choosing a HAUPPAUGE card

[DarrellS]

I was tempted to go down and exchange this card for the Pinnacle HDTV PCI card since it advertised QAM from an extended basic cable connection without having to use a digital cable box but all the reviews I saw said not to buy the card because of crummy picture so I decided to wait. It only cost $69. Oh, and it is supposed to be able to capture to mpeg1, mpeg2 and DivX which I was looking for.

I bought an antenna last night that picks up a few digital channels but only two or three come in decent enough to watch or record from. I also found a program called TsRemux that will convert the MPEG-2 Program Stream to a M2TS or TS file which might be able to be converted to a file you can edit with Soopafresh's enc2mpeg2_AVCHD program. I'll have to test it to see if it works with these files. Nothing else free seems to be able to handle them.

[jagabo]

It was only US$25 so I recently bought a Hauppauge PVR-1250. It has an s-video input , an NTSC tuner (broadcast and cable), an ATSC tuner, and a QAM tuner. I haven't tried the ATSC tuner but all the others work. I can record clear QAM SD and HD as MPG (basically a stream download). Analog capture seems to be limited in bitrate (MPG). I haven't figured out how to get different bitrates like my older PVR-250.

[DarrellS]

What kind of cable connection do you have to get QAM?

[jagabo]

What kind of cable connection do you have to get QAM?

Cox digital cable via the usual cable coax. But the clear QAM stations come in with only an analog subscription. Be sure there isn't a filter where cable enters your house.

[DarrellS]

I was checking out a website trying to get some ideas and decided to connect the cable back into the amplified antenna that I bought last night (I already have an amplified splitter for cable internet and my old AIW card) and ran another scan and it found a ton of QAM channels. All I can figure is that the WinTV software kept freezing up when I was trying to scan for channels or there was another program running in the background that was froze up. It doesn't matter if I can only pick up a handfull of OTA digital channels now with all the QAM channels.

Now I need to find a free and easy solution for editing the Program Streams.

BTW, I'm running COX Extended Basic Cable in the Phoenix area.

[DarrellS]

Found a better software than TsRemux to convert the Program Streams. Mpg2Cut2 does a better job of converting to a usable file and you can save parts of the capture instead of just the whole clip. TsRemux seems to make corrupt files that most of my editors can't understand. The TsRemuxed files play OK in Media Player 11 or PowerDVD7 but won't edit. The Mpg2Cut2 files play in Media Player Classic and I can open them in Virtualdub.

VideoRedo is a $75 payware option but it seems to downconvert the files to DVD 740x480.

I bought a signal switch to connect both OTA and Cable QAM to the same digital input. I tried just using a 2 into 1 splitter but it would not work with both signals going into the input at once. That makes it a PATA having to switch the signals manually. Would be better off with two digital inputs on the card instead of FM radio or even better yet if it acted like a Philips HDTV QAM tuner and put the QAM stations in the right place and showed the correct TV guide with the QAM channels listed.

[jagabo]

I had forgotten about Mpg2Cut2. I downloaded the program several years ago for some reason so I downloaded a more current version and tried it out. It does make the files from the HVR-1250 more user friendly. Thanks for bringing it up!

[DarrellS]

Reinstalled XP and having problems with Mpeg2Cut2 and Virtualdub now but found another program called ProjectX that fixes the Program Streams. It was kinda hard to figure out what to do since the help file was empty. Click Quick Start and it demuxes M2V and AC3 by default or you can click Prepare and choose to TS which Virtualdub will also open and click Quick Start.