I'm contemplating upgrading my PC and would welcome comment on processing HD Freeview and whether I am right or wrong or misguided. Currently I have an old Athalon XP 2400+ , an Hauppauge WINTV-PVR-150 and GBPVR and it has worked pretty well for the analogue signal. I'll stick with Hauppauge for its compatability with GBPVR when I get a Freeview tuner. I intend to retain the WINTV-PVR-150 tuner as well.
TUNER
I understand that any DVB-T tuner will do as it simply outputs the file format that it receives. Even though its spec may state that its file format is MPEG-2, that is just saying that the Hauppauge software can only handle MPEG-2, which is not of great concern to me as GBPVR can handle the MPEG-4 H.264 of our Freeviw HD. Therefore, for example, if I want to record two Freeview channels at once I could purchase a WinTV Nova T 500 even though it's spec states that its file format is MPEG-2.
VIEWING
I watch my recordings over my network, served from my PC with TVersity, and via UPnP receivers currently consisting of a Pinnacle ShowCenter 250, XBox 360, and XBMC software on some computers.
-For recording on the computer but viewing off the computer, the computer does not need significant processing power (such as dual core CPU and H.264 capable video card) so I could conceivably use my existing machine.
-I expect the XBox 360 might view the MPEG-4 H.264 recordings OK.
-I don't know if the computers running the XBMC software will need to be very powerful to view the H.264 files.
-I'm hoping that TVersity will transcode the H.264 recordings to a format that will suit the ShowCenter, and if neccessary the XBMC software
PROCESSOR
I'm thinking of getting a Core2 Duo E8400 processor (3.00 GHz, 1333MHz FSB, 6MB cache), a GeForce 9400 GT (512MB, DDR2, PCIe-16) video card, 4GB RAM, and Vista 32bit with an upgrade to Win 7 32 bit. Though I don't intend to watch the recordings much on the computer it will also need processing power to transcode the recordings with TVersity for UPnP receivers that can't process MPEG-4 H.264, and I will be doing editing sometimes. Do you think that with these components it will enthusiastically process 1080i TV3 recordings?
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