9700 AIW, Hauppauge PVR 250 or something else?

[jkresh]

I have a Hauppauge wintv pvr and have been having some serious problems in XP (driver issues, then recently the files have not been MPEG standard, so I have had to re-encode them using premier and now I am getting sound issues roughly halfway through certain files), I have emailed their support and gotten nothing and have given up on them releasing WDM drivers (which is the only way I would keep the card). So I am looking at replacing it, I will use it for watching TV at college and more importantly recording my Dad's appearances on CNBC and burning them to DVD (must be capable of good MPEG2 encoding), I really don’t care about the price, and have been looking at the AIW 9700 (I could use an upgrade from my gforce 3) or possibly the Hauppauge 250 (would take some significant convincing to buy from them again) but if their is nothing else, I don’t know. I will be buying shortly and any advice would be appreciated. I may also use the card to convert some vhs tapes to DVD's. Thanks.

[crahak]

Lots of threads on this, the card itself is not so much the limitation anyways, even a el-cheapo bt8x8 card makes better captures than the tape is able to give. The thing is, you might need a TBC or other fun sutff. Search the forums and you'll find lots of discussions about that... Good luck

[jkresh]

First what is a TBC? Second I have looked through several hundred posts on the forum and have not seen very much. A lot of people seem to suggest recording in DV-avi and editing (I have the hard drive space and cpu power to do this but don’t think I need to considering what kind of editing I am doing (titles, and cutting) a popular suggestion is an analog to dv bridge then firewire, which makes sense for dv capture but I have found mpeg2 to be fine for capture and would prefer to continue. But I don’t really trust Hauppauge and the highly recommended VMagic TV plus does not seem to be available in the US (though it looks perfect otherwise). So I am left with the same question 9700 AIW (wont go with an older one as it would be either no graphics upgrade (8500) or downgrade (anything else)) the Hauppauge or another option I am not seeing, once again any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[Barnabas]

A TBC is a Time Base Corrector. I own the Hauppauge PVR-250. While not perfect, with the right tweaks, it makes pretty good captures without having to spend hours encoding. The picture is a bit soft, but you can tweak it via Graphedit to raise the sharpness.

[jkresh]

Thanks how are the drivers for the Hauppauge? I like their hardware but their software and support tend to be terrible and I am somewhat worried about buying from them again.

[Barnabas]

The last 2 beta drivers are pretty good. Gone are the days of the color settings not sticking, which is good as the defaults are WAY off. For the money, it's a hard card to beat. Forget the email tech support and call them on the phone if you REALLY want an answer. There is a prefilter tweaking program available that can be used to filter various things in the video which I think really helps the quality.

I have owned all of the following cards, and like the Hauppauge 250 the best.

ADS Instant DVD
Creative Labs Digital VCR
ProVideo PV 231
All-In-Wonder 128
Hauppauge PVR-250
Hauppauge PVR-USB
Hauppauge Win TV GO

If you buy one, IM me and will send you the correct color settings.

[Bruce Simpson]

The more I use the PVR-250 the more I like it.

As others have said, the software is pretty bad -- hell, you have to change a registry setting to alter the audio recording level which is, by default, way way too high.

But having said that, the quality of the MPEG-2 encoding is damned good, streets ahead of any software-based realtime encoding I've seen.

As for support -- I contacted Hauppauge by email to query a problem I had with the GeForce MX440 video card conflicting in TV-out mode (works fine with every other capture card I've got) and they said "contact the VGA card manufacturer" -- so they appear to be just as bad as everyone else in this regard.

I'm now capturing all my stuff at PAL SVCD resolution using a variable bitrate of 1600 (max 2250) and the results are truly stunning. I can get a full 1-hour TV program (44-mins or so without the ads) on a single 700MB CDR with great quality -- far better than VHS tape.

Yes, you do have to remux the audio and video before you can burn the captured MPEG files to disk -- but I simply use the MPEG tools on TMPGenc and the remux becomes an automatic part of the editing required to remove the ads anyway.

The PVR-250 shares a lot in common with other capture cards:

Great hardware
Crappy support
Crappy software

but it adds:

Excellent hardware-based realtime MPEG encoding

[Sulik]

The AIW 9700 is supposed to have much better MPEG encoding capability, so I wouldn't overlook that, especially considering that the captures were already very good since MMC 7.7 (The 7.7 MMC release was a major improvement over previous versions)

[thxkid]

well there is something wrong with how his system is set up and not the PVR card, cause I use the PVR card and get perfect results and I was using Win98se now using XP and have captured over 4 gigs at a time with it with out a problem, from 4000 to 8000 bitrate at DVD settings, or 2520 to 3500 bitrate at SVCD settings, but then again I use the reg hack I got from happauge german web site so I can go in and set all my settings manually. re-adjusting the throttle does help it out some and the sharpness settings also.
My brother bought the PVR-250 running on 98se or 2000 and can not get it to preform at the same quality yet as my PVR.
Been using it for around 2 years with great results.

[pburdett]

If the driver is your problem, I got a better driver for my own Hauppauge capture card at:

btwincap.sourceforge.net

[kitty]

the btwincap drivers are not for the Hauppauge PVR250/350 series.

I have the 250 and with www.shspvr.com driver updates (look under News) it's a good card. With a DVD burner (come on Santa) I should have a heck of a capture solution.

You won't find 10 people to agree on a perfect capture card/device. The only other capture device I have seen with good results in the Canopus ADVC-100 (I think that's it)... AIW has takers & not but I have not heard a great groundswell of people stating it is the best solution.

[jkresh]

unless I am mistaken the btwincap.sourceforge.net drivers remove the ability to use the hardware encoding on the wintv PVR, while they work well as wdm drivers and let you use better programs for capture, they effectively turn the card into a $50 tuner from a $200 hardware encoder. At least that was the experience I had when I tried them last year (couldn’t get wintv to run with them, and since as far as I know wintv is the only program that will use the hardware encoding features, it seemed pointless).

[donpedro]

unless I am mistaken the btwincap.sourceforge.net drivers remove the ability to use the hardware encoding on the wintv PVR, while they work well as wdm drivers and let you use better programs for capture, they effectively turn the card into a $50 tuner from a $200 hardware encoder. At least that was the experience I had when I tried them last year (couldn’t get wintv to run with them, and since as far as I know wintv is the only program that will use the hardware encoding features, it seemed pointless).

Is this true ?

[Barnabas]

kitty is correct,

The btwincap.sourceforge.net drivers are NOT for the Hauppauge WinTV PVR-250. I don't know if they will work on the old PVR or not, but that card is outdated, and uses a different compression chip than the 250 does.

kitty,

I see you own a 250 now too? It's MUCH better than your ADS Instant DVD paperweight was isn't it? The drivers still need some work, but at it's worst, it works 10000's of times better than my IDVD ever did!

[SHS]

Yes thoses drivers work with older PVR but you not have any audio so keep that in mimd.