WinTV-PVR-PCI vs. PV-256T ?

[magicmycote]

Can someone who has experience with both of these cards give a little run down comparison on the quality differences between the MPEG-1 & MPEG-2 captures?

I've been reading that there have been major driver problems plaguing both of these cards (WinXP here + VIA KT266a mobo)...have these been resolved to the best of your knowledge? I've looking to buy a realtime hardware MPEG1/2 capture card (with avi capabilities too if avail.) very soon, and these two seem to do everything I need (for under $200). Any other cards that have comparative abilities/price? TIA!

[drdy111956]

I have Win TV PVR -pci, and have found the MPG1 and MPG2 captures to be disappointing in resulting quality vs AVI capture and conversion with TMPGenc. Of course , one reply here will tell you it is great , I have observed.

[Panash]

I have both and I found the PV-256T much, much better. The WinTV-PVR gave really ugly macro-blocks even with just modest movement.

But the WinTV-PVR really seemed to suit a friends Digital-8 camcorder for some unknown reason.

Hauppauge now have an icompression based PVR which might be better, the 250, but I'd avoid the Kfir based card like the plauge.

Also dropping in price is the Dazzle DVCII, worth considering I believe.

See

http://tangentsoft.net/video/mpeg/reviews/

http://www.iln.com.au/

http://steve.kittelsen.com/pv256c/

http://forums.delphiforums.com/pv256/start

I don't know of any reviews of the PVR250 yet.

PN

[SHS]

Well Panash your friends Digital-8 camcorder works that good to hear.
Yes the icompression based PVR is better at VCD/SVCD.

[Barnabas]

Avoid ANY card or USB device that uses the Stream Machine chipset, which the PV-256 does. The following 3 problems plague the Stream Machine chipset.

1: lost sync after cutting
2: Poor audio (sibilence) due to the audio filter used. Check link below for more info.

http://www.iln.com.au/pv256review1a.html

3: Poor SVCD captures, (have vertical lines)

No hardware compression product that I know of will let you also capture to AVI. I suggest you look at the Hauppauge PVR 250, 350 or PVR USB, which all have the better IVAC chipset.

[fakesky]

Just capture with 8mbit full res and then use tmpegenc if you want the best quality.
Capturing at svcd or even vcd will give good results
if you have a good source and use s-video.
A crappy vhs casette wont go nicely through the encoderchip,
atleast not at low bitrates..

ofcourse its not as good quality if you do a Straight2mpeg
capture with vcd settings..
Avi->whatever will always be better, but I find 8mbit->(s)vcd
to be the easiest and best qualitywise way.. could
never get a good capture with my old happauge avicap card.

No person serious about videoquality would ever justify the vcd settings,
let alone using a 200$card to do a straight2mpeg capture to vcd..
I mean try using something like winvcr with youre avicapcard
and see what quality you´ll get.
The method with highres and highbitrate I mentioned
is vital if you want really good quality, and if you have a decent
computer, using CCE or TMPEGENC to finalize youre video to the format of youre choice shouldnt be to hard, or take to long.
I mean if you are saving youre own homevideo you might aswell
spend a little time converting it in the best possible way, dont u think?


to the topic;


I´ve used WinXP + VIA KT266a mobo without problems,
applying the 4in1 drivers just for security measures.
(didnt notice any difference though)
I didnt use the onboard soundcard though, but I wouldnt
suggest anyone to use that when a decent soundcard costs 50bucks.
Dont use winXP on the capturecomp anymore though, since
win2k works just as good, and adds another .10 on my realtime speed
in CCE. (from 1.3 to 1.4 or even 1.5)

I would recommend the card WIntv PVR,
but if you want to go trough the hassle of avi-capturing
its alot cheaper..
The quality is decent when capturing to svcd/vcd,
(depending on the source ofcourse)
and unless time is a major factor I suggest using a software
encoder and possibly a few filters to clean up the video,
that way bringing just as good quality as you could possibly get.

if you decide to buy it, stop by a few PVR sites,
like shspvr.org or whatever the addy is..
any problems you have, and optimizations for youre
captures will be given out there.

[thxkid]

Yes use TMPGE if you got tons of time, I mean buy the time you rip a DVD, then encode it TMPGE make sure you have a complete weekend to do your 2 hour SVCD cause it takes time, time, time.
Now maybe its because I have the manual settings and play around with them but with my WINPVR card I get DVD results at 5000 bitrate setting by 704x480, I mean not close but exactly DVD results and with my Daewoo 5700 I can play the final SVCD disc in it with no problems, Now I get very good results at 2520 or even better at 3000, but never lower the bitrate below 2000, its just plain to ugly. Now this is not the automatic setups that come with the PVR I went to happauge German web site and got the reg hack to open up the manual settings and played around with them until I found something I liked with a very good finished SVCD, now its really important to adjust the settings when using MPEG1, because the auto settings on it is horrible, 1st of all don't expect any good MPEG1 with this card below 1600 bitrate, next make sure to take out the sharpness settings on MPEG1 and MPEG2, set to zero, for some unknown reason the sharpness settings on this card causes major blockiness problems. Change the throttle response on the MPEG1 and MPEG2 settings from 0.0080 to 0.0070, with 4000-5000 bitrate change to 0.0060 and 6000 and above set to 0.0040, I keep the setting at Constant instead of Variable.
I have recorded some amazing SVCD's from DVD, Laser Disc, Hi8mm, 8mm, not very good at transferring VHS or Cable TV, Unless you capture 4000 or above on the bitrate. Then again I only have tried this on WIN98 and WIN98SE, have no idea on WIN2000 or XP.

[magicmycote]

Thanks for all those replies I do not have the time to make AVI=>(S)VCD captures, I've used that method before and I know the quality is better that way, but I have several hundred old VHS tapes to cap and I need to reel them off asap.

I read on the PV256T site that they've added AVI capture...that would be nice to have as an alternative for any higher quality caps I want to use, and I thought the WinTV-PVR series had that as well (any thoughts SHS?).

[SHS]

magicmycote you should read thur this post
http://forum.vcdhelp.com/viewtopic.php?t=98514