ASUS TV FM Problems

[eng3]

I was just wondering if anyone around here has tried the ASUS TVFM

This is the one that uses the phillips chip, not the ASUS TV Tuner which uses the conexeant one.

I have tried in the past:
Matrox Marvel G400-tv - good, but also a video card
ATI TV Wonder PCI - only half resolution
Asus TV Tuner - great but crappy sound

The ASUS TVFM has worked well, but I have had a few annoying problems.

1. It has a nasty habit of "pausing" or "freezing" for like a second every time I change the channel or begin capturing which causes dropped frames most of the time.

2. Captured video is ALWAYS out of sync, even with no dropped frames. Its a pain correcting this after capturing.

3. Bundled software (PowerVCR) does not work. It takes up tons of resources, opens many windows and uses up your whole desktop. Capturing video always results in dropped frames (prob because the software it self takes up so many resources)

4. Works with my old ATI TV software (which is great), but is prone to crashes (that reboot my computer

5. The new driver fixes this problem, BUT, I am no longer able to preview anything in VirtualVCR (the software I use to capture), but capture works.

So I was just wondering if anyone else has tried this card or had similar experiences. I've used the ASUS TV Tuner before, but I think mine was defective. The audio always sounded over amplified and was clipping.

[John2002]

I'd just suggest using ShowShifter. It's not free but it's worked great with my ATI AIW7500 and now with my Asus TV Tuner card. It maintains good sound sync.

By the way, my Asus TV Tuner card has the opposite problem. Its audio level is too low. Not a big deal because audio can be easily increased in software while encoding to mpeg2 or Divx.

If you still own your Matrox G400 TV you should try playing a video file to your TV via the G400's s-video. It has an excellent TV-out.

[eng3]

Originally posted by John2002
I'd just suggest using ShowShifter. It's not free but it's worked great with my ATI AIW7500 and now with my Asus TV Tuner card. It maintains good sound sync.

By the way, my Asus TV Tuner card has the opposite problem. Its audio level is too low. Not a big deal because audio can be easily increased in software while encoding to mpeg2 or Divx.

If you still own your Matrox G400 TV you should try playing a video file to your TV via the G400's s-video. It has an excellent TV-out.

I tried show shifter once, the main problem I find with this is that the software is too bulky. When I watch TV on my computer, I usually like to do other things at the same time, otherwise I'd just buy a TV. I do not want a software that uses up lots of resources.

But whatever I use to capture, I have the same audio sync problems.

[eng3]

I noticed that ASUS TV Tuner and ASUS TV FM use different decoders.

the ASUS TV Tuner uses the Conexant CX2388x (http://www.conexant.com/products/entry.jsp?id=720) decoder.
The ASUS TV FM uses the Philips SAA713x (http://www.semiconductors.philips.com/markets/computing/pc_tv/decoders/) decoder

Like I noticed that the Conexant one uses a 10bit, but the Philips uses a 9bit ADC

Is there information about which is better?

Also they both have "filters" like anti-aliasing and comb filters, but I don't know if they really do anything, I havent noticed anything

[John2002]

Do you have a fast PC? Capturing video into Divx5 640x480 with high bitrate requires a lot of CPU horsepower. The higher the Divx bitrate the greater the demands on your CPU and if the CPU can't keep up you could be dropping a lot of frames (though I don't know why your software wouldn't report the dropped frames). That could be the reason for the audio sync problem.

If even PowerVCR is dropping frames (taking up too much CPU) then you need to find a way to cut down on the CPU utilization. The easiest is to reduce the resolution but quality would suck. The best way is to capture using a less CPU intensive codec like mjpeg. PicMjpeg is around $20 (or it comes bundled with ShowShifter) and is an excellent capture codec. You can get better quality and smaller files if you reencode the mjpeg files to Divx using 2 passes instead of capturing straight to Divx.

[eng3]

I would get occasional dropped frames

I'm experiementing with using huffyuv, but I had bad results before.

I have a new problem now. For somereason, when i capture, it does not show it on the screen.

I think that something is up with the preview pin, I get weird errors