ASUS TV Tuner questions

[Ufit]

Hi every1!

I have a few questions about ASUS TV Tuner card.
First I don't know anything about available adjustment
options for this tuner.
Is there sharpness correction and good color controls?
What about image - is it acceptable, has any banding
lines, or artifacts?
Furthermore, how is compatibility and driver?
Does it work with VirtualDub and Nandub.

I have quite good system
P4 3Ghz 1Gb DDR333 TI4200 Cheetach 14K.3/336753LC SCSI-U320
and I am considerind to get ASUS 880 TV Tuner and use it
as a combined powerfull Mpeg2-encoding machine.

I dont like current hardware encoders on the market because they use chips that are not flexible and limited by hardware f.ex. chip StreamMachines SM2210 uses max output res 704x480(NTSC) - why not 720x480 - results in aspect ratio change.

Thanks for advices.

[TheMoviezMan]

well for your system specs you should not have any issues encoding, however u have to keep in mind the capabilies of the card, my suggestion will be to research the market a bit more, there are a couple of solutions out there very flexible and some of them have a encoding and decoding engines built in, check at the hauppauge page and look for the model 250 and 350, the 250, this r the specs for the 250:

MPEG record specifications:

MPEG1 recording at 1150K bits/sec (Video CD data rate)
MPEG2 record datarates:
2MBit/sec, 4MBit/sec, 6Mbit/sec, 8Mbit/sec, 12Mbit/sec.
Selections for DVD Standard play (8MBitsec), DVD Long Play (4MBit/sec) and DVD Extra Long Play (2MBit/sec)
NTSC format* at 29.97fps: Full D1: 720x480, MPEG1: 352x240
PAL format* at 25fps: Full D1: 720x576, MPEG1: 352x288
Audio capture formats: 32/44.1/48 KHz, 16bit stereo, 192/224/384Kbits/sec
Chroma sampling: YUV 4:2:0
Video file format: .MPG
MPEG file tested compatible with: MediaStudio 6.0, MyDVD and DVD MovieFactory DVD authoring applications


and these r for the 350

WinTV-PVR-350 uses a highly integrated MPEG-1/2 encoder, compressing your videos while you watch TV on your PC screen. It also has a built-in hardware MPEG decoder with video output, so you can play back your recorded TV shows or home videos on an external TV set or video monitor.

WinTV-PVR-350 can record live television or video from a VCR or camcorder, using as little as 1 GB of hard disk space per hour. Schedule your TV recordings with WinTV-Scheduler, and then edit them with the WinTV-Editor. With the included Ulead DVD MovieFactory, you can also create Video CD's, S-VCD’s or DVD’s. Play your recordings on your home DVD player!

WinTV-PVR-350 also includes a hardware MPEG2 decoder and an S-Video output, so you can watch your recorded TV shows or home videos on your large screen video monitor or TV set!

With WinTV-PVR-350 you can:


Watch TV in a resizeable window (or full screen) on your PC screen. While watching TV, you can surf the net, answer e-mail or do any other PC function.
Record your home videos or TV shows to disk using high quality MPEG compression. Create MPEG movies at datarates up to 12 MBits per second, or make VCD or SVCD compatible movies. You typically use 2 Gigabytes of hard disk per hour of recorded video.
Play your recorded TV shows, or your edited home videos, from your PCs hard disk out to a TV set. Both SVideo and Composite outputs are included.
Pause your TV shows with instant replay, fast forward and rewind.
Schedule your TV recording with WinTV-Scheduler.
Create MPEG movies with data rates from 1 to 12 MBits/sec.
Capture high quality still video images from live or recorded video, up to 1600x1200 pixels in BMP, TIF, and JPEG formats.

WinTV-PVR-350 has these great features:

125 channel cable ready TV tuner for TV in a window (or full screen), plus composite/s-video and audio inputs to connect to VCR or camcorders. Surf the net while you watch TV on your PC screen!
Hardware MPEG-2 video and audio encoder, so you only need from 1-2 Gigabytes of disk space per hour of recorded video. While recording, the WinTV-PVRs' hardware MPEG encoder does all the work, so your PC continues to run at full speed!
Hardware MPEG2 decoder, so you can watch your recorded TV shows, or your edited home videos, on your TV set!
Turn your home video tapes into MPEG movies, then burn them onto CD or DVD!
Pause live TV shows with instant replay, fast forward and rewind. Includes new function remote control.
dbx-TV stereo decoder (Nicam stereo on PAL models), for great TV sound.
WinTV-Scheduler, so you can schedule your TV recordings on a daily, weekly or once only schedule.
WinTV-Editor, so you can cut and trim your videos without losing video quality!
UleadAE DVD MovieFactory99, so you can author and burn Video CD’s, S-VCD’s or DVD’s. Play them on your home DVD* player!

[Ufit]

OK. WinTV-PVR-350 sounds pretty reasonable but there are some
more questions . I like functionality and lots of abilities described earlier
but despite that I'd like to know how this product works.
Can I use it in Vdub. PVR 350 specs say it can capture full D1 780x480
so I wonder how good the image quality is at that res.
Anyway, I want to compress Mpeg2 file to divx avi and when the movie is
little blurry or unsharp it's gonna look pretty ugly after processing.
Does this card provide good controll over sharpness and color levels?
What did you thet it with and how buggy is the soft and driver?

Thanks

[TheMoviezMan]

it has blurr, sharpness, hue, all kinds of controls, remote control, and the drivers for me was a breeze, no problem, class 1 tech support and playback wise is great, just in case if u have heard from the new OS called Xp media center edition, this is the only video card that has been given the digital signing from microsoft for that mentioned OS, for more details go to

www.hauppauge.com
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/mediacenter/

[Ufit]

I heard there is a demo version of WinTV PVR-350.
How do I know if I bought demo or final board. Is it out yet?
If it's not then when it's gonna appear for sale.
Concluding from reviews this card has a lot of problems and bug issues.
Maybe it's better to buy PVR-250 since is $100 less.
After all PVR-350 looks quite powerfull.
I think I will buy it for test and return if crappy.