Tuner Card

[kyleb]

Sounds like your capture software is recording to a lower bitrate.

 

[K.I.L.E.R]

Video: MPEG2 Video 720x576 (16:9) 50.00fps 7650Kbps
Audio: MPEG Audio 48000Hz stereo 224Kbps
1342MB (1408196608 bytes)
00:23:31
MPEG File

This is what it's recorded to.

How much can the PCI bus handle?

EDIT: Just read some info. HDTV streams are all in MPEG2 format.
I should record to the FT mode and not the MPEG2 mode.

 

[Jawed]

Which (given the recordings I've made ~2.2 Gbytes/hour) probably means about 4.x Mbits/sec for UK broadcasts.... though how they do that with several channels per 8Mhz is beyond my knowledge :|

Most channels are running at godawful low datarates.

Jawed

 

[Sxotty]

Living in America I have never used at DTV card or paid much attention to the details, but surely decoding is done on your videocard just like with a DVD or any other MPEG2 file.

Well with HDTV here (in the US) it is only partially done on the GPU, and partially on the CPU, and somehow my avermedia card utilizes my hauppauge cards hardware encode as well, it is very complicated.

 

[kyleb]

But that is all rather off topic as this thread is about a DTV card and not HDTV cards or analog capture cards.

 

[Simon F]

Most channels are running at godawful low datarates.
Jawed

I can imagine that "bid up tv" might be (read "hopefully is") running at 0.25 Mbit/s , but take the BBC multiplex which is home to BBCs 1, 2, News24 and (during the day) CBBC. I just did a test recording of three sequential 2 minute bursts of BBC 1, 2, and News24 and got files corresponding to 4.7, 2.8 and 3.2 Mbits/s. I don't know what CBBC was using (but CBeebies often uses 4.x but it's on a different multiplex) but that still confuses me!

 

[Simon F]

Video: MPEG2 Video 720x576 (16:9) 50.00fps 7650Kbps
Audio: MPEG Audio 48000Hz stereo 224Kbps
1342MB (1408196608 bytes)
00:23:31
MPEG File

This is what it's recorded to.

How much can the PCI bus handle?

Hundreds of MBytes per second. It's not an issue. My tuner is sending data over USB!

 

[Sxotty]

But that is all rather off topic as this thread is about a DTV card and not HDTV cards or analog capture cards.

Perhaps but all the HDTV cards I have seen here basically do all the OTA digital signals, so I get standard definition shows on my hd card. In other words I need to buy a hdtv card to get the standard definition digital broadcasts as well.

 

[kyleb]

You are talking about how it works in the states, eh? The DVB-T cards like the one this thread is about are a whole diferent thing they have in other countries.

 

[Sxotty]

You are talking about how it works in the states, eh? The DVB-T cards like the one this thread is about are a whole diferent thing they have in other countries.

Yeah, I was not trying to argue, I was trying to educate myself b/c I did not realize that. I understand there is HDTV signals over the air as well right? Do the HDTV cards in Europe work with the DVB-T signals then, or would you theoretically have to buy 3 cards? One for old analog, one for Digital TV, and one for high definition digital? Whoever brought up the standards bit was right, geez it would be much easier if someone could agree on this sort of thing, but I suppose due to the way the spectrum has already been handed out in various countires it simply may not be possible to use the same standards without reallocating all kinds of devices from cell phones to walkie talkies...

 

[kyleb]

I don't think they really have HDTV brodcasts in Europe yet, let alone cards to support their standards.

 

[Jawed]

In theory existing DVB-T cards will work with HDTV being terrestially broadcasted in Europe.

The BBC's HDTV trial next year should work with existing DVB-T cards:

http://www.nebula-electronics.com/news/hdtv.asp

Jawed

 

[Tahir2]

I can imagine that "bid up tv" might be (read "hopefully is") running at 0.25 Mbit/s , but take the BBC multiplex which is home to BBCs 1, 2, News24 and (during the day) CBBC. I just did a test recording of three sequential 2 minute bursts of BBC 1, 2, and News24 and got files corresponding to 4.7, 2.8 and 3.2 Mbits/s. I don't know what CBBC was using (but CBeebies often uses 4.x but it's on a different multiplex) but that still confuses me!

I see you are a fan of CBeebies.. I thought "Big Cook, Little Cook" was an acquired taste.

 

[Simon F]

I see you are a fan of CBeebies.. I thought "Big Cook, Little Cook" was an acquired taste.

Surely it's "Hot Hot Hot"... but I only watch it for "The Koala Brothers" and "Balamory"

 

[_xxx_]

I think the question that has to be asked is "What's the software like?".

Yup. I had two Terratec TV-cards, the old TerraTV+ and the Cinergy400. Great hardware, bad software. Cinergy400 supports MPEG2 encoding in HW, but that's not supported in _any_ way in the Terratec SW. Not even a single profile for recording, and anything you set youself is not HW-accelerated.

Long story short, I bought Hauppauge WinPVR250 and still have lots of fun with it, never had a single problem with anything.

Such a pity that Cinergy didn't cut it, the picture quality of that Philips chip makes Broketree look _very_ old. I know there are a few other vendors who built cards with the same chip, may be worth a look maybe?

 

[_xxx_]

Well, the most important fact for me is the fact that it says it has Media Center drivers; I bought a copy of Media Center some time back and it just been lying around since, if I got this or something like it then I'd move my main PC over to Media Center, nullifying the 3rd party software aspect somewhat.

If you want to watch your recordings anywhere else but in your Media Center PC, you might get into problems - MCED encodes stuff in the proprietary format not playable anywhere else but on that very PC AFAIK. I'd look for some information before installing MCED if you're about to record stuff you'd like to watch with other devices as well.

 

[nobody]

In theory existing DVB-T cards will work with HDTV being terrestially broadcasted in Europe.

The BBC's HDTV trial next year should work with existing DVB-T cards:

Jawed

Only if the modulation type is not changed for broadcasting HDTV, then the existing cards will work with HDTV.

For satellite broadcasts the modulation type has changed (at least here in germany), existing DVB-S cards cannot demodulate streams that use one of the DVB-S2 modulation types.