Hauppauge WinTV PVR-USB

[wkulecz]

Don't laugh. I tried it. Since USB is 12Mbps and DVD peaks at 9.8 it should be possible. Its a box with analog in and USB out. Max setting is 6Mbps for mpeg2.

Quality was a pleasant surprise, very nice at 6Mbps when viewed on the G450 DVDmax with powerDVD, maybe a little soft, but this is real-time mpeg2 at definitely better than VHS quality for <$200.

VCD quality was surprising good for a real-time encoder. If I quit now, this may be what you are looking for to build your own "TiVo" like device.

Problem is, neither the VCD nor mpeq2 streams it produces are "compliant". They supply a "converter" program to make the VCD streams compliant, but its slow enough you might as well use TMPEGEnc. For mpeg2 I don't know what they are thinking.

I really don't understand why they would think mpeg2 streams that are rejected by DVD authoring software would be useful to anyone.

If this thing produced compliant streams it'd be fantastic, as it is, I just don't see the point of video that can only playback on a computer, no matter how high the compression or quality.

--wally.

[AndrewDV]

Hi,

I'm surprised you are getting good results with it. The USB version's limits were not making many happy. I wonder if the hardware was updated like what was done to the PCI version.

The VCD Converter is a toss away. If you want to create a compliant stream quicker, you have to:
-Capture using VCD or SVCD settings (available in the latest driver for PCI verions or use the registry hack).
-demux using TMPGEnc.
-mux using TMPGEnc

The demux/mux goes very quickly if all the settings are correct. This has to be done for PVR or DVCII files.

There is a user going by the name of "SHS." He monitors VCDHelp.com's forums (and others like the Usenet) for PVR users. He is a PVR guru that can help answer any questions you might have.

[wkulecz]

Thanks, but I'm not intrested in work arounds. If it can't produce compliant streams, its useless to me.

I was quite pleased with the quality, but once you start having to post process the files for compliance the advantage of real-time encode is lost. The quality is good enough for many purposes if I don't have to futz around with the files. But once I have to do post processing the quality loss over software encoding is not acceptable to me. YMMV.

Mine says REV E so perhaps there has been hardware improvements. IF they can produce a REV F that outputs compliant streams they would have a great product!

Demand better, or you'll never get it!

Has anyone tried the ADS USB MPEG box with similar features?

--wally.