Looking for a PVR/tv tuner card, please help

[Elsipkitch9809]

Hi,
I'm looking for suggestions on a card or external device that will enable me to both play video games with no lag (the tv tuner part--though not HD stuff since I'm mainly referring to composite and Svideo), and a PVR that will help me record and encode on the fly movies from my vcr and cable and such.

As I understand it, the PVR has a delay built in which is good for live recordings and such, but which is pretty useless when playing games.

I only have a budget of about 150 max including shipping, and I hope to get one of the devices with onboard MPEG 1/2 encoding (MPEG4 would be preferable but not absolutely necessary), since my computers aren't too powerful (amd64 3000+ system with 1gb ram and another one which is 64 but I can't remember the specs except they are lower end compared to the first one--it was a gift that I haven't put to use yet ).

I'd like to get something that is portable, like USB2, but from reading about things like the hauppauge wintv pvr USB2 it doesn't seem that reliable. The main reason for portability is that I have an ibook g4 that would be nice to be able to run it if I'm on vacation or something. But, PCI is fine (I don't have pci express though) if it makes choices more available. Speaking of which, is PCI faster than USB2? I would think it would be faster since its on a system bus, but then I'm not that knowledgeable about system speeds.

But in any case, something which has good quality is essential, for gaming or recorded movies. I saw that the hauppauge wintv pvr 250 and 350 were well supported and liked, but no one has commented on its use with video game consoles.

Well, thanks for any input/advice you can come up with!

[kharan5876]

I use the Hauppauge PVR 150 (PCI) for mythtv and its been great, this card has a hardware encoder. I think the ivtv driver has a way send video right to the video card for so theres no delay with console gaming but im not sure how it works, try googling around for it. I think it has a USB version but im not sure if its supported.

[Elsipkitch9809]

That one looks pretty good (the pvr150), especially since it's cheaper than the pvr250.... although looking at the official hauppauge pages, there doesn't seem to be any major differences between the two cards, but maybe I'm missing something obvious. I could probably afford the 250 since I've seen it cheap online, but is it really worth the extra dough?

[Elsipkitch9809]

Well I found this interesting differentiation between the cards:
http://www.diy-pvr-dvr-htpc.com/index.p ... 350_PVR500
and it does seem that for all intents and purposes, the pvr150 is the same as the 250, except its cheaper. So I'll probably get that one, assuming I can confirm it does indeed allow straight playthrough of video for game consoles and the like.

[Elsipkitch9809]

Also, I've been reading that the pvr150 has had some audio recording problems (like the volume can't be controlled, it gets too loud or soft). Can anybody confirm this in linux (if its just a driver issue and not a hardware thing)? If it is hardware (or in a good portion of the batch out there), does the 250 faire better? Or can I just pipe the audio into my sound card for the 150 and completely bypass any problems?

Sorry for all the questions, just want to make sure I do my homework before I buy anything

[infirit]

I would recommend using a PVR350 as a primary card. It has a great tv-out support.

I have a PVR350 as my primary and a PVR 500 mce as second card (PVR500 is 2 x PVR150). The PVR150 does have a lower standard volume but can be changed really easy with ivtv-ctl.

[interested1]

The PVR350 is the top of the line card in terms of video quality --this at least is according to Hauppauge-- and it supports BOTH encoding and decoding on-board. It also has its own framebuffer device, which can be a real nice thing. Moreover, what you will get from both encoding and decoding done on-board is low CPU overhead for both recording and watching your clips.

The 150 and its brother times two the 500 only have encoders and you will see higher CPU load when watching clips (PVR-500 is basically two PVR-150s). But, you have to consider that the load is only that of playing a MPEG-2 file in mplayer, and this would be a good way to test if you really need the 350 for the decoding. In the end, if you have processor specs that are lower end, you will want to seriously consider the 350, although you might even want the 350 for the higher video quality, though I have only read about the superior quality and not experienced it --this claim is also substantiated by Hauppauge.

If you are looking at the 150 I would suggest you step up and get the 500. This will allow you much greater control over your mythtv experience: allowing you to record 2 shows at the same time, PIP, and just overall ease of having one PCI slot handle all of your dual tuning needs.


As for the direct video stuff and USB T.V. cards, I am not expert on it.

[beandog]

USB 2.0 tv tuner, mpeg4 hardware encoding, oss kernel drivers: http://gentoo-wiki.com/HARDWARE_go7007

*shamelessly plugging this thing for years*

[Elsipkitch9809]

I'm not sure I really need TV out at all, I don't know what I would use it for since I'm trying to get rid of my regular tv in lieu of something like this. Plus, the 350 is kind of on the expensive side, with the 150 being much cheaper (I saw one advertised at $54!). When you say that the default audio is low but you can adjust it, does that mean there are no issues with audio being "tinny", too loud, and basically everything I keep seeing about it in other forums and reviews? I see a lot of places where people say hauppauge couldn't help them, that said the audio was inadjustable. Then again, these users were probably all just using the windows drivers. I'm just wondering if the people developing the linux ivtv drivers got around this and all audio recording from said card is perfect and consistent.

While it does seem that the 500 is pretty cool, I really have no need for two 150s in one pci slot. I'm a very patient person and would only need to watch one stream at a time As for the decoder, I imagine if I captured in MPEG2 I'd probably just burn it as a dvd, otherwise I'd keep it at MPEG 1 or something. Of course capturing in MPEG4 would be awesome, but I still need to find a card that does that with all the other stuff I need.

That certainly looks like a nice device, but the page you linked to says that its not possible to get non encoded streams, so that means I couldn't use it to play game consoles, right? I think you need a raw stream to really get a non lagged gameplay. Looks like a cool device though, I'll keep it on my potentials list.

If anyone has any stories of their pvr150 in linux (particularly towards the video/audio sync and audio volume issues that are somewhat prevalent in the windows world), I'd be really interested to hear about it. Thanks everyone so far that responded too!

[interested1]

I don't know if you have checked these pages out or not, but if you really want to find out about the 150 and any possible issues it might have, you should really check the ivtv driver page and the associated forums.

[Elsipkitch9809]

Thanks for posting that, I saw the ivtv webpage before, but I hadn't found that forum yet. And I found out part of my answers. While I'm still not sure about the pvr's audio problems (which it doesn't look like there are many of, or that they are similar at all to the windows ones--most of them look pretty benign and software specific), there is one important tidbit: the pvr150 cannot currently be used for videogames sans lag. As far as I can tell from numerous unanswered and 1 answered posts, the ivtv driver cannot turn off the hardware encoder to give a raw stream. But the technology remaining the same, so someday it could do this. Here is the post that was answered:
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/i ... lag;#27420

So, I guess it's back to the drawing board for a tv-tuner which has no hardware encoding whatsoever (in order to play games on). But that means it'll probably be cheaper and maybe I can get a portable USB tuner I can carry around with me, while the real heavy duty pvr recording something like the 150 can handle at home.

Anyway, thanks again for pointing me there

[KShots]

USB 2.0 tv tuner, mpeg4 hardware encoding, oss kernel drivers: http://gentoo-wiki.com/HARDWARE_go7007

*shamelessly plugging this thing for years*

That is indeed a nice device - probably your best bet for USB capture. I bought my father one, and he's been very pleased with it. However, you should know a couple of the cons on it as well.

1. Your kernel will be out of date. You will be restricted to either 2.6.15-rx or (I believe) 2.6.16-r12. The newer kernels are missing kernel symbols that they thought nobody used... so they were stripped out. Now the go7007 no longer works.

2. You will have to use an older ALSA driver to use this device.

In other words, if you also want your machine to do other stuff, avoid this card until those issues are resolved. If it's a dedicated multimedia box (like my father's), you probably won't care as long as it can be made to work.

[tpf80]

This is a little late but I figured I would post this in case anyone would want to know because I had to look hard for the answer:

I saw this on another site somewhere:

"Take a look at <myth-install-prefix>/share/mythtv/tvmenu.xml. Copy the
file to ${HOME}/.mythtv/tvmenu.xml and then edit it. There's an
example at the bottom of the file; try uncommenting it to get a
"Passthrough Mode" button in your TV menu."

So I went and did the following:

1) emerged xawtv
2) uncommented the button

Now i can use the recording feature with shows, or if I want to play a game I have a button that bypasses the encoder using xawtv, Thus removing the lag. I am using an old Hauppauge 61381 d423 card and it works perfectly in this setup for both recording and for games in real time. In fact I had thrown it in a box a long time ago because I could never get it to work in Windows, but then I saw mythtv and was able to get it to work fine. Go figure..