Review: Creative Labs Video Blaster - Digital VCR 284
"Two weeks ago, I dropped by my Local Frys Electronics to pick up the Creative Labs Video Blaster Digital VCR. I picked up the card for the lovely price of $99. I felt at the time that the days of a PVR was upon me. I hooked it up into my modest system and got started right away. My modest system includes:
- Pentium III 1Ghz System
- 512 MB of PC-133 SDRAM
- 1 40 GB 7200 WD Drive, on ATA-66
- 1 60 GB 7200 Maxtor Drive, on ATA-100
- ATI Radeon VE
- LG 24x CD Burner, on ATA-66
- Running Windows XP Pro
Now, at home, I don't subscribe to any digital video services: I get pretty good reception over an old-fashioned antenna. I primarily wanted the card so I could capture my tape collection of Enterprise episodes to MPEG-2, so I could burn VCDs for my DVD player. I also wanted to begin my trek down the PVR road, and eventually do away with VHS forever.
I spent an evening a couple of days ago, playing with settings on screen-size, capture quality and file sizes. One thing I noticed quite quickly is that the Digital VCR system does not encode directly to MPEG-2. Creative sets up many segment files on your system, each in 32mb blocks, to store your recorded shows and timeshifting buffer. It is essentially a filesystem on top of a filesystem. In order to get the MPEG-2 files out of the Digital VCR, you use a 'File Converter' that they provide in the Creative Menu. The results of this setup is that when you setup the system, you specify how long you want to record (19 hours in my case) and it takes up the appropriate harddrive space (45 GB in my case) for use for future recording. The tool works pretty well overall, even going so far as to create new MPG files every 650 MB. The problem with this is that its possible that your recording could be sliced mid-sentence in your show. The other problem though, didn't occur until last night.
I recorded the episode of Enterprise last night, as well as I had some previous shows of 'Friends' in my 'Saved Shows' menu. After watching the episode again, I pulled up the file convert tool to convert Enterprise to MPG, and flipped onto Live TV, so I could watch the news. Then, the unspeakable happened. Digital VCR froze. I tried to kill it from the Task Manager (which worked perfectly well), but to no avail. There was no killing this app at all. This crash spread like a bad flu across the rest of my system and I was forced to hard reboot. Returning to Windows, I brought up the convert tool to start again, this time not to make the mistake of watching television at the same time. There was only one problem: All of the shows recorded in the last 2 days were wiped out. No data on disk, nothing.
In the end, there were very few positive points that I would give to the Digital VCR product: it just doesn't seem ready for primetime. All in all, the issues I found were as follows:
- Jerky on startup
- Processor Intensive during playing (I'd recommend at least a 1.5 Ghz)
- Menu System is slow
- No Linux Drivers
- Instability in proprietary filesystem
- Mpeg Splitting (what about 700mb CDRs or DVDS)
2.5 (Score:5, Funny)
He'll rail on a movie, go on about how it sucks and then give it 50 stars (out of 5)
This thing doesn't even really work and it gets 2.5 out of 5? Sounds like 2.5 out of 10 may have been more appropriate.
.
Re:2.5 (Score:3, Funny)
Re:2.5 (Score:2)
I thought you're talking about Harry Knowles. Of Aint-it-cool-News [www.aint-it-cool-news] fame.
It doesn't matter if he thinks the movie sucks or not, he'll still rave about it, compare it to multiple orgasms, and then gush about how he needs presents because it's his birthday.
"Me want presents! Me want presents!"
It's nice that critics are so nice these days.
Re:2.5 (Score:2)
But I agree...the guy is an idiot and his site tries to hard with all the bullshit scoops from people that read like they wish they were fiction writers.
Crappy Creative hardware (Score:2)
Re:2.5 (Score:2)
As with all things technology, you have to review the product based on (a)it's purpose, (b)it's fulfillment of that purpose, (c)the hardware, (d)the software and drivers.
In this case, the hardware fulfilled it's purpose. It records and it converts to MPEG-2 (both presumably well, I'd imagine). The reviewer had problems with stability, processor usage, and some lacking features (customizable MPEG sizes). These can all be fixed with a simple update to the software and drivers of the product.
There's nothing inherently wrong with the product. The hardware works, the software works, and they both do as advertised. Stability and missing features are often lacking in a first release, and this is no different. Creative has a somewhat solid reputation IMO of timely releasing updated software and drivers. I'd expect a revision within the next few months.
In all, based on this review, I'd give it a 3/5 stars with a recommendation to hold off purchases until the next version of the SW is available.
anonymous reviews (Score:5, Insightful)
No legitimate publication would do so, there are many questions of conflicts of interest.
Does this reviewer work for a competiter of Creative Labs? Until that is anwered, nobody should take this review too seriously.
Re:anonymous reviews (Score:3, Insightful)
You need to judge every piece of information to see if it has bias, not just the ones where you don't know the source but the ones where you do know the source but don't have a reason to trust the source.
I think the review was by some random person that just picked up the card. The review implies that he enjoys the card but has some problems with it. Which basically describes every piece of software I've ever installed, whether it be closed or open sourced. He's not promoting a competing product, in fact he's almost promoting the product with a disclaimer that it won't work perfectly and that he found a nasty bug. He doesn't work for creative (he pointed out a nasty bug) and he doesn't work for a competitor (he actually enjoys the card).
Just because you can attach a name to someone doesn't mean they're not anyless a stranger then an anonymous.
Re:anonymous reviews (Score:3, Funny)
Re:anonymous reviews (Score:2, Funny)
Re:anonymous reviews (Score:5, Informative)
- It's anonymous (for Christ sake!)
- Superficial: CPU load at encoding to MPEG ? Support for other video formats ? Bundled software (e.g. DVD player) ? etc, etc...
All in all, don't confuse "luser stories" with "reviews".
Ah, and one last thingie: here [extremetech.com] you have a proper review of two video cards with Digital VCR, time-shifting, remote control, (etc, etc) capabilities (namely "ATI Radeon All-In-Wonder 8500 DV" and "VisionTek Xtasy Everything") . Alternatively, do yourself a favor and look for other reviews for ATI Radeon All-in-Wonder 8500 DV card ("tom's hardare" and "tech-report" had two pretty good ones, IIRC)
Oh, yes, I'm looking forward to be modded down to "-1 flamebait"
Re:anonymous reviews (Score:2, Informative)
There is no hardware decoder, so CPU use is dependent on your video card's acceleration features (iDCT, Motion Compensation) -- expect about the same overhead as a software DVD player.
It doesn't store the data in standard MPEG format, and the conversion tool is very slow.
If you could get raw MPEG out of it and there were Linux drivers, it would kick ass. The effort to make Linux drivers for it isn't very mature:
http://www.760mp.com/videoblaster/
Re:anonymous reviews (Score:2)
But, if it's just some user... then they wouldn't be able to compare cause they don't have both...
and...it's a 2.5 out of 5 rating... soo, it's not a "good" rating...
But then again, someone just gave Creative Labs a lot of hits... and, well, that's not exactly something to take lightly.
Do you watch TV on your Computer? (Score:5, Insightful)
TiVo/replayTV makes life easier for the person that comes home, sits in their couch, and flips on the tube (it gives them something THEY want to watch, regardless of time).
This is why TiVo/replayTV is successful, and "computer digital VCR"'s don't.
Not everything is better if you put it on your computer.
No, I watch my computer on TV (Score:3, Informative)
Works great, I rarely watch live TV any more, and for me the Creative card has been rock stable under Win2K SP2. I've also had no problems converting files to MPEG-4 formats, though I do have keep the input files under 2GB. YMMV
-Ryan C.
I don't (Score:2)
I've been very interested in "Digital VCR" lately because I could save my favorite shows. I could care less about file sharing, but I don't have time to watch every show!
I've also considered Cable In The Classroom could be an option because I know two high schools with VCD players [DVD/TV].
What does everyone recommend? I'm using Digital Cable and I could use any platform.
I watch TV's on my computer... (Score:5, Interesting)
I have a home brew PVR in my apartment (I'll describe it in a later post...) and it quietly captures shows for me. I find my time's a little more efficiently spent. Since I don't edit out the commercials (I usually watch and then delete), I have a few minutes to tidy up my email box or fiddle with Lightwave.
I'll tell you a few totally cool things about this setup:
1.) When the show is being dull etc, I have other ways to pass the time on my computer.
2.) Easy to glance at, no more turning my head. Face it, no matter how close your TV is, you'll have to turn your head.
3.) I can pause/rewind/etc and make sure I don't miss anything that sounded interesting
4.) My TV hasn't been turned on in weeks.
5.) With the extra monitor, the video's never intrusive.
I realize most people would probably be turned off by this idea, but I thought I'd share my epxerience on this topic. I've managed to catch up on a lot of shows I don't normally have time for!
Description of my setup at home... (Score:2)
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=31380&cid=3
One more note on travelling.. (Score:2)
When I went to Siggraph last year, I dumped a bunch of shows I hadn't watched yet to my laptop and took off to LA. While I was there, the trade-show just wiped me out every night. I really wasn't up to floating around town looking for something exciting to do. Instead I laid in bed watching shows I *wanted to watch* on my laptop.
That's pretty cool considering that every time I stay in a hotel, there's never anything interesting on TV.
Re:One more note on travelling.. (Score:2)
Re:I watch TV's on my computer... (Score:2, Funny)
2.) Easy to glance at, no more turning my head. Face it, no matter how close your TV is, you'll have to turn your head.
Yes, god forbid you should have to *turn your head*.
Once again, technology to the rescue!
Re:I watch TV's on my computer... (Score:2)
It's not a matter of laziness.
Re:I watch TV's on my computer... (Score:2)
Re:I watch TV's on my computer... (Score:2)
I'm really hoping Mira (from MS) turns out like I imagine it will. I've been aching for a 'hand link' I can use for scheduling tv shows.
I've been tinkering with the idea of using a Pocket PC + 802.11 and a custom VB app to talk to my computers. I wanted to do things like set an alarm, record a show, have my TV automatically turn on to CNN at 7am, etc.
Building on this idea, I wanted to turn a spare computer into a 'voice recognition box'. MS has a free Speech SDK you can download and play with. I so loved the idea of saying 'Quantum Leap' and have my TV/Monitor start playing the next episode I haven't watched yet.
Re:I watch TV's on my computer... (Score:4, Informative)
i set LIRC to do certain things when i press a button on the remote.
Girder is the windows equiv for it.
check out www.monkeygadget.com for building an IR reciever ($5 or so in parts)
www.lirc.org for linux software
and girder.nl for windows software
Re:I watch TV's on my computer... (Score:2)
Re:Do you watch TV on your Computer? (Score:3, Insightful)
Plus you can play games, have a CD catalog, full X10 control, and quite a bit else which is either difficult or expensive to do with a traditional home theater setup.
Within a few months to a year you'll be able to do all of the above, plus 100% of a pre-amp, a PVR, and probably some other stuff I'm forgetting.
Replacing $40k+ of equipment with a $1500 box is what the old idea of convergence is all about. Not to mention that you're replacing 3-5 separate components with one, and that one is more configurable and expandable than the original components were.
So what's missing? Well, there are some really good sound cards out there now (check AVS Forum for info), but I don't think they do all the latest sound formats, particularly the 7.1 or 8.1 ones. There's a big gap in user friendliness, ease of setup (and that's considering how intricate a lot of high-end AV gear is to setup too), and stability. And there's still no replacement for a stand-alone PVR - although it's getting closer and closer.
That said, I will continue to shake my head sadly at people who refuse to buy a TiVo/Replay because they either think it's too expensive ("$10/month? That's absurd!") or are worried about it being around in X amount of time. To the former I say - if you can build it for cheaper, do it. Thusfar nobody has. There's a reason you're paying for the service, it's because nobody else can provide it. To the latter, well, this _is_ the future of television. In this time of hard to get VC, both companies are still getting it. And, worst comes to worst, if they fold then the data needed to make the unit functional (guide data) is available from other sources. (I don't agree with not paying for service as long as TiVo exists, because then you're just looking for a free lunch and not paying for services rendered -- but I also think not getting the lifetime service is rather silly).
Multitasking? (Score:2)
What many forget (or never knew) is that a PVR is recording at least one stream of TV to disk 24/7. That's a pretty big load on a current machine to begin with if you try to do other things with the computer too.
Re:Multitasking? (Score:2)
It's called a dedicated system. If the kid is playing Quake5, then he's doing it on the TV, so it's not an issue.
What many forget (or never knew) is that a PVR is recording at least one stream of TV to disk 24/7. That's a pretty big load on a current machine to begin with if you try to do other things with the computer too.
Uh... I have two TiVo's. I'm quite familiar with them. And did you know that the original TiVo does all that encoding, plus decoding a second stream, plus indexing various data with a 80 MHz CPU, right?
It's, again, called dedicated hardware. A MPEG-2 encoder offloads nearly 100% of the burdon from the CPU. MPEG-2 decoding is pretty strenuous, but a modern video card offloads the heaviest parts, so you can easily get away with "as little as" a 500 MHz P3. TiVo's have dedicated MPEG2 decoding as well, but you really don't want that if you want the deinterlacing abilities as well.
Re:Do you watch TV on your Computer? (Score:2, Informative)
Yes, I do watch TV on my computer. The Replay is in the living room, but I've run a cable from there to the office and I watch TV in a little window more often than I watch it in the living room.
Re:Do you watch TV on your Computer? (Score:2)
Doesnt the ATI AIW do this? (Score:3, Insightful)
And its been our for how long? couple years?
Re:Doesnt the ATI AIW do this? (Score:3, Funny)
The coolest was looping that scene in Brady Bunch where they looped the scene of that girl getting hit in the face with the football.
Alfred was in stitches for weeks.
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Re:Doesnt the ATI AIW do this? (Score:2)
it is a bitch to get working and records in either a special format or (the latest version) Mpeg1 at slightly less than VCD quality.
your best bet for archival of tv shows and playback is Nuppelvideo + mplaye r+ a hollywood+ card + a BT878 tuner card. I get better than VHS, can convert from a nuv file to a mpeg2 easily... (ok mpegtools is a royal bitch to compile after you download 98 different libs and fight with the compiles... but you can get it to work in about 4 hours of fighting) Slap all of this in a DCT/Allwell Metallic6086N2 and you have something that even LOOKS like a tivo clone.
now you need to slap PicoGUI on there with some custom software (write it in perl!) and you have what you desire.
Re:Doesnt the ATI AIW do this? (Score:2)
"
I disagree! I liked the TV Program that came with the card... it was fast and easy to use, and to begin recording it was just one click...
Though, i did pre-configure it to <B>NOT</B> use it's own digital-vcr format video, and instead the mpeg1 has worked very well for me so far.
It't not as slick and fast and easy as a componant-level TiVo, but just as a feature written on a side of a box of a 3d card I don't think its that bad at all!
Re:Doesnt the ATI AIW do this? (Score:2)
It will capture to MPEG-2, AVI (with your choice of codecs), or WMV as well. MPEG-2 captures worked pretty well for me, but Huffyuv-compressed AVI captures dropped frames. (A 1.0-GHz Athlon with a pair of 7200-rpm drives in RAID 0 should be more than fast enough to do that...and AVI_IO indicates that it is.)
Re:Doesnt the ATI AIW do this? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Doesnt the ATI AIW do this? (Score:2)
Wait a sec... (Score:2)
PVRs Pricey? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:PVRs Pricey? (Score:2)
IMO the best feature is the button-fly.
Re:PVRs Pricey? (Score:2)
I've had the dish PVR 501 for almost a year now, and my friend has a TiVO that he has bumped up to 90 hours, & added ethernet to. Certainly, the PVR 501 was a pretty good deal, but looking back, and comparing with TiVO, I believe if I had to choose again, I would go with TiVO.
The Dish unit has some advantages over a stock TiVO, such as 35 hours at full resolution, where the TiVO was 14 hours. Of course the upgraded TiVO beats it hands down on storage, but truthfully, I never seem to fill up more than about 15-20 hours anyway.
The real difference in the dish unit, is that it is nowhere near as smart as the TiVO, in that it has no "suggestions" or the "thumbs up/dn" rating system, or the "get all Clint Eastwood films" sort of programming. The Dish is strictly a VCR- like device, ie pick a time and it records that show. If a show gets pushed back for a ball game, or etc, It is supposed to follow it, but I have not seen that happen.
I get local channels off of cable, and where the TiVO has an input and a tuner for cable/antenna broadcasts, and can record just as easily from my buddy's DirecTV unit as his cable feed, my dish 501 only records from satellite. I keep forgetting to tune in to Enterprise, where if I could set up the PVR to record it, I would watch it when I wanted.
The Dish 501 interface is fine for scheduling a show, by picking it off the on-screen guide, but to remove a timed event, you have to go to a separate menu, which doesn't list the show name, but only the time/channel. It makes it inconvenient to edit your recording setups.
I really like the unit, it is vastly better and more convenient than vhs tapes, but between the TiVO and the Dish PVR 501, the TiVO is certainly the cooler unit. I noticed in the ads lately that the new TiVOs are coming with more capacity off the shelf, so that is not really an issue anymore.
Re:PVRs Pricey? (Score:2)
Re:PVRs Pricey? (Score:3, Interesting)
My buddy has to reboot his TiVO about that often, (~2/yr) so I guess it is a symptom of these things just being computers after all.
Asus Digital VCR (Score:5, Interesting)
I'll discuss the Windows 9x version, since it is the only version that really worked. The sound had a hissing, broken quality If I used timeshifting feature. It did not record to a known format, but to a special format developed by Asus. An hour at a Tivo-like quality would take over 2GB, which was a problem, because the program wrote only to one file, and the file size was limited to 2GB. I did have fun recording music videos in highest quality and using the included movie editing software to spend several hours turning the proprietary format into mpeg-2, but really, it wasn't worth my time.
I've since bought a TiVo, and it is night-and-day. It was quite easy to add a hard drive for a total of ~34 hours at the highest quality, and the television guide and automatic programming are alone enough to make it much better than any pc recorder without this feature. I only wish it were easy to pull the mpeg-2 streams out of the TiVo and put them on my hard drive.
Get a TiVo!
...The problem with TiVo (Score:2, Interesting)
This is the reason I can't justify buying one yet. The fact that you are only given fairly small time-shifting windows (until the drive is full), and no ability to space shift / archive information off (VHS? Talk about defeating the whole purpose!) fails to make it attractive. The ability to clip video is also missing.
TiVo seems to do a great job as a consumer toy for today; I don't argue that. I would prefer a computer-based (open-protocol) solution to give myself the flexibility to play with the information, and yes, share information between different locations.
But... it isn't there yet. Is it just copyright fear?
Re:...The problem with TiVo (Score:3, Informative)
Re:...The problem with TiVo (Score:2)
Re:Asus Digital VCR (Score:2)
Re:Asus Digital VCR (Score:2, Insightful)
Funny you should mention that since it really makes me wonder about this Creative "filesystem on top of a filesystem" implementation... NTFS supports file sizes in the terabyte-range unlike FAT, so I wonder if this is all done in a way to allow backwards compatibility with FAT. I'm sorry, but for the requirements the article specifies/recommends, you'd think this person would be runnning Windows 2000 or XP anyway. It's kinda analogous to instead of having swap partition(s) in Linux, you just create normal paritions and dd a bunch of swapfiles onto them. Pretty stupid if you ask me.
Re:Asus Digital VCR (Score:2)
graspee
Another Alternative (Score:4, Informative)
This looks like a good product but I think I will wait a bit on it. The product in almost the same category (almost because it's also a video card) is the ATI Radeon 7500 All-In-Wonder card. It's 200 bucks and has pretty much the same features, my favorite is the wireless (non-IR) remote. It's 200 bucks but I needed a vid card upgrade so it worked out well.
Here's the review for the 7500: http://www6.tomshardware.com/graphic/02q1/020122/ [tomshardware.com]
Another card that have been around for a long time is the ATI TV tuner (I have had two version of this) and it's always worked really well, just lately they have introduced the scheduled recording to compete with the TiVo, et al...
Re:Another Alternative (Score:2)
Best Capture / PVR reviews (Score:3, Informative)
Respect (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Respect (Score:2)
If they do, and they're reading, maybe this would help with their QC process: MOST PEOPLE HAVE MORE THAN ONE PCI CARD IN THEIR COMPUTER. MAKE YOUR CARDS PLACE NICE WITH OTHERS.
Ha! I just got through with creative support! (Score:2)
So I start a dialogue with their online support people (no phone number ANYWHERE, just 1 e-mail message a day over the course of a week and a half). I told them what I did- they ignored most everything I said, asked me to perform some voodoo ("turn off your computer monitor. Turn it off twice. Keep doing that. Change your video ram cache. See if that fixes your sound") - I ended up running out and buying an SBlive and installing it (and getting it to work) just to prove to them that it was not my system, my card was broken.
Yes thats right. I paid an extra $60 just to prove them wrong. Spite will make you do a lot of things!
I ended up putting the SbLive in my XP mp3/web browser box (all it had was on board audio... maybe this is an improvment?!)
Next time I will hold out for the Echo Mia.
Re:Respect (Score:2)
I got one of these cards back in December (Score:5, Informative)
While the card does have some impressive upsides, don't expect to be able to convert the outputted MPEG2 files, I have yet to successfully convert one to Divx. I did get one to VCD after using TMPEG, MPEGcorrector, and Nero. In the feedback on VCDHELP.com there is some posts in the feedback of what people have gone through to get the files converted. Typically this involves splitting, then remerging the files.
My result? The third tuner card in a row w/o any support and a signifigant need for it. (previously I had an STB and 3DFX card that were bought only months before thier demise)
File size limit (Score:3, Informative)
iirc (this was 4 months ago), at 2047MB ir worked correctly, at 2048 it would not (and upon re-entering the options it would say "-1". At 4095 it would work out to -2047, and 4096 would be back to 0, 4696 would create 600MB files.
I'd have to go home to re-do the experiments to say the effects with 100% certainty. But I am 100% sure that it acted like an overflow error, and not a file size limitation.
Now there are three (Score:3, Interesting)
Even Worse... (Score:3, Interesting)
Solution: I bought a bunch of parts and slapped together another PC that will house the DVR and display to the TV, be a file server, etc. $800 bucks later, i have a new PC...but it probably would have been cheaper to just buy a Tivo and an Xbox and be done with it. Now that i have the new PC i wish the Creative card had come with a TV Out, because i had to buy another card with one, and the output seems to lose a lot of quality after the multiple conversions.
I just wanted to tell people to be careful with this product because it is definitely a 2.5 out of 10, not 2.5 out of 5.
Good taste V-chip (Score:2, Funny)
That was not a bug, that was a feature built in to prevent you from watching crappy shows.
What about Macrovision? (Score:2)
Get a video clarifier box (Score:2)
Can you use this thing in conjunction with some other software to bypass the anti-taping measures used such as Macrovision?
Yes you can. It's lawful in the United States to make video clarifier [google.com] devices that fix the NTSC conformance issues that a Macrovision signal produces because they have substantial uses other than circumvention of fair-use barriers and thus fall under the exception to 17 USC 1201(a)(2) and (b)(1) [cornell.edu] because 1. Macrovision isn't "effective access control" but merely copy quality degradation, and 2. the right to prohibit fair use [cornell.edu] isn't "a right of a copyright holder under this title." Subsection (k) does mention Macrovision specifically but gives blanket exemptions to digital video recorders, professional analog VCRs (while potentially defining "professional" to include consumer-grade VCRs used by professional K-12 teachers), and VCRs that can receive signals over fiber (through a suitably stretched interpretation of "camera lens").
Get a lawyer.
Take the UNIX approach! (Score:2)
That's what the UNIX approach is all about, little tools that WORK combined intelligently by an intelligent operator to do amazing things. I think tv + tivo + dvd player + cd player + a/v receiver will always seem to work better than a computer which has been taught all of the above tricks. That's because compromises must be made in any product, and as functions are added to products, invariably so are compromises.
Now, when I can do something like "xawtv -ch 122 | pvr --buffer | grep startrek | mkisofs -" then maybe it'll work!
Get what you pay for (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.hytekcomputer.com/Reviews/ati/8500dv/1
Re:Get what you pay for (Score:2)
He could have gotten a TiVo and a TV in card and been set.
My personal solution (Score:4, Informative)
A key issue with many boards is bandwidth. The general idea is that one hooks the RCA / S-video outputs of your VCR/TV/Camera into the computer, and it does the rest. The problem, for many boards (I don't know about this Creative setup specifically - although it seems to be taxing on the processor, if nothing else) is that this conversion either (a) if done well, takes an enormous amount of resources, or (b) must be done poorly.
The other big problem, and one which seems to be the case here, is compression. For some reason I have never encountered an analog capture board that saves its video in consolidated, lossless files. For my personal work, small, compressed 320x240 files simply do not cut it.
The best way I've found to turn you computer into a digital VCR is to purchase a digital video camera with RCA / S-video inputs. Record your source to the camera and then send it via firewire to your computer. The incoming signal is entirely digital - all your computer has to do is save it to disk. As far as file format goes, there exists a standard DV format (for Windows, at least) that allows lossless compression without the file shenanigans of this Creative board (and most others).
Just my 2 cents.
DV works under Linux too :) (Score:2, Informative)
Note that DV *is* a bit lossy, but it's not too bad, aside from the fact that the color space is a bit odd - 4/1 x/y reduction instead of the 2/2 done in mpeg-2. So encoding a final result with >352 horizontal resolution is subpar in that regard.
When it all works, the dvgrab solution is much smoother than analog ones as the sync is handled by your camcorder or other codec device. The Linux drivers are sometimes flaky though, and you need to have a good set for it all to work.
Now to finally get around to setting up the IR reciever so I can use the cable mouse off my digital cable box... and then automated recording... PVR-land here I come (albeit very expensively
Urm, I've been doing this for a long time (Score:4, Informative)
My own system (Score:4, Informative)
--start--
I bought a Hauppauge WIN-TV PVR (PCI) card for video capture. It has a hardware MPEG-2 encoder with many settings for quality from 2mb/sec to the ridiculously high 12mb/sec with the option of constant or variable bitrate.
After testing I settled on 4mbit/sec VBR which looks great - sometimes it's easy to forget I'm not watching a live broadcast. Importantly it also has a "pause" feature just like a commercial PVR which is great for dealing with the amount of calls I get from clients at all hours. Output to the TV is via S-VHS from an old GeForce 1 card that has TV-out built in. Initially I wanted to use the MPEG decoder card from my DVD kit for output but after testing, the output from the geforce is so close in quality I just use it, plus then I get to use the PC even while it's recording (the hardware encoder means no dropped frames ever).
The box is just a celeron 900 with a half gig of ram running win2k - there is a linux driver available for the Hauppauge on sourceforge but the PC is part of my render farm (I'm a 3D animator by trade) and 3dsmax only runs on windows (for now).
The software that ships with the Hauppauge is, well, shitty. It works fine but the interface sucks, especially when you've used showshifter (www.showshifter.com) though from reading showshifter's forums apparently it will soon support the WintTV PVR board. In the meantime I have simply "frontended" the Hauppage software using scripting in Automate from Unisyn. I've bound all the major features to the cute rubber buttons on the internet keyboard on my coffee table and I've even been able to do things like have the scroll-lock light flash when recording (for when we're not watching TV via the PC). For scheduling I go to the Aussie TV guide at sofcom.com.au to pick out my weeks viewing - the lounge box has winvnc on it so I can program it from my office or even start recording if I see something good and don't have time to run out to the lounge. I use PowerDVD for mpeg playback, mainly cause you can fast forward and rewind using the scroll wheel on the mouse - trez chic
For the future I just ordered a Redrat2 IR controller from www.redrat.co.uk to give the box control over my satellite decoder, and I plan to add functionality like being able to email the box to program it etc.
--end--
Well it's been nearly five months now since I set up my PVR system, a good indication of how it's going is that about two months ago I finally took my VCR out of the TV cabinet and replaced it with the PC. Still using 4mb/sec CBR D1 Pal to record, the end result is indistinguishable from 'live' TV.
My viewing habits have changed; every Sunday I go through the online TV guide and update my record-list (late night shows like Enterprise tend to run at different times some weeks - not that I've been able to sit through a single episode of it yet.), and I almost never watch live TV anymore. Every time I check the /record fileshare there's something new to watch, sometimes I'll hit the weekend and have a week's worth of stuff to sift through at my leasure (mainly simpsons - they show it a LOT here in .au)
I stopped using PowerDVD for playback as for day to day use there were some rough edges that caused annoyance, and reverted to using media player version 6 (I dislike version 7 intensely). A simple alt-enter and it goes full screen, and the spacebar pauses. I've also gotten very good at gaugeing the length of commercial breaks - the show I'm watching goes to commercial I alt enter to get the playback bar and click where I think the break's gonna end - most times these days I'm bang on :-)
The RedRat controller is great, I've yet to find a remote it can't learn, and it's liberating being able to code my own IR app. I'm off VHS for good, no more crappy tapes for me! I've used the Hauppauge to make high quality (6mb/sec) archives of precious VHS tapes such as a friend's wedding and a ten year old recording of a family xmas which had footage of our great grandfather enjoying the day with us just hours before he passed away.
My experience with a home-built PVR (Score:4, Insightful)
- ATI 8500 DV (yes, much more expensive)
- Athlon 650
- 384 Mb RAM
- 2x60 GB drive
- Wireless KB, mouse, remove, 802.11b
I am surprised at his playback problems. The ATI easily plays back anything on my [much more] modest machine. Recording is a slightly diff issue. I can do "good" at about 90% CPU, anything more and the machine cannot keep up.
ATI's "multimedia center" is, IMO, crap in terms of quality and -- in some ways -- features. Really important things like 30-second skip isn't present on playback. It tends to crash with alarming regularity. The on-line guide is nice, though. But you can't schedule anything to be recorded from S-Video (or composite) because of a but which makes it all scheduled programs revert to the tuner, so no digital cable recordings for me. The library function is very marginally useful. The remote has very limited programming for other apps (like WinAmp). It is hooked up to a 53" wide-screen HDTV-capable; the quality is surprising good considering the very demanding display. Dual-head sort of works, but never does the bits you want to (i.e. desktop on one, TV playback on the other) but this is supposed to be "coming".
All-in-all, good hardware, software needs a _lot_ of work. Same old story for ATI. Hopefully someone will come out with much better software; ATI has been working on the mult-media center for years so I don't hold out much hope for it. I would like highly functional software with command-line options so I could script togather the wierd stuff. Is that too much to ask?
Snapstream (Score:5, Informative)
It's great software. Check it out.
Re:Snapstream (Score:2)
Well, it did, except of course two days after I registered the software, the PC I was using it on flaked out and won't boot. Not Snapstream's fault, just bad karma.
ATI TV Wonder VE does realtime sw mpeg2 for $47 (Score:3, Informative)
I go to Walmart of all places and get an ATI TV Wonder VE for $47, and plug it into, of all things, my second box with only a K6-500 in it.
After fighting with windows to get all the hw resources sorted out, I get the sw that came with the card working. And it encodes, MPEG2, any quality, DVD, VCD, or any crappy bitrate/vid quality/sound quality/size I define. It does this in realtime. I can't find any avis it leaves around as an intermediary step, and the mpeg file saves and is there instantaneously when I stop recording.
This k6 is very hot when recording, the tv card isnt (well, more than usual), and there's no bloody space on the card for an encoder.
I don't trust using Windows crappy scheduling to record shows, so I switched the tuner to the linux box I'm typing this on.
I WANT, I HAVE TO find a ported version of whatever the heck wonderful realtime (ON A K6!!!) sw encoder ATI licensed for this thing! Picture an mpeg stream at somehting conservative like 176x144 coming off your webserver, with channel and even encoding volume control right in the web page interface...my tv anywhere i want ;p
Thats my plan..
Hardware vs. Software Decoding (Score:2)
Enjoy stunning video and audio performance in TV shows on your PC courtesy of the onboard hardware MPEG-2 recording engine
I don't understand why you'd need a P4 1.5GHz machine to successfully record shows unless something is amiss. I always thought the difference in price between low cost and high cost solutions was hardware vs. software encoding.
Hardware solutions should allow a PII to record shows smoothly.
Not really digital is it! (Score:3, Insightful)
All though I have to agree its fun, it however is hardly groundbreaking. Prices have just dropped on TV tuner cards. Just in time for them to go obsolite.
James
Re:Not really digital is it! (Score:2)
Now if this had been DIGITAL, ie it was a DVB card hooked up to cable or satelight (even better if it was a premium pay service) and was directly pulling and recording the digital stream. I might be interested, but this is just capturing TV and then using a computer to process it to mpeg.
Prices have just dropped on TV tuner cards. Just in time for them to go obsolite.
I think that it is naive to think that digital content providers will soon provide digital feeds that can easily be captured by computers. They will do as much as possible to make that illegal and difficult because they do not want perfect digital copies (or feeds!) going onto the Internet.
Re:Not really digital is it! (Score:2)
The problem with DVB cards as far as I understand, is you need a different one for Terestral, cable and Satelight.
James
Maybe you could try replacing the software... (Score:2)
It also hasn't crashed on me, so that would at least solve the problem you're having with the Creative Labs software wedging your machine.
My home-brew PVR.... (Score:4, Interesting)
I have an old P2-400 machine that was basically doing nothing. So I decided to turn it into a PVR. The requirements on the machine are borderline, but it works fine. Here are the specs:
-P2 400
-128 meg of RAM
-8 Gig drive
-Video card with TV out
-Hauppage WinTV PCI card ($99 including IR remote, you can get a cheaper mono version for $49)
- Snapstream PVS ($50, http://www.snapstream.com)
- Windows 2000 (I average about 30 days uptime w/o rebooting.)
-10/100 Ethernet card
Some of you might be turned off at the capture specs, but hear me out. Snapstream captures the video at 320 by 240 @ 30 fps at 330kbits/s. It's compressed in real time using Microsoft's Media Encoder. So the resulting file is in
The picture quality's certainly watchable, but it is noticably artifact'd. My goal was to fit 4 hours to a CD, I could double the data rate and get much nicer quality. The truth is, though, that the only shows I'd want to do that for are Farscape and Deep Space Nine. They are very beautifully filmed and this format does deaden it a bit. (Again, it's very watchable.)
I sometimes watch the videos on the TV in my bedroom via the old video card with TV out. I also send them over the network to my main machine sometimes. It has a dual monitor setup, so I frequently watch the video in a little window on one screen while I'm doing things like e-mail. To tell you the truth, I'm addicted to watching TV this way. I'm able to pause it, zoom past commercials, and even search for stuff about previous episodes.
I'm very happy with this setup. When DVD writables get cheaper, I intend to upgrade the computer so I can get closer to broadcast quality. But I'm not in a huge hurry to do this. Most shows (especially sitcoms) can survive running at really low resolution. Low resolution = low data rate = low CPU Usage = more I can capture and play back. You guys might find it interesting that once I encoded an episode of Quantum Leap at 160 by 100 @ 100kbps at 7fps and played it back on my old Jornada PocketPC. I was pleasantly surprised at how watchable it was, especially considering I was on a flight to LA. I damn near went out and bought a microdrive so I could store more shows on that guy to watch. Heh.
I've been using this machine for over a year now. The biggest change I've noticed is that I don't turn on my big TV very often now. I'm very happy with how it came out.
Comments from the Author (Score:4, Informative)
The primary reason that I had written this review was that at the time of writing, I was quite upset at the losses I kept sustaining in the way of recordable streams. After reading the comments by the readers, I wanted to offer some clarifications to my review that were brought up by the readers.
First of all, I can tell you that I'm not in any way affiliated with Creative Labs in any way. I know that this statement could be questionable since I'm still posting as anonymous, but the fact of the matter is, even if I weren't anonymous, I could still be on their payroll. I'll eventually set up an account, but I have yet to find a real reason why.
Second, In my review, I give the card a rating of 2.5 out of 5. A few people had suggested that with my complaints, I should have rated it a 2.5 out of 10. The reason for the 'mediocre rating' was that this device can serve purposes quite well. Recording my episodes of Enterprise off of VHS, it doesn't matter if they system loses the files, as I can always run the attempt again. This seems like a driver issue that could be resolved in the long run, and if so, making it a very nice product.
Third, I am pretty new to video conversion and am still trying to figure out how to decode/edit/encode the movies in MPEG-2. There have been a few articles recently that seem to help with this, and hopefully I'll be able to edit out the commercials in no time.
In closing I realize that the Digital VCR can't quite compare with the dedicated hardware PVRs, and their pretty high cost ($699 for ReplayTV, $200 for TiVO, + $250 for Lifetime Scheduler service). The Digital VCR seems to fill a niche, but doesn't go so far as to making PVR a real reality for those of us who DO watch Television on their PC.
Re:Comments from the Author (Score:2)
I'm surprised no one's done a review or anthing, on the new iMac's capabilities. Seems to me, the best solution would be to use it to record, convert, and burn your favorite shows to DVD (not VCD, not SVCD, but *DVD*)
Beta still works fine for me (Score:2)
Perhaps if I didn't have any form of VTR for taping TV and I had waaay too much money...
ATI All-In-Wonder (Score:2, Informative)
wintv pvr (Score:3, Informative)
graspee
You kids have it so good.... (Score:2)
Today you have a tv tuner, computers fast enough to handle realtime compression of full NTSC@30FPS signal with minimal loss in quality, drives that don't need to be A/V-rated (remember that 7,000$ 4GB baracuda for the flyer?), Bandwidth and storage beyond beleif... god.. some of you here will understand the feeling when I say that the younger crowd here probably didn't have to mess or invest in those expensive equipment, and will never appreciate newer technologies and pricing as much as we do
Anyways, sorry for this little incursion, I think I'll go plug my vidi-24RT back in my amiga 1200
AVerTV Stereo + WinDVR (Score:2)
The price is incredible, but what's even more incredible is that the card is very high quality. It has Coax, S-Video, and RGB inputs, plus an audio loopback to connect to your soundcard. The PVR software that comes with it is very good if you don't need advanced features. It records directly to MPEG-2, although the recording quality is not customizable enough for my tastes.
I personally wanted software that would record to MPEG-1 with custom bitrate settings so I could then use VirtualDub to convert my recordings to DivX. I bought a copy of InterVideo WinDVR [intervideo.com] for $99.95, and I'm extremely happy with the combination. WinDVR is extremely customizable, letting me choose between MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 formats, as well as giving me a ton of bitrate, audio, resolution, and other options. I highly recommend WinDVR as well.
Based on the review of Creative's card, I wouldn't go anywhere near it. It sounds like a horribly-designed product, and I think the AVerTV Stereo + WinDVR is a much better solution that can be had for about $150
Re:TV watch or surf? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Slashvertisments (Score:2, Informative)
Although I personally would like more VoIP and Anime they have to keep to what they think their audience wants.
Besides, how many Creative Labs banners have you seen on Slashdot?
Re:Hmmm... (Score:2)
Cool that I can be apparently Off-topic and Insightful at the same time. Next I hope to go for the sweep, with under-rated, over-rated, troll, and Informative, as well as insightful and off-topic.
Hope that clarifies it for you.
Re:How much do these companies pay you? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Don't buy the TV-wonder if you've got winXP (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Don't buy the TV-wonder if you've got winXP (Score:2)
I do want to use it for time lapse during the storm season, and I can't figure out how to do that other than writing my own DirectX Filters (ugh). Also, it works with the newest DirectX capture architecture, and every shareware/freeware windows program that I have tried fails.
Re:you guys are losin' it (Score:2)
Re:3rd Party PVR software (Score:2)
The command to change channels is 0xFA 0x46 followed by two bytes of the binary channel number, MSB first.
A response of 0xF4 indicates that the command was successful, and 0xF5 indicates a failure.
Re:How about for specific applications (Score:3, Informative)
The standard excuse is that they don't want the support burden. But that's bogus; they obviously have no obligation to provide support to any party other than the company they sell the chips to. In particular, the IC vendor does NOT generally have any obligation to support the end purchaser of a product containing their chip, or to someone trying to write their own drivers.
The other excuse I've sometimes heard is that they don't want other companies to clone their product. But that's a red herring. There are literally millions of transistors in these chips; just having the information on the programming interface to the chip (registers and commands) doesn't magically make it easy to design a compatible chip. If that were true, everyone and his brother would be making Pentium IVs, since the programming interface for that is well documented. As it is, there is only ONE company successfully competing with Intel on high-end x86 processors.
IMNSHO, these companies are just stupid to have such policies. If a company selling even a halfway-decent MPEG-2 encoder chip would make the programming specs available, there would be Linux support in no time, and it would sell more chips.
I've actually spoken to sales reps at three different manufacturers of MPEG-2 chips, and none of them are willing to provide docs except under NDA after you buy a very expensive SDK. And that might not be so bad, except that they won't sell the SDK to just anyone who is willing to pay. They'll only sell them to companies that they are convinced will buy tens of thousands of their chips.
One of the MPEG-2 encoder vendors does have a Linux driver as part of their SDK. Their chip is used on the Hauppauge board, and so Hauppauge has the right to distribute the Linux driver (in binary form only), but refuses to do so.
If the MPEG-2 encoder vendors wanted to support Linux, they could offer to sell the SDK (or just the documentation) to anyone who will sign a contract acknowledging that the vendor would not provide any support and that the SDK is provided on an AS-IS basis.
It almost seems like these companies believe that it's a good idea to support the Microsoft monopoly.
</rant>