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OT: win/tv type stuff
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Gents,
I know some of you have dabbled with PC-based PVRs and tv cards and
whatnot. The Mrs wants her PC set up to work as a TV as well, and is
trying to decide which bit of kit to buy to do the job.
Of those who've tried them, which is the better bet? PCI or USB?
Advantages/drawbacks to each? It'll be running on XP Home, and the
operator is a bit of a technical numpty (bless her cotton socks)
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Things may have changed, but all my experiences with USB and video have
been "bad" - random fallings-over and rebooting required.
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Sir wants a Hauppauge WinTV Nova-T PCI. It receives the freeview
digital channels, so it streams mpeg 2 directly into your pc's guts.
Hence no A/D conversion, hence the picture is superb.
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Can it also recieve input on a scart or RF feed?
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Doubt it. Cards like this literally write the same bits and bytes that
come over the air, through the PCI bus to disk. The card doesn't have
any image-processing capability, simply the ability to tune to a
frequency, demodulate, extract the binary data, and understand just
enough about the data stream to be able to extract the different
channels, find the audio, video and subtitle components, and locate
programme guide information.
For a card to be capable of processing an analogue source such as SCART
input from a DVD player, they'd need to stick a dedicated MPEG2
encoding chip on the card, which would bump up the cost considerably.
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yebbut, that's *exactly* what my 350 card does. It can accept input
from RF or Scart from a Sky box (tho for some reason I've not been
able to get that to work...)
What I'm looking to do is mod my system to be able to support two
sources - one Sky, the other Freeview. I could do this with a
Hauppauge 500 card, which has two tuners, but I'd also need a Freeview
box - I was hoping that I could get that on the card too.
Of course, the easy answer is to have two cards, but I can't do that
with the fancy small form factor Shuttle :-)
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I had the same issue when I was still using mine - the conclusion was
to keep the 350 for analogue, and get a Hauppauge USB2 freeview tuner
- make sure you get one that's supported by GBPVR, and off you go.
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Of course! Ta.
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I don't seem to watch any TV so I'm feeling rather out of this
discussion. Is there something wrong with me.....
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Ideally I'd like to replace my single 350 card with a dual card so
that I can:
a. Record one channel while watching another, or record 2 at once and
b. use the PC/PVR as a DVD player, and lose one more box from the
living room (the 350 can't decode DVD apparently)
I suspect that the 500 is the only two channel card they do, tho.
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They're as cheap as chips, too.
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As Champ says Hauppage are now pretty much a fit and forget for a PCI
solution. Bro-in-law has one and has never had any trouble with it ever ..
and he's a complete numpty, not just a bit of one ... ;)
Onet additional bit to get whichever way you go and if you can affoed it is
extra ram. Many computers come with bare minimum for their price point and
adding more ram really, really helps the computer ime.
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Things may have changed, but all my experiences with USB and video have
been "bad" - random fallings-over and rebooting required.
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In general I've been pretty happy with my Nebula card (PCI, though they
do a usb version as well - supposedly as good).
It's a freeview card rather than analogue one, so the quality is
excellent too.
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That rather depends on what you mean by "quality", of course.
Quality aside, though, and as pointed out elsewhere, buying an analogue
tuner card these days is a fool's errand, unless you live in the back
of beyond.
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or spend a lot of time in hotels, apparently.
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This'll definitely be DVB.
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I like it 'cos it can broadcast TV over the network and allows watching
on several PC's at once. Even different channels, with some
restrictions.
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Conversely, my Hauppauge PCI card has never done anything but wrok
perfectly. I've got a "WinTV PVR 350"
My reading of the various forums and web sites on this sort of thing
suggest that Hauppauge are the leaders in this area, so personally I'd
need a good reason to look elsewhere.
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I have seen lots of reports of people having problems with Hauppage
(mainly the software) and it is Pinnacle kit which is superior.
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OK, my personal experience is that Hauppage is fine, though I don't
use the bundled PVR software (GBPVR is far superior).
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