Looking for some good PVR program, need advice.

[illuminatirex]

Hi, I have an ATi TV wonder 650, and was wondering wheather anyone knows of any good tv recording software that I could use to record some of my favourite sitcoms, I am looking for soemthign that would record the video in Divx formats , or high quality mpeg2's, since those are the video formats that my dvd player recgnizes
(Philips - DVD Player Model: DVP5982/37) I did use the currenly provided ati coftwaer to record teh video but out of the 12 or so possible codecs my dvd player did recognize only 6 and plyd only 5 im im not mistaken....it did not play any mpeg4 encoded vidoes, i heard that it would do so only if the video would be at a 720x480 rezolution...so i guess i could play divx 6.0 coded files, but they would need to be resized to that rezolution.

I did find one open source pvr program but unfortunetly i forgot its name by the time I was able to get it.
Im looking for somethign that has many encoding options, I do not care much about timing the recordings or such, just about many recording options such as codec types, rezolution, aspect ratio and such.


Thank You for any suggestions.

 

[Wolfshadw]

I think you may have been thinking of MythTV as your open-source PVR.

Never used it myself, but others will swear by it.

-Wolf sends

 

[reconviperone1]

I think you may have been thinking of MythTV as your open-source PVR.

Never used it myself, but others will swear by it.

-Wolf sends

Isnt that just for linux?

 

[skittle]

Yes, its just for linux... and its a royal pain in the ass to set up

 

[illuminatirex]

no , there was another one it was supposably new, looked simmilarly to the ati media center, but bluish, and with a vistaish semi shine to it

saved the link somewhere but cant find it, it supposably had some nice features in it.

any other good pvr apps out there?

 

[serisman]

I have been using GBPVR (http://www.gbpvr.com/) for the last year or so. It is Windows based and free.

 

[TwiZtiD_3]

if it wasnt mythtv, it might have been BeyondTV. there is also SAGETV. I'm not sure which ones work with windows, if that is what you are using.

I've only ever used Mythtv, and the Vista Media center. both work great.

and by the way... Mythtv isnt a pain to set up if you use the Mythknopp setup at mysettopbox website. pretty much does it all for you.

 

[illuminatirex]

thank you for the information, ...does any of You maby know which offers the most robust recording dettings? that is option to change the codec used, rezolution, aspect ratio and such?

Thank You very much for all the info.

 

[illuminatirex]

btw, im using sattelite, will it work well with it? I wouldnt think there would be any issues there(cable/satelite signal transfer wise)

 

[eric54]

no , there was another one it was supposably new, looked simmilarly to the ati media center, but bluish, and with a vistaish semi shine to it

saved the link somewhere but cant find it, it supposably had some nice features in it.

any other good pvr apps out there?

lol, yeah Windows Media Center is perfect. I used to use ati's media center and it really blows chunks compared to WMC. I dont know if you can get it outside of xp MCE or vista, but if you have either they are far superior to the competition (that i have tried).

 

[illuminatirex]

^ i have vista on a cd , still not installed, and im hoping of not installing it for a slong as possible. as to WMC i heard there are many issues with it when it comes to compatibility, so thats why i decided to sick with Xp.

 

[roadrunner197069]

Vista MCE works great. You can use a satellite but not for HD channels.
Here is a quick link of my Vista media center in action. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HguFs7Lr2iw

 

[cattbert]

I also have the ATI TV Wonder 650. I use BeyondTV4, which others previously referenced. It is a very good program. I have not tried to change the output settings from the dvd quality mpeg2 to another format, so I cannot speak to that, but the company does have a dvd burning plug-in you can buy to directly record your files to standard DVD. I have also converted them to DIVX using the DIVX Converter, but I have not tried to play them on a DVD Player (as I do not have one that supports DIVX).

 

[illuminatirex]

^ Thank You for the information, I was considering getting Beyond TV initially. I am using the DVP3140/37 dvd player from philips
http://www.consumer.philips.com/consumer/en/us/consumer/cc/_productid_DVP3140_37_US_CONSUMER/DVD-Player+DVP3140-37
, I payd for it only $40 (and i think it sales for $30 nowedays)
and I am amazed at its recognition of formats, it plays amlmost every(except 2) movie i tried to play on it, from avi's to mpg's(since its divx certified), but i was unabl to play anything relatively compressed while using the ati's media center, that is a 1 hour 42 minutes long movie did take a bit more than 4GB's , in mpg2(dvd) and it was noticably "blury" compared to the regular Standard Deffinition picture that I get on the TV.

Cattbert, if You wouldn mind, would You share a bit of info as to the size, and time, as well as the quality of the movies that You managed to encode in divx format?

btw Cattbert what imput do you use for Your tuner? im using a sattelite tuner, that is connected to the analog input, did you have any succes with the digital input?

Thank You

 

[jblow89577]

the other pvr that i know is Media Portal
http://www.team-mediaportal.com/

there quiet a few different skins i do like this one

 

[illuminatirex]

^ i think that was the one I was thinking about initially, lost the link to it , i will check all of these apps out, thank You very much everyone, any further comments apprecieated as well