TV Cards

[doctor_prox]

Im unsure what to do and wondered if some of you could give me some advice.
At the moment i have an old Hauppauge TV card, one of the first i think with a BT848 chip or something. Also i bought a hauppauge DEC1000 for freeview.
Thing is the quality is crap, and its mono sound via the MIC port because my Line-in has stopped working for some reason.
Even when viewing menus etc from the freeview box the quality is pretty poor concidering they are generated images, not signal, maybe it has interference from fans or whatever or is it just crap? Its tuned in and using DScaler.

I want to be able to record programs, so is it worth me:

• buying a program such as showshifter and making use of what ive got
• buying a new analogue or digital card
• buying a card with built in recording, are these worth it (ie. can i play games at the same time as recording)

Thanks.

[SilentDeath]

Cards based on the connextant BT848 chips are utterly poo. I have a BT478 based one with a samsung tuner. The tuner makes a LOT of differnce to quality however, as the chip really is just an analog to digital converter. I dont recommend connextant based tuners, as they lack any form of hardware video compression (leaving it to software, or uncompressed avi).
Also the software and drivers are usually also poo. The card I have has the sound through the pci bus, not out the back like yours, this is the only card based on that chip to do that, meaning 3rd party drivers are compleatly unsupprted for any kind of sound from it. The drivers are outdated and only work in win9x, and then make it crash ever five mins. Recording programs for much longer than 1 minute is impossible on high quality becuase of win32 file system limits (2gb).

I also have a card based on a phillips chip, (forgot the tuner, its in pc atm so cant check). Reception is noticably crap on many channels, mostly the sound, to correct this the channel can be fine tuned, to make sound ok, but it degrades the picture noticably. the cause is bad hardware design imo. It only does mpeg1 or uncompressed avi. The quality of mpeg1 at 3mbit/s is not great either, I advise only get a card that can do MPEG2 or compressed avi, using mpeg4 or similar.

Freeview is digital tv, and digital is broadcast in mpeg2, making digital a good chioce if you want to record stuff. Image and sound quality should be very good, assuming your ariel is pointing in the right direction, and is getting a good enough signal. While analog tv is watachble still unless the signal is very weak, digital tv requires quite a bit stonger signal to get a good picture. Without a strong signal, you wont get much with digital.

Have a look in volume control for your line in, and check the connections arnt broken on the sound card..

I assume the hauppauge DEC1000 is the tv card you are using, and not just a freeview box connected to the other tv card?

I would buy a new digital card, howver afaik none offer analog aswell - the reson being they are broadcast compleatly differently, and therefore compleatly imcompatable. This limits you to digital. Also afaik digital tv cards do not have the required slot and hardware to allow subscription channels, for example sky digital, the only way I know of for them is using a sky/stand alone box, and a analog tv card. This does therfore limit digital tv cards to freeview only, which doesnt seem to have too many good channels...

I would very much doubt the ability of tv cards currently to allow you to play games in full screen while they are recording, simply becuase of the way they use the graphics card, I may be wrong, but tv cards afaik are simply stil very far behind where they should be - they are not a replacement for a tv and vcr, yet.

I think this is the one my brother has, I havent seem it much, but it looks like its a good card, and has plenty of features at a resonable price...

[doctor_prox]

Thanks a LOT, the tv card is a Hauppauge Primio or something, BT878 and Phillips tuner, the DEC1000 is a freeview box i bought not long ago, thats the reason why i think the tuners crap because digital is really all or nothing isnt it, and the menus from the freeview box are still bad on screen.
I would like to get a new analogue card, simply because it would make that box useless unless i sell it, and like you say no sky (which i dont have anyway but maybe sometime).
What i was thinking is could i expect the same quality from an analogue card connected to the freeview box, as with just a digital card, if not i may aswell get a digital card.
I havent come across any cards which take a scart input either, (maybe theres a converter as scart is too big).
I read something about chips other than the BT8x8 ones detecting macrovision or something and not allowing recording, or is this just when recording off VHS tapes?

Thanks for the advice.
Jason

[SilentDeath]

Scart input is too big and not really a feature manufacturers can be arsed to add, aswell as being to big, although I *think* ati AIW cards might have it as part of teh break out box, but im not sure.

With a digital card, signal goes in, error checked etc.. and saved straight to disk - quality is good, becuase its saved how its broadcast (mpeg2).
If you do what you suggest, digital box -> analog card -> hdd, then the same process as above, apart from it will also get converted to analog, then back to digital and encoded by the tv card, onto hdd. This *will* give worse quality, and theres really not many analog cards I would recommend buying...

Macrovison, I really havent tryed recording from a VHS machine, or even from an external dvd player (using the analog input). However I know there is hardware for filtering out macrovision (which doesnt stop you recording - ive tryed vhs to vhs but the picture is brownish and dark and very unwatchable).
Also scrambled cable tv can be decoded with tv cards, as it simply works by missing out the sync information, trying to watch these channels will make the tv card try to guess the sync, which makes the picture jump all over the screen. There is a program called powerstrip for setting the sync of your vga card output, if there was a program similar to control the tv tuners sync then it would be possible, but I dont know of any
Also a circuit could be made to fake the sync, but that is far past my electronics skills

So imo sell the digital box and the tv card, get a digital freeview one, and then sell them later on if you want sky or something..
Disadvantage being that digital cards cost more than analog ones, by about twice

[Firelord]

Sorry to jump thread but I wondering about TV cards lately and with Maplins doing thge DEC-2000t at £60 I wondered if I should get one!

Any one used one??

[SilentDeath]

Seems to have some problems. I only read a few reviews though, google for some

[doctor_prox]

Might get one of those Compro cards from tekheads, they seem to be rated good, and then ill get showshifter.

[SilentDeath]

Im probably going to get the hauppauge dec-2000 from maplin (£60) soon, they have one at work which seems to be v good..

[doctor_prox]

I cant find that on their site, dunno where the nearest shop is either :|

Found

[SilentDeath]

http://www.maplin.co.uk/products/mod...moduleno=34413
L11AH if that link doesnt work. delevery is free too (orders over £30..)