Affordable TV Tuner with hardware MPEG2 encoding?

[Jugernot]

I thinking of building a PVR system, but I need a card that does HARDWARE MPEG2 encoding. None of that software crap....

Any suggestions?

Jugs

 

[rbV5]

None of that software crap....

Software encoders like TMPGEnc and Cinema Craft beat hardware encoders hands down for quality, so I'm not sure what you mean by "software crap" unless you're talking speed, but ATI AIW 9700 uses 10-120% hardware assisted encoding. Hauppage makes WinTV PVR 350 that gets mixed reviews, and an older model WinTV PVR 250 that can be had for half that price, and I think there are some osprey cards that do hardware MPEG-2 encoding.

 

[Jugernot]

In the past my experience with encoding video without hardware support was a bad one. Video was choppy because of missed frames and was low quality. Maybe things have changed significantly in the last few years... I dunno...

This system will probably be running PVS3 (snapstream.com) and some sort of software DVD decoder. Hardware specs will be somewhere around 2.5GHZ P4, 512m, 200gig HD, CDRW/DVDROM, etc.

So, software isn't too bad now a days? Would I be able to capture MPEG2 full resolution from TV or other input on the fly?

Jugs

 

[modedepe]

Software encoding seems fine these days to me.. I use tmpgenc to encode and it works fine--good quality and not choppy at all.

 

[rbV5]

In the past my experience with encoding video without hardware support was a bad one. Video was choppy because of missed frames and was low quality. Maybe things have changed significantly in the last few years... I dunno...

You shouldn't be dropping frames encoding at all, I suspect you're talking capturing and encoding on the fly, and yes software is definately up to snuff, and has been, hardware is what lagged behind and is now catching up. I could capture full resolution MPEG-2 and encode on the fly with my old AIW Radeon and Duron 900 back when, so your specs easily fit that bill with the proper components and software. Hardware encoders are on the way out, with formats changing and brute force CPU power, being saddled to a closed format encoder leaves you very inflexable. Resolution, format and bitrate is generally hardcoded, whereas software is constantly being upgraded and refined, new features added, new formats, codecs ect.

 

[Jugernot]

Ok, software is ok then. Any suggestions of a card to get that has a good quality picture and sound?

I've read that 10bit cards are better than the older 8bit... true?