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Cross-Platform Video Capture Cards And TV Tuners?
ePIsOdEOnline writes "This Christmas reminded me of the times when you were a child and your parents bought that new toy that says on the packaging "Batteries Not Included". Post-Christmas rituals always turn into spending sprees to get other things that will be compatible and complementary to the gifts we recieved. This past Christmas, I recieved a PS2 along with a mini-dv camera set. Well, now I'll need something to view these with since I don't have a television in my apartment. So, I was looking into picking up a TV-tuner card for my computer. What kind of cards has the slashdot crowd been successful with, and which ones should I steer clear of? I'd like to be able to use the card in linux and sometimes windows, to watch and record off of. What kinds of software/hardware should I invest in, and is it an easy, accomplishable task to delve into?"
Includes hardware MPEG encoder/decoder.
h ee t.htm
http://www.hauppauge.com/html/wintvpvr250_datas
I purchased a Leadtek Winfast TV 2000 XP Deluxe tv tuner, and I enjoyed it alot. It is not as expensive as other tuners available on the market, but works for all my needs. It has a stylish and easy to use remote control, as well as an FM tuner built in.
I have written a TV Tuner Guide for linux that focuses mainly on this tuner (but can be used for most tuners under linux.
For the price, and the quality you get, in my opinion, this is one of the best tv tuners out there.
tourettes
Under linux you really can't beat the hauppauge PVR 250 or 350. Both include hardware mpeg2 encoding, the 350 includes hardware mpeg2 decoding. You can find drivers at ivtv.sf.net. It's nice to record tv shows at 640x480 at 2% cpu load.
The card is also well supported by mythtv.
Why does it need to be a card? I use the Canopus ADVC-1000 external FireWire DV converter for video captures, it will work on anything with a FW port.
There are quite a few TV Tuner external boxes, but most of them are based on USB, which doesn't have sufficient bandwidth to do DV, so most of them use proprietary codecs with much lower bandwidth use (and lower quality). If you just want to make VCDs, they're probably fine, but all the USB tuners are of insufficient quality to do DVD quality storage. Of course, most of what you grab off the air or cable/DirecTV isn't DVD quality either, it's already been compressed more than the ~6:1 that DV uses.
For people trying to get a strange video card working with a later Windows OS such as 2000 and XP, these generic drivers are life savers.
http://btwincap.sourceforge.net/
http://www.iulabs.com/drv/index.shtml
You can find a reasonable TV set for $15 at the local thrift shop. Make things easy on yourself.
Why not use the PS2 Linux distribution? The Linux1394 project offers strong support for FireWire, especially DV gear. You could use your gifts to get your video on the TV, with Open Source editing tools. Along the way, you'll get your PS2 on the network, and much more portable gear in the PS2 formfactor. And you'll support the OSS FW and DV communities with your feedback.
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make install -not war
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I have the 8500 DV and i run my gamecube through it. It is not HDtv quality, but it is better then having to fit a tv into my tiny dorm room :)
Plus, it has people turning their heads seeing me play my gamecube on my computer. Of course, the newest ATI Radeon All in wonder probably costs around 400-500 bucks....so go for an older one
Jeff
Back in the late <gasp> '80s, I bought a 27" Sony TV, and declared that I wasn't going to do anything but replace broken video gear until HDTV came out. 15 years later, I've finally broken down and replaced the (still functional) altar to the entertainment gods.
Nearly a year ago, we finally fell to the temptation of getting a projector. The thing that finally made this happen was the InFocus X1. This is a Not only is the price of the projector quite reasonable, the operating cost is down from $1 per hour (many projectors have $300 bulbs that last around 300 hours) to under $0.10 per hour (the X1 bulb is still around $300, but it lasts 10 times as long).
So, while it's not a TV tuner card, I just had to provide some feedback. We love the projector, it doesn't take up much space, it's easily portable, it makes a 45" TV seem small.
That said, I've heard good things about the Haupage tuner cards using the Brooktree chipset. I haven't tried any of them in over 5 years, so they've surely changed. However, they seemed to work great using Video 4 Linux drivers.
Sean
I would not recommend a TV tuner for anything other than watching TV.
Your DV camera should have a digital output (IEEE 1394 (FireWire)) - use that. Additionally, if that DV camera is a nicer one it may have video input; meaning that you can connect your PS2 to your camera, which is connected your computer, which is connected to your display.... you may not need to buy anything?
there is no spoon
Get a Brooktree chipset card, and download dScaler and be knocked out at the quality. I've been through half a dozen different cards, and I'm currently using a I/O Magic PC-PVR card. Virtually every one of these cards uses the same reference design, and the only variation is how well they handle the signal path and grounding. I know how clean this card is because I'm using it to capture at 720 x 480 and scale up to 1280 x 720 using dScaler's amazing deinterlacing. Then I show it on my 90" wide screen.
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb
The Hauppauge 250 is a great card to watch and record TV, but because of the 2-3 second delay as the video stream is encoded into MPEG-2, it makes playing any sort of video game system through it virtually impossible. Beware.
or for most other cards (bt878 or bt848) BTTV (included in the linux kernel)
Just get a TV for fifty bucks at a pawn shop. It'll probably either be stolen, or have been hocked by someone in desperate straits, so in a sense you'll be trafficing in human misery, but hey, can't beat the prices. That way you'll be able to surf porn while you're watching Letterman.
I've been using a Hauppauge WinTV PCI w/ FM for a few years now and have no complaints. It's got good sounding stereo sound and with a good enough antenna the FM reception is very good too. CPU utilization while watching TV depends on the app. With xawtv it's practically zero, with tvtime it sits around 10% (due to picture smoothing, etc..). That card is moving into a MythTV box at the moment.
The Hauppauge PVR250 is on my current shopping list. MythTV supports the 250s hardware mpeg encoding, so you can record without putting pressure on your CPU. I'm sure the same is true for it's own Windows application.
You might also look for a VGA converter for your PS/2. Lets you plug your PS/2 straight into your monitor. Pick up a KVM with it and you're set.
I'm against picketing, but I don't know how to show it.
I 've been trying to find and buy the pvr250 for about two months (I live in Greece). My plans were simple:install the card and make a mythTV video recorder using my pc. But it seems that the local representative of Haupage here was not interested in selling any units so after a dozen phone calls to various stores (they kept telling me that there weren't any units available) I decided to just drop it, and went and bought a
philips dvdr70. It may be more expensive than the pvr250/350 but:
1)The price is roughly the same with the sum of the prices of a decent dvdr (~200Euros) for the pc and the haupage (~200Euros).
2)If I was going to use the pc as a pvr, I would probably have to buy a small UPS too. Dunno about other countries but here in Greece, leaving the pc open always is a recipe for disaster. Add about ~120Euros minimum for that too.
3)I believe a standalove product is more usable than a pc based pvr. In the later case I would be the only one in my family really able to use it.
4)The standalone writer is really plug and play. Hell, it even learned the channels from my tv, so I did not have to do anything besides plugging it to the outlet and the tv set.
Of course the pvr based solution probably offers more capabilities so someone may have no choice than to use it.
I have an ATI USB TV tuner/capture device (usb tv wonder).
and I have to say..its awful.
I got a decent machine (p4 2.8GHz HT, 512 MB DDR400, and a 120 gig hdd) and it drops an insane ammount of frames.
I have even tried speed disking the drive before capping.
Also the resolution isnt that good..it maxes at 320x200, while a rage 3d pro i had didnt drop many frames (maybe 10 for each 10 minutes while the ati does about 150 every minute!) and it capped at 700+ res
hope this helps