Home made Tivo

[flaninacupboard]

VCDforme,
the black borders you mention are related to overscan. the TV-out chipset i have has to scan options, big and small. small gives me borders, and big spills things off the screen. this is because my TV is overscanning the picture (i.e. making it too big) I don't believe the X card would be any better. and video device suffers from the overscan issue. if you watch "Blade Runner" on your computer, you will see black bars on the left and right of your screen. play it on your TV and you won't see them, because of your TV's overscan.
As for not playing AVI, it's designed to play Divx and MPEG, so it does play at least -some- AVIs, but the codecs you use may be restricted.

[The village idiot]

Well, my HD card came in, and it is a huge sucker. The little case that I bought wasn't really designed properly! The opening for the PCI cards was too small! After several hours, I finally ended up cutting the case so that the card would fit. And I'm glad I did not buy a floppy. The myHD card and the floppy can not co-exist! Hopefully tonight I will be able to get the software installed.

[The village idiot]

Crash, crash, crash! Go into Bios, reset PCI configuration, save/exit. Boot, install again, and the damn thing is working. Even the remote.

[mikewg]

Just by a TiVo... not all the work, works out to be cheaper, and it's a MUCH better product. I'll skimp on a lot of things in life, but my TiVo is the one thing I wouldn't want to live without.

[PlaiBoi]

You cant play a DVD/VCD with TiVO. You can't watch DivX files with TiVO. You cant do alot of things with a TiVO. TiVO is ONLY a PVR. What most people build here is like a whole media center. Plays DVD/VCD/DivX (And all other audio/video formats, since its a comp), some add a cd burning capabilities as well as the PVR function. Plus, its alot funner to build it yourself than to buy it.

[The village idiot]

And, in my case, Tivo doesn't do broadcast HDTV! And so far, very little work has been done to get it to work! Not too much more money either. So it doesn't record things automatically. I know how to program a VCR like device, so I still won't miss what I want! If Tivo had a non-subscription version, then maybe I would have one. Until then, we are stuck with making them.

[The village idiot]

Tried some capturing last night. The VIA board did everything I expected it to do. It crashed almost everytime I hit the record button. Now begins the screwing around part. The myHD does not like the win2000 IRQ sharing at all! I was afraid of this.

[jman908]

Just wondering, is the VIA EPIA 800 any good?
I am on a very limited budget and if this board can do an okay job at playing video files, maybe capturing and possibly burning cds (not counting on that last bit), then I'm in! Also, has anyone seen this case? At $58 I can't lose!
*reads fine print*
Well, then again, for another $35 i can get a 9000.
Hmm...

[vhelp]

evening guys...

the villiage,
I see you profile as Windows 2000.. have you tried a lower version OS
for your capturing tests ie, Windows 98 yet ??

W2K (AFAIK) requires or eats up a lot of system resources. Where'as,
W98 does not. Maybe bumping down to a lower and less intensive OS
will help here.

Keep trying though.. there's always a need for beta testers he he..
-vhelp

[flaninacupboard]

jman908, i have the epia 800and to answer your questions, yes it's good, yes it's good at playing back files (but not really displaying them, the M series has much better TV-Out, but if you are using the VGA out, i.e. data projector, plasma, tft monitor, dlp etc, then it's fine) of divx and mpeg 1/2 to dvd spec. as for captyuring... i could use huffyuv at 352X576, but no higher, so full D1 capping is out. burning cds is a piece of pi*s, as is burning dvds. i use the machine (tucked under the telly) for plonking in a dvd ripping reauthoring and burning, so i can still use this machine for other stuff, i also use it to watch things i download, tv shows or divx movies. the only thing i don't use it for is encoding, but that's hardly a problem, i just point this machine to the epia's hard drive over the network and sort out cce settings, go to bed, and tell the epia to author and burn in the morning. i sometimes use it for showshifting as well. quicker to open showshifter and hit record than it is to find a blank tape.....

[The village idiot]

The M9000 is a very good board. Sound is good, video (& s-video) out is very good. Seems to play files fairly well. Just the same old VIA capture blues though. Should have no problem burning CD's, and should have no problem burning DVD's, as long as the files are already encoded. I'll still fight with the capture part for a while. I think it will work OK with HDTV recordings, since those are really just a transfer of the stream from the tuner to the hard drive. But for analog captures, so far, it and or the app with the myHD card suck!!! To bad too, the card displays a really good looking picture on the computer monitor. Much better quality than other cards I've seen or tried. I'll have to try some of the other WDM capture apps, and see if they might work. For now, the capture audio is the problem. It is several seconds out of sync. As well as some other issues. I'll try the HDTV part soon. If not, I'll have a massively overkill set top tuner for HD.

[vhelp]

The village idiot,

you could also check out the VFW driver instead, if you're able to change
OS to W98, and/or in addition to, if you have a wintv go card, together,
may work as good, or better, or not.

I think that maybe bumping down a few notches is probably the best way
to go ie,
* OS
* to VFW
* to wintv go cap card

That's my opinion though, and I think it's worth a shot anyways, if you have
the wintv do capture card. would be interesting to know though.
-vhelp

[PlaiBoi]

Have you considered using the software Showshifter? It captures, plays, etc.

[The village idiot]

I was hoping that the supplied software would work. It is a nice looking app. And comes with a nice remote control. But I think the analog capture is an after thought for the MyHD card. Its basic purpose is for HDTV, and it just happens to be able to tune the analog channels to. So they threw in capture for the analog, and didn't really optimise it. I will be trying the showshifter software, as well as Amcap, and a few others.

The MyHD card has a Philips tuner on it, and it looks really good. Even looks good with weak signals. I haven't tried the HDTV part yet, been too lazy to get an antenna and hook it up. I think that part will work fine. I have another box, built with a Pinnacle Bungee and shuttle FV-24 that will work for general purpose analog recording. The Bungee may be a piece of junk, but it does work well for a VCR. As long as you don't try to do anything else with that computer, you are in good shape. I'm working on mounting it in an old VHS VCR case. So it will have the look of a traditional VCR, if not the feel. Maybe I'll buy a remote for it too.

[lusid]

flaninacupboard,

Can you capture full D1 if you use mjpeg in showshifter?

I can do 704x480 recordings in mjpeg on my PIII-850 showshifter box, and cpu utilization stays under 40%.

Someone mentioned no overscan on the radeons, but they will do it, you just have to enable it with a radeon tweaker.

[The village idiot]

The MyHD card does not work with show shifter. Nor does it work with virtual VCR.

[dcsos]

W2K (AFAIK) requires or eats up a lot of system resources.
REQUIRES: YES
but once your over the hump...you're much better off.

After capturing one program on WIN98 your system resourses often dip below 75%. The only way to restore system resources is to reboot.
Not necessary in 2k as after exhaustive capturing and rendering chores, the system still has all its resources over 90%..no reboot necessary to continue!

[eagle17]

Village Idiot

Have you talked to cliff over at avsforums? I believe he is the point-man for the Myhdtv product. ... also looks like kei's shop is selling them too. @
http://www.digitalconnection.com

also could you post the link to Idot or pm it to me ... thnks.

[The village idiot]

http://www.idot.com

You might want to consider waiting to buy one until the new boards come out. Check the mini-itx site for updates on that product. I sent cinefx an email last night (where I bought it) and will see what they have to say. The M9000 is a really good "basic" PC. As well as a multimedia player. Streaming media to your TV should look great from this box. And if you buy the right HDTV TV set, you could use the VGA to connect to it.

Keep in mind..... This CPU is a LOW power device, it will not compete in speed tests to an equivilant P3. But the new CPU will be able to work as SMP. How about a multi CPU HTPC? :P

An OS that uses NTFS is almost required, since HDTV is 8+GB an hour. I'm sure the software will split the file, but that often sucks.

BTW cinefx bent over backward to get my card to me, so they should get a link too. http://www.cinefx.com I just hope that tech. support is as good as sales support.

Maybe someone should contact those 2 places about buying some ad space on the site?

[The village idiot]

Tech support from cinefx is pretty good so far. Here is the reply I got:

I am forwarding this message to engineering to see if there is a solution. We are getting the same problem when capturing NTSC to AVI. We had no problems "recording" the transport stream with HDTV and it plays back great.

[PlaiBoi]

That idot.com looks pretty good, except they dont offer a TV-Tuner, so you'd have to add that yourself. Otherwise, seems pretty good.

[PlaiBoi]

Has anyone used one of these before, http://www.shuttleonline.com/product_mini.asp. They look pretty good and are based on Intel chipsets. Anyone used one? Any good? How do these compare to the VIA Epia series?

[jman908]

Well, I put my order in at Big008. Here's what's in it:

• VIA EPIA 800 Motherboard
  Cubid 2677R case (black, to go with my AV setup)
  128 megs of PC133 SDRAM
  External 48x12x48 CD-RW drive ($80 after rebates at Circuit City)
  Cheap ~20GB hard drive (can anyone help me find one?)

Maybe I'll shell out for an ATI TV Wonder VE later.
Does it look okay so far?

[PlaiBoi]

Not gonna be playing DVD's?

[jman908]

PlaiBoi: Naw, I'm gonna use it in my living room, which already has a DVD player in it.

THIS JUST IN: CC was out of the CDRW drive above, found another for the same price.

[PlaiBoi]

why an external cd-rw drive? you can get an internal one for cheaper.