Reviews on WinTV-PVR?

[AndrewDV]

Hello,

I was on Hauppage's web site looking up some info (still trying to get captures on the WinTV to look close to the G400 - not happening) and noticed the WinTV-PVR. At first, I thought it was not much. After reading their claims for full frame and 12MB/s rate, I became very interested <grin>.

Has anyone taken a look at this on a personal or professional level? If so, how good are the resulting files when compared to other cards? Can you use this with any vid cap program or are you limited to their software?

Is the card able to capture AVIs as well(hopefully, better than the other WinTVs)? I wouldn't mind kicking the tires on it, but only if the aggreviation levels are low and success is high.

I would be very interested to know how the created MPEGs integrate with other products. They claim to have tested the files with MediaStudio, but which version?

Thank you

[Jkun]

WinTV PVR is a hardware MPEG2 encoder

Got mine a few days ago. TV quality is pretty poor, haven't had the ooportunity to test grabbing in MPEG2 via Svideo yet, unfortunately I don't get any audio from the card and I suspect it's defective.

Can't find any support forum nor does Hauppauge support seems to answer in a decent delay (probably swamped with bugs in PVR?)

The other alternative being the Dazzle DVCII, which is also notorious for trouble, I think hardware MPEG2 in this price range is not quite yet ready for a plug and play market. Maybe some new stuff gets announced at Cebit?

J-kun

[AndrewDV]

I am not sure if this helps, but the new drivers have made some owners happy. From their site, looks like Win2K beta drivers are available as well (if that appeals to you).

I was really wondering if it could produce decent quality MPEGs without going through the YUY2/Huffyuv to TMPGEnc route.

If the claim for 8MB/s and 12MB/s rates at 720x480 are true, this might give a really nice result. Having a hardware encoder would be a super plus as well.

Seems like only a few have dared to actually buy one of these. It is hard to get any input on them.

Thanks

[KuroNeko]

On the unofficial Dazzle DVCII website there are a few links to MPEG files made with that card, at SVCD data rates, from a DVD standalone player.

The links are in the forum, in a thread by SpawnDK, subject Installed my new Dazzle DVC II today :-)

Here's the link to the site: http://stop.at/dazzle2

and here are the files. They look very good indeed:

www.spawns.dk/svcd/1.mpg
www.spawns.dk/svcd/2.mpg
www.spawns.dk/svcd/3.mpg

Neko

[Jkun]

Andrew,

- the audio issue turns out to be a hardware problem; the connector on the board is shaky.

- I made a few grabs at 6MB/sec VBR. Looks good, considering the tuner is very noisy.

- and that's my main point of critique. The tuner is VERY noisy, and inserts some interferences on the color as well. PAL owners have complained about this before. It's not on all channles but on many. Finetuning doesn't help much, this is definitely caused by a poor quality tuner implementation. Svideo in is very nice

J-kun

[Dr Mordrid]

FWIW the Matrox G450-eTV has a very nice Philips tuner

Dr. Mordrid

[Jkun]

The WinTV PVR is the same Philips tuner. Doc, you're in NTSC land, right?

The people in US haven't complained about the tuner, but PAL users have. So I think it's limited to European cards only.

Andrew, the DVCII works only with its own capture software, as does the WinTV PVR

You have to grab your MPEGs with the proprietary software, but you can of course edit the MPEGs with other editing software, as long as it can handle MPEG2.

If no audiosync problems pop up with long captures over Svideo, I don't think that the PVR is any better or worse than the DVCII (also known for sound sync issues - I think for either board you need to be lucky and have the right PC to put it in. Don't ask, I don't know what the 'ideal' PC is either)

Mind you, I won't mind a fix for the tuner issue.

BTW, no news at all about new consumer MPEG2 hardware encoders at Cebit. The new Dazzle TV4all (or something like that) is a software codec solution

J-kun

[AndrewDV]

If I am reading everything correctly:

-Captures must be done using proprietary software. This is not a huge issue as long is it can split files at 2GB/4GB.

-Editing can be done using 3rd party software. This begs for the question: can you use the hardware encoder after editing with 3rd party software? In other words, I edit using MSP6. When I go to 'create' the video file, is the 'DVCII' or 'WinTVPVR' codec going to be an option rather than being stuck with 'Ligos.' This would be a sticking point. I'd want to use the hardware for mastering the files.

-Drivers are geared for the Window98/Me crowd with Win2K being under development.

-Audio could possibly have some issues.

Would you say these are true for both DVCII and WinTV-PVR?

Doc, how is the quality of the MPEG2 files from the G450eTV compared to the DVCII/PVR (color depth, full frame, etc..)? I like the idea of the Dazzle/Hauppage cards getting high rates at full frame (8MB/s+). Have you done an editing project with it? Any config issues with it that are similar to the Marvel G400? I'd assume it is better than ATIs solution, but I hope it is a bit more VIA friendly than the G400 :-{@

Thanks for everything, this is a great thread! Please, keep the info coming. I've been waiting for some experienced folks to talk about this for awhile ;-{> Others out there could benefit from this as well.

[KuroNeko]

Captures must be done with proprietary sw, yes. According to a statement from a Hauppauge rep, the PVR sw allows spanning over multiple files. Don't know about the DVCII

You CANNOT use the hw for re-encoding. All of these hw encoders only encode from the videoinput, you cannot send a sw file to the encoder. The DV500 and RT2000 supposedly do this, but the RT2000 files I saw were no good as far as VBR was concerned, so I'm not sure if they will do a good job. For the price of an RT2000 you of course will get a full fledged realtime hw editing solution with effects sw etc.

W2K is not a priority, but once Whistler is out, that should be solved

Audio sync is a problem on every single low cost video grabber I've seen

As for the G450, now that I know they use the Ligos codec, I know I will avoid it...

If you are interested in creating SVCDs or DVDs, the PVR or DVCII will provide a cheap solution. However, if your primary goal is editing and then exporting to other formats, a more classic solution would be better. Maybe switch your camera to DV and get a cheap firewire card?

Neko

[AndrewDV]

Thank you for your input! I really appreciate it!

The TV tuning is not a big interest for my needs. However, the s-video capture quality is at the top of the list. Ideally, I would like to
-Capture Hi8 in MPEG2 at the highest quality
-Do some editing with MSP6
-Release to all formats

Currently, I use my G400. As long as everything is in place, it works well. The process can get tedious. Recently, I started to use Huffyuv. To me, the process gets a bit more tedious. The resulting MPEGs are great. I would give up some quality to simplify matters.

KuroNeko, do you know if the DVCII works with MediaStudio Pro 6? Previously, I was told that the DVCII only works with MovieStar.

Thanks again

[Dr Mordrid]

eTV works good, but I can't compare it to a PVR as I haven't used a PVR yet.

As a realtime softcodec it's MPEG-2 is not as good as doing offline encoding (capturing YUY2 and using TMPGEnc), but it's a ton better than using MSPro6's old Ligos codec.

PC-VCR is massively revamped, as has been documented in the online reviews, and has the MPEG features built in. Otherwise VideoStudio 4 VE is bundled and it works great with VideoStudio 5.0.

BTW: there is a patch for VS5 already. It adds SVCD presets, has the new Ligos kernel and some fixes for TI OHCI cards.

Dr. Mordrid.


[This message has been edited by Dr Mordrid (edited 22 March 2001).]

[AndrewDV]

Thanks

Do you want to know something funny? I upgraded my copy of VS5 to MSP6 thinking that VS5 was not going to get the same support as MSP6. Silly me ;-{>

[cjyo~]

Doc,

On the subject of the 450eTV, does it have a YUV capture option with avi_io, or other capture software? I have looked around, but can't seem to find find the info (even on the Matrox site).

I'm also wondering what tv-in chip it uses? Is it a new Matrox chip? Is there much difference between it and the BT 848 or 878?

TIA

[Dr Mordrid]

It does indeed have YUY2, so keep AVI_IO and HuffYUV around. Also the MPEG-2 captures are pretty darned good.

For sure they are not as good as HuffYUV encoded with TMPGEnc at high quality settings, but they are hell and gone better than MSPro6 or VS4 can do.

As noted the TV tuner, and I presume the chips inside, is a Philips. I haven't opened the shield to find out for sure, yet.

As for the VS5/MSPro6 upgrade issue, this seqnence is not unusual. Ulead typically uses VideoStudio as a testbed product for new MSPro technologies.

With this in mind realize this:

VS5 now has scene detection for its DV captures and a few other nicities like SVCD presets. No need for Scenealyser or other such utilities. I'd be willing to bet most all of them make it into MSPro.

Dr. Mordrid




[This message has been edited by Dr Mordrid (edited 22 March 2001).]

[AndrewDV]

Thanks again

I might give the PVR a shot. If it does better than the WinTV (still can only get good captures at 320x240), I'd be happy. If it does better than the G400 MJPEG, I'd be estatic.