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Review: Creative Labs Video Blaster - Digital VCR
"Two weeks ago, I dropped by my Local Frys Electronics to pick up the Creative Labs Video Blaster Digital VCR. I picked up the card for the lovely price of $99. I felt at the time that the days of a PVR was upon me. I hooked it up into my modest system and got started right away. My modest system includes:
- Pentium III 1Ghz System
- 512 MB of PC-133 SDRAM
- 1 40 GB 7200 WD Drive, on ATA-66
- 1 60 GB 7200 Maxtor Drive, on ATA-100
- ATI Radeon VE
- LG 24x CD Burner, on ATA-66
- Running Windows XP Pro
Now, at home, I don't subscribe to any digital video services: I get pretty good reception over an old-fashioned antenna. I primarily wanted the card so I could capture my tape collection of Enterprise episodes to MPEG-2, so I could burn VCDs for my DVD player. I also wanted to begin my trek down the PVR road, and eventually do away with VHS forever.
I spent an evening a couple of days ago, playing with settings on screen-size, capture quality and file sizes. One thing I noticed quite quickly is that the Digital VCR system does not encode directly to MPEG-2. Creative sets up many segment files on your system, each in 32mb blocks, to store your recorded shows and timeshifting buffer. It is essentially a filesystem on top of a filesystem. In order to get the MPEG-2 files out of the Digital VCR, you use a 'File Converter' that they provide in the Creative Menu. The results of this setup is that when you setup the system, you specify how long you want to record (19 hours in my case) and it takes up the appropriate harddrive space (45 GB in my case) for use for future recording. The tool works pretty well overall, even going so far as to create new MPG files every 650 MB. The problem with this is that its possible that your recording could be sliced mid-sentence in your show. The other problem though, didn't occur until last night.
I recorded the episode of Enterprise last night, as well as I had some previous shows of 'Friends' in my 'Saved Shows' menu. After watching the episode again, I pulled up the file convert tool to convert Enterprise to MPG, and flipped onto Live TV, so I could watch the news. Then, the unspeakable happened. Digital VCR froze. I tried to kill it from the Task Manager (which worked perfectly well), but to no avail. There was no killing this app at all. This crash spread like a bad flu across the rest of my system and I was forced to hard reboot. Returning to Windows, I brought up the convert tool to start again, this time not to make the mistake of watching television at the same time. There was only one problem: All of the shows recorded in the last 2 days were wiped out. No data on disk, nothing.
In the end, there were very few positive points that I would give to the Digital VCR product: it just doesn't seem ready for primetime. All in all, the issues I found were as follows:
- Jerky on startup
- Processor Intensive during playing (I'd recommend at least a 1.5 Ghz)
- Menu System is slow
- No Linux Drivers
- Instability in proprietary filesystem
- Mpeg Splitting (what about 700mb CDRs or DVDS)
This reminds me of a homeless guy on local radio who rates movies.
He'll rail on a movie, go on about how it sucks and then give it 50 stars (out of 5)
This thing doesn't even really work and it gets 2.5 out of 5? Sounds like 2.5 out of 10 may have been more appropriate.
.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
No legitimate publication would do so, there are many questions of conflicts of interest.
Does this reviewer work for a competiter of Creative Labs? Until that is anwered, nobody should take this review too seriously.
SIG:Slashdot: indymedia for nerds.
Honestly, your average consumer doesn't watch TV on his/her computer (not a whole lot watch DVD's on their machines, either. Especially if they own a DVD player for their TV).
TiVo/replayTV makes life easier for the person that comes home, sits in their couch, and flips on the tube (it gives them something THEY want to watch, regardless of time).
This is why TiVo/replayTV is successful, and "computer digital VCR"'s don't.
Not everything is better if you put it on your computer.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
DishPVR 501 is a $200 upgrade for existing dish users. While I'm holding out for the 701, An additional $100 for aproduct that works doesn't = pricey in my boat.
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
I'll discuss the Windows 9x version, since it is the only version that really worked. The sound had a hissing, broken quality If I used timeshifting feature. It did not record to a known format, but to a special format developed by Asus. An hour at a Tivo-like quality would take over 2GB, which was a problem, because the program wrote only to one file, and the file size was limited to 2GB. I did have fun recording music videos in highest quality and using the included movie editing software to spend several hours turning the proprietary format into mpeg-2, but really, it wasn't worth my time.
I've since bought a TiVo, and it is night-and-day. It was quite easy to add a hard drive for a total of ~34 hours at the highest quality, and the television guide and automatic programming are alone enough to make it much better than any pc recorder without this feature. I only wish it were easy to pull the mpeg-2 streams out of the TiVo and put them on my hard drive.
Get a TiVo!
personal attacks hurt, especially when deserved
This looks like a good product but I think I will wait a bit on it. The product in almost the same category (almost because it's also a video card) is the ATI Radeon 7500 All-In-Wonder card. It's 200 bucks and has pretty much the same features, my favorite is the wireless (non-IR) remote. It's 200 bucks but I needed a vid card upgrade so it worked out well.
Here's the review for the 7500: http://www6.tomshardware.com/graphic/02q1/020122/
Another card that have been around for a long time is the ATI TV tuner (I have had two version of this) and it's always worked really well, just lately they have introduced the scheduled recording to compete with the TiVo, et al...
I recently lost the last of my respect for Creative Labs after I tried to install a "Sound Blaster Live" on my new system. Not only could I not get the thing working, but their lame "driver setup tool" (which is apparently the only way to get the drivers) wouldn't even run without crashing or failing horribly. Back in the day, they used to be the main players in the sound card business, but lately it seems like their driver support capabilities haven't evolved since the days of DOS. Even if I had gotten it installed, I probably would have been plagued by the skipping and popping that seems to be characteristic of every new Creative Labs product. Honestly, I'm not surprised at the negative review.
...and immediately reported a rather signifigant bug in thier file exporter, they still have yet to fix it. The exporter allows you to specify a split size in the options (0==no split), however all sizes above 2GB appear to have an overflow into the sign bit error. This includes thier own DVD-RAM setting (5.2GB). The only driver release since the originals (for Win2k atleast) was to add a digital signature. Another glitch is the occasional too-jumpy-to-watch picture. And it's not consistant enough to blame one thing easily. The startup delay is also extremely long, to the point that I often question if the double click registered.
While the card does have some impressive upsides, don't expect to be able to convert the outputted MPEG2 files, I have yet to successfully convert one to Divx. I did get one to VCD after using TMPEG, MPEGcorrector, and Nero. In the feedback on VCDHELP.com there is some posts in the feedback of what people have gone through to get the files converted. Typically this involves splitting, then remerging the files.
My result? The third tuner card in a row w/o any support and a signifigant need for it. (previously I had an STB and 3DFX card that were bought only months before thier demise)
If you think education is expensive, you should try ignorance -- Derek Bok, president of Harvard
I spent a few years and well over a thousand dollars struggling with this same problem. I finally realized that analog video capture simply does not work.
A key issue with many boards is bandwidth. The general idea is that one hooks the RCA / S-video outputs of your VCR/TV/Camera into the computer, and it does the rest. The problem, for many boards (I don't know about this Creative setup specifically - although it seems to be taxing on the processor, if nothing else) is that this conversion either (a) if done well, takes an enormous amount of resources, or (b) must be done poorly.
The other big problem, and one which seems to be the case here, is compression. For some reason I have never encountered an analog capture board that saves its video in consolidated, lossless files. For my personal work, small, compressed 320x240 files simply do not cut it.
The best way I've found to turn you computer into a digital VCR is to purchase a digital video camera with RCA / S-video inputs. Record your source to the camera and then send it via firewire to your computer. The incoming signal is entirely digital - all your computer has to do is save it to disk. As far as file format goes, there exists a standard DV format (for Windows, at least) that allows lossless compression without the file shenanigans of this Creative board (and most others).
Just my 2 cents.
I have a plain Hauppauge Bt848 card. With vcr or mp1e, combined with cron, I record TV programs regularly even with DivX encoding. mp1e doesn't do DivX, but gives you the advantage of being able to play the mpeg while recording it, so you can pause, rewind and fast forward TV...sweet.
Am I a hipster-doofus?
--start--
I bought a Hauppauge WIN-TV PVR (PCI) card for video capture. It has a hardware MPEG-2 encoder with many settings for quality from 2mb/sec to the ridiculously high 12mb/sec with the option of constant or variable bitrate.
After testing I settled on 4mbit/sec VBR which looks great - sometimes it's easy to forget I'm not watching a live broadcast. Importantly it also has a "pause" feature just like a commercial PVR which is great for dealing with the amount of calls I get from clients at all hours. Output to the TV is via S-VHS from an old GeForce 1 card that has TV-out built in. Initially I wanted to use the MPEG decoder card from my DVD kit for output but after testing, the output from the geforce is so close in quality I just use it, plus then I get to use the PC even while it's recording (the hardware encoder means no dropped frames ever).
The box is just a celeron 900 with a half gig of ram running win2k - there is a linux driver available for the Hauppauge on sourceforge but the PC is part of my render farm (I'm a 3D animator by trade) and 3dsmax only runs on windows (for now).
The software that ships with the Hauppauge is, well, shitty. It works fine but the interface sucks, especially when you've used showshifter (www.showshifter.com) though from reading showshifter's forums apparently it will soon support the WintTV PVR board. In the meantime I have simply "frontended" the Hauppage software using scripting in Automate from Unisyn. I've bound all the major features to the cute rubber buttons on the internet keyboard on my coffee table and I've even been able to do things like have the scroll-lock light flash when recording (for when we're not watching TV via the PC). For scheduling I go to the Aussie TV guide at sofcom.com.au to pick out my weeks viewing - the lounge box has winvnc on it so I can program it from my office or even start recording if I see something good and don't have time to run out to the lounge. I use PowerDVD for mpeg playback, mainly cause you can fast forward and rewind using the scroll wheel on the mouse - trez chic
For the future I just ordered a Redrat2 IR controller from www.redrat.co.uk to give the box control over my satellite decoder, and I plan to add functionality like being able to email the box to program it etc.
--end--
Well it's been nearly five months now since I set up my PVR system, a good indication of how it's going is that about two months ago I finally took my VCR out of the TV cabinet and replaced it with the PC. Still using 4mb/sec CBR D1 Pal to record, the end result is indistinguishable from 'live' TV.
My viewing habits have changed; every Sunday I go through the online TV guide and update my record-list (late night shows like Enterprise tend to run at different times some weeks - not that I've been able to sit through a single episode of it yet.), and I almost never watch live TV anymore. Every time I check the /record fileshare there's something new to watch, sometimes I'll hit the weekend and have a week's worth of stuff to sift through at my leasure (mainly simpsons - they show it a LOT here in .au)
I stopped using PowerDVD for playback as for day to day use there were some rough edges that caused annoyance, and reverted to using media player version 6 (I dislike version 7 intensely). A simple alt-enter and it goes full screen, and the spacebar pauses. I've also gotten very good at gaugeing the length of commercial breaks - the show I'm watching goes to commercial I alt enter to get the playback bar and click where I think the break's gonna end - most times these days I'm bang on :-)
The RedRat controller is great, I've yet to find a remote it can't learn, and it's liberating being able to code my own IR app. I'm off VHS for good, no more crappy tapes for me! I've used the Hauppauge to make high quality (6mb/sec) archives of precious VHS tapes such as a friend's wedding and a ten year old recording of a family xmas which had footage of our great grandfather enjoying the day with us just hours before he passed away.
I recently set one up using:
- ATI 8500 DV (yes, much more expensive)
- Athlon 650
- 384 Mb RAM
- 2x60 GB drive
- Wireless KB, mouse, remove, 802.11b
I am surprised at his playback problems. The ATI easily plays back anything on my [much more] modest machine. Recording is a slightly diff issue. I can do "good" at about 90% CPU, anything more and the machine cannot keep up.
ATI's "multimedia center" is, IMO, crap in terms of quality and -- in some ways -- features. Really important things like 30-second skip isn't present on playback. It tends to crash with alarming regularity. The on-line guide is nice, though. But you can't schedule anything to be recorded from S-Video (or composite) because of a but which makes it all scheduled programs revert to the tuner, so no digital cable recordings for me. The library function is very marginally useful. The remote has very limited programming for other apps (like WinAmp). It is hooked up to a 53" wide-screen HDTV-capable; the quality is surprising good considering the very demanding display. Dual-head sort of works, but never does the bits you want to (i.e. desktop on one, TV playback on the other) but this is supposed to be "coming".
All-in-all, good hardware, software needs a _lot_ of work. Same old story for ATI. Hopefully someone will come out with much better software; ATI has been working on the mult-media center for years so I don't hold out much hope for it. I would like highly functional software with command-line options so I could script togather the wierd stuff. Is that too much to ask?
I've said it before, I'll say it again: Snapstream rocks. I've been using it for about six months now, and it's a wonderful piece of software. It's not perfect, but it's great, at least for the way I use it. It lets you tape shows using a standard TV tuner (Hauppauge WinTV PCI in my case) and has a great scheduler. I just set stuff and don't worry about it. You can use any bitrate you want. The only bummer is it exports to .wmvs, so you're locked into Media Player, but I'm sure somebody somewhere has a converter out there that will make it a different format if you like. Oh, yeah, it's Windows software, so <asbsetos on> 95% of you should be able to use it.</asbestos>
It's great software. Check it out.
I have a dual monitor setup at home. Sometimes while i'm browsing forums etc I get kind of bored, so I have media player playing a show in a little window kind of out of the way. It's very easy to glance at it when something interesting comes on.
I have a home brew PVR in my apartment (I'll describe it in a later post...) and it quietly captures shows for me. I find my time's a little more efficiently spent. Since I don't edit out the commercials (I usually watch and then delete), I have a few minutes to tidy up my email box or fiddle with Lightwave.
I'll tell you a few totally cool things about this setup:
1.) When the show is being dull etc, I have other ways to pass the time on my computer.
2.) Easy to glance at, no more turning my head. Face it, no matter how close your TV is, you'll have to turn your head.
3.) I can pause/rewind/etc and make sure I don't miss anything that sounded interesting
4.) My TV hasn't been turned on in weeks.
5.) With the extra monitor, the video's never intrusive.
I realize most people would probably be turned off by this idea, but I thought I'd share my epxerience on this topic. I've managed to catch up on a lot of shows I don't normally have time for!
"Derp de derp."
I thought I'd describe my setup at home.
.WMV format. You can also capture to Divx, etc, but to be honest my best luck has been with MS's software. Don't worry, it's pretty open.
:) Not bad for $150 + finding a use for an old computer.
I have an old P2-400 machine that was basically doing nothing. So I decided to turn it into a PVR. The requirements on the machine are borderline, but it works fine. Here are the specs:
-P2 400
-128 meg of RAM
-8 Gig drive
-Video card with TV out
-Hauppage WinTV PCI card ($99 including IR remote, you can get a cheaper mono version for $49)
- Snapstream PVS ($50, http://www.snapstream.com)
- Windows 2000 (I average about 30 days uptime w/o rebooting.)
-10/100 Ethernet card
Some of you might be turned off at the capture specs, but hear me out. Snapstream captures the video at 320 by 240 @ 30 fps at 330kbits/s. It's compressed in real time using Microsoft's Media Encoder. So the resulting file is in
The picture quality's certainly watchable, but it is noticably artifact'd. My goal was to fit 4 hours to a CD, I could double the data rate and get much nicer quality. The truth is, though, that the only shows I'd want to do that for are Farscape and Deep Space Nine. They are very beautifully filmed and this format does deaden it a bit. (Again, it's very watchable.)
I sometimes watch the videos on the TV in my bedroom via the old video card with TV out. I also send them over the network to my main machine sometimes. It has a dual monitor setup, so I frequently watch the video in a little window on one screen while I'm doing things like e-mail. To tell you the truth, I'm addicted to watching TV this way. I'm able to pause it, zoom past commercials, and even search for stuff about previous episodes.
I'm very happy with this setup. When DVD writables get cheaper, I intend to upgrade the computer so I can get closer to broadcast quality. But I'm not in a huge hurry to do this. Most shows (especially sitcoms) can survive running at really low resolution. Low resolution = low data rate = low CPU Usage = more I can capture and play back. You guys might find it interesting that once I encoded an episode of Quantum Leap at 160 by 100 @ 100kbps at 7fps and played it back on my old Jornada PocketPC. I was pleasantly surprised at how watchable it was, especially considering I was on a flight to LA. I damn near went out and bought a microdrive so I could store more shows on that guy to watch. Heh.
I've been using this machine for over a year now. The biggest change I've noticed is that I don't turn on my big TV very often now. I'm very happy with how it came out.
"Derp de derp."
The primary reason that I had written this review was that at the time of writing, I was quite upset at the losses I kept sustaining in the way of recordable streams. After reading the comments by the readers, I wanted to offer some clarifications to my review that were brought up by the readers.
First of all, I can tell you that I'm not in any way affiliated with Creative Labs in any way. I know that this statement could be questionable since I'm still posting as anonymous, but the fact of the matter is, even if I weren't anonymous, I could still be on their payroll. I'll eventually set up an account, but I have yet to find a real reason why.
Second, In my review, I give the card a rating of 2.5 out of 5. A few people had suggested that with my complaints, I should have rated it a 2.5 out of 10. The reason for the 'mediocre rating' was that this device can serve purposes quite well. Recording my episodes of Enterprise off of VHS, it doesn't matter if they system loses the files, as I can always run the attempt again. This seems like a driver issue that could be resolved in the long run, and if so, making it a very nice product.
Third, I am pretty new to video conversion and am still trying to figure out how to decode/edit/encode the movies in MPEG-2. There have been a few articles recently that seem to help with this, and hopefully I'll be able to edit out the commercials in no time.
In closing I realize that the Digital VCR can't quite compare with the dedicated hardware PVRs, and their pretty high cost ($699 for ReplayTV, $200 for TiVO, + $250 for Lifetime Scheduler service). The Digital VCR seems to fill a niche, but doesn't go so far as to making PVR a real reality for those of us who DO watch Television on their PC.