Can I record with something besides Windows Media Centre??

[guy24s]

Hello,

I have an old 2006 Dell computer that has a TV tuner card in it. With that I'm able to view my cable stations on the computer and record shows in Windows Media Centre. The problem is, the recordings in Media Centre look awful and after they are converted to MPG and authored to DVDs the quality goes beyond awful. Just really poor pixely resolution. I am positive even an old tuner card like this should be able to capture better looking quality than this. Somehow I think the problem is related to Windows Media Centre, so I wanted to try some other software to record with. But what software would be compatible with my tuner card? All info I have on it is what Dell's diagnostics are telling me:
"HJ399 1 GUIDE, SAFETY, TUNER, Television, TVT2DT, LEAD FREE"
Any idea what tuner card this is and what software would be (or MIGHT be) compatible with it?
Any suggestions are welcome.

[usually_quiet]

I can't say which tuner you have, but there are other PVR programs that can use an MCE-compatible analog tuner. Unfortunately setting them up is often more difficult than setting up Windows Media Center.

Maybe you could tweak a setting to improve your results. Is this PC running Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005? There should be good/better/best (or similar) quality settings somewhere in WMC's setup that control the MPEG-2 encoding for the analog tuner. Check to find out if you are using the "Best" setting. Also are you using a built-in DVD conversion program from Microsoft? If so there may be better options for creating DVDs.

[Edit] I found out a possible identity for your TV tuner card. If you have a Dell XPS 210 it may be an ATI TV Wonder Elite Tuner card, which is a good analog TV card with a Theatre 550 Pro chip, although it is incompatible with any Wondows OS newer than XP. Catalyst Media Center is ATI's provided software for their retail version of that product.

[guy24s]

Thanks for the reply.
I asked Dell, and it's indeed an ATI TVT2 Wonder Elite card. I am however running Windows 7 and it records in the same quality as it did in XP. I've got it set to "Best" and I'm not using the built in DVD authoring program to make the DVDs, I've been manually converting the wtv files to MPG but it still ends up looking horrible.
Would Catalyst Media Center be compatible with my card even though it's an OEM version of the ATI TVT2 Wonder Elite card?

[usually_quiet]

Thanks for the reply.
I asked Dell, and it's indeed an ATI TVT2 Wonder Elite card. I am however running Windows 7 and it records in the same quality as it did in XP. I've got it set to "Best" and I'm not using the built in DVD authoring program to make the DVDs, I've been manually converting the wtv files to MPG but it still ends up looking horrible.
Would Catalyst Media Center be compatible with my card even though it's an OEM version of the ATI TVT2 Wonder Elite card?

I don't know for certain if Catalyst Media Center would work with the OEM version of the card and CMC is not stable if someone is using Windows 7. I have used Calalyst Media Center with an ATI TV Wonder 650, running Windows 7. CMC does allow access to the bitrate settings for the encoder, but the UI is clumsy, and the software quit eorking after a little under a year. I re-installed CMC, but after a while it stopped working again. I finally gave up on it for analog capture. CMC isn't available for download from AMD's website. The only ways to get CMC are from the installation disc bundled with the retail version of specific ATI capture devices or by downloading a multi-part copy of an installation disc for a TV Wonder 600 USB available at DigitalFAQ.

Connections affect quality too. The analog tuner would provide the worst quality, and S-Video would provide the best quality.You could tinker with the card's settings using GraphStudio to find out what kind of quality is possible with the connection that you use, but it is hard to figure out how to build filter graphs on your own. It is late here, so I'll have wait until tomorrow to find some of my posts here that explaining the process.

If you need PVR software NextPVR may work, but it is tricky to set up for analog tuner cards and doesn't work for all of them.

[usually_quiet]

Constructing a filter graph:

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/363840-Extract-closed-captions-from-PVR?p=2317348&v...=1#post2317348

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/344424-best-settings-for-ATI600USB-in-Catalyst-Medi...=1#post2155068

The graph for your device will probably look like the second graph in the second link above because it is supposed to hardware encode. If so, the encoder settings will probably be accessed by left clicking on the MPEG Multiplexer Filter.

[guy24s]

I installed ATI Catalyst Media Center but it failed to setup. I guess it detects that I have a tuner card, but when I let it run the autoscan for stations it finds nothing... hmm.
The GraphStudio stuff seems a bit too complex for me. :/

[usually_quiet]

I installed ATI Catalyst Media Center but it failed to setup. I guess it detects that I have a tuner card, but when I let it run the autoscan for stations it finds nothing... hmm.
The GraphStudio stuff seems a bit too complex for me. :/

It does seem daunting at first, and I'm not suggesting that you use GraphStudio to record TV. I'm suggesting GraphStudio to figure out if it is possible to improve your recordings from that card by tweaking the encoder settings.

I thought maybe you would be better off finding out if improvement is possible before going to the trouble of setting up an analog card with NextPVR. NextPVR allows setting the encoder bitrate for some cards, although I can't say if yours is one of them.

[Edit]ChrisTV's paid versions (Standard and Professional) have a free trial period and ATI Theatre 550 cards are supposed to be supported. The downside is that unlike WMC and NextPVR, there is no program guide to control recordings. Recordings are manually controlled or controlled with timers.

[guy24s]

Thank you for the suggestion about ChrisTV! I'm going to check out the trial.