Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-150 question

[AlecWest]

My system is a 1.3 ghz Celeron with 256 megs RAM. I have a dual-boot system (2 hard drives, 40 gigs each) with one HD set up on Win98SE and the other on XP Home Edition. My XP drive will be used exclusively for video capture purposes ... and I'd be using the WinTV-PVR card only on the XP operating system. Also, I have a dual-format (-/+) DVD burner already installed.

My plan is to use the card for two purposes only:

1) Capture home video through composite inputs, saving on-the-fly in MPEG2 standard play format (8 mbps) at 720x480 NTSC.

2) Capture TV programs, saving on-the-fly in MPEG2 standard play format (8 mbps) at 720x480 NTSC.

According to their specs:

http://www.hauppauge.com/pages/products/data_pvr150.html

only a 733 mhz Pentium III is required to use the card successfully. However, I'm worried that this may only be a "minimum" requirement for card use as opposed to a "safe/recommended" speed requirement. The reason I'm worried is because some people on eBay have told me that to use the pause or instant replay features, a 1.5 ghz (or better) Pentium 4 is required. While I don't plan on using either feature, I do want to make certain my system operates at a speed capable of RELIABLE MPEG2 captures as mentioned above before I shell out the money for one of them. Thanks to all who reply.

[AlecWest]

Thanks to Capmaster for the private message. I've decided to give the card a go. Not sure whether this is the lowest price for it ... but I just bought one from Buy.com for $87.67 (free shipping):

http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=10385910&loc=

I did find it slightly cheaper at a few other places. But, when their shipping was tacked on afterward, it made Buy.com the cheapest of all.

[lordsmurf]

I'm not familiar with the "150" card, but the 250 and 350 are current models, have been for at least 1-2 years now, and are hardware MPEG chips.

You'll need this on a slow system like yours. Your caps should be fine.

If you are capturing the VHS and tv sources mentioned, just a note, 720x480 may be severe overkill. You can do 352x480 and it'll still look stellar. But that's a discussino for another time. Just a note.

Consider a drive ONLY for video files. No OS on it, especially not during capture. That's important, as those swap files can kill you.

[AlecWest]

Consider a drive ONLY for video files. No OS on it, especially not during capture. That's important, as those swap files can kill you.

That may be problematic. I keep one of my hard drives set up on Win98SE because some of the programs are old and may not have XP driver support - and I want to keep using those old programs. That leaves me with one more hard drive for XP (and capturing).

Still, I do have a couple of options. Currently, this is my "letter" setup:

C: drive --- Win98SE
D: drive --- WinXP
E: drive --- DVD/CD burner
F: drive --- CD-ROM drive

My C drive is well over half empty. Would it be possible, without losing any current data on the C drive, to partition off part of it as a new G drive -- putting XP on the G drive and leaving the D drive free for capture only? It's easy to set up a separate hard drive on XP ... but I'm wondering how easy/difficult it would be to have Win98SE/XP cohabitating on the same hard drive in separate partitions.

The other option would be easier but involve $$$. My local guru told me that my system does have the physical space and the capability of running a "third" hard drive.

Is my first option viable? If not, I'll have to go with spendy option #2.

[Ironballs]

Alec,
I bought a 250 about 18 months ago, and I can say I had nothing but problems getting this card to work. Search this site and you'll see others have had problems too.

I did get it working, once, and I must admit the quality was prety good, but unless you fancy rebuilding your pc many times over, forget it, try something else instead mate - life's too short wasting on the pvr250.

Ironballs

[lordsmurf]

Sacrifice or expand. Those are your choices. It's nice to think you can do it all on limited resources, but it's a wasted effort most times. I no longer cater to such ideologies.

Sacrific: Kill 98. Migrate over. Find out if it works or not, stop guessing at it. Use that old 98 drive as capture drive.

Expand: Buy a nice big hard drive and a Promise TX2 expansion card to give you 4 new IDE connection. Takes up PCI slot.

On your slow system, you need a hardware device. You have two choices, neither are bad. The Hauppauge PVR's are great, work well. The Canopus ADVC's may be fine, but not 100% sure if you can maintain datarate well.

I migrated to XP back in May. No regrets. Have a TX2 card full of devices. Smooth operation.

You could do other things, but it would require FAT32. You really need an NTFS drive for video. I fought that for years, but gave up eventually. You cannot get around it for long.

[AlecWest]

Alec,
I bought a 250 about 18 months ago, and I can say I had nothing but problems getting this card to work. Search this site and you'll see others have had problems too.

I did get it working, once, and I must admit the quality was prety good, but unless you fancy rebuilding your pc many times over, forget it, try something else instead mate - life's too short wasting on the pvr250.

Ironballs

Well, I'm not getting the PVR250. I'm getting the PVR150. There are currently 4 comments on it on this site (see link below) and all 4 are largely positive:

https://www.videohelp.com/capturecards.php?CaptureCardRead=503#comments

BTW, I got a private message from another person who used it on a system slower than mine with only a 20 gig hard drive ... with OS and capture both on the same drive. And he said he's made over a thousand successful captures.

In any case, I ordered it before you posted ... so, if I'm screwed, I'm screwed. Either way, I'll put the product through the paces once it arrives and post my findings to the page linked-to above. Based on that private message I got, I'll try it on the same drive as the XP OS ... just like the other guy did (though my drive is twice as large).

FWIW, the only reason I have XP is to do large-file video capturing. If I didn't want to do that, I'd probably never have gotten the 2nd drive. If that doesn't work, I'll try the partition route on the C drive. And, if that doesn't work, I'll spring for a 3rd capture-only drive ... and possibly upgrade my Celeron chip from 1.3 ghz to a faster speed (depending upon what my motherboard can stomach).

P.S. This is where I got my full XP OEM Home Edition for only $82 (free shipping). They've still got it at that price, too:

http://store.viosoftware.biz/wixphoedoem.html

[AlecWest]

Sacrifice or expand.

If all else fails, I'll follow your advice. While my XP OS is solely devoted to video capturing, my Win98SE OS is used to some extent in my business. And, I can't tell customers to "wait" if I encounter problems during an upgrade. Waiting customers generally go elsewhere (grin). But, the guru-shop I bought the computer from said my motherboard might handle a Celeron chip upgrade from 1.3 to 2.8 ghz. So, I might go that route as well as doubling my RAM to 512 megs. I suspect those two changes might solve any issues.

In any event, the PVR150 is on the way and I'll post my findings once I put it through the paces.

[wxguywa]

I haven't posted any comments on the PVR-150 under the official capture card list, but I can definitely vouch for it's great performance. Lordsmurf is definitely correct that you want a non-OS dedicated hard drive for the sole purpose of capturing. I replaced an older Leadtek capture card with the PVR-150 on a 1.8 Ghz Celeron with XP SP2 and 768 MB of RAM. All the capturing is done on a 160 GB Maxtor drive and I've been very happy with it!

Have fun with your new card!

[junkmalle]

The Hauppauge WinTV PVR150 looks to be a very slightly crippled version of the PVR250. I have the PVR250 and it is nearly bulletproof when it comes to capturing. My computer is much faster than yours (2.8 GHz P4, 512 MB DRAM, two 120+ GB drives) but I have done things like copy multi GB files from one place to another on the same drive, captured to the same drive as the OS, converted videos with VirtualDub, even played 3D games while capturing and NEVER dropped a frame. About the worst that has happened is the audio and video has gotten out of sync in the capture program (it decodes and displays the MPEG data while capturing) but the MPEG file that was saved was perfectly fine.

If you do have any problems you can try using WinTVCap (free):

http://wintvcap.sourceforge.net/

It captures the MPEG without displaying it and uses hardly any CPU cycles.

A web site with lots of useful information and links:

http://www.cask-of-amontillado.com/htpc.html

A program for adjusting the filter settings:

http://www.shspvr.com/download/hcwpp2ut.zip

By the way: when I capture using Hauppauge's WinTV2000 program I find CPU usage to be about 40 percent. When capturing with WinTVCap at similar settings CPU usage is 2 to 3 percent.

[lordsmurf]

If you need the value of two computer, buy an extra computer. Use a switch box on the monitor.

[AlecWest]

The Hauppauge WinTV PVR150 looks to be a very slightly crippled version of the PVR250.

That's the same impression I came to. The 250 has a hardware VCD encoder and supports a few 3rd party apps while the 150 does neither ... though the 150 does capture in MPEG1 as well as MPEG2.

Thanks for the links. I sent an email to KevinKiller, asking him if WinTVCap is copasetic with the PVR150. I'll definitely use it if I need to. But, I will prepare my computer for the job beforehand.

I've done an analysis of my current hard disk usage. Most of what I have on my Win98SE drive is archival stuff ... documents, etc. The rest is used by a few older programs I've become "comfortable" using ... some of which may not have driver support under XP. At this point, I don't want to rock the boat and plan to keep Win98SE as my primary OS ... for the moment, anyway. But, I have decided to put my archival stuff where it belongs ... on CDs. After I'm finished, I should only be using 10 gigs out of 40 on that drive.

I've ordered Partition Magic 8 ... and, I'll be partitioning my current Win98SE drive in half ... 20 gigs for Win98SE, 20 gigs for WinXP Home - and XP will be used only for running video-related programs. My 2nd 40 gig hard drive will be blank, NFTS-ready, and used for capture only. And, both hard drives have DMA enabled.

That's about all I can do to ensure the best capture possible and I hope it's enough. I'll know for sure in a week or two. When the card comes, I'll put it through the paces. Wish me luck.

[junkmalle]

With the WinTV PVR cards you don't need to worry about capturing to your OS partition. They use so little drive bandwidth it's a non-issue. Editing, converting, and DVD mastering can go faster with your data on separate partitions though.

[AlecWest]

If you do have any problems you can try using WinTVCap (free):

http://wintvcap.sourceforge.net/

I must have caught KevinKiller at a good time. He responded to my email almost immediately. This is what he said:

Since I don't own a PVR-150 I don't know how to update WinTvCap to support it. If you can get it working in GraphEdit and send me a picture of the graph it wouldn't be to much trouble to get it working in WinTvCap.

I'm assuming GraphEdit is part of his program. Let me know if he means something else.

[lordsmurf]

I've ordered Partition Magic 8 ... and, I'll be partitioning my current Win98SE drive in half ... 20 gigs for Win98SE, 20 gigs for WinXP Home - and XP will be used only for running video-related programs. My 2nd 40 gig hard drive will be blank, NFTS-ready, and used for capture only. And, both hard drives have DMA enabled.

That's about all I can do to ensure the best capture possible and I hope it's enough. I'll know for sure in a week or two. When the card comes, I'll put it through the paces. Wish me luck.

Sounds like a good solution.
Good luck in getting the dual-boot setup perfect.

[lordsmurf]

With the WinTV PVR cards you don't need to worry about capturing to your OS partition. They use so little drive bandwidth it's a non-issue. Editing, converting, and DVD mastering can go faster with your data on separate partitions though.

Software cards drop frames with HDD interference.
Hardware cards crash the system or freeze up. Not fun.

[junkmalle]

With the WinTV PVR cards you don't need to worry about capturing to your OS partition. They use so little drive bandwidth it's a non-issue. Editing, converting, and DVD mastering can go faster with your data on separate partitions though.

Software cards drop frames with HDD interference.
Hardware cards crash the system or freeze up. Not fun.

My PVR250 has never crashed the system or frozen up regardless of what I do while capturing or where I capture to.

[AlecWest]

I've ordered Partition Magic 8 ... and, I'll be partitioning my current Win98SE drive in half ... 20 gigs for Win98SE, 20 gigs for WinXP Home - and XP will be used only for running video-related programs. My 2nd 40 gig hard drive will be blank, NFTS-ready, and used for capture only. And, both hard drives have DMA enabled.

That's about all I can do to ensure the best capture possible and I hope it's enough. I'll know for sure in a week or two. When the card comes, I'll put it through the paces. Wish me luck.

Sounds like a good solution.
Good luck in getting the dual-boot setup perfect.

Thanks. I may need luck (grin). I've partitioned hard drives before ... but never with FAT32 on one partition and NFTS on the other. Yes, I will do a backup first, hehe.

[junkmalle]

With the WinTV PVR cards you don't need to worry about capturing to your OS partition. They use so little drive bandwidth it's a non-issue. Editing, converting, and DVD mastering can go faster with your data on separate partitions though.

Software cards drop frames with HDD interference.
Hardware cards crash the system or freeze up. Not fun.

My PVR250 has never crashed the system or frozen up regardless of what I do while capturing or where I capture to.

I was able to get the PVR250 to drop frames today! I ran chkdsk, defrag, a big file copy, WinTV2000, and a webcam based game all at the same time on the same drive! The WinTV2000 app got out of A/V sync while capturing and produced an MPEG file that had frozen frames (it seems to duplicate the last frame until it "catches up"). It continued running though. I think the dropped frames were caused by the game popping a system modal dialog box up on the screen because of an internal error. Once I shut the game down the WinTV2000 capture went back to normal. The resulting MEPG file's audio remained in sync.

[AlecWest]

FWIW, here's a basic comparison between the PVR150 and PVR250:

[AlecWest]

Good luck in getting the dual-boot setup perfect.

Lately, I've been having so much luck it's scary (grin). Partition Magic 8 worked like a charm. My setup is now:

C:\ - Win98SE, about 20 gigs, FAT32 (drive 1)
D:\ - WinXP Home Edition, about 20 gigs, NTFS (drive 1)
E:\ - blank 40 gig, NTFS (drive 2)
F:\ - DVD writer
G:\ - CD-ROM

That's under WinXP. Under Win98SE, drives D and E aren't recognized (which makes sense) ... and the DVD writer shows up as D, with the CD-ROM as E.

Burned 2 test DVDs successfully ... sound in sync, no audio/video artifacts. But, am still waiting for the PVR150. In theory, it was supposed to arrive yesterday. But, I elected free "budget" shipping (ahem) ... meaning, the Post Office. Instead of sending it direct to Portland from California, the Post Office sent it to a sort center in Kent, Washington (?) ... where it just left yesterday. At least I can track it.

[lordsmurf]

You may still run into issues if the video "drive" is in fact merely a partition. Partitions do not fix the issue.

Separate physical drives are needed.

[AlecWest]

You may still run into issues if the video "drive" is in fact merely a partition. Partitions do not fix the issue.

Separate physical drives are needed.

No ... the capture drive is drive E. The capture software (and OS) are on drive D. And, E and D are separate "physical" drives. My original drive C was just cut in two ... half Win98SE (C), half XP (D) ... and my OS/programs are all on the original drive, leaving drive E blank.

[AlecWest]

FWIW, my partitioned hard drive has been working fine continuously now for almost a month. And, my Hauppauge PVR-150 capture device is firing on all thrusters, capturing full-D1 flawlessly from cable and VCR at the "DVD Standard Play" rate (8mbps). Heck, that's a better rate than the DVDs I burn.

I did have one bitch about the PVR-150, though. If you look at most places selling the card, they tell you it's compatible with 98SE/NT/2000/XP. And the manual that comes with it has installation instructions for all OS environments.

B U T .....

The installation CD that came in the box is only for 2000/XP systems. Not that it matters much since I'd always planned on using it exclusively on my XP partition. But a call to their tech support told me that they no longer support 98SE setups ... meaning that unless I disable the hardware profiles (since I have no drivers to load on the 98SE partition), that darned "Found New Hardware" window will pop up every time I boot to 98SE (grumble).

[junkmalle]

AlecWest, good to hear your PVR-150 is working well. You might find this interesting although I don't know if it will work on the 150:

At Amontillado's site there's a registry hack for the PVR-350 that lets you turn off decoding of the MPEG stream on the PC (the 350 has it's own hardware decoder and TV out so you can monitor via a connected TV). This hack works for the 250 too. I can now record with WinTV2000 with only 3 percent CPU usage! Of course, the WinTV2000 window is just black since the app is no longer decoding the MPEG stream and displaying it. But that's usually not a problem for me. I hate it when I forget to turn the speakers off and a timed recording wakes me up in the middle of the night!