hdtv/dtv cap card

[jerets]

i read around the forums a bit but haven't been able to find everything im looking for.

few questions:
1) what are some of the better HDTV/DTV capture card out there? (more quality the better)
2) wheres the best place to buy?

Thanks
jerets

[Karyudo]

i read around the forums a bit but haven't been able to find everything im looking for.


You're really reading at the wrong site. Try AVS Forums -- many more people with much more experience in HDTV stuff.


1) what are some of the better HDTV/DTV capture card out there? (more quality the better)


MyHD and HiPix are the two it seems almost everyone uses.


2) wheres the best place to buy?


I believe Digital Connection sells both. The MyHD is $299; the HiPix is a bit more. Ebay sometimes has both/either of these, too.

[trbarry]

You might also want to check out the HiDTV card at http://www.pc-dtv.com/ .

I have one, and like it.

- Tom

[Angrychair]

Originally posted by trbarry
You might also want to check out the HiDTV card at http://www.pc-dtv.com/ .

I have one, and like it.

- Tom

Tom, does the card work well in windows2000? I had a wintv-hd once, that was utter crap in win2k (crashed my system like crazy when I used it) and I understand pretty much all the hd cards on the market use the same sort of equipment as the wintv-hd (janus chip, or something like that) so I'm wondering if I can get a decent hd card that will work in windows 2000, or if they're all subject to the same problems I was having with the hauppauge card.

Thanks in advance for any insight.

PS- anyone else using an hd-tv card in windows2000, please post experiences, I only use win2k because I have a dual athlon system.

*edit* oh yeah, do any of them actually utilize a different way of getting the hd image on the screen than using the passthrough/breakout cable? The one that the hauppauge had introduced horrible interference with my vga signal (heavy blurring and wavey interference lines).

Once again, thanks for any insights.

[trbarry]

I believe that at least the MyHD and HiDTV cards support W2K but I'm not sure. (I'm running Win/Me) There is also a forum somewhere on that web page where you could solicit opionions.

As far as the breakout cable, if you TV has 2 HDTV component inputs most of the cards allow you to connect your HDPC card directly to one of them. The HiDTV has a YPbPr output option if you choose.

[fisix]

hey tom, do i read the spec sheet on the HiDTV card correctly, in that it can capture the full 1080i stream to disk, but can only pass the video to screen through the pci bus at 240p?

basically, it looks like i can use it as a receiver of OTA digital tv, but can i get the same quality (1080i) directly to disk while i'm watching it (on a hd tv) AND can i scale 480i (svideo or composit input) to 1080i and it still look good?

since you have one....

-fisix

[trbarry]

but can only pass the video to screen through the pci bus at 240p?

It is configurable even through the PCI bus up to 704x480 @ 60. But that uses a lot of CPU and it is better to set it at a minimum and just use the PCI bus window as a preview.

The real HDTV out uses a pass through cable so you can route your VGA through an A/B switch in the HiDTV card. Most PCHD cards do this. So the HDTV goes out to you monitor at full HDTV res, assuming your display can support this. It also can convert to 1024x768 in hardware for folks with VGA monitors.

However you display it you will still record the full ATSC stream, whatever that is at the time.

I don't use the card for scaling s-video or NTSC since I use DScaler.

- Tom

[unimatrixzer0]

Got a related question, do most of these HDTV cards need an extral decoder for the HDTV signal or does it decode that itself?

I'm just an idioit, can anyone translate that for me in simplier terms? I can't cap HDTV singals from my cable? :confused:

http://www.digitalconnection.com/Support/cn_myhd_1.asp
Q. Can I record cable or satellite HD programs?
A. No. All HDTV card "stores" high-def signals in their raw data form and decodes the signal during playback. Since Cable and Satellite services do not use 8VSB modulation, their signals require dedicated tuners, and once decoded, cannot be routed to the input of the HDTV PC cards.

[Karyudo]

Got a related question, do most of these HDTV cards need an extral decoder for the HDTV signal or does it decode that itself?

I'm just an idioit, can anyone translate that for me in simplier terms? I can't cap HDTV singals from my cable?


Nope, you can't cap from cable. Only OTA (over the air) broadcasts -- or signals that *look* like they're OTA.

HD cards can decode whatever OTA signal you've got (by definition, no encryption and 8VSB encoding, I believe), but nothing from cable, which likely has some sort of encryption and a different MPEG-2 encoding scheme.

[fisix]

one more for tom,


you said you use dscaler to scale the video, but that doesn't seem to fit with how you said you use your card, do you have another capture card to watch regular broadcast rez (and cable tv)?

-fiz

[trbarry]

I also have a Silk-SDI card. For most NTSC channels I just split my RF cable into my Tivo, then pipe the Tivo into the Silk card. The Tivo always seemed to have a better tuner than my previous (Non-HD) digital cable box so I would use that for the channels it could receive in analog.

Sometimes I also use DScaler on the Comcast digital (but non-HDTV) channels above #100 or so. To do this I route the cable box output to another input on the Silk card.

So generally I use my HiDTV card only for the HDTV channels.

- Tom

[fisix]

thanks, all is clar

[morsa]

So these cards can digitize a raw HD signal?
Or only mpeg encoded ones are supported?

[trbarry]

So these cards can digitize a raw HD signal?
Or only mpeg encoded ones are supported?

I assume you are talking about the digital tv cards here, not my DScaler cards. Anyway, the digital TV signal is already digital and already compressed in MPEG-2. So all the capture cards do is store the stream on disk, or display it.

My HiDTV card can also capture analog NTSC and compress it before storing it but I don't use that function and don't remember whether it even has any hardware acceleration for that compression.

- Tom

[catalyst]

Not sure if anyone's actually mentioned any cards in this... erm, well anyway, i got a Hauppauge Nova-T which i picked up for £80 and basically it means you can watch D1 resolution video (same resolution as DVD) and then the audio is usually MPEG-1 layer II somewhere around 192-256kbps...

as someone's just mentioned, the DVB cards don't actually capture video... the DVB cards receive the television signal as a multiplexed audio/video stream.

this stream can be saved as a file (ie. the file just keeps getting bigger and bigger until you press stop)

you end up with a HUGE .mpg file which you can then transcode to whatever you like... DivX, VCD, SVCD.

one thing you might want to make a note of is that the received stream can have some audio and/or video "packets" missing... it could just be a couple of video frames here and then a few milliseconds of audio missing dotted about through the .mpg file... but it's enough to throw all the synch-ing off if you try to transcode it to something.

BUT you can use PVAStrumento to correct this and then happily convert your DVB recordings to something which could be burned on to disc

(i wish i bloody knew this when The Office was on BBC2!!!)

anyway, yeah, i think the Nova-T is one of the cheapest cards you can get and it seems to be on offer around a few places, check it out...

=)