Mailing List Archive

On Thu, 31 Jul 2003, ndep8515 wrote:

> are the hardware mpeg2 cards like the Hauppauge Freestyle/250/350 worth it?
IMHO, Yes.

> If it really is worth the upgrade.. should I grab the PVR 350/250 or
> freestyle.

I have a 250 and love it. But any of the avove should be fine.

>
> Any problems with the mpeg2 encoders and Live TV viewing?

Aside from audio spikes when doing a FFW/REW, no.


--------------------------------------------------------------
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james@jameswhite.org Electrical Engineer - Etc.
http://www.jameswhite.org Caffeine is my anti-drug.
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I think it is a good idea. It does offload a lot of work from the CPU to
the card not to mention MPEG2 compression.

The thing is that most people will think that a new Athlon 2400+ is dirt
cheap now but if you get a nice low CPU with low power you can actually
compensate with the cost of power consumption. I calculated that I will
save about $4/month that makes it $48/yr. Moving to a lower powered CPU
like a VIA Nemiah will bring that down a bit further also.

Also with lower power and dedicated hardware encoder card means less heat
means less cooling needed means low powered fans means lower noise.

Not to mention the fact that the files are in MPEG2 and therefore if you
have a windows machine it is quite possible to watch the video files
without even re-encoding it.

Ok, I'm the other voice.
The one that says: MPEG2 BAD! MPEG4 GOOD!
I use nothing but the stuff I pulled out of my closit.
(AMD 1800+, everyone's fav. TV tuner)

I use MGEP4 compession with all the imaging goodness turned on, so I
gota ask, why use 4gig/hr when you can have 500meg/hr? Sure HDD is
cheap, but I can get 160gig for $116, and then have ~320hs of record
time, or I can have ~40hrs with MPEG2. And YES I CAN use 320hrs of
record time damit! Cost asside, to me record time and quality are all
that matter.

In realty, it is a matter of what works best for you. I'm a tech
junky, and the way I work a POT (plain old Tuner (C)2003 Matt) works
fine for me. Now in your case, you may want the benifits an MPEG2
hardware encoder give you, lower processor usage, lower heat, etc...
For me, since I am intigrating it all in one system, it just makes sence
to use what I got, and throw in a big HDD. I feel that in the future,
more people will have to move over to MPEG4 compression, with the
poliferation of HDTV. Untill that day, in ~2009 (when we all upgrade)
use what works best for you, and don't worry about the rest. Besides,
whats the worst that could happen, besides you computer bursting into
flames, and it burnes down every house on you block. No, wait, thats my
computer. Never Mind.
Matt


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In the same lines will PVR250 support MPEG-4 using some firmware upgrade
in the future ? Can I buy PVR250 now and expect that MPEG 4 be supported
in it sometime in the future ?

-Saravan

On Thu, 2003-07-31 at 11:40, matt wrote:
> Ok, I'm the other voice.
> The one that says: MPEG2 BAD! MPEG4 GOOD!
> I use nothing but the stuff I pulled out of my closit.
> (AMD 1800+, everyone's fav. TV tuner)
>
> I use MGEP4 compession with all the imaging goodness turned on, so I
> gota ask, why use 4gig/hr when you can have 500meg/hr? Sure HDD is
> cheap, but I can get 160gig for $116, and then have ~320hs of record
> time, or I can have ~40hrs with MPEG2. And YES I CAN use 320hrs of
> record time damit! Cost asside, to me record time and quality are all
> that matter.
>
> In realty, it is a matter of what works best for you. I'm a tech
> junky, and the way I work a POT (plain old Tuner (C)2003 Matt) works
> fine for me. Now in your case, you may want the benifits an MPEG2
> hardware encoder give you, lower processor usage, lower heat, etc...
> For me, since I am intigrating it all in one system, it just makes sence
> to use what I got, and throw in a big HDD. I feel that in the future,
> more people will have to move over to MPEG4 compression, with the
> poliferation of HDTV. Untill that day, in ~2009 (when we all upgrade)
> use what works best for you, and don't worry about the rest. Besides,
> whats the worst that could happen, besides you computer bursting into
> flames, and it burnes down every house on you block. No, wait, thats my
> computer. Never Mind.
> Matt
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> mythtv-users mailing list
> mythtv-users@snowman.net
> http://lists.snowman.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users

MPEG4 is an interly different from MPEG2. You can not simply
upgrade a MPEG2 hardware compression board with a firmware update and
have mpeg4 compression. If you want, there is a MPEG4 hardware
compression board out there, with linux drivers.
http://www.viewcast.com/products/osprey/osprey220_divx.html
But since it was never desgined for this purpos it is unlikly to work
with MythTV.
And for $300 I am unwilling to try. But if you wana give it a go...
Just don't complain to me when it fails miserably.
Matt
Saravanan Subbiah wrote:

>In the same lines will PVR250 support MPEG-4 using some firmware upgrade
>in the future ? Can I buy PVR250 now and expect that MPEG 4 be supported
>in it sometime in the future ?
>
>-Saravan
>
>On Thu, 2003-07-31 at 11:40, matt wrote:
>
>
>>Ok, I'm the other voice.
>>The one that says: MPEG2 BAD! MPEG4 GOOD!
>>I use nothing but the stuff I pulled out of my closit.
>>(AMD 1800+, everyone's fav. TV tuner)
>>
>> I use MGEP4 compession with all the imaging goodness turned on, so I
>>gota ask, why use 4gig/hr when you can have 500meg/hr? Sure HDD is
>>cheap, but I can get 160gig for $116, and then have ~320hs of record
>>time, or I can have ~40hrs with MPEG2. And YES I CAN use 320hrs of
>>record time damit! Cost asside, to me record time and quality are all
>>that matter.
>>
>> In realty, it is a matter of what works best for you. I'm a tech
>>junky, and the way I work a POT (plain old Tuner (C)2003 Matt) works
>>fine for me. Now in your case, you may want the benifits an MPEG2
>>hardware encoder give you, lower processor usage, lower heat, etc...
>>For me, since I am intigrating it all in one system, it just makes sence
>>to use what I got, and throw in a big HDD. I feel that in the future,
>>more people will have to move over to MPEG4 compression, with the
>>poliferation of HDTV. Untill that day, in ~2009 (when we all upgrade)
>>use what works best for you, and don't worry about the rest. Besides,
>>whats the worst that could happen, besides you computer bursting into
>>flames, and it burnes down every house on you block. No, wait, thats my
>>computer. Never Mind.
>>Matt
>>
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>mythtv-users mailing list
>>mythtv-users@snowman.net
>>http://lists.snowman.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
>>
>>
>
>
>
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>
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>
>

> I use MGEP4 compession with all the imaging goodness turned on

I have to ask... I'm using a 2.4Ghz p4 - faster than your athlon - and
I can't enable any of the extra encoding options without all KINDS of
slowness going on... Or are you just talking about general quality
settings, and not the mpeg4 enhancements that went into .10?

Then again, I'm going to go with the hardware encoder card at some
point, too.. that way, I can set up a separate backend on an old p3
system and put it in the basement with the rest of my (old/free)
rackmount stuff.

-Chris

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At 11:43 AM 7/31/2003 -0700, you wrote:
>In the same lines will PVR250 support MPEG-4 using some firmware upgrade
>in the future ? Can I buy PVR250 now and expect that MPEG 4 be supported
>in it sometime in the future ?


No

I have every MPEG4 Enhancement turned on.
I get slowdowns also, but ONLY when I crank up the resolution beond
512x420 (~ TIVO best quality). That is with simulatious record and
playback. I havn't tryed that high on just record.
Matt
(PS: Insert AMD4ME here)
Chris Petersen wrote:

>> I use MGEP4 compession with all the imaging goodness turned on
>>
>>
>
>I have to ask... I'm using a 2.4Ghz p4 - faster than your athlon - and
>I can't enable any of the extra encoding options without all KINDS of
>slowness going on... Or are you just talking about general quality
>settings, and not the mpeg4 enhancements that went into .10?
>
>Then again, I'm going to go with the hardware encoder card at some
>point, too.. that way, I can set up a separate backend on an old p3
>system and put it in the basement with the rest of my (old/free)
>rackmount stuff.
>
>-Chris
>
>_______________________________________________
>mythtv-users mailing list
>mythtv-users@snowman.net
>http://lists.snowman.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
>
>
>
>

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I'm completely new at this DivX encoding stuff so I just _need_ to ask
you some questions:

why the 3 steps? what is frameserve? what kind of filtering are you doing?

I'm currently using Dr. DivX to do my encoding (like you over the
network on a Windows machine) and quite satisfied with the result. (but
only because I've not needed to encode anything that has commercials in
the middle because it doesn't allow editing, just begin and end positions).

Cheers,
-Tako

Will Dormann wrote:

> At 03:28 PM 7/31/2003 -0400, you wrote:
> >>>>
> I have every MPEG4 Enhancement turned on.
> I get slowdowns also, but ONLY when I crank up the resolution beond
> 512x420 (~ TIVO best quality). That is with simulatious record and
> playback. I havn't tryed that high on just record.
>
>
> <<<<
>
> What I do is record with my PVR-250 at high quality (720x480, about
> 2.5-3GB/hour) and then transcode to XVID later on. I think it's the
> best of both worlds as when I watch live TV, there is no loss of
> quality (actually a tad better than my TV tuner's reception, due to
> the PVR-250's digital noise reduction), and when I record a show that
> I want to save, I just convert it to a higher-compressed format.
> (Using VirtualDub-MPEG2 to open and frameserve, Avisynth to
> deinterlace, and then VirtualDub again to filter and compress). The
> results are amazing.
>
> I haven't found any linux equivalents of the above programs, so I do
> the conversion over the network on my Windows machine.
>
> -WD
>
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>
>

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The circuit city deal ($99 for a pvr-250 after $50 MIR) ends today or
tomorrow I believe. I just got one, haven't put it in. Based on what
I've seen on this list, I figured the upgrade was worth it from WinTV PCI.

--
Brian

On Thu, 31 Jul 2003, ndep8515 wrote:

>are the hardware mpeg2 cards like the Hauppauge Freestyle/250/350 worth it?
>
>Right now im using wintv-pci with 640x480 rtjpeg 170 quality
>with this setting im not using btaudio just the pass through, should I be
>using the btaudio?
>
>Also, recording mpeg2 to the hard drive then watching it at the same time..
>whats the cpu usgae usualy?
>
>like right now on my athlonxp 1900+ with the above settings in LiveTV
>(recording/watching at the same time) I have about 30-40% cpu free... 60%
>usage.
>
>If it really is worth the upgrade.. should I grab the PVR 350/250 or
>freestyle.
>
>The freestyle looks like a nice cheap all around mpeg2 encoder I really want
>to get one.
>
>Any problems with the mpeg2 encoders and Live TV viewing?
>
>Thanks.
>Nick D
>
>
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>mythtv-users@snowman.net
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>

--
Brian Hayward