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Topic: Recommend me a PVR card package (Read 3568 times)
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Venkman
Terracotta Army
Posts: 11536
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I have a PVR card on my PC. It's an amalgamation of a bunch of disparate programs, and it works only ok. I have to return it to my in-laws though, so need a replacement.
What do you folks recommend?
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Viin
Terracotta Army
Posts: 6159
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What do you want to do with it? Tivo-like or just for fun?
The ATI All-In-Wonder's do pretty good, if you get a newer one. If you are looking for Tivo-like stuff I can point you to a few forums/sites that talk about that.
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- Viin
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Lum
Developers
Posts: 1608
Hellfire Games
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MrHat
Terracotta Army
Posts: 7432
Out of the frying pan, into the fire.
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Second the hauppage card. Very compatible, and good software to boot.
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Venkman
Terracotta Army
Posts: 11536
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You know, it's funny. I grew up near Hauppauge, New York (on Long Island, east of New York City), and just assumed the "Hauppauge" name on the card and software suite I'm using was from a local provider that hacked stuff together. It is in fact a pretty good system, with WinTV, nanoMPEG editor, and it works well with Titantv.com.
Viin, I'd be interested in those sites you mentioned too, for the Tivo-like functionality. I never ever get a chance to watch TV when networks want me to, and I'm generally too busy to dedicate time just to TV anyway. Being able to watch in one window while I work in the other is why I love the PVR.
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Trippy
Administrator
Posts: 23657
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My first PVR card was an ATI AIW 9600 Pro which worked fine for a long time until something on the video capture chip somehow broke. The software it came with (ATI MMC) was functional though nothing fancy. It also had the nice side effect of being able to play console games through it since it was a software-only encoder so there was no lag in the controls. The format the AIW encoded into though, was a little funky and some MPEG2 software programs had difficulty working with it. I finally found one called VideoReDo which worked really fast and really well for cutting out commercials and the like. I highly recommend that program for general MPEG2 cutting needs and the support on that program is outstanding (the developer handles questions and issues on the forum personally). My next PVR "card" was a Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-USB2, an external USB box, which I'm still using. The quality is very good with that box and while the software UI is pretty ugly to look at and it doesn't have that TIVO-style TV interface so you can't really use it as a HTPC it is functional. My newest PVR card is the ATI TV Wonder Elite which I got for my new box. It has the ATI THEATER™ 550 PRO chip on it that review sites say has the best capture/encoding quality currently (Hauppauge used to be the best until this chip came along). In informal tests with my Hauppauge box I can't really see any difference in quality though I'm encoding at a medium bit rate of ~2.5 GB/hour. The software this card comes with is crap (old version of CyberLink PowerCinema) that ATI doesn't even support. I don't know why they didn't include their MMC software with it which was better even back then with my old AIW 9600 Pro though the PowerCinema software does have a TV-compatible UI where the old MMC did not. I'm currently messing around with SageTV and BeyondTV for my Wonder Elite and I think I'll probably go with SageTV even though it's somewhat less polished than BeyondTV. BeyondTV requires you to login to get programming information and I hate that sort of thing whereas SageTV does not. Both programs have cumbersome UIs since they are designed to be used on a TV which is a pain for me since I'm using it on my computer but both have free trials so you can decide for yourself if they do what you need. |
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Viin
Terracotta Army
Posts: 6159
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I'll second (or fifth?) that Hauppauge seems to be the most used card for PVRs. I just threw out All-in-Wonder because I didn't know what you wanted to do with it. Couple good sites: http://www.byopvr.com/http://www.diy-pvr-dvr-htpc.com/index.php/Main_PageThere's more, but I'd have to dig them up from when I was looking into it. The biggest reason I didn't do it was because there was nothing that supported HD channels from cable or satellite feeds without a lot of hoops to jump through. Though I think Hauppauge now has a card that can take a CableCard which would let you record/view premium channels on cable. |
- Viin
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Sky
Terracotta Army
Posts: 32117
I love my TV an' hug my TV an' call it 'George'.
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It has the ATI THEATER™ 550 PRO chip on it that review sites say has the best capture/encoding quality currently (Hauppauge used to be the best until this chip came along). Video tests I've seen on the net (sorry no linky, probably anand) have shown ATI to have inferior scaling compared to nvidia. I have a 9800pro I use for DVD viewing and it's ok...but I wonder... |
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Trippy
Administrator
Posts: 23657
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It has the ATI THEATER™ 550 PRO chip on it that review sites say has the best capture/encoding quality currently (Hauppauge used to be the best until this chip came along). Video tests I've seen on the net (sorry no linky, probably anand) have shown ATI to have inferior scaling compared to nvidia. I have a 9800pro I use for DVD viewing and it's ok...but I wonder... Are you referring to TV tuners/video capture cards or DVD playback? This is the sort of thing I'm referring to when I said that reviews are touting the THEATER 550 PRO chip: http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2393&p=1 |
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Sky
Terracotta Army
Posts: 32117
I love my TV an' hug my TV an' call it 'George'.
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Playback. Unless you plan on not watching what you capture and encode.
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Trippy
Administrator
Posts: 23657
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Playback. Unless you plan on not watching what you capture and encode.
That's a function of your video card GPU then (assuming you are using hardware acceleration in your DVD playback) not the MPEG2 encoder in your video capture card. The Theatre 550 Pro chip is the video encoder/TV tuner chip not the GPU. |
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Righ
Terracotta Army
Posts: 6542
Teaching the world Google-fu one broken dream at a time.
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The camera adds a thousand barrels. - Steven Colbert
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Sky
Terracotta Army
Posts: 32117
I love my TV an' hug my TV an' call it 'George'.
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Playback. Unless you plan on not watching what you capture and encode.
That's a function of your video card GPU then (assuming you are using hardware acceleration in your DVD playback) not the MPEG2 encoder in your video capture card. The Theatre 550 Pro chip is the video encoder/TV tuner chip not the GPU. On an ATI card, which has lesser playback via the gpu. |
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