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  • Advice on which tvcard to buy??

    I have to buy a tvcard for my pc, and since I dont know anything about this I will rely on MURC

    At this point in time I am thinking of getting a card from one of these manufacturers:
    Hauppauge
    or
    Pinnacle Systems

    I would appreciate it if anyone has any experinces or other kind of wisdom!

    Grego

    ------------------
    System:
    Asus A7V rev. 1.01p bios 1004.a
    AMD Thunderbird 800@800
    SBLive retail with liveware 3.0
    Matrox g400 MAX
    LG Flatron 795FT 17" monitor
    IBM 13.5 GB 7200 hdd
    Pioneer 103-s dvdrom
    Win98 1.st edition
    directx 7.0a
    128mb pc133 cas2 from Memory Card Technology
    System:
    Asus A7V rev. 1.01p bios 1011
    AMD Thunderbird 800
    SBLive retail with liveware 3.0
    Matrox g400 MAX pd 6.51
    LG Flatron 795FT 17" monitor
    IBM 13.5 GB 7200 hdd
    Pioneer 106-s dvdrom
    WinME
    directx 8.0a
    384mb pc133

  • #2
    Don't know about Hauppage, but Pinnacle has great driver development *cough*.

    There are a lot of flows in it's current drivers, and they've been aware of most of them for at least half a year. Nothing has happened yet...

    Comment


    • #3
      I recommend Hauppauge !!!

      I used in on German cable & satelite TV and was stunned how DVD Max pumped it to fullscreen on my TV ...
      specially those pay-TV channels, if you know what I mean ...

      Say Grego, what kind of TV are you planning to watch ?
      (cable, satelite or aerial)

      L8r,
      Maggi
      Despite my nickname causing confusion, I am not female ...

      ASRock Fatal1ty X79 Professional
      Intel Core i7-3930K@4.3GHz
      be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 2
      4x 8GB G.Skill TridentX PC3-19200U@CR1
      2x MSI N670GTX PE OC (SLI)
      OCZ Vertex 4 256GB
      4x2TB Seagate Barracuda Green 5900.3 (2x4TB RAID0)
      Super Flower Golden Green Modular 800W
      Nanoxia Deep Silence 1
      LG BH10LS38
      LG DM2752D 27" 3D

      Comment


      • #4
        Hi Maggi, I plan to use it with cable. Is there any particular model of Hauppauge you can recommend?
        System:
        Asus A7V rev. 1.01p bios 1011
        AMD Thunderbird 800
        SBLive retail with liveware 3.0
        Matrox g400 MAX pd 6.51
        LG Flatron 795FT 17" monitor
        IBM 13.5 GB 7200 hdd
        Pioneer 106-s dvdrom
        WinME
        directx 8.0a
        384mb pc133

        Comment


        • #5
          As an alternative to a TV card you might consider a simple device that converts video into monitor compatible signals so you can watch TV directly without the computer being involved. They are called scan converters, scan doublers, etc. Great for watching TV on your computer monitor without having to have the computer turned on.
          http://www.tvone.com/cheese.htm $100 http://www.mat-co.com/ $70

          Comment


          • #6
            I've got one of those... the proview tv-box. It's a son of a b*tch, because of too many reasons to list here, and one of the most important ones:

            You can only watch tv on your monitor at 50Hz, which give me a headache! Don't know about those others though.

            Comment


            • #7
              Originally posted by Grego:
              Hi Maggi, I plan to use it with cable. Is there any particular model of Hauppauge you can recommend?
              I'd personally choose the Win-TV PCI as minimum, since it's the cheapest one offering stereo sound.

              Here's a table about the features of each card: http://www.hauppauge.com/html/products.htm

              Make your mind up what you need or want and choose either the PCI, Radio (+ Radio & s-video capture) or if you can, go for the Theater (+ dolby surround decoder)

              All of the above can be used in video overlay mode and therefore it's just a matter of which player you use to port it to fullscreen TV.

              Right now I have the DVB-s (Digital Video Broadcast - satelite) at home, but that one's restricted to digital satelite signals only. I never ever tried any of the USB flavors, so I cannot give any input on those.

              Hope that helps a bit ...

              Cheers,
              Maggi
              Despite my nickname causing confusion, I am not female ...

              ASRock Fatal1ty X79 Professional
              Intel Core i7-3930K@4.3GHz
              be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 2
              4x 8GB G.Skill TridentX PC3-19200U@CR1
              2x MSI N670GTX PE OC (SLI)
              OCZ Vertex 4 256GB
              4x2TB Seagate Barracuda Green 5900.3 (2x4TB RAID0)
              Super Flower Golden Green Modular 800W
              Nanoxia Deep Silence 1
              LG BH10LS38
              LG DM2752D 27" 3D

              Comment


              • #8
                thanks for all the info, at the moment Im leaning towards the Theater model, its not too expensive compared to the tv pci model. I dont want to buy the usb version, since I have enough cables around my appartment, kind of reminds me of spaghetti.

                the wonderful world of making decisions on which hardware to buy

                btw does the card require its own irq, and if yes would it be willing to share it?
                System:
                Asus A7V rev. 1.01p bios 1011
                AMD Thunderbird 800
                SBLive retail with liveware 3.0
                Matrox g400 MAX pd 6.51
                LG Flatron 795FT 17" monitor
                IBM 13.5 GB 7200 hdd
                Pioneer 106-s dvdrom
                WinME
                directx 8.0a
                384mb pc133

                Comment


                • #9
                  Yes, the Hauppauge does require its own IRQ. One or more of its features may well fail to function if it is sharing - that is if you machine will even function properly

                  As you may have guessed, I've had a few difficulties setting these up in the past

                  Well worth it though - excellent cards.

                  Chris.

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Oh well I have irq 12 available, if only that will work...

                    I just checked on the Hauppauge homepage, and it said that there might be problems with via chipsets unless the mobo was pci 2.1 compliant. I have just checked the manual for my asus a7v and could not find anything about this, I assume that with a board this fresh there will be no problems, but can anyone verify this?

                    thx
                    Grego
                    System:
                    Asus A7V rev. 1.01p bios 1011
                    AMD Thunderbird 800
                    SBLive retail with liveware 3.0
                    Matrox g400 MAX pd 6.51
                    LG Flatron 795FT 17" monitor
                    IBM 13.5 GB 7200 hdd
                    Pioneer 106-s dvdrom
                    WinME
                    directx 8.0a
                    384mb pc133

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      I'd also recommend getting a Hauppauge one. And if you're planning to do video-captures on Win2k, you definitely should go for the Hauppauge as it's one of the very few companies whose drivers do work flawlessly in Win2k.

                      I have the WinTV Radio here and it can do full-res PAL captures (768x576x32@25fps) to HuffYUV or MJPEG (using the free PicVideo MJPEGu-codec) under Win2k.

                      The Hauppauge are also the most compatible cards if you want to use one of the "educational" decryption Programs Maggi mentioned. And yes, the quality of these decoded signals to the TV or VCR via DVDMax is simply amazing.

                      The cards need 2 interrupts (VfW Video and VfW Audio), to my knowledge they can be shared with other PCI cards. At least they are here without negative effects...
                      As mentioned they also work well in Win2K ACPI mode.
                      But we named the *dog* Indiana...
                      My System
                      2nd System (not for Windows lovers )
                      German ATI-forum

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Originally posted by Grego:

                        I just checked on the Hauppauge homepage, and it said that there might be problems with via chipsets unless the mobo was pci 2.1 compliant. I have just checked the manual for my asus a7v and could not find anything about this, I assume that with a board this fresh there will be no problems, but can anyone verify this?


                        thx
                        Grego
                        I have the ABit KT7-RAID here, no problems with the WinTV, even though the IRQs are shared.
                        AFAIK the Asus A7V and the ABit KT7 have the same VIA chipset (KT133), so the Hauppauge should work on your board as well.
                        But we named the *dog* Indiana...
                        My System
                        2nd System (not for Windows lovers )
                        German ATI-forum

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Grego, your MB is PCI 2.1 compliant, no worries there. One thing I found installing the Hauppauge M#401 (WinTV DBX stereo/ FM stereo w/ remote) it may take a little guggling of cards/slots/Irq's so it won't conflict with your Max.

                          On my initial setup it decided to share irq's with my Max and altho worked at first glace... acted very odd and then when trying to capture it would wig out the system.

                          (For me) It was a card shuffle to reasign IRQ (MSI 6167 MB) and all was good

                          I don't know about Pinnacle drivers personally (have heard they suck), Hauppauge isn't far ahead. I called up their tech support in NY and they acted bored stiff, technically clueless and wouldn't let me go... kept jabbering on and on and on...
                          (somebody shoot that rabbit

                          I like the card none the less and it performs fine. Here in the US, my model (~<$100) is 1/3 the price of the DVB-s model Maggi has.
                          "Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind." -- Dr. Seuss

                          "Always do good. It will gratify some and astonish the rest." ~Mark Twain

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            somebody shoot that rabbit
                            Ok, I own a Pinnacle Studio PCTV Pro, and the drivers have the following problems:

                            - No stereo capturing possibilities
                            - No mouse hiding in full-screen (because the tv viewing app doesn't use REAL fullscreen mode)
                            - NO OSD support in fullscreen (or in general)
                            - remote software only works well with tv apps, while in potential you should be able to control any app with it
                            - no possibility to switch sound channels on bilingual channels (for German dubbed movies
                            - No tuning with MHz but instead of channel frequency with manual slider
                            - No teletext integrated into tv viewing app
                            - No possibility to save settings for brightness, contrast, saturation, audiolevel and audiomode for each tv channel seperately
                            - No de-interlace filter that de-interlaces the video _without_ only playing back half of the lines or fields (so called line-doubling)
                            - Capturing software included is VERY limited in it's functionality

                            bugs:
                            - hibernation bug (trying to use PCTV after use of hibernation and bootup again results into system crash)
                            - when adding a channel, the channel that was selected previously to the one beng added will behave very odd, untill the frequency properties are displayed (then tunes back to the right frequency).
                            - sometimes the tuner does not properly tune into a channel, resulting into a lot of noise (snow)
                            - sometimes crashes on startup? or is that because PSU is not strong enough?
                            - Random crashes with 4.02 driver. 4.01 driver has been the most stable until now

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Ok the decision now stands firm Hauppauge it is, now all that is left is to decide whether I want the stereo version og the theater version.

                              Thanks alot for all the input, once again murc shows its worth
                              System:
                              Asus A7V rev. 1.01p bios 1011
                              AMD Thunderbird 800
                              SBLive retail with liveware 3.0
                              Matrox g400 MAX pd 6.51
                              LG Flatron 795FT 17" monitor
                              IBM 13.5 GB 7200 hdd
                              Pioneer 106-s dvdrom
                              WinME
                              directx 8.0a
                              384mb pc133

                              Comment

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