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Television Media Hardware

Hardware MPEG2 TV Tuners Compared 266

Posted by timothy from the baby-I'm-tuned-to-your-wavelength dept.
EconolineCrush writes "The Tech Report has put together an intriguing comparison of TV tuner cards with hardware MPEG2 acceleration from ATI, eVGA, and Hauppauge. The article examines CPU utilization for typical PVR tasks and highlights some very apparent image quality differences between the three cards. Testing was apparently done with Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005, but does anyone have experience with the cards in MythTV?"
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Hardware MPEG2 TV Tuners Compared More

Hardware MPEG2 TV Tuners Compared

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  • Interesting (Score:5, Interesting)

    by AKAImBatman ( 238306 ) * <akaimbatman AT gmail DOT com> on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @02:43PM (#12225783) Homepage Journal
    An interesting article, to say the least. I'm somewhat surprised that MPEG4 encoders haven't started popping up, though. MPEG2 hardware has been around since the days of the original Pentiums, but Hauppauge has had things pretty much sewn up. Not because Hauppauge's hardware is that much better mind you, but more because the market hasn't been that big. Video files (especially MPEG2) have always been very large. Computers have only had enough capacity to deal with these on a regular basis in the last few years.

    Now for just a generic TV Tuner, there are other options besides Hauppauge. *However*, almost all of the successful TV Cards use the same Brooktree [brooktree.com] (now Conexant) chipset. This has meant that the quality of the card drivers has been something of deciding factor, which Hauppauge always seemed to do a better job of until recently. Now with "digital convergence" on the horizon, suddenly everyone and their dog is producing usable drivers for just about every OS and settop box in addition. Which, of course, was made easier by the fact that they all use the same chipsets.

    On another note, a purple PCI card?! These guys are just going nuts with their solder masks, aren't they? As if there's something wrong with the color green. (Must be too 1980's.) If they *really* wanted to do something different, they should produce a transparent card with the interconnects lined with a cool color like red. i.e. Make it look like something out of Star Trek or something. :-)

    • Re:Interesting (Score:4, Informative)

      by yamla ( 136560 ) <chris@@@hypocrite...org> on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @02:54PM (#12225903)
      Hauppauge always seemed to have better drivers? Bwah ha ha. That's laughable. I had one of Hauppauge's earlier cards, the high-end card before the -250 and -350, and the drivers were TERRIBLE. I don't think they ever released Microsoft-certified drivers. In any case, they regularly caused my computer to lock up and even when they worked, they didn't work very well. Now, I suppose it is possible that the drivers from other companies were even worse, but Hauppauge was skirting consumer-protection laws as it was.

      ArsTechnica has some information on this, and on how to use third-party drivers, which can make things much more reliable. I cannot immediately find the article, however.

      • Re:Interesting (Score:2, Informative)

        by AKAImBatman ( 238306 ) *
        Now, I suppose it is possible that the drivers from other companies were even worse, but Hauppauge was skirting consumer-protection laws as it was.

        You obviously never tried the Pinnacle StudioTV drivers. Up until the most recent versions, it would blue screen my computer just by minimizing the TV application. Not to mention that DVR software (I used to use SlipStream) was completely unable to *change the channel*. Do you know how annoying it is to record the wrong show just because you forgot to switch th

      • Re:Interesting (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Chris Burke ( 6130 )
        I suppose I didn't notice the way that the OP was written, because at first I agreed completely. But I guess I don't know anything about the quality of Hauppage drivers.

        What I know (and care) about are the linux drivers for Hauppage cards. I've tried several different cards that use the bttv.o chipset driver and several with the Connexant (can't remember module name, cx8800.o or something) driver, and the former provided superior image quality. I could never get the contrast/brightness settings to pro

    • Re:Interesting (Score:5, Insightful)

      by martok ( 7123 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @02:55PM (#12225909)

      Hardware MPEG/4 cards do exist. Plextor has their pxtv line which can do MPEG/4 capture and has recently released Linux drivers.

      It's just unfortunate that these cards don't also support DV compression. MPEG is nice and all but sometimes when capturing from a camcorder or vhs, you want to edit the resulting video. MPEG is not ideal for this. Granted, DV capture devices do exist but none to my knowledge have a tuner.


      • It's just unfortunate that these cards don't also support DV compression. MPEG is nice and all but sometimes when capturing from a camcorder or vhs, you want to edit the resulting video. MPEG is not ideal for this. Granted, DV capture devices do exist but none to my knowledge have a tuner.

        1) In our lab, we've been using an analog CCTV signal [which gets us 60 frames per second, versus maybe 15 frames per second for digital cameras]. The ATI TV cards can pick up the signal, but some of the Hauppauge hardw

        • 2) Digital Video over Firewire [IEEE 1394] is supposed to have a "direct to disk" feature, so that the intermediate "signal -> MPEG" compression layer is not necessary.

          signal -> MPEG2 compression is not necessary because the signal being captured is already streamed as MPEG2 video. Firewire enables this to stream directly to a HDD. As far as streaming analog NTSC to a HDD, at some point it has to stop being analog, so DSP is needed. It would indeed be neat if someone could come up with a digital

      • Re:Interesting (Score:3, Informative)

        by ajna ( 151852 )
        Why would you need a "DV capture device"? Isn't the whole deal with DV cameras that you plug in the device via Firewire (or whatever pleases you/your platform of choice) and the DV stream is simply booted across the cable without molestation to your computer? I'm pretty sure my FW cable isn't doing any encoding on its own...

        • Re:Interesting (Score:2, Interesting)

          by martok ( 7123 )

          This is true if your camcorder is a digital one and has firewire ports. However, cards like the Pinnacle moviebox av/dv lines support regular analogue inputs such as rca and s/video and use dv to compression running over the firewire cable. However, no TV tuner.

        • Not exactly. It's not recompressed but it is encoded into .dv format. The video on the tape is just raw video -- if there was a way to browse the tape, you wouldn't just see a big .dv file (or series of files).

          In most DV camcorders, they function as a .dv capture device. You can also purchase external (and internal, I'm sure) capture devices that capture direct to .dv format.

          If you were to use a non DV camcorder and wanted to capture it as a .dv stream, you would need said capture device.

          The stream


          • You can also purchase external (and internal, I'm sure) capture devices that capture direct to .dv format.

            Do you have any links? I'd be especially interested in a [barebones OEM] card that didn't cost like a gazillion dollars, where "a gazillion" is anything more than about, oh, say $49.95.

            PS: In our case, the input signal would be Analog CCTV.

          • wrong! (Score:3, Interesting)

            by halfelven ( 207781 )
            How come this comment was rated Interesting? It's wrong!

            All the DV and mini-DV camcorders on the market write DV content on the tapes, not raw video! Sure, it's not a .dv file, but the video stream is already encoded with the DV codec (pretty similar to MJPEG). The encapsulation (on-disk and on-tape format) does not matter, it's the video/audio codecs that matter.

            Want proof? (aside from reading up the existing documentation on the Internet) The capacity of a 60 minutes mini-DV tape is about 12...15GB (i f
      • Plextor has their pxtv line which can do MPEG/4 capture and has recently released Linux drivers.

        Link. Plextor did recently release open source drivers [slashdot.org] for their tuner cards.

      • DV Capture with Tuner (Score:3, Informative)

        by ashpool7 ( 18172 )
        These exist, just not for the PC. The Formac Studio TVR (http://www.formac.com) hooks up over FireWire, takes input from composite, cable, and SVideo, outputs via composite, cable (i think), and SVideo, and captures in DV.

        It is, however, pretty expensive ($300).

        Elgato makes one too, but last time I checked, the quality wasn't as good.
        http://www.elgato.com
        • Errm, I am no expert in this field, but a quick google turned up similar products (convert analogue video to DV) from a number of manufacturers:

          ADS Pyro
          Canopus ADVC series
          DataVideo
          Dazzle
          Miglia
          Snazzi
          Sony
          T erraTec

          All of the one's I have listed claim Windows compatibility. Prices seem to range from $150 up. Now as I said, I'm no expert, so there may be something wrong with these products - but the Formac Studio product you mentioned is in the same list, so I'm guessing they're similar.

    • Hardware MPEG4 (Score:4, Informative)

      by leoc ( 4746 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @03:02PM (#12226010) Homepage
      I recently bought a Plextor M402U [plextor.com]. It's a USB2 device that supports hardware MPEG4 encoding and has open source GPL'd drivers [plextor.com] (except for the firmware, but thats freely distributable at least). MythTV supports it too, although I haven't tried it yet.

    • MPEG2 hardware has been around since the days of the original Pentiums...

      I'm not positive about the MPEG4 specs, but the MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 specs were written so that they were implementable on the largest available single-chip ASIC process at the time.

    • Re:Interesting (Score:4, Informative)

      by Roached ( 84015 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @03:12PM (#12226109)
      almost all of the successful TV Cards use the same Brooktree (now Conexant) chipset. This has meant that the quality of the card drivers has been something of deciding factor, which Hauppauge always seemed to do a better job of until recently.

      According to Hauppauge engineers, the reason they don't release an open source linux driver is precisely for this reason. They feel that their edge over competitors is in the tuning of their driver. Even so, by sniffing the I2C bus on these cards you can pretty much figure out what their driver is doing, which makes this moot (The PVR-150 IVTV driver is rapidly being developed now and is quite usable under MythTV).
      • Which does not prevent Hauppauge from releasing closed source drivers a la NVidia graphic drivers. That Hauppauge will not do that speaks volumes of their commitment to Linux.

        Now this lack of commitment wouldn't be so bad except Hauppauge has the gall to use Linux in their Media MVP product. And, to further add insult to injury, Hauppauge does not provide Linux server software for this product, only Windows based software.

        Hauppauge seems to be very good at taking from the OSS community. It's the giving ba

    • Re:Interesting (Score:5, Informative)

      by benow ( 671946 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @04:23PM (#12227038) Homepage Journal
      Plextor PX-TV402U [plextor.com] - US$199
      • First Official DivX Certified PC PVR Product
      • Hardware Encode to DivX, MPEG-4, MPEG-2/DVD and MPEG-1/VCD
      • Watch, Pause and Record Live TV
      • High-Quality TV Tuner Included
      • Free Electronic Programming Guide (EPG)
      • Schedule Recording For When You Are Away
      • Composite Video, S-Video, Composite Audio, RF/Coaxial Inputs
      • DivX Certified Hardware and DivX Licensed Software
      • InterVideo WinDVR and WinDVD Creator Software Included
      • USB 2.0 Interface for Best Quality Video
      • Burn Direct-to-Disc and Edit-on-Disc Supported
      • One-year full warranty (parts, labor or replacement)
      and, active linux support [plextor.com]... way to go Plextor! OGG/Theora support would be a plus, but that's not stable, yet... still, use that upgradable firmware for something! Nice device. I'm planning on getting one.
      • I have one and it works well, with the following problems:

        1. The audio/video inputs are recessed in the case, making it hard to plug in my higer quality, shielded audio/video cables. My SVHS cable connector fits the SVHS plug on the Plextor, but only barely and it can fall out easily. I will need to modify the case to fix this problem.

        2. The only way to capture video on Linux right now is by using the sample "gorecord" application, which while it works fine for simple captures, has a lot of problems doi
    • no it's die in the board stock, a pretty standard sort of option these days, we sometimes use colors to distinguish different prototypes

    • Re:Interesting (Score:3, Informative)

      by halfelven ( 207781 )
      MPEG2 is still popular for those cards because it's directly interoperable with the existing DVD players. The MPEG2 files captured by the MPEG2 cards can be directly imported into a DVD authoring software, no conversion (hence, no quality loss) required.

  • Mirror (Score:3, Informative)

    by winkydink ( 650484 ) * <sv.dude@gmail.com> on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @02:44PM (#12225789) Homepage Journal
    In case of slowness a mirror of all pages is available here [networkmirror.com]

  • Before it gets slashdotted... (Score:4, Informative)

    by Toasty16 ( 586358 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @02:44PM (#12225796) Homepage
    Here's the conclusion for all of you latecomers:

    "Hauppauge's PVR line of cards has held the crown for hardware MPEG2 TV tuner cards for the past few years, and while the PVR-150MCE l.p. has low CPU utilization and the quickest initialization and channel change times, its image quality is clearly lacking. The bundle could also use a DVD decoder to meet Media Center Edition 2005's compatibility requirements. Still, it's the only true low profile card in the round-up, and at $67 online, it's certainly affordable.

    The TV Wonder Elite is a new contender in the hardware MPEG2 TV tuner market, and ATI has packaged the Elite as an all-inclusive solution that comes with everything you need to transform your PC into a personal video recorder. With low CPU utilization, good image quality, and an excellent remote control, it's a pretty slick solution. However the bundled PowerCinema software seems like a step backwards from ATI's old Multimedia Center, and it doesn't even come close to the functionality of Media Center Edition 2005. At $133 online, the TV Wonder Elite is by far the most expensive tuner in this round-up. You get what you pay for, though; the remote alone is worth $50.

    eVGA NVTV April 2005 Surprisingly, the best image quality comes from the least expensive tuner, eVGA's $65 NVTV. The card's bundled NVDVD decoder also makes the card ready to run with Media Center out of the box, provided you have a DirectX 9 graphics card. That's something the other cards lack. The NVTV does have its shortcomings. The card's CPU utilization tends to be a little higher than the others, although not by a significant enough margin to cause concern. The driver bug that plagued our Athlon 64 test system is also a cause for concern, although the card had no issues with our Intel test platform.

    Overall, it's hard to come up with a verdict. The PVR-150MCE l.p. is easy to discount due to its comparatively poor image quality. Although the TV Wonder Elite has great image quality, works flawlessly, and comes with a swanky remote, it costs twice as much as the competition. The eVGA NVTV, which also has low CPU utilization and great image quality, runs only $62 online and comes bundled with the NVDVD decoder, making it perfect for Media Center Edition and thus our Editor's Choice. Just keep in mind that if you have an Athlon 64 system with a VIA chipset, you might want to avoid the NVTV until NVIDIA resolves its issues with that platform."

    • "The PVR-150MCE l.p. is easy to discount due to its comparatively poor image"

      According to Hauppage:
      "The WinTV-PVR-150MCE has the best video quality of any Media Center TV tuner,..."
      Hauppauge PVR 150MCE [hauppauge.com]

      But its obvious this is not the case when you look at the comparison.

      *sigh*, marketing, go figure.
    • The WinTV PVR 250/350 cards are supported by MythTV through the ivtv drivers: http://ivtv.sourceforge.net/
    • I agree with the article's comments on Hauppauge image quality. I have a PVR-250 (before they added the MCE part) and see much of the same artifacting mentioned in the article. I was disappointed with that. I haven't seen it running on Windows though, only Linux with the ivtv driver.

      I've since bought a pcHDTV-3000 card. Haven't got it running jsut yet due to lack of time, but hopefully I'll be happier with this one.

      Anyone know if there are good Linux drivers for the better cards reviewed here?

  • I'm such a tool (Score:5, Funny)

    by karn096 ( 807073 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @02:47PM (#12225819)
    I have a tivo.

  • hauppauge (Score:5, Informative)

    by BitchAss ( 146906 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @02:49PM (#12225839) Homepage
    The hauppauge card is excellent with MythTV. Myth seems like it was built for the hauppauge card. The best Howtos [wilsonet.com] are written with the hauppauge card in mind.

    • Re:hauppauge (Score:2, Informative)

      by Nos. ( 179609 )
      I have Myth running with a Hauppauge 350.. no regrets. The machine is a 650Mhz with I believe 128MB (might be 256). Watching live TV (which means I'm also recording - you know, PVR functionality) puts a load of about .1 - .2 on the box. So, while I may have spent a bit more on the card, I can do so without having to spend a lot on other hardware.

  • Hauppauge and Mythtv (Score:5, Informative)

    by w.p.richardson ( 218394 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @02:50PM (#12225852) Homepage
    The 150 series of cards will work, but the 250 is easier to get up and running with Knoppmyth. PVR350 has a couple of additional features, but they are a bear to get working with Myth.

    Other capture cards are not as well supported as the Hauppauge cards.

  • More importantly, does anyone have experience with usb tv tuners like the Hauppage WinTV-PVR-USB2 with MythTV ?
    Are the linux drivers finally compatible with the video-for-linux model that MythTV requires ?

    Has anyone tried using them in order to turn an XBox into a PVR that would like to share their experience ?

  • SageTV PVR (Score:5, Interesting)

    by crypto55 ( 864220 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @02:53PM (#12225890)
    I don't use Myth tv, although I've heard that it's pretty good. I built my own system with a 200GB PATA HDD and a Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-USB2 TV tuner, which is not shown. Using Myth instead of MCE probably wouldn't make much difference in the quality of the encoded video, if any at all, because all encoding is done on the card itself or with software encoders that are not part of the GUI. Myth is just the front end, and is used because it's open source, not for its superior quality. Although I don't use it, Myth has some pretty nifty features like a webserver for setting up recordings remotely, as well as commercial skip and other nice features.
    As far as front ends not provided by MS or linux based, I definitely think that SageTV [www.sage.tv] is the best Windows tv software. It has a great network client app which lets users access the full server remotely, either via a network or over the internet. It's nice to look at and is remote-control friendly. On the other hand, it's current version, 2.2.8, lacks commercial skips and a webserver (although plugins for both are available). Besides that, it's definitly one of, if not the, best front end available for windows, that's not a damn OS. Both missing features listed above are expected to be included in version 3.0, which is scheduled to be released some time this summer, I believe.
    One piece of advice that everyone who has ever bought a Hauppauge TV Tuner knows is that do not use the bundled recording software. Hauppauge did a great job on its hardware design but seems to have outsourced its software design to a bunch of monkeys on typewriters currently residing in the Congo.

    • Re:SageTV PVR (Score:4, Funny)

      by davidmcw ( 97565 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @03:11PM (#12226092) Homepage
      Honestly I don't know why more people don't go the old 'build your own PVR system'.

      Having checked out the Knoppmyth site it would appear that after only a new PC, tuner card, degree in computer science and many weeks of messing around with it, I would certainly end up with something that will work.

      It would only require my wife and kids completeing their associates in computing for them to be able to use it. Oh, and don't forget the job working nights that I will have to take on as I will spend all day every day supporting it.

      I mean, who do these TiVo johnnies think they are? Why would mr & mrs joe public ever use anything that they can plug in and just have work. Don't they realise that everyone likes to tinker around way out of their depth.

      ### Caution the above passages may contain trace elements of sarcasm ###
    • I definitely think that SageTV is the best Windows tv software

      Hear, hear! I went with SageTV, as it was by far the best performance of any of the other Windows-based PVR I tried (BeyondTV, GB-PVR, some others). The others had nice features, etc, but simply wouldn't run on the older system I was using to build a PVR (500Mhz Pentium3)

  • I swear by my Hauppauge (Score:5, Informative)

    by TexVex ( 669445 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @02:56PM (#12225923)
    I have the Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-250 [hauppauge.com] running on an Athlon 2200+ w/ 512 MB RAM, 16G OS/software hard drive, 250 GB video hard drive (both IDE). The machine also supports a DVD burner, and a USB-UIRT [usbuirt.com] for remote controlling my cable box. The PVR portion of it comes from Sage TV [www.sage.tv]. Oh, and the wireless. Mustn't forget the wireless.

    This setup gives me a PVR package that has superior capabilities to my old DirecTiVo, but slightly (SLIGHTLY!) inferior quality. It records MPEG video that I can easily work with in many video players, video editors, and DVD authoring/burning packages. I can watch videos either streamed over wireless from the SageTV box's hard drive, or I can use the SageTV Client software.

    The only weakness is slow channel change times (2 seconds or so). The computer has to control the cable box through IR, and in order to guarantee precision it "punches the remote control buttons" slowly. However, channel surfing is something I don't miss -- now the machine just records what I want, I watch it when I'm damn good and ready, and skipping commercials requires only a few taps on a key on the wireless keyboard I use to control the computer. (I could use a regular remote through the USB-UIRT but the keyboard is faster (though bulkier)).

  • Don't agree on their picks.. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cbreaker ( 561297 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @02:56PM (#12225927) Journal
    In the sample pictures they provided, the Hauppage card was a little more jagged at some points but the image was a lot more clear. The other screenshots looked very blury.

    Because I believe the Hauppage card is capturing the signal into the MPEG more accurately, without fussing with as much AA and smoothing - it will end up looking better on the TV screen - as would be what you would use it for in a PVR setting.

    If you're capturing to view on your desktop monitor, then maybe the blurryish smooth images from the eVGA might do you better.
    • I don't know what MPEG-2 software decoder the tester used (I assume intervideo), but in my experience with PVR-250 on windows under SageTV, the software decoder has a HUGE impact on the video quality.

      The bundled Intervideo decoder is pretty much crap and most people on the SageTV forums suggest the latest NVDVD decoder (which incidently comes with the eVGA card) for best quality. I personally used the Sonic decoder on my Hauppage card and the improvement over the stock on is like night and day.

      Not to dis
    • Methinks the Hauppauge card had comb filtering disabled, or maybe the comb filter was not working so well. The artifacts look like chroma dot crawl.

      The others do look better, but a cartoon is only good for testing the comb filter (contrasty color-changes) for composite inputs, and noise in the pure color regions. Natural scenes such as moving trees/leaves or water ripples are better tests for an MPEG video encoder. What we're seeing in the review is effectively a comparison of the analog path to the enc
      • S-Video is amazingly better then standard composite. It's unreal.

        I had everything going through my Stereo before, which is an older unit that only has standard RCA composite jacks. I mean, it looks okay. But when I hook up the computer's output to it, it looks very junky.

        I hooked it up S-Video and it's just great. So I got a switch-box, with a remote control, for 5 S-Video inputs and two outputs. Everything but the VCR supports S-Video now so it's great!

        The new fancy digital connectors and digital

  • Anandtech also reviewed tuner cards yesterday (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Andyvan ( 824761 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @02:57PM (#12225938)
    They reviewed 6 boards, and came to a different conclusion: http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2393 [anandtech.com]

    -- Andyvan

  • other DIY PVR/.MCE resources & recent reviews (Score:5, Informative)

    by enrico_suave ( 179651 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @02:59PM (#12225965) Homepage
    first, gratuitous link to my site build your own PVR [byopvr.com] and the byopvr forums [byopvr.com].

    Anandtech just did a round up [anandtech.com] of a bunch of windows MCE "certified" hardware encoding tuner cards.

    Also HTPCnews did a Review comparing the new ATI 550 theater pro with the venerable wintv pvr150 [htpcnews.com]

    E.
  • Why not compare apples to apples? I'd more readily compare the two full-height PCI cards to the full-height Hauppauge 250 [hauppauge.com] ($127) rather than the half-height 150. Of course, that may not have yielded the result the author intended.
    • There is a full height 150. It came out last month. 150 is the lastest version so it makes sense to review using the 150, but I agree it should have been the full height model instead of the low profile
    • I was thinking maybe the 150 does not do hardware decoding and thus they wanted to compare that to similar cards.
      Whereas the 250 does do hardware decoding to give less CPU utilization.

      Going on memory here, may have my facts wrong though.
    • Oh brother. Because the Tech Report is definitely out to get them!

      Seriously....i thought the picture quality looked like crap on it, and comparing apples to apples?

      So take two $125+ and compare it to the NVCard, omg, those jerks are trying to screw over the eVGA card!

      They are three similar cards (with the ATI jumping out because of the remote and whatnot) with similar features and similar specs, the half height issue doesnt affect the card. If the PVR 250 had a remote THEN maybe I would consider that app
    • To clear up some confusion:
      • The 150 and 250 both do hardware encoding and software decoding. The 350 does hardware decoding. This isn't a big deal, since X (at least with nvidia cards) supports accelerated video decoding under linux. (The most important thing is support for hardware scaling) On the other hand the 350 is handy if you don't have a tv-out port on your video card.
      • The 250 comes with a remote.

      The PVR-250 is a good choice under linux since it works with MythTV and the remote is supported.

  • It's been said here many times... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Mr. Cancelled ( 572486 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @03:01PM (#12225988)
    If you use MythTV, an ATI card will not work. I'll go so far as to say that an ATI AIW card isn't reccomended for any Linux-based PVR work. The coders blame ATI, and ATI says "What? We released Linux drivers!". It's a lot of finger pointing, and in the end is just frustrating to any AIW owner, such as m'self.

    The Hauppage on the other hand, is the most reccomended PVR card I've seen - Both on the Linux end and the Windows end of things. It has a built in mpeg decoder/encoder, which allows the systems CPU to focus on things other than converting video for playback.

    I recently came across the Hauppage 350 for $160 [pcalchemy.com] and am seriously considering one, however as we move into the HDTV age, I'm wondering if an HDTV-capable solution [eff.org] might be a better option.

    (Yes, I realize there's PC-based HDTV options, but the Mac link was handy)
    • If you use MythTV, an ATI card will not work.

      That's definitely not true. I'm currently using an ATI TV Wonder Pro [ati.com] in my MythTV box (Gentoo-based) and it works fine.

      A lot of cards, including the ATI TV Wonder Pro, work via V4L and the bttv [bytesex.org] driver. Check it out. I've found that the card works far better in Linux than it did in Windows!

    • Re:It's been said here many times... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @03:33PM (#12226346)
      Hi. I work in the multimedia department (Theater 550 Pro) at ATI. I also use Linux, and have for years.

      Getting ATI to write an official Linux driver for the Theater 550 will be very, very difficult. We're already a small department in ATI (dwarfed by the Graphics side), and simply don't have the resources for it.

      However, we will absolutely, 100%, offer support to anybody that wants to write an open-source driver for the Theater 550. We've heard a lot of "I'll do it," but when we follow up, there's nothing there.

      So that's the situation. If anybody honestly wants to step up and write a v4l2 driver for the Theater 550 Pro, respond to this post and I'll contact you.

      • Someone moderate parent up.

      • Re:It's been said here many times... (Score:5, Informative)

        by rco3 ( 198978 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @03:59PM (#12226710) Homepage
        I'm assuming that you've actually had contact with the GATOS project people, who have actually written functional software to use AIW cards under Linux in the past - right?

        If not, try this:

        Send Gatos-devel mailing list submissions to
        gatos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net

        They're not using V4L2 for AIW, AFAICT mostly because it doesn't exist. I'm sure that if anyone in the community is going to be able to use your information, it's these guys.

        Of course, I can't really imagine that the people running the V4L2 project would turn down support either. Unless it's the sort of support in which they are told that they have to sign NDA's which preclude ever writing any other software again, they aren't really given the information they need, and they aren't allowed to actually implement all the functionality they need to... not saying ATI is going to do that, but it's been known to happen.

        While you're tossing 'em information, try sending them chip docs so that they can get a working driver again for my old 4MB AIW, too. I love that thing.

  • PVR-350 + MythTV = Love at First Sight (Almost) (Score:5, Interesting)

    by lofi-rev ( 797197 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @03:03PM (#12226011) Journal
    I've got an Epia M10K box with a PVR-350 that works like a dream for TV recording and viewing. The built-in encoder and decoder means the processor is barely touched when performing actions with the card. The only draw back is the non-MPEG-2 video/DVD playback. Without unpatched video players you are forced to use the regular x11 output which chews up enough processing power to make somethings unwatchable. There are some hacks for mplayer and xine to work around this, but so far they have had audio delay issues with my current setup or required downgrading the driver version for the card. For now I live with slight frameloss when watching DVDs, but am looking forward to new hacks on mplayer and xine.

  • strange choice for their test video (Score:5, Insightful)

    by frankie ( 91710 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @03:05PM (#12226034) Journal
    The Lion King, like all standard animations, uses large swaths of relatively flat color punctuated by dark linework. Optimal compression for line art is substantially different from that of highly-shaded photographic imagery. Given that the vast majority of video available on TV is real-world, that test case seems like a poor indicator for typical performance.
    • The Hauppauge card gets its ass handed to it when recording Anime in those screenshots. So its pretty real-world in that case, and to say its not is dishonest. Getting some facts about card support and quality of MythTV is one of the reasons I havnt bothered, cant find out what a good mpeg4 card is without searching forums, pfft.
      The MythTV site is crap for detail on which hardware to use. I'm rather tired of hardware thats lists as "Working" when you dont find out, not with AMD 64 cpu's or other hardware c

      • Why the MPEG4 obsession? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Andy Dodd ( 701 ) <atd7NO@SPAMcornell.edu> on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @04:21PM (#12226998) Homepage
        Unless you want to run extremely low bitrates (fitting full-length movies on CDs, etc), MPEG4 has very few advantages over MPEG2. In fact, it has quite a few disadvantages.

        1) Less hardware support. 95%+ of all DVD players out there do not have MPEG4 capability. But they all have MPEG2 capability, since DVD uses MPEG2.
        In addition to DVD players, there are numerous MPEG2 hardware acceleration solutions for cheap low-cost low-power frontents, such as the Hauppauge MediaMVP, and the MPEG-2 acceleration capabilities of many Mini-ITX boards, along with hardware IDCT and hardware MoComp found in almost any video card.
        2) Lower decoding complexity. Even without the advantage of highly available hardware acceleration, MPEG-2 requires much less CPU power to decode than MPEG-4

        MPEG-4 has its advantages, but it's not always the right tool for the job. In the case of PVRs, it is definately not the right tool for the job.

        Go buy a Hauppauge PVR-250 and any reasonably supported video card (GeForce 4MX boards are cheap, VERY well supported, and have excellent TV-out capability, as a result they're one of the most reccommended MythTV TV-output boards), and slap them in your choice of stable x86 system, basically any one will do. It'll work, and if you follow Jarod Wilson's MythTV guide with Fedora Core (Google it, it's also linked to from MythTV's site I believe.) it's easy to set up.

        I agree the documentation is kind of crappy in some regards for MythTV... Jarod's HOWTO should be linked to in a more prominent location, plus MythTV's lead developer refuses to set up user support forums and/or even link to forums that anyone else sets up, resulting in a mailing list with such high volume that basically no one can keep up with the traffic. :(
        • If you plan to burn to DVD yes, mpeg-4 is a waste, but your using a computer to save to a file, and quailty and space, mpeg4 is better. And if you are only going to store the files, space wise, mpeg4 is much better.

          Right now, the common size for a good quality divx tv show is 350 megs, you can fit alot of tv shows on 1 dvd. And there are DVD players that do Divx now. Or your MythTV should be able to play divx.

          So Mpeg-4 is not a waste for me, and seems to be a very common question.
  • There use to be lots of the 250's and 350's on eBay.
    Not anymore. (gratefully I bought 3 of the "48432" versions for my Myth box.)

    The 48432 is an OEM version that was bundled with HP boxes, if memory serves me.
    This was causing some confusion for buyers, but was a great way to pickup a 250 for half the cost.
    Hauppage forum [shspvr.com]

    I would have liked to have seen a comparison of the entire Hauppauge lineup. There was a good link running around somewhere, anyone know of that page URL?

  • Different images (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AdamInParadise ( 257888 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @03:12PM (#12226104) Homepage
    Their "tests" show different pictures for each card. How can they juge the picture quality if they do not show the same picture displayed by each card? The artefacts we see could be attributed to actual differences in the pictures. At least show me a video capture!

    Those guys must have skipped Science 101.

  • for the Hauppage Nova-T says > 1Ghz or something like that, But I can use 2x cards on a 500Mhz AMD both recording and have less than 35% CPU usage. Quality is great as well.

    I'm guessing Satellite Versions will take the same amount of CPU too.
  • These things are great, but unfortunately, it looks like they're discontinuing them [copperbox.com]. It's looking doubtful that we'll see 64-bit WinXP drivers, much less Linux support. Too bad, because HDTV on widescreen notebooks looks great. 1680x1050 res is close enough to 1080i, and 1280x800 is the same width as 720p.

    Sasem's site [usbhdtv.com] has a notice posted about the discontinuation, if anyone reads Korean.

    Of course, you really need to be able to receive broadcast TV for HDTV tuner boxes/cards to be useful. Unencrypted

  • MythTV experiance (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Schmots ( 859630 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @03:24PM (#12226245)
    I love linux, even have my LPI level1, so of course I wanted to try to build a mythtv box. I bought a pvr-350, and even though I don't really like fedora I followed the instructions at www.wilsonet.com. It works great.. Here are my specs 256 megs of ram p2 400 I am using the hardware decoding which cancels out the ability to watch dvds on this box, but hey a p2 400 wouldn't handle that anyway. I have perfect tv playback and recording, without my processor hardly every droping below 85% idle. The system is wonderful and I suggest to anyone trying to build one of these systems on a low end box to get the pvr-350. If you happen to have a power house you can put it in.. a 1.5ghz or higher save some money and go with the pvr-250, your backups will take up half the space and your output should be just as nice. Plus you will get dvd playback and can use the other nice mythtv features such as mythmusic and mythgame

  • Stay clear of Hauppauge USB (Score:3, Interesting)

    by smoker2 ( 750216 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @03:28PM (#12226286) Homepage Journal
    I have a Hauppauge Nova USB -T which does digital terrestrial (in the UK at least).
    It has PVR functions and pause of live tv etc. The only problem I have found is it sucks !
    Getting it to work under linux is almost impossible, as it uses a different chipset to the standard analogue devices. As such, it is relegated to use on a Windows machine only. the supplied software *requires* both IE5 and WinDVD 4 to be installed for the tv to work at all. Removing ads is an exercise in futility, because, as the card records straight to mpeg2, if you take out the ads, then you have to resynch all the following recording. This is a problem that gets worse as the recording length increases.
    Also, as I am running this on an old win98se box, I am limited to 4GB filesize. I can live with that as it has automatic file splitting, except, that when I try to use the separate pieces of the recording in software such as TMPGEnc DVD Author, I can't ! Only the first section of the file is recognised, and the rest is refused as being out of spec. Strangely, if I use another piece of software ( Womble mpeg editor IIRC ) to open and then save the same "out of spec" files (that's all, just open then save), TMPGEnc suddenly recognises the files ok.

    Add to this the occasional IE "page not found" error in the TV interface (no, I'm not kidding), and you get an idea of the shite this program represents.
    I did buy a PVR 350 originally, but it didn't work, so I RMA'd it and got this instead....foool.
    I will be getting another PVR 350 as soon as funds allow, then I'll have to get a set top box for the digital broadcasts and feed that into the 350.
    A large part of the decision to get the Nova-t was the fact that the uk authorities are going to start turning off analogue tv broadcasts as early as 2006, ie, next year, but if I can get a set top box feeding into the 350 then thats what I'll do.
    • one suggestion... for MPEG2 editing that's quick/easy and doesn't suffer from loss of sync try videoredo [drdsystems.com]

      or MPEG2vcr by womble (?? I think something like that... google around)

      It's worth a trial download at least to see if it's easier on you for cutting out commercials. IMHO. Although I have no idea if either product runs on Win98 or not.

      good luck!

      e.

  • Low requirements? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by UnknowingFool ( 672806 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @03:35PM (#12226365)
    Although video and tuner requirements are strict, MCE is less demanding of CPU power. Microsoft suggests a minimum processor of 1.6 GHz with at least 256MB of ram.

    Anybody read this and think WTF? It's not demanding if you are buying a new machine to run MCE, but if you have an older one machine that you want to convert to be your media center, good luck with anything but a P4 or Athlon XP. With Linux and MythTV, you can get PIIIs and sometimes PIIs to work if you have a card with both hardware encoding and decoding capabilities.

    Since Hauppauge is the veteran in this market, it will be interesting how the newer cards will fare in Linux machines. Although Hauppauge does not release Linux drivers themselves, they at least acknowlege that people are running Linux and provide you with a link. I don't know what the numbers are but I would think that a majority of people buying Hauppauge products run Linux.

    nVidia and ATI might want to take that hint and release Linux drivers for the TV functions. Currently there are drivers for the video cards but the ones for the TV chips are not as mature.

  • In the UK, digital TV is widely available over the air with both free channels and a small number of subscription ones. There are now several cards which can capture the MPEG2 stream directly from the broadcast, meaning no encoding and no quality loss. One such company selling these is Nebula Electronics [nebula-electronics.com].
  • Interestingly enough AnandTech is also out with a round up today. http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2393 [anandtech.com]
  • Isn't this kind of stuff obsolete now? Everybody's going to MPEG-4. Both cable and satellite providers are deploying MPEG-4 AVC (a.k.a. H.264) as we speak. Only terrestrial broadcasts will stay with MPEG-2, and that's only because ATSC won't tolerate a massive change to the standard they spent more than a decade writing.
  • I've got analog cable, and no plans to upgrade. Does this mean that I need to use an analog card like the Hauppage, and that if I had digital cable I'd need a digital card instead?
    • Most HDTV cards will tune OTA HDTV, but there is supposed to be some kind of protection on most cable HDTV transmission, with the exception of the "must-carry" stations (i.e. local broadcast stations), and those you can pick up with an antenna anyway. To my understanding, most HD channels on cable cannot be tuned by these things.

      On a side note, for those of you looking for an HDTV card, be it for your computer or a MythTV box, DON'T BUY ATI!!! The ATI HDTV Wonder is the worst crap I've ever used. At p
    • You may get "upgraded" to digital cable whether you like it or not. Digital cable makes much more efficient use of the bandwidth on the cable distribution system. Some cable companies have said that they plan to remove all of the analog channels from their systems. They are waiting for digital STB prices to fall to the point where they can afford to give them away to their analog customers.
  • A comment has already been made about USB 2 [slashdot.org] cards, but how about firewire. Both my laptop and my portable (Epia-M10000) have USB2 and Firewire ports.

    Does anyone know what would be the best card out of those worlds (are firewire better than USB 2)... on a cost VS quality comparison. Mostly they'll probably be used for helping to convert my old VHS video collection into DVD format, and perhaps some PVR-type stuff.

    PCI cards are nice... but of course they don't go in my laptop.
  • The way they tested the quality of the video was HIGHLY questionable, IMHO.

    I would have preferred that they use color bars and other reference standards that are relied upon by broadcasters and videographers.

    For example, these DVDs:
    http://www.videoessentials.com

    Also, they don't mention whether or not the monitor (TV or otherwise) they were using was calibrated. Quite frankly, it's possible that the color looked better simply because the video card was outputting a signal that was more amenable to the d

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