Question about recording tv?

[Guest]

I was wonder what the best video card is for recording tv on your computer.(tivo) I was looking at the all in wonder but i was wondering if there is something better out there. I want to be able to program my computer to record shows at certain times when I am away from the house. Also if I use the video out to my tv will I lose some of the quality? Or will it be the same quality as TIVO or replay tv or a vrc?

Thanks
ps. does anyone know about how much space an hour of recorded tv will take up on my hard drive?

 

[Guest]

IRT your space question, 1 hour of recording @ 480x352 resolution @ 29+FPS (FPS=Frames Per Second. Mininimum FPS for a smooth picture is 24, but more is better and 29+ is TV standard) at 6MBs takes about 3.9 Gig (yes, gig, not meg)of space. 720x480@ 12+ MBs does 3.9 gig in about 30 minutes. Be forewarned, Windows 95/98/Me all have 4gig file size limits (using FAT 32, 2Gig for FAT 16) but there are ways around this

As for the All in wonders, I own a AIW 128. I use it to record TV programs (digital VCR) via the timer (ATI Scheduler) included in the ATI Multi Media Center software provided with the card. The program works 4.0

Are there better cards out there? Absolutely. Period. Hauppage to name 1. However, in ATI's defense, the AIW's are a very nice all around compromise offering hardware DVD decoding, 2d/3d processing TV out/software digital recording(DVCR), as well as video input for DV capture. Personaly, will I buy another Hauppage? No. Will I buy another ATI AIW? Yes, but I am waiting for the AIW Radeon 8500DV, due out this fall. (check it out at http://www.ati.com/na/pages/products/pc/aiw_radeon_8500/index.html)

On the TV out quality issue, the quality depends on your TV and what resolution/frame rate and data rate you record at. So if you have a crappy TV, the best digital video in the world wont give you a good picture, conversely, if you have the best TV in the world but are recording at 320x240 @ 23 FPS for 2MBs, your picture is going to be crappy. The simple answer: If your components are reasonably well matched, the system should work with no problems.

Something to note. Normal VCR recording is analog to analog. You suffer quality loss during that process. Digital VCR recording (i.e AIW) is analog to digital. Quality loss is greatly reduced compared to normal VCR recording, assuming you computer is powerful enough to handle high resolution/frame rate.
Jump forward in time---If you have digital cable TV (DTV, or HDTV) and are recording on your computer you will be recording digital to digital-theororetcially 0 (zero) quality loss. Using a normal VCR to record from DTV/HDTV would be recording digital to analog, so again you would experiance quality loss.

3 final notes

1: Im sure you realize that you must leave your computer on while your away for the timed recording function to work.

2: TV recording/DV capture can suck up some CPU power, so if you have a slow system (less than P III 800 or Athlon 800) your either going to have to suffer through low resolution captures or frame dropping. Be forewarned, if you think adding RAM to your system will help, it wont in this case. Windows 95/98/Me all have problems with more than 512MB of RAM installed. Windows trys to load everything to RAM when you have more than 512MB and in doing so it leaves little or no space for other applications. This results in system crashes when trying to do video processing

3: This one goes hand in hand with note 2. If your planning on recording and storing large amounts of decent video, you'd better have a big hard drive thats a minimum of ATA 66. ATA 100 is better though.

Hope this helps

 

[Guest]

I presume you're talking about WinTV PVR.

Hauppage's output quality is not good. AIW's real-time encoding uses Ligos' GoMotion, by far the best output quality in Mpeg2 encoding.

regards
jon

 

[arsend]

Here is another very important suggestion. Fi you do plan on recording alot, I would highly recommend you buy the following:

Windows 2000 or better yet, XP - and make sure you use NT File system, not fat 32!

Also, you will want to have two additional Harddrives, for a total of 3, one for the OS and other programs, then the two for your digital content. Once you have the two HS's set up, configure them to so a software RAID (stripping) in <A HREF="http://www6.tomshardware.com/howto/01q3/010906/index.html" target="_new">Windows 2000/XP </A>. This will give you the most space for your video, and much faster transfer speeds.

I have an XP machine and may try doing a little video capture to see how well it works fairly soon, so if I have any more reletive info, I will post it.

If it works for you then don't fix it.