Need TV tuner/capture card recomendations urgently

[TakuSkan]

I'm hoping I can get a few quick suggestions on replacing this Hauppage PVR-150 tuner/capture card that I'm going to have to return for a different card in a few days.

I've been recording episodes of Discovery's 'American Chopper' series for my personal library, and I'd like make the replacement quickly to catch some upcoming new episodes I don't want to miss.

Here's what I need in a card:

* Hardware MPEG2 encoder
* TV tuner / Coaxial input for TV and VCR capture
* PCI slot interface for Athlon 800, Windows XP based PC
* Lossless capture (AVI)
* Budget pricing: $75-$150
* Color accuracy better than the white glare of the PVR-150

Not necessarily needed:

* FireWire, Composite, S-Video, Component inputs

I'm not even sure if there are cards with MPEG2 hardware encoders can also circumvent that chip, and run the signal straight to lossless capture software like VirtualDub that I got to like a lot. Yes or no??

Have looked down the search results for 'TV Tuner' and 'MPEG2 hardware capturing' at VideoHelp.com (http://www.videohelp.com/capturecards.php?CaptureCard=&Submit=Search&tvtuner=1&mpeg2=1&searchconnection=Any&price=&&hits=25&Search=Search&country=&orderby=Price), but I'm dizzy from endless options

:thanks: for any and all suggestions!

TS

[Revgen]

If your willing to spend $150 to buy an MPEG2 hardware accelerated video capture card because your CPU is too slow to capture in realtime, then you might as well spend a little more and upgrade your entire system.

For $200 you could upgrade to a 3x faster Mobo, CPU, and RAM. You could buy an AMD 3100+ Sempron, Mobo, and 512MB DDR RAM in a custom configured combo over at this site. (http://www.monarchcomputer.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=M&Product_Code=80151&Category_Code=AMDC)

This CPU, RAM, Mobo combo should allow you to record MPEG2 video in realtime with software solutions instead of needing a hardware decoder. It will also improve your overall system performance as well.


Just my 2 cents.

[hartford]

You might consider cards using the ATI Theater 550 chip.
Only works under Windows XP and MCE. Included software
leaves much to be desired. For example, there is no
selection for the bit-rate. To my knowledge, there is no
way to bypass the encoder.

On the plus side, in several reviews it was ranked at the
top for picture quality due to its on-chip filters.


Before you make a choice, perhaps you could get some advice
on how to repair the "white balance" problem that you are
experiencing with the PVR-150?

My 2 cents.

[TakuSkan]

If your willing to spend $150 to buy an MPEG2 hardware accelerated video capture card because... That's why it was #1 on my list. But if you look at the link to the VideoHelp.com capture card comparison list above, (http://www.videohelp.com/capturecards.php?CaptureCard=&Submit=Search&tvtuner=1&mpeg2=1&searchconnection=Any&price=&&hits=25&Search=Search&country=&orderby=Price) you'll see that all those cards have hardware encoders. In fact, this PVR-150 has one, and can be got for $65-$70 online. I got it because my old ATI AIW 128 Rage could only capture at 320x240 on this 800MHz system. The PVR-150 is snappy capturing at 720x480 with the hardware controller.

You might consider cards using the ATI Theater 550 chip. ...software leaves much to be desired... (&) ...no selection for the bit-rateNice software is a plus, I have a lot of nice video tools at this point... but the software/drivers can be critical. No selection for the bit-rate could be a major issue too. I hadn't thought about that. I've had this ATI AIW, and I really haven't been all that impressed with it, or ATI for the most part.

It seems the only cards widely available locally are from ATI, Hauppauge, and Pinnacle. It seems Pinnacle makes some good cards, but the only model for less than $200 is one for $150 that doesn't have a hardware encoder.

I'm getting a bit antsy about sorting through that VideoHelp.com list, and picking up a good card online at a good price soon. I found a Doom9 post recommending, "a Lifeview FlyTV or Leadtek TV2000XP Expert or similar." (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=601220#post601220) Neither have a hardware encoder, and Lifeview doesn't show up on VideoHelp.com for under $200.

The Leadtek Winfast PVR2000 does though for $100, There's a pretty good review of it here, (http://www.trustedreviews.com/article.aspx?art=734) and another here. (http://www.neoseeker.com/resourcelink.html?rlid=95015) But now reading through the 2nd review, I think the poor audio may count it out for me. The poor FM & TV reception, and strain on system resources resulting in problems dealing with motion don't sound great either.

Well... there's a lot more cards in those VideoHelp.com search results to research.

For $200 you could upgrade to a 3x faster Mobo, CPU, and RAM. You could buy an AMD 3100+ Sempron, Mobo, and 512MB DDR RAM .... That's just what I've been working on, and have been meaning to post a message on it. I could write a lot on this, but will be quick here, and just list the components that are at the top of my list for a new system. I found good old Leo Laporte's new 'Call For Help' website, and found he was recommending Athlon 64 CPUs as being the fastest about a year ago... so maybe they're a good price now. I haven't compared them to the Sempron yet. But here's what I'm considering:

* ASUS K8V SE DELUXE Socket 754 VIA K8T800 ATX AMD Motherboard (http://reviews.pimprig.com/motherboards/asus_k8vse_deluxe_a64_motherboard.php)
* AMD Athlon 64 2800+ Processor Socket 754 (http://www.amdcompare.com/us-en/desktop/SideBySide.aspx?opn=ADA2800AEP4AX&opn=ADA2800AEP4AR&opn=ADA2800AEP4AP)
* Asus 512MB DDR400 PC3200 (http://www.memoryx.net/asusxdq512.html)

I have a nice old Enlight ATX case, and just got a 500W power supply on sale at a good price. I'm hoping to put things together for under $300 if I'm lucky.

This CPU, RAM, Mobo combo should allow you to record MPEG2 video in realtime with software solutions instead of needing a hardware decoder. It will also improve your overall system performance as well.But I'd think the hardware encoder would still save system resources while encoding video, and multitasking.

On the plus side, in several reviews it was ranked at the top for picture quality due to its on-chip filters.True... but...

Before you make a choice, perhaps you could get some advice on how to repair the "white balance" problem that you are experiencing with the PVR-150?From what I've read in recent posts on the PVR-150 support forum, that hasn't been resolved to a degree where everyone's happy. The glare on mine is awful... tho' admittedly I having tried a firmware update. Good idea there... I'll look into it.

Thanks for input from both of your on this. I'll research the cards on VideoHelp.com further. Meanwhile I'm hoping someone on Doom9 might recommend an excellent card they've found at a good proce.

TS

[Sirber]

Using "AMD Athlon 64 2800+ Processor Socket 754 " prevent much CPu upgrades later. No new CPU are Socket 754.

[LightningFire]

Unless you have NTSC in your country the following could be intresting:

I have a vmagic (formerly vidac vmagic) (http://www.vmagic.de) tv, old model.
Because I do not have cable up to the location of my computer I no longer use it. I used it extensively for some time and also did some tests with performance and quality. On a athlon xp 1333 it used about 10% CPU during recording. The quality of the recording greatly depends on the quality of the signal. It is analog cable that is compressed to mpeg2 with a configurable bitrate range of 1kilobit to 9kilobit I believe. Never the best strategy for such a source.
On top of that usage of the card made me lose all faith in analog tv.
I had nothing to compare its capture quality to however. Fair to say though, I believe the signal on the cable here (Belgium:Oost-Vlaanderen) is not good at all.
BBC has noise in it all the time, and so do other channels from time to time.
I did manage to get quite good looking recordings of some documentaries. In the best cases after recompression to mpeg4/divx/xvid and some cleaning up it was like a lower resolution but cleaner than tv picture, with an hour fitting in 600mb.

The new models come with vfw drivers. From the specs on this card and the features of Virtualdub this suggests that the card can be used in virtualdub.
The only question is can it be used for capture in virtualdub.
I guess this must depend on what the vfw drivers support.
All models also offer a recoding application for hw accelarated MPEG2 compression of files from a different format.

The quality of the theater 550 cards is really impressive but the lack of an program interface that allows bitrate setting is really depressing.
The vmagic cards have about all the settings you could wish for (numeric bitrate entry, not with a slider; setting of bitrate avg, top and low;recording as interlaced or progressive (leave that best at full interlaced!),open or closed GOP; aspect ratio; resolution from an extensive list; VBV buffer;input filter strength, and some others that I do not understand very well as the program interface of my card is in German, the English interface gives program errors).

Greetings.

[TakuSkan]

Using "AMD Athlon 64 2800+ Processor Socket 754 " prevent much CPu upgrades later. No new CPU are Socket 754.

C*** ... just composed long detailed reply explaining why I'm going to a PVR-250 and commenting on a few things mentioned above. But lost the darned thing with some board problem when I tried posting it. Its too late to redo at this point. So this is it for now if I can get this to post.

Quickly... I'm in USA with NTSC, and wish I could get my hands on all the great components that Holland, Belgium and Germany seem to crank out.

AMD is up to an Athlon 4000+, and as far as I know, is still developing the line. So I have no problem with going with a Socket 754 MB, as the Athlon 64s seema to get the best bang performance-wise for the buck, that I can see at this point. And I can upgrade the CPU in that ASUS MB in the future.

TS

[jpeshek]

If you are considering the Theater 550 Pro, ATI has finally released a version of MMC to support it - 9.13. But be advised that this card will only capture in MPEG2, not lossless avi (using hardware encoding). And editing MPEG2 is pretty much limited to cutting/trimming and some transitions AFAIK.