Got the AIW Radeon, this is how it's going...

[Mance]

Tony,
You've gotten farther than I have. After having been happy enough with the MPG2 captures I never went back and tried VCD or SVCD. I mostly use this to watch TV shows at a later time, so I don't end up keeping the captures for very long. MPG2 files are still too big to keep forever (unless I do it for home movies that are less then 13 minutes apiece so they'll fit on CD and then I use the DVR), and I've never been happy with the quality of VCD or SVCD for archiving.

I use Win98SE, since I don't like what I've read about WinME, and the ATI W2K drivers are terrible for gaming. The latest display drivers from the web and the multimedia center from the CD have been working fine for me in 98. Almost no crashes when gaming (depends on the game) and rock solid stable for vid captures. I leave the machine on for weeks and it happily records my shows for me (80gig HDD).

I just wish it would record MPG2 captures that were good enough to keep. Their CBR doesn't look that great, and there's quite a bit of flickering, which I think is a Ligos problem with interlacing or DCT, not sure which. My Sigma DVR does great MPG2, IMHO, but it has no TV tuner or timed recordings. Sigh, if I only I could mix and match pieces and parts.

I can capture 640x480 on ATI's best quality MPG2 settings with no problem (<1% frames dropped). If I leave everything the same and bump it up to 704x480, I get massive frame loss, like a third of them. Same thing even if I try and bump other quality settings down while keeping that resolution, it doesn't like that res for some reason no matter what I do. Don't know what the problem is, it can't be my CPU as I have a PIII-800 and ATI claimed that you could do full size captures with a PIII-600. I wonder how they got that to work?

I wonder how the Matrox G450-TV with its software codec will fare in comparison to the AIW and its software codec? I wonder if they're both using Ligos underneath? I assume Doc and some others have received sample boards and probably know the answer, but then there's that pesky NDA that keeps them from telling ;-)

Mance

[GSfan]

Hey Mance,

Take a look at the Hauppauge Wintv-pvr,it has a tv tuner and uses the same mpeg2 encoder found in sigmas dvr. Retails for $249 but comes without any editing software.

[Mance]

GSfan,
Thanks. I found out about the WinTV-PVR only recently, but I bought the Sigma DVR almost a year ago now. So, too little too late. From checking the newsgroups it seems that there are some complaints against the WinTV-PVR, and they mostly seem to be driver related. That was the same with the Sigma DVR when it first came out too. I think it takes them a while to figure out how to use the Visiontech KFIR chip. Sigma has gotten better at releasing new drivers recently, but I haven't had a chance to try them yet. Hauppage seems to have some new betas as well. It would be interesting to compare and see which product does better since they're both based on the same chip. But it looks like Hauppage has included some Tivo-like features that Sigma didn't, and Hauppage's product is way cheaper. Makes me wonder if there's something that Hauppage chose not to license or implement because of cost, in order to accomodate all those features, or if it's just that the KFIR chip got that much cheaper to use in a year.

I still like the Radeon AIW, but it's mostly a fun toy. The Sigma DVR seems more professional, but that's probably because it lacks a lot of fun frills. Maybe the WinTV-PVR is somewhere in between.

I wonder if anyone here has used it?

[jeepman]

I looked at the PVR, but they don't have W2K drivers, the Web page just says planned support. Sorry Charlie, I have waited before for "planned support."

Also, since I have already sold my GeForce2 MX, I don't have a fast video card to combine with it.

I still may have to go with the Asus V7700 Deluxe, but reviews show that the card's capture quality does not come close to ATI's, but then again there isn't the drivers issues that are actually preventing me from using the ATI's great quality!!!

Great quality+bad drivers=crap almost any day.

Finally, I still haven't been able to fix the crash in W98 when I have the ATI TV Player Open with IE.