UK Freeview -- am I on the right track? +Advice on card would be greatly appreciated!

[mg262]

I'm thinking about getting a card to capture UK Freeview, ideally in time to capture a rare BBC serial that is being repeated on CBBC on the 20th & 21st. I've read through every post mentioning Freeview, and so far I've gathered that:

-- it is transmitted as low bitrate MPEG 2 stream(s)
-- it's possible to get a DVB-T card that will let me copy the streams to my hard disk losslessly

But I've also seen this, which confused me a bit:In all honesty you might as well buy a decent DVB-T card... Install ProgDVB, MyTheatre or something similar. And crank up the Mpeg2 capture bitrate.(From this thread (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=527768).) Does the reference to the capture bitrate simply mean that there is an option to recompress while capturing?

What I'm interested in is getting a stream to the HDD losslessly (I can take it from there); I want a card that won't introduce glitches or freeze up after two hours of capturing, but other than that I don't need any particular features. I would be very grateful for recommendations on a cheap, reliable card, preferably one known to work with Freeview/CBBC -- or for sound reasons for going for a more expensive card.

Hardware specs: P4/2400, P4C800-E motherboard, 1 GB RAM, 300 MB S-ATA HDD (separate from OS HDD). I have no problems capturing losslessly with a msi TV@nywhere (though the quality is awful), and freeview is currently coming via a "Nokia 9850T Freeview/ITV Digital/TopUp TV Rec" box.

Edit: or... are there DVD recorders which can capture the stream losslessly? That would be much preferable (as my family could use it).

Edit: I'm very tempted by the Hauppauge WIN TV NOVA-T which sells for a very reasonable-sounding £40 at PC World (here (http://www.pcworld.co.uk/product.php?sku=464884)) ... thoughts on this would be particularly welcome.
Thanks in advance!

[Incast]

I have a Nova-T USB2, which is the same as the PCI card. The card captures losslessly and will work great with the BBC channels.

You have no control over the MPEG2 bitrate, you receive what is broadcast.

I have captured up to 3 hours+ of video at any one time and have only had the Nova-T fail on me twice during the same sports event live and rerun (at the exact same point) on ITV. This makes me suspect that was due to what ITV were broadcasting and the Nova-T therefore has been flawless.

There are some downsides to the Nova-T:
No EPG with bundled software
No MHEG ie. text services
Default program records in mpg which is not ready for DVD. You have to perform some changes to the mpeg2 stream (although this is a lossless procedure). I use ProjectX for this.

I've used mine since March regularly and have been very satisfied with the results.

There are some PVRs which will record losslessly out there, but i'm not sure if you can transfer the lossless capture to DVD with them. I suspect not as some Freeview channels broadcast at 544x576 (don't worry though, all BBC full screen channels are 720x576) which isn't an official DVD res.

[charleski]

I have a Nova-T USB2 as well, and it performs well as Incast said. It has a 'sort-of' EPG, in that you get info on the current and next programme when you change channel for a few seconds, but can't bring that info up independently.

Just be sure to keep your capture HD thoroughly defragged, as that's the one thing that can trip the Nova-T up (all the times I've had a failure when recording were linked to having a messy disk). I've tried MyTheatre with it, but it didn't perform that well, so I just use the WinTV2000 that comes with the Nova-T. I also use ProjectX to cut and process the video after capture.

[DrP]

If your DVB device has BDA drivers, you really can't go past webscheduler (http://dvb-ws.sourceforge.net/) for automated timed recording.

As far as non-DVD spec video, don't be too concerned. Most DVD players will play just about anything. All you have to do is convince your DVD authoring app that the video is valid for DVD and things like dvdpatcher do that nicely.

[mg262]

Thanks for all the advice, guys. I've bought the Nova-T. I'm getting a bit confused about all the different capturing formats (.ts, .mpg, .pva), but that really belongs in another thread (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=751639#post751639) ... although I would be particularly grateful to hear what software/format combinations you find keep a/v synchronisation and generally work well with this card!

[Incast]

Have a look there.

I use ProjectX to deal with audio synchronisation and any Freeview signal break up.

Although I don't blame you if you're confused by the latest version, the layout is hideous. I use an older version, 0.82.0.04

I use this method: demux: MPG =>sPES for my Nova-T USB2 and have no problems. It also deals with any corruption from the DVB-T signal and ensures audio synchronisation, I'm not sure if the others do that.