Greg Bell wrote: > I don't care about time shifting, just basic VCR type functionality (but > it'll be more fun :). It'll have a big disk so hopefully I won't need > hardware assisted encoding. The software MPEG encoders work, although the quality isn't quite as high per meg as a hardware encoder like a Tivo has because the software ones AFAIK are all MPEG1 and the hardware jobbies are usually MPEG2. (YMMV) Personally I can get an hour per gig using "watchable" quality settings of 352x240 at 2.3Mb/s. Which means that you only need about a 30G drive to have a usable amount of space. A lot of early Tivos are only 14 hours.... Since 100G drives are available, I don't see compressing it any more than that. If my drive gets too full I expect some of it is stuff I've decided to keep and I can stripe it out to VHS to recover the space. 2.3Mbit makes for a very watchable picture. However, my normal source of video is a satellite dish, so I'm sort of used to watching MPEG artifacts. I have a pretty large TV though so it does make it more noticeable than on the monitor. I can send you a sample if you want. > Basic question not yet answered after a few weeks of lurking: Am I better > off with a product like ATI's all-in-wonder type cards, or with a separate > capture/tuner (Hauppauge WinTV-PCI) and TV Out (Nvidia GE2 MX-400) combo? From my experience you will pay much less for seperate units if you scrounge the junk bins and newsgroups. Since the features that make the newer video cards expensive aren't really going to help you (3D, lots of fast memory) it is a valid way to save a buck or two. A bt848 card seems to capture video just fine, and I got mine from a local newsgrounp for $15cdn ($10us). I don't use a tuner because my prime source is a satellite receiver, just Svideo in. I got an ATI Rage 8MB PCI card with Tv-out for $35cdn. ($23us?) and it has more than enough horsepower to show the image. A big 3D processor and 32M of vram would likely be wasted on a PVR. So... if you are buying the stuff specifically for the job, my experience is that you can save your money and go with the older stuff which is usually seperate. It also saves you the big ugly cable breakout box that most all-in-wonder type cards have because there isn't enough room on the backplate of one card for all the plugs. > I don't have a ton of home entertainment equipment so ideally I'd be able > to take coax in and have coax out. I realize this is a bit unrealistic... > my DSS box has Svideo in... I found the coax in video quality to be unacceptable. The noise in the image is especially bad because it then gets compressed and makes more artifacts as the encoder tries diligently to reproduce all those freckles. :< Your DSS likely has both Svideo out and composite out and they are both usually live. One of which should be open and available for your video in card. I use the composite and it seems fine, the Svideo is used for my normal viewing. (side issue, can Svideo be split?) As for coax out, few cards will support this. (None that I know) You might have to use the composite out and the video in of your VCR if you are short of jacks. -- Trevor Boicey, P. Eng. Ottawa, Canada, tboicey@xxxxxxx ICQ #17432933 http://www.brit.ca/~tboicey/ "Quit harvesting me with your eyes!" - Homer
