Reviews on WinTV-PVR?

[AndrewDV]

Doc,

For one, thanks for the great info!

If you don't mind, do you happen to know the capabilities of capturing AVIs with the eTV? Is the YUY2 ability native from Matrox or do you still need a hack? Can it do full frame (720 or 704) at 29.97? I am curious of this because the one machine I have that has a WinTV in it (1.1GHz AMD with RAID) can only do 320x240 without loss of quality (looks terrible at 640x480).

How are the system requirements for MPEG2 full frame capture? Are there any gotchas to be looked for? I'm assuming the codec is Ligos. Is the quality up to snuff when compared to other solutions?

Sorry to ask so many questions, I really like learning about potentially useful devices.

Thanks again


[This message has been edited by AndrewDV (edited 23 March 2001).]

[Dr Mordrid]

The drivers I'm using have YUY2 active from the get go, but how they handle activating it in the release is up to Matrox. I doubt a user created hack will be necessary in any case because the betas definitely tried to "influence" the YUY2 issue

Full frame MPEG-2 and RGB captures can be done within PC-VCR, but of couse RGB requires a RAID with ATA100 7,200rmp drives preferable because of the high data rate. AVI_IO works as usual for YUY2/HuffYUV captures, if not better.

Both MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 can be done in VideoStudio with VS4 VE being in the bundle. I would STRONGLY recommend upgrading to VS5 full ASAP and applying the patch recently posted on Uleads site though. It really is that much better. VS5 is becoming quite a product.

For full frame MPEG-2 @704x480 you really should have a 1ghz processor to give you some margin over the minimums. Sounds like you're in business as long as you don't catch VIA-itis

PC-VCR enforces the CPU restrictions and will not offer full frame with slow processors. VS4 or VS5 will let you try with whatever CPU you have, so if the system is tweaked you might get away with a slightly slower system. Maybe.

Dr. Mordrid


[This message has been edited by Dr Mordrid (edited 23 March 2001).]

[AndrewDV]

Sounds like a real winner! At first, I doubted the software solution route. The more I learn about it, the better it sounds. If it all works, Matrox is showing their experience rather than hype. If only they could release the product on time :-{@

From my stand point, the VIA-itis <ha> is the only concern. On that topic, my upgrade to the IWILL KK266-R turned out great. The KT133A is way better than KT133. After tweaking everything (key word being 'tweaking'), most of the screwy problems I had before went away.

I agree with VS5. I used it for awhile before upgrading to MSP6. It is a full featured product that gets to the point. The GUI is a little rough to deal with (compared to MSP6). What I was really amazed with is all of the fx/transitions included. Not bad for a $99 solution.

Hmmmmm, maybe I'll hold off on getting a DVCII or PVR and go after the eTV. I'll lose the hardware encoder, but it might not be that big of an issue with a 1.1GHz AMD ;-{>

Thanks again!