[mythtv-users] WinFast TV2000 XP Expert with MythTV
Phill Wiggin
wigginp at mantech-wva.com
Fri May 5 14:14:52 EDT 2006
Brian Wood wrote:
>>
>>
>>I used one of these for 6-8 months as a primary, and afterwards a
>>backup, tuner in my standalone BE. I had no problems running it
>>with a
>>2500+ w/ 512M of RAM. But, the video you end up with is, MPEG4, IIRC.
>>It didn't make for putting shows on DVD, and I was annoyed by the
>>compression artifacts. I bought a PVR-250 and relegated the WinFast
>>TV2k to second-tuner duty and it worked out well, but the 250 had
>>better
>>recorded quality (albeit larger file-size). Then, I replaced it
>>with a
>>second PVR-250 and ended up (permanently) loaning it to a friend so he
>>could get a mythbox started for 'free'.
>>
>>In short, if you only need a backup tuner, and aren't worried about
>>archiving the shows it records, it's a fine free method. But, if you
>>want to archive and/or have good quality, go with a hardware
>>encoder card.
>>
>>
>
>With a frame-grabber card you can get MPEG-4 or RTJPEG compression,
>and you can adjust the parameters of the compression to get the best
>combination of CPU usage and quality for your particular machine.
>
>If you want to make a DVD you can transcode the result to MPEG-2, but
>the result might not be as good as if you had compressed to MPEG-2 in
>the first place.
>
>
>
Agreed. In my particular case, this was a while ago and the tools
weren't nearly as friendly as they are now. But, IIRC, I never got as
good of a picture with the software encoder card as the hardware encoder
regardless of settings. But, I could have had a bad cable, connection,
or any number of other problems at that time.
But, you're absolutely correct, it can be done, but I'd personally
recommend a hardware card for any long-life system (or one where you'd
like to archive to DVD). =)
--Phill W.
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