Need advice for a video tuner card

**Loopy** · April 12th, 2006, 04:49 PM

Hi, I need a little advice about getting a Tv tuner/ recorder card. I'll only be recording analog tv signals through a DirecTV reciever. I was thinking about getting a Happauge 350 capture card since it has an encoding chip on it.

My question though is would I be able to use my computer (play Battle Field 2 etc) while recording using said card? I can record Tv using my Geforce7800GT but it seems to use software encoding and if I try to use the computer while recording with it the video I've recorded ends up out of sync with the audio.

Here's my spec's

Processor: Amd Atholon XP 3700+ (San Diego core)
Ram: OCZ Dual Platinum PC3200 Ram (2gigs)
Motherboard: Asus A8N-Sli premium
Video: Evga Geforce 7800GT
Audio: Soundblaster X-fi xtrememusic
Hard drives: 1 Seagate 7800.2 120GB hard drive 2second drive 160GB Seagate 7800.8 (both 7200 Rpms) The first drive has windows X.P on it and my apps(web browser etc.) and the temp and swap files (in a separate partition)
The second drive has my games(one partition) and the space where I store video to (another partition) when I record I record to the first physical disk.
OS: Windows X.P home.

**BOB IROC** · April 12th, 2006, 06:44 PM

I highly Recommend the Hauppauge cards. I just bought one and the ease of use and its seemless integration with Windows XP MCE was fantastic.

Here is the one I purchased http://www.provantage.com/hauppauge-1062~7HAUP12A.htm

Not sure what the 350 has over the 150 because they both list HardWare decoding.

**Loopy** · April 13th, 2006, 06:19 PM

Originally Posted by BOB IROC

I highly Recommend the Hauppauge cards. I just bought one and the ease of use and its seemless integration with Windows XP MCE was fantastic.

Here is the one I purchased http://www.provantage.com/hauppauge-1062~7HAUP12A.htm

Not sure what the 350 has over the 150 because they both list HardWare decoding.

Cool, I was thinking about buying one from newegg are you able to run most programs while recording with the card?

**slgrieb** · April 13th, 2006, 06:28 PM

Depends on your system. You need at least a Gig if not 2 GB of fast memory and I'd suggest a Dual Core processor. Plus a decent SATA hard drive. Try it on your current platform and see if you're happy with the results.

**jaimicook** · April 14th, 2006, 12:21 AM

I am particularly pleased with the Data Video DAC-100 unit. This is a firewire unit which does not need to be installed in the computer. It has analog (including Svideo) inputs and outputs as well as firewire inputs and outputs. It's a bit espensive (aprox $150), but it does the job extremely well. It doesn't include software, but will work with any software which will read a digital camcorder. It includes hardware MPEG encoding. Definately recommended. I'm not sure that anyting less than a dual core processer is going to allow you to record video and play games at the same time.
Jim

**BOB IROC** · April 14th, 2006, 12:38 AM

Actually I use it as dedicated Home Theatre PC to play music, movie clips and record shows. But like slgrieb said you will need a decently powerful system to multitask like that. I am sure you should be able to record a show and do things like browse the net or work on a document.

**Loopy** · April 14th, 2006, 01:23 PM

Originally Posted by slgrieb

Depends on your system. You need at least a Gig if not 2 GB of fast memory and I'd suggest a Dual Core processor. Plus a decent SATA hard drive. Try it on your current platform and see if you're happy with the results.

I won't be able to do a trial of it

Techniclly I have my Geforce 7800 card which has VIVO but using the software I record with it doesn't do hardware encoding. Therefore It's slightly pointless of me to get another card if I can't make use of the computer while I'm recording t.v.

Dual core is out of the question for me at the moment, I have 2 decent SATA hard drives, and 2GB of fast ram. To be more specific I don't have to be able to play BF2 just browse the internet and play less resource demanding games.

That Firewire box sound interesting, I'll have to check it out. My question though is will the performance be the same as a PCI card? will I still have to stick to using less resource intensive programs with it?

I which I could have a dedicated HTPC like you Bob, I wish there was a box similar to a ReplayTV that I could just add a harddrive too and configure the way I want.

I should have also stated that I'm comparing the idea of putting in a tv tuner card(with hardware encoding) to buying a standalone PVR ( the Neuros mpeg-4 recorder) but I'm not sure this unit will work, plus there is the added cost of media. I'm also not sure how well any of this stuff will work with a direct tv reciever.