Will my older PC Handle a WinTV Nova T 500HD TV Tuner (DVB-T)

Forums › Freeview (DVB-T/DVB-S) › Will my older PC Handle a WinTV Nova T 500HD TV Tuner (DVB-T)

brad.wright

67 posts

Master Geek

#44725 28-Oct-2009 21:46

***Sorry I have posted this twice and this one is in the wrong forum, I can't seem to delete it ***

Hi All,

Just after some quick advice...I have an HP media centre with an analogue TV tuner, I want to replace this ideally with the WinTV Nova T 500HD TV Tuner (DVB-T).

My PC:

P4 3.4 GHz with Hyper-threading
3 GB RAM
ATI Radeon X300 (PCI-E with 256MB RAM)
Windows XP Media Centre

I don't care so much about HD, just so long as I get good quality TV on my secondary monitor in the office.

If my PC is not up to spec, I was considering the Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-3000 TV Tuner...

I have read some discussions about older machines and the Nova T 500 not working. I do have Sky and dish so this would be another option.

I have line of site to Mt. Kaukau so thought DVB-T would be my best option.

Cheers, Brad

Nety

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#267871 28-Oct-2009 22:31

If you get DVB-T then it is HD.. there is no SD feed over DVB-T. You could get a 3000 and get DVB-S for the time being until you upgrade the rest of your MC. What you have would handle SD TV ok. Then when you upgrade you can use the 3000 for DVB-T.

Media centre PC - Case Silverstone LC16M with 2 X 80mm AcoustiFan DustPROOF, MOBO Gigabyte MA785GT-UD3H, CPU AMD X2 240 under volted, RAM 4 Gig DDR3 1033, HDD 120Gig System/512Gig data, Tuners 2 X Hauppauge HVR-3000, 1 X HVR-2200, Video Palit GT 220, Sound Realtek 886A HD (onboard), Optical LiteOn DH-401S Blue-ray using TotalMedia Theatre Power Corsair VX Series, 450W ATX PSU OS Windows 7 x64

Buttonmash

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#267886 28-Oct-2009 23:12

Should be absolutely fine. It's recording a broadcast h.264 feed not transcoding it.

Nety

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#267910 29-Oct-2009 06:22

Buttonmash: Should be absolutely fine. It's recording a broadcast h.264 feed not transcoding it.

brad.wright: I don't care so much about HD, just so long as I get good quality TV on my secondary monitor in the office.

The last poster is correct as long as you are not trying to play it from that PC. The PC you have listed should be able to record TV but there is no way it would play live or recorded HD TV. Your statement above is a little unclear. Is the secondary monitor running from this PC?

Buttonmash

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#267915 29-Oct-2009 06:55

I'd expect a 3.4GHz P4 to be able to play back even TV3's 1080i. What'd I'd recommend doing is:

Find someone with a tuner who can give you a .ts file they've recorded. Then you can play with codecs and settings to see whether the performance is acceptable to you.

If it turns out the system can't cope you can always grab a cheaper new video card and use the Cyberlink h.264 codec to offload most of the processing to the graphics processor.

brad.wright

67 posts

Master Geek

#267918 29-Oct-2009 07:14

Thank you everyone. My second monitor is connected to the Media Centre...

To be honest, I only want to watch TV on this Media Centre PC, recording will be done on my separate HT set-up which is not even connected to my PC yet.

So would the WinTV-HVR-3000 TV Tuner cope with playing SD TV on this PC?

Thanks again,

Brad

Regs

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Snowflake

#267979 29-Oct-2009 09:53

the tuner makes no difference to the playback. the graphics card and the CPU are the ones you need to look at. it may be that your CPU plays stuff back ok - but it might do so using 90%+ CPU. An upgrade to a nVidia or ATI card with h.264 acceleration capability might then be required. As long as you have a PCI-Express slot in your machine then you can easily get a Graphics card that will do the trick, probably for around $100 if you only need it for TV and not games...

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brad.wright

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Master Geek

#267985 29-Oct-2009 10:04

Thanks for that, I was looking at getting a Sapphire 4670 but my HP Case is a little small and the 300W PSU probably won't power a new graphics card. I have a Corsair 620WHX PSU but this is too large for my current case.. Any suggestions would be greatly welcomed!

Thanks, Brad

Nety

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#268012 29-Oct-2009 11:03

Looks like a Radeon 4350 should work and it specifies a 300W PSU so you should be OK. However I do not know much about the ATI cards so you might want to confirm with someone that has one before buying one.
Also I am still not sure if your CPU will be up to HD. The basic rule used to be dual core minimum. Now with newer video cards that do more offloading (like the 4350) it might be OK but I am not sure if there are others that have successfully run Freeview|HD on a P4 single core.

brad.wright

67 posts

Master Geek

#268031 29-Oct-2009 11:38

I think I will settle for Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-3000 TV Tuner with DVB-S - Standard Definition.. Later on when I build my new PC (dual core) I can switch to DVB-T. I am going to measure my current PSU and look at one of the Vantec 500W PSU's.

Thanks for all your help.

Regs

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Snowflake

#268385 30-Oct-2009 00:54

if you're looking at power supply i can recommend the acbel ipower series. very quiet and damn good value when compared to other PSUs. i replaced my zalman 460aps which died with the acbel and its quieter and about 1/4 of the price! these acbel psu's are around $100 for 510W: http://www.qmb.co.nz/p.aspx?107715

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