Have I been a wolly? TV card in computer...

[TonyHetherington]

Will I lose picture quality going the route I am (through tv card from freeview receive)?

[beanbag]

TonyHetherington said:

Will I lose picture quality going the route I am (through tv card from freeview receive)?

Yup, definitely.....basically, you are getting a clean signal, decoding it in the freeview box to an S-Video output (lower quality already), and then re-encoding it again to a digital MPEG signal before showing it on your computer screen.

The nice thing with a digital TV card is the signal never gets converted to analogue at any stage of the game, and as such you get the best possible quality.

[TonyHetherington]

Ah ok - I'm glad you said that! It wasn't the best, most crystal clear picture ever when I plugged it in last night and was a bit worried, especially as how good a monitor it is!

DVD's look ace though

So, in the future then, a DVB Freeview card it is. Must stop spending money though

Thanks again !

[Podie]

TonyHetherington said:

So, in the future then, a DVB Freeview card it is. Must stop spending money though

http://www.saverstore.com/productinfo/product.aspx?catalog_name=Savastore&product_id=20004526&pid=10&tid=35

[TonyHetherington]

Cheers my good man, I might be pur-chasing that little beauty a bit later!

[Podie]

TonyHetherington said:

Cheers my good man, I might be pur-chasing that little beauty a bit later!

If it's non-essential IT purchases, then I'm your man...

[beanbag]

Podie said:

TonyHetherington said:

So, in the future then, a DVB Freeview card it is. Must stop spending money though

http://www.saverstore.com/productinfo/product.aspx?catalog_name=Savastore&product_id=20004526&pid=10&tid=35

I wouldn't recommend this card at all. Reasons being:

1. Never heard of the manufacturer. TV cards are notoriously unstable and bad support from drivers are usually the reason. Also a lot of applications only accept mainstream cards so you might find some TV apps don't work with this card...

2. No hardware encoding (or decoding). This will cause big problems with recording TV which you may eventually want to do. With Freeview, the quality is superb however you are looking at about 8.5Mbps to encode real-time and that really does sap up CPU power if you have a software card.

This is the fella you should get:

http://www.saverstore.com/productinfo/Product.aspx...

Hardware encoding / decoding, remote control, reliable XP and Vista drivers, MCE compatible and stunning quality DVB recording.

It's not much, more and I suggest if you are short on pennies, then save a little and get something decent!

Hope this helps!

[TonyHetherington]

It does indeed help, cheers BB. I was going to look into them all later but you've answered the questions I was going to ask!

Can't believe you've just made me find another pc-stuff site. Gits

(Yesterday, 400GB SATA II 16mb cache hard drive, couple of new fans (graphics card keeps overheating) and some wires/connectors. Ouch!).

And I have a Lotus, too (cry!)

Seriously though, thanks chaps

[ThePassenger]

The original TV card appears to be, quite honestly, a cheap knock off of the old Hauppauge PVR-x50 (probably a 150 or 250 looking at it) even down to the MPEG-2 accelerator. So handy to keep around if you get a DVB only unit (such as the Nova range), but redundant for a HVR unit.

Personally, if you're buying a TV card for a PC, get Hauppauge. Always. They're pretty much universally supported by everything from MediaPortal to MCE.

[beanbag]

ThePassenger said:

The original TV card appears to be, quite honestly, a cheap knock off of the old Hauppauge PVR-x50 (probably a 150 or 250 looking at it) even down to the MPEG-2 accelerator. So handy to keep around if you get a DVB only unit (such as the Nova range), but redundant for a HVR unit.

Personally, if you're buying a TV card for a PC, get Hauppauge. Always. They're pretty much universally supported by everything from MediaPortal to MCE.

I'll second that! And the driver support is fantastic....

[Podie]

beanbag said:

And the driver support is fantastic....

Wasn't when MCE first came out...

[beanbag]

Podie said:

beanbag said:

And the driver support is fantastic....

Wasn't when MCE first came out...

I've never had any issues and I've been using a Hauppauge card since 1999.....still....every company has it's hiccups!

[Podie]

beanbag said:

Podie said:

beanbag said:

And the driver support is fantastic....

Wasn't when MCE first came out...

I've never had any issues and I've been using a Hauppauge card since 1999.....still....every company has it's hiccups!

agree they're a lot better now. Had a few issues when MCE first came out... but they did help get it sorted.

[ThePassenger]

Podie said:

beanbag said:

Podie said:

beanbag said:

And the driver support is fantastic....

Wasn't when MCE first came out...

I've never had any issues and I've been using a Hauppauge card since 1999.....still....every company has it's hiccups!

agree they're a lot better now. Had a few issues when MCE first came out... but they did help get it sorted.

True enough, although the first releases of MCE were more for system builders and OEM's, so they'd be building with compatible hardware and drivers and so on... rather than spuds like us to go 'splat' with

But yes, XP-MCE improved rather quickly (I still hate it personally, too much Home and not enough Pro for my liking but that's me). Not heard much about 'Vista-MCE' which probably means it's working quite well

[TonyHetherington]

beanbag said:

This is the fella you should get:

http://www.saverstore.com/productinfo/Product.aspx...

Just purchased the HVR1300 Will let you know next week how I get on with it. Thanks everyone!!

[TonyHetherington]

Hi all

Installed the card last night; brilliant! Picture is great and the set up is really nice.

A few questions though, if I may;

I have this computer;
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?pro...

with this graphics card;
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?pro...

and this RAM;
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?pro...

with this monitor;
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?pro...

when I first got the computer, the graphics card was getting ridiculously hot and giving me the BSOD when it went OTT (it took me a while to work out that it was the card getting hot though). So, installed fans front and back of the unit (one in one out) and put a fan right next to the card itself. Now keeps it lovely and cool.

Using the TV card, when in full screen mode if I change channel it takes a very long time (3 seconds) and hangs while doing it. The screen also goes "fuzzy". Not in the traditional sense, but as in horizontal lines momentarily. Is it something wrong with the way I've set it up? To be honest, I don't know abot hardware acceleration etc. so haven't altered anything. After 5 or 6 quick channel flicks, the computer totally freezes I can't do a thing and have to restart. The graphics card is not getting hot.

2nd; is there a decent computer based program guide you can get up on screen? The inscreen one is not great and I can't see there's a "what's on" type guide?!

3rd; thanks all for your help on this, very much appreciated!

Tony

[TonyHetherington]

shameless bump! Anyone...?!

[ThePassenger]

TonyHetherington said:

when I first got the computer, the graphics card was getting ridiculously hot and giving me the BSOD when it went OTT (it took me a while to work out that it was the card getting hot though). So, installed fans front and back of the unit (one in one out) and put a fan right next to the card itself. Now keeps it lovely and cool.

Fishy. Most modern nVidia units have a thermal limiter in them, I'd have assumed ATi were the same. But being an ATi card you've got the Catalyst drivers (or whatever they're called now) installed, which aren't the worlds most stable things... hence I also recommend an nVidia unit. I'd suggest poking around the internet and see if you can find a newer/more stable (not necessarily the same thing) version of the drivers.

TonyHetherington said:

Using the TV card, when in full screen mode if I change channel it takes a very long time (3 seconds) and hangs while doing it. The screen also goes "fuzzy". Not in the traditional sense, but as in horizontal lines momentarily. Is it something wrong with the way I've set it up? To be honest, I don't know abot hardware acceleration etc. so haven't altered anything. After 5 or 6 quick channel flicks, the computer totally freezes I can't do a thing and have to restart. The graphics card is not getting hot.

Hot or not, the two are tied together. A flakey GFX driver can and will shit itself all over the place when the video overlay functions are used. Conversely, so can a shitty TV card driver. Compare version numbers between the CD-ROM ones you installed and those on the Hauppauge site, if newer, try them. The HVR's are spanky new so I don't know anything about them, but if their DVB is the same chip as the older Nova's then should be rock solid. Comming from a MythTV perspective the stutter when changing channels is normal as it's buffering to disk for the repeaters to pick up on... on your machine it should be pretty much instantaneous as no buffering to speak of; which makes me think it's an issue with... drivers. Something isn't happy, I'm leaning heavily on ATi's drivers and sniffing around the HVR's, but it could well be chipset drivers freaking out, double check to make sure you/OverClockers installed all the needed drivers for the mobo.

TonyHetherington said:

2nd; is there a decent computer based program guide you can get up on screen? The inscreen one is not great and I can't see there's a "what's on" type guide?!

Top o' me head. No. You could get creative and use say XMLTV, the RadioTimes website and a 3rd party app to display it else where, but the onscreen EPG is a software function (so again, hauppage site and see if something newer/better exists).

Edit: Now I come to think of it, my PVR-350 would spaz out all the time with an ancient ATi All-in-Wonder card, delays in video and random crashing... same with an SiS IGP system, oddly enough on the Nvidia and VIA Unichrome boxes it was rock solid and quite nippy.

Edit: You have disabled the onboard graphics yes? Double check that one.

Edited by ThePassenger on Saturday 18th August 12:32

[TonyHetherington]

Hi!
Thanks very much for the detailed reply; muchos appreciatedos.

I disabled the onboard graphics card, yup. I will have a play and reply in much more detail hopefully tomorrow (out for the day now) but, once again, thanks for the detail - it looks like it's something to do with the drivers for the ATI card or even the card itself, then?! I used the drivers on the CD for the card but what I didn't say is that it did it before the TV card was installed on simple stuff like pausing an MPEG playing in Win Media Player so not just TV card specific.

Thanks again
Tony

[ThePassenger]

TonyHetherington said:

Hi!
Thanks very much for the detailed reply; muchos appreciatedos.

I disabled the onboard graphics card, yup. I will have a play and reply in much more detail hopefully tomorrow (out for the day now) but, once again, thanks for the detail - it looks like it's something to do with the drivers for the ATI card or even the card itself, then?! I used the drivers on the CD for the card but what I didn't say is that it did it before the TV card was installed on simple stuff like pausing an MPEG playing in Win Media Player so not just TV card specific.

Thanks again
Tony

I'm going to get ripped to shreads and I just know an entire collective of happy ATi users will appear but: ATi's drivers suck more than an Electrolux. Every BSOD and kernel panic I've had on a machine with an ATi card fitted.... can be traced back to the drivers being utterly wank.

When they work, they're nice, but twitchy buggers at the best of times. The fact it did it on video playback (which uses the same overlay/video ram dumping system) before the HVR appeared points me straight to ATi's drivers... and the tool shed... for a bloody great `ammer