BEST PVR Card for the money?

by **aristottle** on Sun Jul 17, 2005 11:12 pm

I thought I would ask for some opinions....what is the best PVR card with video in and composite stereo in for the money?

I want to be able to use my computer like a vcr and have the option to capture video from a vcr.

I have been looking at Hauppauge products but there are a lot of different versions.

will the cheapie $30.00 cards from ebay work? Or do I need to stick with a brand name.

I will be using it with XP PRO so I need it to be compatible.

Thanks for any help guys

by **TheWizard** on Mon Jul 18, 2005 3:13 am

I thought you were aiming to buy the Hauppauge PVR-150, no? According to your other thread, you were going to get the Hauppauge and give up your Pinnacle.

by **aristottle** on Mon Jul 18, 2005 6:18 am

Wizard I have decided to set up a video editing suite....I am buying a second (used) p4 celeron 1.7 system from a family member.....so I have decided to keep the pinnacle studio 9 and am going to put the PVR card in the second computer....

As for the card.....I am as you pointed out, thinking of the hauppauge 150 card....but noticed the 250 as well. Not really sure what the difference between the cards is....or even what the diff is between the huappauge cards and some of the less exspensive no namers is?

Does the Hauppauge 150 have video and composite audio in?

by **CowboySlim** on Mon Jul 18, 2005 12:53 pm

I'm kinda' interested here myself, but need to do more research. I think that Hauppage 350 is the minimum way to go. It may be that lesser Hauppage cards offload too much on the CPU. Compressing to MPEG 2 and all that.

by **Boba_Fett** on Mon Jul 18, 2005 1:02 pm

CowboySlim wrote:I'm kinda' interested here myself, but need to do more research. I think that Hauppage 350 is the minimum way to go. It may be that lesser Hauppage cards offload too much on the CPU. Compressing to MPEG 2 and all that.

Is that really a problem? Not like you can multitask while capturing video (not a good idea anyway)...

by **CowboySlim** on Mon Jul 18, 2005 1:43 pm

Probably not best to multitask during capture and I try not to.

by **aristottle** on Mon Jul 18, 2005 3:16 pm

This morning I bought the Hauppauge 150 card and installed it.....had a bugger of a time getting the ir remote to work (this is a known issue from what I have been able to find out on the Hauppauge sote forum)....but the tv card seems to work quite well.....but they don't inlcude the composite audio in jack.....so I will have to go to radio shack to buy one :evil:

....anyway I want to do a capture (from VHS) and burn with the PVR card and compare it to my Pinnacle Studio 9 capture and burn and see what the quality is like.

I will have one desktop doing the capture and the other one for surfing and editing and as a pvr.

by **hoxlund** on Mon Jul 18, 2005 6:39 pm

congrats and welcome to the hauppauge family

also who the hell makes your p4 celeron 1.7GHz?

go on say that again to yourself, see if you can find the mistake

by **aristottle** on Mon Jul 18, 2005 6:52 pm

also who the hell makes your p4 celeron 1.7GHz?

Sorry

Just set up the card with GB-PVR...pretty amazing.........can't believe I had not done this before. first I thought...what do I need a remote for.....boy is it ever handy. What a difference a good brand makes....my oldTV card was a no namer from Radio shack that I ended up returning as I couldn't get XP PRO to work with it properly.

Can see that my 120 gig hard drive is going to need to be upgraded now. :wink:

by **aristottle** on Mon Jul 18, 2005 7:25 pm

OK....I have a question....after the pvr has recorded a program what is the most efficient way to watch the program without watching it on the computer?

Do you guys burn everything to DVD RWs and watch it on a desktop dvd player? Or do you burn to dvd as the program is captured?

by **hoxlund** on Mon Jul 18, 2005 8:24 pm

so far ive always watched on computer, if it was a show i really wanted to keep, i would burn it with nero visionexpress (NVE)

also you still didn't catch it

noboday makes a p4 celeron 1.7GHz

by **aristottle** on Mon Jul 18, 2005 8:50 pm

yes I got it .....its a celeron not a p4 thats why I did the red face.

by **TheWizard** on Mon Jul 18, 2005 9:14 pm

Well, do you want to compress and/or edit the video before you watch it? Personally, I like to edit out the commercials and compress it to either WMV or DivX/XviD AVI. A half-hour program can be neatly compressed to a 100-200MB file, so, it's clearly much too small to waste a DVD-RW. I always wait until I have several compressed videos before I start burning. Just think, you can fit 47 100MB videos on a 4.7GB DVD-RW. :wink:

by **CowboySlim** on Tue Jul 19, 2005 12:09 am

Depends what you have and what you want.

Captured TV does not play back well on a PC monitor so it is best burned out and played on a DVD Player.

Now I capture NASCAR races which are about 4 hours long. I edit it out the commercials and other stuff and then compress them to fit on a DVD. I use DVD+R if I want to keep them for more than one viewing or DVD+RW for a one time watch and then use the disc over.

Now for things like Hox watches, for instance a 1/2 hour Jerry Springer show (

just kidding Hox), cut out the commercials and burn out to a CD-R using SVCD format.

by **hoxlund** on Tue Jul 19, 2005 12:52 am

can't stand vcd or svcd stuff

again i have never burned my shows on dvd and then watch on tv

only thing ive ever done was a few times transfer the xvids, divx and regular recorded shows onto my xbox then watched them on tv

by **Dartman** on Wed Jul 20, 2005 8:23 pm

I've got a Dvico fusion 3 gold HDTV card and it's pretty good, not perfect, but good. I have capped a couple of shows with it and I can just have it cap as about any normal pc/tv standard including dvd specs. I can burn it with the software that came with it, pinacle I think, or anything else that can handle what it puts out. I had some sound problems with the older box with the Athlon 1800 plus. My new Athlon 64 3200+ on the Asus board seems to have the HP needed to do it all without major problems. The fusion cards are mostly software so it takes a good cpu and video card to really make it happy.
The Hauppauge is a hardware based card I believe so it doesn't need as much power plus that one is normal analog TV so theres a lot less bandwidth being used too. HD takes a lot of everything to run.
The one I did do to DVD played just fine except for the audio problem that seems to be fixed with the new stuff

by **CowboySlim** on Wed Jul 20, 2005 10:53 pm

hoxlund wrote:congrats and welcome to the hauppauge family

also who the hell makes your p4 celeron 1.7GHz?

go on say that again to yourself, see if you can find the mistake

My P4 Celeron 1.7GHz was made by Atari. It came stock in my Atari Amiga. It is perfect for decoding and reading in my 80 column punched cards.

by **aristottle** on Thu Jul 21, 2005 9:24 pm

I guess I am going to have to go hide in a corner for a while. :oops:

by **TheWizard** on Thu Jul 21, 2005 9:46 pm

If you think you are the only one to say P4 and Celeron back-to-back, aristottle, then you are dead wrong. It's a more common mistake than you think.

BEST PVR Card for the money?

BEST PVR Card for the money?

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