Escaping Matrox on a budget - Suggestions?

[LuSiD]

I'm a matrox victim.
I want out.

I bought a G400max and a rainbow runner G about 2 years ago naively thinking I could use it to watch TV on my computer and record shows for conversion to VCD without making a huge sacrifice in gaming performance or giving up my dual monitor configuration.

Driver after driver after driver has not solved the mjpeg problems with the RRG, which I am now convinced is faulty by design. After finally accepting the fact that my only option was to hack it to use huffy, and realizing that windows 2000 drivers were little more than vaporware even after they were officially released, I see that they refuse to support XP with even the primitive level of functionality remaining in the windows 2000 drivers.

I need to move to a more stable OS. And XP looks like it will be that OS, but thanks to Matrox I'm stuck in 1998. If I could afford to, I would replace my entire video subsystem and let matrox rot in hell, but that is not an option right now. The G400 will still function as a video card for now, but the RRG has got to go. It's a worthless POS.

Does anyone know of a TV card addon I can replace it with in the sub $100 range? I need something that can capture with any software codec of my choosing, has a TV tuner, and that either does not have macrovision protection or can tell the difference between a dropout on a VHS tape and real macrovision. Something from a company that can write drivers? even for XP?

Sorry for the rant, but Matrox has screwed a lot of us, and I want out.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

[dsp]

LuSiD,

Many people on this board (myself included) have purchased Hauppauge TV tuners that have working drivers for 2K (don't know about XP) and are pretty cheap (price wise) cards.

Heres their webpage www.hauppauge.com

dsp

[LuSiD]

Thanks

I looked at their site, and they already have the XP logo on the WinTV pci line, And it's also listed in the XP HCL already, so Hauppage looks like a good place to start.

What capture software do you use? Does it work with Vdub & huffy under win2k?
Any macrovision problems?
Any other issues with it?

[Indiana]

I'm also using a Hauppauge WinTV for my captures since the quality is better than that of my RadeonVIVO - and this exclusively in Win2k (I don't have Win98 installed anymore).
No problems with HuffYUV, PicVideo MJPEG or macrovision for that matter.

And yes, VirtualDub works just fine with the hauppauge capture driver, in fact better than hauppauges own software...

The only thing that is a bit annoying with the Hauppauge cards is that you can't have an overlay preview while capturing at the highest resolution. An a bit jerky non-overlay preview works with VirtualDub, though.

[Damascus]

I agree. I bought a G400 w/ RRG last year, only to have it come back and bite me. Capture doesn't work under Win2K, and they're not releasing any info for people to write Linux drivers.

I'm gonna dump my RRG in the trash bin and pick up the WinTV Go which is on sale at Staples this week. At least they've got working Win2K and Linux drivers.

The last Matrox product I'll ever buy. It's a sad day, I've used Matrox cards for several years now, but I'm fed up with their laziness. Cheers.

[dsp]

Hey Damascus before you throw that RRG in the trash send it to me, I could always use a capture card like that.

[Damascus]

Originally posted by dsp
Hey Damascus before you throw that RRG in the trash send it to me, I could always use a capture card like that.

No you don't. The RRG is evil and it must be disposed of approriately. It's not getting anywhere near anyone else ever again.

[Brian Ellis]

Damascus

If it's that bad, send it to Osama to use for his steganography

[frogster]

If you're looking to go cheap, go with an iomagic pc pvr. they're sold at compusa for $39.99

it's basically a pinnacle studio pro minus the fm radio and remote. i'm using it in ME and 2K without a problem.

the pinnacle studio drivers also work with it.

[LuSiD]

Question about the WinTV

I've been reading up on this card and it looks like it only captures at VGA resolution. I would imagine that aside from the extra time in scaling down to 352 it would work OK for VCD, but what do you do for 720? Just stretch it? or encode with black bars on the sides?

Or does it let you capture at vcd & dvd resolutions and it's just not stated on the vendor's site?

[Android]

One word: ATI

I just upgrade today from a G400Max & RR-G to a Radeon 8500 & TV Wonder... it kicks butt. Okay the R8500 is not a budget card, but the R7500 is... and the TV Wonder slaps the RR-G all over the place with the Mpeg2 encoding.

I loved my Matrox, but this stuff is truely sweet! Just wish I had some good editing software, guess I will have to go buy retail, sigh.

ciao,
Andrew

[Indiana]

Re: Question about the WinTV

Originally posted by LuSiD

Or does it let you capture at vcd & dvd resolutions and it's just not stated on the vendor's site?

Yes, exactly this. The WinTV can capture up to 768x576, even though otherwise stated on Hauppauges site.

[Dr Mordrid]

Yup. I've got a WinTV Theater in one of my systems here and it's a VERY nice board. Relatively cheap too.

Dr. Mordrid

[LuSiD]

thanks

Thanks guys, thats good info.

I think I'm going to go with one of those boards.