Hauppauge WINTV PVR

[Conquest10]

i'm thinking about getting it. i have a question, though, does it have inputs for rca cables? the red white and yellow ones.

[bani]

the encoder quality is very poor. you will be happier with the quality that tmpgenc or ligos produces from a standard tv card.

if you absolutely positively require realtime encoder, the ati stuff works pretty well.

[kitty]

Bull - the WinTV PVR 250 has good quality & has RCA inputs (and s-video)

See www.shspvr.com for more info

[bani]

i had one of these cards and i can say from experience its crap. dont waste your money on it.

the vcd settings are absolutely unwatchable, it looks like a poor 33.6k realvideo stream. and the mpeg2 is very bad overall with lots of artifacting.

[Treebeard]

Maybe kitty could post a short clip of his mpeg2 captures and let us decide for ourselves

[epo]

PVR-250 makes excellent work on MPEG-2. 1/8" stereo audio in and S-Video in (configurable for composite or S-Video). Some have trouble with installation. And I myself couldn't get rid of gradual out sync issue on SVCDs (DVD is perfect)

[Amontillado]

Conquest10 : As epo allready said the pvr (250) has no rca (red whit yellow) connectors but a 1/8" stereo audio in and S-Video in. For these you can if you wish always get a cheap converter.
About the quality : I suggest you should take a look on the pvr forum (pvr.opcenter.de). My own experience is that with the latest drivers the quality is very good. Some users do report sound sync problems with some authoring tools but most of those seem to be solvable.

[kitty]

See some samples here: http://steve.kittelsen.com/pvr250/

[bani]

that web page claims "The SVCD and DVD captures are very good, at the same level as the best software encoders."

this is complete BS. its obvious from the captures that the pvr 250 cant touch even tmpeng. there is a lot of bad artifacting in even simple static scenes.

even the DVD encode was just "ok", nothing special. software codecs easily do much better.

the best hardware encoder ever was the Futuretel NS 325, even with crappy source video the card did excellently. alas the company is no longer in business, you might be able to find a used card somewhere though.

[leebo]

Stay away from ATI if you plan to do live encoding of mpeg2 (unless their newer card has hardware mpeg2 encoding).

Any software encoding in REAL TIME is likely to be poor quality.

[bani]

the ATI has hardware assist, its partly hardware and partly software.

but yeah if you want the best quality then software encoding is the only way to go.

[kitty]

I won't debate encoder quality - a good analog capture & software encode will beat the cheaper hw encoders now out, true. But for a quick & easy capture with decent quality this card is ok.

You all can debate ATI quality vs other methods - I have my opinion but I'll not start a long thread.

[SHS]

Hmm that funny bani I don't see any post or reply here nor on the PVR forum for you saying you had WinTV-PVR 250 or first PVR.

[bani]

thats nice shs, your point?

[SHS]

as in you never own one

[bani]

bullshit.

[SHS]

bani I don't see any post here nor on the PVR forum or any forum with your nickname point that you own or try a WinTV-PVR or 250.
You see your cutting your own know what by saying I own one but fact tell other wize.
Now please under stand I'am not trying say you did or didn't have one but as rule 99% user alway make some kind post bitching or asking for help or even just comment on something.

[Rickyblaze]

Let me add my two cents except for the scheduler ,which I can't get to work the pvr250 I bought from circuit city which is the latest version with 1.2 drivers updated to the latest .275 ahs worked very well. I have recorded several movies from Direct TV at dvd quality using the 1/8 strereo adpt into the audio input of the card and the s-video input for the video have created amazing results. The dvd,s I make from the mpeg2 files are as good as the original signal even better on my big screen . I have'nt experienced any audio sync problems but then again I have'nt used a lot of scene selections or edits either. I have also captured a couple home movies from my sony trv103 that were very good as well. I would say it has a little edge on my pv256t provideo card as far as audio sync and capture quality. Even the mpeg1 while not as good as a rendered down avi file from tmpge is still quite a bit more watchable than the mpeg1 from my pv256t. I think I will keep the pvr256 in my pc for a while