Hardware mpeg-2 capture card

[cd090580]

Hi,

I'd like to know if it exist some mpeg-2 harware capture card (preferably with TV Tuner embedded) which can work on an old PII processor and that can capture at 720*576.

All the cards I've seen work only for PIII 500 and higher (maybe they need sse to work).

Thanks

[edDV]

Many choices, see list in link. The Hauppauge WinTV PVR-250 is the best trusted default. The PVR-150 is new but currently has problems. Buyer beware until all the fixes are released.

http://snapstream.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/snapstream.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=47

Edit: That list is for USA, most of the manufacturers will also have models for Europe.

[mats.hogberg]

PVR250. The factory capture app also displays on screen, and this takes some processor, but there's a 3rd party capture app that captures to mpeg without displaying anything.

/Mats

[lordsmurf]

I think Hauppauge cards also need minimum PIII. You need to spend money on a new computer. That relic you have is far too old, from 1997 or so.

[cd090580]

All the cards listed in your link need at least a PIII 450

Does a hardware capture card need SSE to work ?

[edDV]

For a PII you would need to go back in time to a card from that era. It won't work very well by compaison to modern cards. Old Optibase cards may be available on Ebay. They cost thousands back in the day.

Why not try a standalone DVD recorder with tuner? They are cheap and would get the job done.

Edit: Here you go, team this with an old tuner. Must use win 95 or NT4 or or Windows 2000
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=86700&item=5167061221&rd=1&ssPageName=WDVW

[Panash]

Doesn't the Hauppauge PVR-350 have hardware assisted playback?

PN

[edDV]

Doesn't the Hauppauge PVR-350 have hardware assisted playback?

PN

Yes it does, so does the PVR-150 and PVR-250.

[The_Doman]

Doesn't the Hauppauge PVR-350 have hardware assisted playback?

PN

Yes it does, so does the PVR-150 and PVR-250.

Not correct!
The PVR-150 and PVR-250 have NO hardware playback function!!.
Only the PVR-350 has it.

[edDV]

Sorry, I didn't catch "playback". Read it as capture.

One interesting aspect of the PVR-350 during playback. The hardware MPeg decoder works only for interlaced video paths from HDD to the external TV outputs.

The deinterlaced playback window on the computer display is done in software and does consume CPU cycles. There is no real hardware support for deinterlaced computer display from this card.

[trossin]

The biggest question is your OS not your processor speed. If you are not using windows XP the 2 or 4 Gbyte file size limit will drive you insane. You can always give it a try and see if it works. If it does not you will have not wasted your money as a new computer will not come with hardware MPEG2 compression unless you give lots of money to HP for a media center type machine.

I use a PVR-250 on a 0.6 GHz PIII and have plenty of performance left over. Also, while recording, if you hit pause, it keeps recording but stops displaying the video in the window which frees up tons of processor cycles.

I would guess that it would work fine with a slow processor in pause mode as all that has to happen is copy buffer from the card to DRAM then copy DRAM buffer to hard disk. Not much thought involved and if you do the math you will see that the Mbytes/sec is pretty damn slow. For example, 4.7G byte DVD that plays for 2 hours would require:

4700Mbytes/2hours/60minutes/60secnds or 0.652 Mbytes/sec

You could use programmed I/O mode for such a slow rate!

[edDV]

Using a PII for this makes an interesting science project or history lesson, but has little contemporary usage value other than as a dedicated MPeg2 encoding black box.

[SHS]

edDV that not ture
I have setup PVR 250 on a low end PII 233 MMX with 256MB runing Win2000 Pro with SageTV but things is that the PVR 250 only dose Hardware encoding so there for you need some Hardware decoder card on a low end system this where REALmagic Xcard, Netstream 2000, 2000TV or 4000 come in play or PVR 350 but it only has TVout.

You should spent time reading thur this post
http://forums.sage.tv/forums/showthread.php?t=3514&

There also Xcard plug-in for OSD
http://forums.sage.tv/forums/showthread.php?t=9356

[edDV]

hmm, didn't say it couldn't be done. But why?
PIII hardware is free, laying on the side of the road.

[cd090580]

Edit: Here you go, team this with an old tuner. Must use win 95 or NT4 or or Windows 2000
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=86700&item=5167061221&rd=1&ssPageName=WDVW

This card was quite good but it's on an isa slot and I don't have any ISA slot free.

What I would like is to replace my TV card with a TV card + MPEG2 harware encoder wich don't need main cpu power to work.

[Beavis]

PVR250. .....but there's a 3rd party capture app that captures to mpeg without displaying anything.
/Mats

There is???? Could you give me some more info on this app?? I'm very interested in such a thing.

[winifreid]

The 4 gig limit really isn't much of a problem. All the apps I know of will split files into any size you want. I use 98 and have no problem with file size.

[junkmalle]

PVR250. .....but there's a 3rd party capture app that captures to mpeg without displaying anything.
/Mats

There is???? Could you give me some more info on this app?? I'm very interested in such a thing.

You can do the same with Hauppauge's WinTV2000 program. Just change the this registry setting:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Hauppauge\hcwTVWnd]
"TV_Out_PlayLocal"=dword:00000000

Use 1 to display, 0 not to display. When not displaying the video, capture will take almost no CPU cycles -- about 3 percent on my 2.8GHz P4 when capturing at 720x480, 12,000 kbps.

You can also use WinTVCap, a command line capture utility:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/wintvcap/

[mats.hogberg]

Yes, wintvcap was what I meant. There's a graphics front for it too, IIRC.

/Mats

[Beavis]

You can do the same with Hauppauge's WinTV2000 program. Just change the this registry setting: ....

Thanks... will have to give it a try.