/remove. last_widely_available_year is left null because the sources confirm discontinuation but do not pin a defensible final broad-availability year. The kernel.org Kconfig URL is included as a canonical recall URL for the locally inspected file.