HVR 22200 and Analog TV

Forums › Home Theatre (including HTPC and EPG Collector) › HVR 22200 and Analog TV

kiwijunglist

2981 posts

Uber Geek

ID Verified

#21974 12-May-2008 15:24

Hi

I'm building a stand alone multimedia PC, and I have an HVR2200 on backorder from ascent for $145. I just read some posts stating that the HVR2200 doesn't work with analog TV in mediaportal. Can anyone confirm this? If so perhaps I am ordering the wrong card, and I should get a different card. Analog TV is not absolutely important and compatibility and stability is probabiy the most important issue.

The gear I already have

Christchurch Roof Top UHF Aerial with perfect reception
AMD X2 4200+ CPU
Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H 780G Motherboard (Onboard h264 decoding)
WD 750GB HDD
Adata 2gb ddr2-800
Enermax 535W speed control PSU
Silverstone LC16-M
Samsung 46" Full 1080P LCD TV via HDMI
+Samsung 5.1 Stereo via redemption in the post
Silverstone remote control

Will run windows vista + mediaportal

So my question is, am I choosing the best tv card for the job? I guess the disadvantage of getting a PCI-E TV turner is that it wont allow me to do crossfire with another video card and the onboard card.

Would i be better of with the Nova T 500? The 2200 is on backorder till the 16th so it's not too late to cancel my order and choose something different

HTPC / Home automation (home assistant) enthusiast.

Disrespective

1926 posts

Uber Geek

#130275 12-May-2008 16:02

Further to my post in your other thread.

If you don't have to have the Analogue the HVR2200 is a perfectly capable card.

Why won't you be able to do crossfire with the onboard video if you use an HVR2200? The HVR2200 is a PCI-e 1x slot whereas the crossfire capable card will go in the PCI-e 16x slot. So it doesn't go in the same slot.

p.s. Crossfire (or any catalyst drivers really for that matter, including the onboard graphics) doesn't have the best reputation for quality in MediaPortal so don't expect miracles when/if you go to crossfire.

xcubed

194 posts

Master Geek

ID Verified

Lifetime subscriber

#130276 12-May-2008 16:12

Assuming the chipset on the HVR2200 is similar to the chipset on the HVR3000, you should have no problems using the analogue tuner in MediaPortal, as my HVR3000 works fine. The only catch is that the card does not have a hardware encoder for the analogue tuner, so your computer will need to encode the feed into MPEG-2 in software, before MediaPortal will do anything with it. Considering the spec of your machine, this shouldn't affect performance too much. If you were using the analogue tuner a lot, I would recommend the likes of the PVR150 which has onboard hardware encoding.

The only other potential issue, is that the EPG data is only available via DVB and not via analogue. MediaPortal will try to fetch the EPG regularly, and if both tuners are in analogue mode, it will fail. This isn't an issue, unless both tuners stay in analogue mode for an extended period of time, so that MediaPortal never gets a chance to update the guide. Two easy workarounds are to:
- only assign the analogue channels to one of the analogue tuners (assuming you only need to receive one channel via analogue, such as Prime), so that there is always at least one tuner in DVB mode.
- use Reven Interactive's XMLTVNZ or similar, to fetch EPG data from the web.

Considering the card is PCIe 1x, you should still be able to do CrossFire as the card won't need to go in a PCIe 16x slot.

Carey

mcraenz

1140 posts

Uber Geek

#130279 12-May-2008 16:14

MediaPortal does not support HVR-2200 analog yet. but I would think that it will in the future. Also ATI cards/drivers seem to be getting a bit of a bad rep lately in terms of decoding NZ's interlaced DVB-T channels, just something to watch out for.

Help me build a better way of doing politics in Aotearoa New Zealand

political.nz

kiwijunglist

2981 posts

Uber Geek

ID Verified

#130282 12-May-2008 16:23

Thank you all for the very informative replies.

[b]Disrespective:[/b] I read one of your posts on 10 April that you had a 780G mobo on backorder at one stage, what happened to that did you get rid of it because of problems?

HTPC / Home automation (home assistant) enthusiast.

Disrespective

1926 posts

Uber Geek

#130293 12-May-2008 17:07

No, it arrived and has been running perfectly (apart from a troublesome audio crackle with DTS enabled for the onboard audio)

If you're confused about my note about my PCI slots being full i'll elaborate:
I have a PVR-500 in the bottom PCI slot (I had this as a leftover from my old machine so have kept it for the Analogue signal)
Then in the PCI-e 16x slot i have a passive 8600GT

The PCI slot between the two is troublesome because the graphics card takes up an entire slot so anything that goes next to it will restrict the airflow over the passive heatsink so much that both cards overheat terribly. I decided that i was best to keep the passive 8600GT and to just replace the Nova-T that i would have put in the second PCI slot and swap it with an HVR2200 which can now go in the PCI-e 1x slot.

ajst2duk

170 posts

Master Geek

#130299 12-May-2008 17:18

xcubed: Assuming the chipset on the HVR2200 is similar to the chipset on the HVR3000, you should have no problems using the analogue tuner in MediaPortal, as my HVR3000 works fine. The only catch is that the card does not have a hardware encoder for the analogue tuner, so your computer will need to encode the feed into MPEG-2 in software, before MediaPortal will do anything with it. Considering the spec of your machine, this shouldn't affect performance too much. If you were using the analogue tuner a lot, I would recommend the likes of the PVR150 which has onboard hardware encoding.

The only other potential issue, is that the EPG data is only available via DVB and not via analogue. MediaPortal will try to fetch the EPG regularly, and if both tuners are in analogue mode, it will fail. This isn't an issue, unless both tuners stay in analogue mode for an extended period of time, so that MediaPortal never gets a chance to update the guide. Two easy workarounds are to:
- only assign the analogue channels to one of the analogue tuners (assuming you only need to receive one channel via analogue, such as Prime), so that there is always at least one tuner in DVB mode.
- use Reven Interactive's XMLTVNZ or similar, to fetch EPG data from the web.

Considering the card is PCIe 1x, you should still be able to do CrossFire as the card won't need to go in a PCIe 16x slot.

Carey

I believe the HVR-2200 has hardware decoding of the analogue signal - or am I missing something?

Analogue TV features
	Record analogue TV shows to your PC's hard disk using our hardware MPEG-2 encoder. TV recordings will typically take 1,5 Gb of disk space per hour.
	Auxiliary audio/video input for analogue video sources such as VCRs, Camcorders, satellite TV boxes, etc. S-Video and composite video, too!

mcraenz

1140 posts

Uber Geek

#130305 12-May-2008 17:39

Hardware encoding. Yes. It uses the SAA7164 chip, it's fairly new so I guess it will just take some time before the different apps support it. Unlike the digital side which just uses the BDA driver standard hence support is auotmatic for apps like MediaPortal, GBPVR and Windows MCE

Help me build a better way of doing politics in Aotearoa New Zealand

political.nz

Sharesies

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

xcubed

194 posts

Master Geek

ID Verified

Lifetime subscriber

#130347 12-May-2008 20:03

xcubed: Assuming the chipset on the HVR2200 is similar to the chipset on the HVR3000, you should have no problems using the analogue tuner in MediaPortal, as my HVR3000 works fine.

ajst2dsk: I believe the HVR-2200 has hardware decoding of the analogue signal - or am I missing something?

mcraenz: Hardware encoding. Yes. It uses the SAA7164 chip...

My bad. The HVR2200 obviously uses quite a different chipset from the HVR1300, HVR3000 and HVR4000.

Carey