newbie needs help / advice

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Johnk

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#29676 14-Jan-2009 21:29

hello everyone,
i have a 2nd box sitting in the corner that i was thinking of dusting off and turing into a basic htpc,all i really want to do with it record freeviewHD with two tuners onto an internal harddrive.its fairly old and dont really know what i need.its running XP pro,motherboard is: Gigiabyte ga-7va (rev1.x)CPU: AMD Athlon xp 2400 / 2.01GHzand the graphics card is some old $5 trademe special so i can see what im doing when i turn it on ( this will be replaced)i dont need HDMI out on the box as tv has vga input.i guess what im asking is, would this spec box be ok for freeviewHD with little money being spent?or is it all too old.

Ragnor

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#189652 14-Jan-2009 23:06

Recording is not overly taxing. However playback is, especially of MPEG4 H.264, a single core cpu and and no hardware acceleration from the graphics card isn't going to work well.

You didn't mention whether you were going to use DVB-T or DVB-S and whether you want to record to mpeg2 or mpeg4.

Johnk

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#189821 15-Jan-2009 18:25

when you say "no hardware acceleration from the graphics card", do you mean not having a decent one? sorry i want freeviewHD, so that is dvb-t is it?also dont really know the diff between mpeg2 or mpeg4. i dont need HD 5.1 audio

1gkar

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#189872 15-Jan-2009 21:36

If your video card is anything less than an Nvidia 8500GT or it's ATI equivalent, then don't bother trying to get FVHD; it is wasted effort. 'Hardware acceleration' is where the decoding process is passed off to the video card's GPU, thereby saving the system's CPU the intensive effort of decoding the HD signal.

Also, what do you mean by 'two tuners'? Is that one dual tuner card such as an HVR-2200? Or two separate single tuner cards?

Mpeg 2 & 4 are totally different video formats with 4 being a far newer variant. Freeview DVB-S (satellite) uses MPEG 2 which is why it cannot transmit the HD signal. That requires the MPEG4 stream. It may pay to do some basic research. Check here

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Johnk

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#189878 15-Jan-2009 22:00

yeah sorry, when i said two tuners i pretty much meant i want the abillity to record two chanels at once.

I see that card u listed has PCI-E16x interface, my motherboard does not suport this, hence my question, with this motherboard only having 1 x AGP slot (8x/4x, AGP 3.0 compliant), supports 1.5v display card only., and 5 x PCI slots (PCI 2.2 compliant). is it actuly possibly to get mpeg4 HD freeview or is this interface to old?

Regs

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#189889 15-Jan-2009 22:28

Johnk:

yeah sorry, when i said two tuners i pretty much meant i want the abillity to record two chanels at once.

I see that card u listed has PCI-E16x interface, my motherboard does not suport this, hence my question, with this motherboard only having 1 x AGP slot (8x/4x, AGP 3.0 compliant), supports 1.5v display card only., and 5 x PCI slots (PCI 2.2 compliant). is it actuly possibly to get mpeg4 HD freeview or is this interface to old?

you can go for the Nova-T-500 card instead - its DVB-T, has twin tuners and uses a PCI slot

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Regs

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#189892 15-Jan-2009 22:32

1gkar: If your video card is anything less than an Nvidia 8500GT or it's ATI equivalent, then don't bother trying to get FVHD; it is wasted effort

the 8400GS card i have seems to do a perfectly good job of h.264 h/w acceleration on freeviewhd, mkv and panasonic HD mts files.... all with < 5% CPU on XP, Vista and now Win7

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elkano

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#189918 16-Jan-2009 01:02

Regs:
Johnk:

yeah sorry, when i said two tuners i pretty much meant i want the abillity to record two chanels at once.

I see that card u listed has PCI-E16x interface, my motherboard does not suport this, hence my question, with this motherboard only having 1 x AGP slot (8x/4x, AGP 3.0 compliant), supports 1.5v display card only., and 5 x PCI slots (PCI 2.2 compliant). is it actuly possibly to get mpeg4 HD freeview or is this interface to old?

you can go for the Nova-T-500 card instead - its DVB-T, has twin tuners and uses a PCI slot

Or go for the Blackgold BGT3500 which has dual analogue or dual DVB-T tuners, and can hardware encode to MPEG 1\2\4, DiVX or VC1.
I'm looking at ordering some in from U.K.

I haven't heard much about them, but other members are pretty positive about the 3540 models they got in a while ago..

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mcraenz

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#189956 16-Jan-2009 10:57

John, not suer why these guys havne't given you the cold hard facts yet but there is no way you will be able to use that box for FreeviewHD. It will make a great little DVB-S box but you will need a PCIe architchure with a NVIDIA 8x00 card for watch FreeviewHD Some may claim this ATI card or that software codec but I will tell you now and many more will back me up:

NVIDIA 8x00 (probably also the 9x00 cards but not 8800GTS) PCIe Graphics card
Basic daul core CPU
PowerDVD Codec
Vista (For EVR)

This is the ultimate FreeviewHD Combination. Anything else and you will be pushing sh1t up hill!

But DVB-S SD is pretty good too.

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elkano

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#189957 16-Jan-2009 11:07

mcraenz: John, not suer why these guys havne't given you the cold hard facts yet but there is no way you will be able to use that box for FreeviewHD. It will make a great little DVB-S box but you will need a PCIe architchure with a NVIDIA 8x00 card for watch FreeviewHD Some may claim this ATI card or that software codec but I will tell you now and many more will back me up:

NVIDIA 8x00 (probably also the 9x00 cards but not 8800GTS) PCIe Graphics card
Basic daul core CPU
PowerDVD Codec
Vista (For EVR)

This is the ultimate FreeviewHD Combination. Anything else and you will be pushing sh1t up hill!

But DVB-S SD is pretty good too.

I thought that was implied when we were talking about the graphics card. But of course you're right- we should have spelled it out.

Are there any other good alternatives to the PowerDVD codec?
PowerDVD is great for DVD's, but I've found TMT is better for blu-ray.
Sorry, don't mean to hijack the thread!

Johnk, afraid an upgrade is needed, especially if you want HD!

Johnk

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#189969 16-Jan-2009 11:39

hey guys, thanks for the replys i thougfht that an upgrade might have been the case if i wanted HD,
if i was to go down the DVB-S path, what vid cards could any one recomend for this box, also what tv card and software?
thanks for your help.

elkano

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#189988 16-Jan-2009 12:43

You mean DVB-S freeview or are you trying to get sky in the mix as well? Will you be recording anything else?

The only one I've had experience with is the Hauppauge Nova-S, which works quite well.
The software that comes with Hauppauge cards is pretty rubbish.

There are a lot of other free software alternatives out there though. Quite a few linux ports and free software like MediaPortal or GB-PVR for Windows based systems. I have no experience with the linux ports (MYthTV, MythBuntu etc) but I know you have to be very careful about hardware choices as you will need the linux drivers to be available.

Johnk

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#190003 16-Jan-2009 14:14

just want to record freeview, dont have sky yet.
if i was to get a Hauppauge Nova-S, would i also need to upgrade my curent graphics card, or does the Hauppauge Nova-S, take care of all of that?
sorry the dumb questions, im just not that tech savy.

Asmodeus

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#190007 16-Jan-2009 15:00

Johnk:
just want to record freeview, dont have sky yet.
if i was to get a Hauppauge Nova-S, would i also need to upgrade my curent graphics card, or does the Hauppauge Nova-S, take care of all of that?
sorry the dumb questions, im just not that tech savy.

For dvb-s, you should be OK with an AGP graphics card. The tv card itself should also be fine with your cpu/mobo

I ran 2x nova-S c ards and an fx5200 AGP graphics card and it works fine for dvb-s and dvds

But as mentioned, if you want dvb-t freeview or blu-ray, you'll need a new mobo, graphics card, cpu.....

mcraenz

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#190022 16-Jan-2009 16:28

Yeah a couple fo NOVA-S cards and any Nvidia gforce or ATI Radeon APG card and you'll be away laughing :-)
Check out MediaPortal/TVserver. TVServer allows you to record multiple channels using a single card as long as the channels are on the same mux, ie, you can record all TVNZ channels on one card and all TV3 channels on the other card all at the same time :-)

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