[mythtv-users] WinFast TV2000 XP Expert with MythTV

[Brian Wood]

On May 5, 2006, at 12:14 PM, Phill Wiggin wrote:

> Brian Wood wrote:
>
>>>
>>>
>>
>> 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). =)


I would make the same recommendation, and have many times.

In fact I gave away my old Win-TV card, and if I want an MPEG-4 file  
I use a Plextor unit to get a hardware-encoded recording. To save  
space I'd go to an entirely hardware MPEG-4 system except for the  
fact that it would render my MediaMVP useless.