Mailing List Archive

What about Creative Digital VCR card that has a mpeg encoder? You can get it for $50 after rebate time to time from CompUSA. I know there is a sourceforge page on developing linux drivers for the card but I don't see any activity. Can anybody comment on this card for MythTV?

Matthew Schumacher <schu@schu.net> wrote:Now that there is hardware compression support in Myth-TV I want to go
that route. I started looking at the PVR-250 and it is pretty
expensive. How many people have had good success with the g400-tv?
Does it support seeking in the video file or does that not work? I can
pick up a g400 much cheaper and if it works good I may go that route.

Also, how supported will this card be in the future, it looks like
everyone is going with the pvr-250 since Isaac has one.

Thanks,

schu

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On Monday 21 April 2003 01:11 pm, Matthew Schumacher wrote:
> Now that there is hardware compression support in Myth-TV I want to go
> that route. I started looking at the PVR-250 and it is pretty
> expensive. How many people have had good success with the g400-tv?
> Does it support seeking in the video file or does that not work? I can
> pick up a g400 much cheaper and if it works good I may go that route.
>
> Also, how supported will this card be in the future, it looks like
> everyone is going with the pvr-250 since Isaac has one.

There's been support for hardware mjpeg cards (like the g400-tv) for quite
awhile now. They're not really worth it, in my opinion. The created files
are _huge_, and it takes a lot more cpu to decode than other formats (my
p3-550 can barely decode 320x240 mjpeg files in real time, but it happily
plays back 640x480 mpeg4-based .nuv files), which quite completely offsets
the cpu saved by the hardware encoding.

Isaac

Isaac Richards wrote:
>
> There's been support for hardware mjpeg cards (like the g400-tv) for quite
> awhile now. They're not really worth it, in my opinion. The created files
> are _huge_, and it takes a lot more cpu to decode than other formats (my
> p3-550 can barely decode 320x240 mjpeg files in real time, but it happily
> plays back 640x480 mpeg4-based .nuv files), which quite completely offsets
> the cpu saved by the hardware encoding.
>
> Isaac
>

This is very interesting. Thanks for your reply. Does this mean that
the PVR-250 card is the same way? If so I'll just pick up a win-tv or
something and do the crunching in the processor. Athlons are so cheap
right now anyway.

Thanks,

schu

>
> This is very interesting. Thanks for your reply. Does this mean that
> the PVR-250 card is the same way? If so I'll just pick up a win-tv or
> something and do the crunching in the processor. Athlons are so cheap
> right now anyway.
>

my understanding is that the previous hardware encoding cards did
mjpeg. Those are the ones Isaac was talking about. The PVR-250 on the
other hand does mpeg2 encoding. This makes smaller file sizes and uses
much less cpu to play back. So this is so far the only card that _is_
worth it. Be aware that support isn't fully mature for it yet. But it
seems likely that since Isaac has one, and it seems to be working well
so far, it will get better quickly.


best,
Cedar

Few other cards with hardware mpeg2 compression:

1. AVerMedia M179 AVerTV PVR TV Tuner

2. Emuzed Maui PCI PVR

3. KWorld DVD Maker (TV version)

4. Creative Video Blaster Digital VCR card

The first two are specifically marketed for Windows
MCE along with Hauppage PVR 250 and 350.



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Kaushik Mallick wrote:
> Few other cards with hardware mpeg2 compression:
>
> 1. AVerMedia M179 AVerTV PVR TV Tuner
>
> 2. Emuzed Maui PCI PVR
>
> 3. KWorld DVD Maker (TV version)
>
> 4. Creative Video Blaster Digital VCR card
>
> The first two are specifically marketed for Windows
> MCE along with Hauppage PVR 250 and 350.

The thing that is always overlooked in these threads is that
MythTV does not support any cards, it supports interactions
with drivers. The reason there is work to support the
Hauppage PVR cards is because there is now the ivtv driver.

There are lots of mpeg2 cards in the world but the only ones
that might work with the current work in progress are cards
that are supported by the ivtv drivers:

http://ivtv.sourceforge.net/FAQ.html#_jump01

This implies that other cards may be supported but the
source code uses these just these defines:

#define IVTV_250_V1 0 /* wintv pvr 250, encoder and decoder */
#define IVTV_250_V2 1 /* pvr 250, encoder only */
#define IVTV_350_V1 2 /* encoder, decoder, tv-out */

Until there is verification of support for any other specific
card, it would be wise to assume that only the Hauppage PVR
250 and 350 might work with ivtv and therefore might work
with MythTV.

-- bjm