Want recomedations

[truckracer]

I have been into FTA for a few years but am looking to go the PC card way.

Some of you knowledgeable and experienced folks with pc cards tell me what I need.

My goals are:

To receive clean HD broadcasts that are FTA.
4:2:2 and 4:2:0 broadcasts that work smoothly and do not freeze or macroblock because of cpu loading on my pc.

What pc specs do I need:

Front side buss speed?
Cpu speed?
Hard drive size/speed?
Ram?

Which card will do the above?

What software does what?
Is there one software that does all pretty well?

I want to send the HD from my pc into my HD distribution system through the house (Y, Pb, Pr) through my CE Labs distribution amps.

I have searched through pages of threads and posts and still undecided.

I want to spend my money wisely.

Thanks for your help- Trucker

 

[W_Tracy_Parnell]

I had a Twinhan 102G running on an Athlon 2800+ (2 ghz) with a GEforce 5500, 1 GB RAM and could not get (consistently) smooth HD. 4:2:0 and 4:2:2 were ok. I am going to upgrade to a new PC soon and am wondering if the DVB World box would work on this PC? I don't think hard drive space would be much of an issue though.

 

[Anole]

FTA hi def via computer

I've tried a Twinhan Starbox USB.
Had had good (enough) success with a 1.5ghz laptop and the USB box to make DVDs that are "A" quality, from standard def.
Experiments on a solid 720p test channel were never satisfactory, even with the laptop screen blanked for lower CPU usage.
Software choices were limited due to the poor support of USB boxes by the major suppliers of receiver programs.
That was running Windows XP.

I got a Twinhan 1025 card (?) but had to return it due to missing remote.
While I experimented with it, it never seemed to be quite the answer.

I then got a Twinhan 102g card, thinking it was the better choice.
Both PCI cards were shoved into an AMD Barton running about 2ghz, with 1gb, dual SATA drives, and Win2k.
The computer was set up a couple of years ago , so it's possible it's not got the latest fixes, and it may be carrying some extra baggage.
At any rate, my attempts to procure a decent 720p recording have been unsatisfactory.
That is in spite of turning off the video (I'm running a gForce 5900 card), and testing additional receiver software choices.

I see reports of many others who've succeeded, and they always stress a hot cpu and more importantly, the proper video driver.
So far, I haven't found the magic bullet.

My next test is to strip the Barton down to its shorts, replace the HD, install a fresh WinXP with all updates, and see if that'll help
I have read reports it may.



On another note:
I'm thinking of splitting the load by having a back-room computer do the reception and recording, then a front-room computer connected via LAN do the display.
I've just gotten a 4gb disc of a hi def movie in 1080 format, which has been compressed with DivX to 720p.
I'll try to play that through the front-room computer to see what problems I run into.

 

[WyrTwister]

Being cheap , all my computers are out of the box units with video and sound on the MB .

A EMachine w/ 335 Celeron d ( 2.8 ghz , I think ) 256 + 512 memory & Nexus-S running software mode . MyTheatre for software . This will not produce HD on the computer monitor w/o MAJOR pictilization . This computer does fine with SD .

B Compaq w/ AMD 3400+ , 512 + 512 memory & 1020A Twinhan . MyTheatre . This will give stable HD .

A computer with dedicated video card might give good results with somewhat slower CPU and les memory .

Wyr

I have been into FTA for a few years but am looking to go the PC card way.

Some of you knowledgeable and experienced folks with pc cards tell me what I need.

My goals are:

To receive clean HD broadcasts that are FTA.
4:2:2 and 4:2:0 broadcasts that work smoothly and do not freeze or macroblock because of cpu loading on my pc.

What pc specs do I need:

Front side buss speed?
Cpu speed?
Hard drive size/speed?
Ram?

Which card will do the above?

What software does what?
Is there one software that does all pretty well?

I want to send the HD from my pc into my HD distribution system through the house (Y, Pb, Pr) through my CE Labs distribution amps.

I have searched through pages of threads and posts and still undecided.

I want to spend my money wisely.

Thanks for your help- Trucker

 

[truckracer]

So it look like cost wise, I should just think about one of the upcoming fta hd receivers. I have thought about the qualitv receiver and know it has issues, but it does 4-2-2 and 4-2-0 hd.

It appears that it would probably take a pc of 3 ghz with a premium video card with good drivers and plenty of ram.

I know a pc based system would be more flexible for recording and such but my only goal it just to view hd fta broadcasts on my tv.

The cost of a high performance pc with the correct hardware for smooth viewable hd programs plus the cost of the card and then some type of adaptor to get to the componet video y-pb-pr inputs, i would just be better off looking into a set top box.
Thanks for your input and time
Trucker

 

[Anole]

I wouldn't throw in the towel without hearing from some more folks with better success.

B Compaq w/ AMD 3400+ , 512 + 512 memory & 1020A Twinhan . MyTheatre . This will give stable HD .

That's not what I call a premium computer, by any means.
And if he gets good HD on it, you could, too.

As for the component out, that just takes the right video card.
I favor DVI output, and it's been on all the video cards I've bought in the last... uhhh...4 (?) years.
We're not talking over $100 for video, I don't think.

Just hate to see you give up so easily.
I've been at it for a while, and I'm not quitting.
As a matter of fact, I was just installing XP on a new hard drive, tonight.

 

[linuxman]

Hey Truckracer,

The machine I am using is an older (4 yrs) P4 3.06Ghz socket 478 which means it is limited to 533Mhz FSB and 1GB RAM with an older Nvidia TI4200 with 128Mb memory. I have an 80Gb SATA drive in it for the system, and two 80Gb EIDE drives for storage, and it does fine with HD or SD.

The key is the codecs that you use. If you get the right combination the picture is just fine.

My old video card has DVIout, TVout, and VGA out and I have it hooked to a 21" CRT and my TV.

I just happened to have this unit already, but you could buy the used video card for $50.00 or less maybe $25.00. If you can find a used computer like this you could get it for under $200.00 or less w/o the Windows XP.

Used computers and parts have very little value because everyone wants the latest and greatest.

I am using the Technisat Skystar2 ($79.00) and DVBViewer Pro ($19.00) and DvbDream (free) and am having good success with both.

 

[iammike]

I agree with linuxman about the codecs. I record a fair bit of HD. My sources are FTA via a Twinhad card or Twinhan Starbox and also a r5000 modded 4dtv receiver. I usually play the files either with a MyHD card or in SageTV environment through an Nvidia 6800 card using the Purevideo drivers. My 3.0Ghz Pentiums have plenty of power, as most of the processing of the video is done by hardware on the card. I think I typically have around 15% or 20% CPU cycles on the box with the Nvidia card and less than 10% on the one with MyHD. Before using Purevideo, I had very poor HD performance on the PC using the Nvidia card. It would peg the cpu at 100% and the video would stop and stutter and was basically unwatchable.

If you're not going to offload the video processing onto the gpu of an add-on card (Nvidia or MyHD in my case) you will need a pretty hot processor and probably extra memory. Personally, I feel the add-on card is the most cost-effective way to go. I usually just buy my PC's from the Dell outlet. For around $300 to $400 you can get a decent box, then pick up a video card for around $70 or so that does good video processing or a MyHD for $169 and you're in business. On the video card route you'll also probably need to purchase the codec. For Nvidia, I think Purevideo is around $50 (there's a 30-day free trial) but you can also get it if you purchase TheaterTek, which is the route I took.

Mike

 

[digiblur]

Some of those 4:2:2 1080i 35mbps feeds are a bugger to decode! My AMD X2 4200 decodes and displays it nicely though. If I have booted as single core the system will not decode these 35mbps HD feeds.

 

[digillover]

I have tried Twinhan 1027 PCI card purchased from www.sat-sales.com. It works very well so far.

TwinhanDTV Sat Pro is a professional digital satellite TV card with AV capture function. A great deal of practical functions such as instant recording,time-shifting,EPG,teletext…are easy to use by an amiable interface. In addition, TwinhanDTV Sat brings “Internet via satellite” into your PC, and you can surf on web at high download speed!