What do I need to record TV to a PC ?

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xlinknz

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#13681 23-May-2007 12:39

Rather than buy an 'appliance' DVD recorder at est. $800 what would I need to record TV to a PC or laptop ?

And how well does this work i.e. obviously I need some sort of TV tuner card [recommendations please] but would that come with software to allow one to do delayed recording as one would with an DVD/VHS appliance solution ?

I want something my wife can operate !

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#71866 23-May-2007 12:41

If you wife is anything like my wife, I think that you are barking up the wrong tree.

xlinknz

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#71867 23-May-2007 12:48

I'd still like to hear the 'not friendly for the wife' solutions...i.e. what it involves hardware and software

grant_k

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#71868 23-May-2007 12:48

A suggestion -- if I may be so bold -- in the interests of marital harmony:

Buy a MySky for your wife and you can fiddle around with the TV Tuner Card in your PC.

By doing this, you will avoid having the remote thrown at you every time the software malfunctions...

grant_k

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#71869 23-May-2007 12:49

xlinknz: I'd still like to hear the 'not friendly for the wife' solutions...i.e. what it involves hardware and software

Get a Hauppage TV Tuner Card. They are one of the best available. I can dig up some links if you are interested.

xlinknz

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#71873 23-May-2007 13:05

wow just had a look at the Hauppage range :-o

I see there is digital, analogue and satellite options too not to mention usb and pci [usb dongle version looks cool]

1. Will the software allow delayed recording ?
2. What has been peoples experiences
3. Will it record sky and freeview etc

grant_k

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#71878 23-May-2007 13:12

xlinknz: 1. Will the software allow delayed recording ?

Pretty much ANY software allows this. It is a basic PVR function. However, you won't have the benefit of an EPG (Electronic Programme Guide), at least, not a reliable one...

xlinknz: 2. What has been peoples experiences

I haven't used it myself (we have MySky), so I'll leave it for others to comment.

xlinknz: 3. Will it record sky and freeview etc

You need a subscription and a decoder to record Sky.
In theory it should be possible to record Freeview if you have a dish and LNB installed. Cyril or Sbiddle will be able to comment further about this.

xlinknz

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#71882 23-May-2007 13:28

What is an Electronic Programme Guide ?

Sharesies

Trade NZ and US shares and funds with Sharesies (affiliate link).

grant_k

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#71883 23-May-2007 13:32

xlinknz: What is an Electronic Programme Guide ?

Instead of needing to look in the TV Guide or Listener to find what programmes are on, you can do it all on the screen of your TV.

Then when you find a program you want to record: Press the RECORD button and it's done.

No need to select the Channel and Start/Stop times for the recording. One press of a button is all it takes, and if you have MkSky, you can also use the SERIES LINK function to record all programmes in a series with one extra button press.

Once you have used this kind of a system, you won't go back to a separate DVD / HDD / VCR, it is just so much slower and prone to mistakes with incorrect channel, start/stop times etc, etc.

lchiu7

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#71917 23-May-2007 16:31

Grant17:
xlinknz: I'd still like to hear the 'not friendly for the wife' solutions...i.e. what it involves hardware and software
Get a Hauppage TV Tuner Card. They are one of the best available. I can dig up some links if you are interested.

The PVR series are the best. They have on board hardware based MPEG2 encoders so that the CPU load of recording is offloaded to the card. The cheaper WinTV series don't do any compression so any compression has to be done by the CPU if indeed you can do any at all.

On my lowly Athlon 2000+ I can record a stream from TCL cable and watch another show at the same time and the CPU loads hardly goes up above 20%

Larry

Staying in Wellington. Check out my AirBnB in the Wellington CBD. https://www.airbnb.co.nz/h/wellycbd PM me and mention GZ to get a 15% discount and no AirBnB charges.

xlinknz

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#71983 23-May-2007 20:18

Larry

I'm new to this so bear with me but why would I want to do compression ?

FYI My office PC is a P4 1.Ghz and my laptop a PIII 750Mhz both with 256Mb of RAM currently I can pay content on the laptop with no issues. Both PCs are WK2 SP4. From what I can tell your athlon 2000+ is approx 25% faster than my P4 1.6

Should I get a USB setup that way if I replace the laptop or the desktop with a new laptop I can reuse the solution [both have usb2]

The plan would be record TV to disk [delayed] on the office PC and stream via Wifi to the laptop which is connected via RCA to the 29" CRT TV. This works quite well at present for downloaded content.

I see many of the Hauppage adapters require WinXP and Windows Media Centre which I have never used.

lchiu7

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#71987 23-May-2007 20:25

xlinknz: Larry

I'm new to this so bear with me but why would I want to do compression ?

FYI My office PC is a P4 1.Ghz and my laptop a PIII 750Mhz both with 256Mb of RAM currently I can pay content on the laptop with no issues. Both PCs are WK2 SP4. From what I can tell your athlon 2000+ is approx 25% faster than my P4 1.6

Should I get a USB setup that way if I replace the laptop or the desktop with a new laptop I can reuse the solution [both have usb2]

The plan would be record TV to disk [delayed] on the office PC and stream via Wifi to the laptop which is connected via RCA to the 29" CRT TV. This works quite well at present for downloaded content.

I see many of the Hauppage adapters require WinXP and Windows Media Centre which I have never used.

If you try to record video uncompressed you will be in the 10Gb/hour range. You need a fairly grunty PC to compress video on the fly so basically you would be recording video uncompressed and watching in that format. The Hauppauge PVR150/250 cards compress the video into MPEG2 format in hardware taking very little of the CPU. The advantage of that is, the MPEG2 can be authored to DVD quite easily. And an hour's show is now about 2G (or less depending on your compression settings).

The USB2 version of the Hauppauge is a good way to go. Saves having to open up the machine to install the card.

It would be very difficult to stream uncompressed video over Wifi - Wifi just hasn't got the bandwidth. Even MPEG2 can be problemmatic but at least you've got a chance. The reason it works well for downloaded content is that it's probably in MPEG4 format so say a 45 minute show is about 350Mb. In MPEG2 that would be 1.6Gb potentially.

The Hauppauge adapters are supported by XP, Vista and also by some Linux distributions (like the MythTV product). There might be drivers for Win2K - not sure.

Larry

Staying in Wellington. Check out my AirBnB in the Wellington CBD. https://www.airbnb.co.nz/h/wellycbd PM me and mention GZ to get a 15% discount and no AirBnB charges.

grant_k

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#71992 23-May-2007 20:35

xlinknz: I'm new to this so bear with me but why would I want to do compression ?

ALL video recording systems do some sort of compression. If they didn't, your hard disk would be full within a few hours.

xlinknz: ...currently I can pay content on the laptop with no issues.

The downloaded video will ALREADY be compressed. If it's from YouTube, it will be in Flash Video format which I think uses MPEG4 compression.

xlinknz: I see many of the Hauppage adapters require WinXP and Windows Media Centre which I have never used.

I am fairly certain that you won't find any decent TV Tuner cards which support Windows 2K nowadays. Maybe some of the cheap Chinese ones will, but then you will be pretty disappointed with the software.

Your best course of action is to upgrade to Windows XP while you can -- before M$ pull it from the shelves in January next year. Your existing PCs would run XP quite happily although it would be best to upgrade the RAM to 512kB. That's all the RAM I have found to be necessary for what I do, and there's hardly ever any disk swapping going on.

I hope that helps.

Cheers,
Grant.

xlinknz

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#71997 23-May-2007 21:38

Thanks for the answers - its all making sense now

A little use of video inspector shows my current content is mostely in mpeg-4, some in divx or mpeg1 or 2

The good news is that many of the Hauppage adapters support W2K

But it appears that the Hauppage software with their various adapters only do mpeg-2 what would one need to do MPEG4 ?

USB PVR is approx $250 whereas the PCI version is half that, I liked this one http://www.ascent.co.nz/productspecification.aspx?ItemID=349071 as its small and supports DVB-T Freeview [so I can future proof myself] but it requires WinXP and a 2.8 Ghz processor [I can upgrade my to that for approx $100]

grant_k

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#72006 23-May-2007 22:28

xlinknz: But it appears that the Hauppage software with their various adapters only do mpeg-2 what would one need to do MPEG4 ?

Most of the current DVB content around the world is currently still using MPEG2 so that is why you won't find too much MPEG4 equipment available just yet. The issue here is not what compression scheme any particular video adapter supports, but rather what is being broadcast.

Right now in NZ it is only MPEG2 (via DVB-S from FreeView) but come March next year that is all set to change when DVB-T arrives.

Hence your statement:

xlinknz: ...ItemID=349071 as its small and supports DVB-T Freeview [so I can future proof myself]

is not correct as NZ's upcoming DVB-T service will be different to most others around the world in that it will only support MPEG4 decoders rather than MPEG2. The DVB-T that they are referring to in the specs for that product is the UK system. The specs also don't mention MPEG4 anywhere, only MPEG2.

No doubt there will be MPEG4 versions of the Hauppage cards in the works, so I would just wait a while until you can get something that supports BOTH MPEG2 AND MPEG4.

xlinknz

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#72038 24-May-2007 10:23

Grant

Thank you for the heads up on dvb-t being mpeg4 only

I brief look didn't show any dvb-t tv tuners that are mpeg 4...[I did find a elagto mac one]

But what will I again with dvb-t I assume it is the same channels are analogue public TV except possibly some HD content ?

So maybe I just spend $125 get an analog tuner card and toss it when dvb-t comes ?

I have line of sight of Mt KauKau so I won't bother with dvb-s as I can't see what advantage I would get not to mention the cost of the stb and dish

Bottom line seems get an analogue tv tuner now or ressurect the VHS until next year !

ps: is dvb-t really going to be Feb 08 ?

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