AIW vs PVR card

[ambihl]

Hello all,

As you can see I'm a complete noob here, but I?m thinking about building my own machine and was looking for some help. Did a forum search, but couldn?t find anything that really addressed this question. My usage plans (complete swag) are:

TV Capture / TIVOing 20%
Copying VHS Tapes to DVD (tons of old family crud): 25%
Gaming 20%
General Surfing: 25%
Work (general MS office stuff): 10%

So the question is Radeon AIW or a PVR card w/seperate video card? Read a couple of articles / web pages on building a pvr system and their pretty much split, but none have explained why they went one way or the other.

Cost isn?t as big a concern as ease of use, reliability and longevity. Also, the ability to remotely set the recording feature would be nice.

I will warn you, for my personal use I?ve been a Mac user since 1983, and this will be my first home Microsoft OS machine, so be gentle.

AMB

 

[Staver]

I'd say PVR since you are going to use it for many things. The PVR takes the load off your CPU, so you can do other things with no video or sync errors. I have an 9600Pro-AIW, but prefer my PVR250 for everyday recordings.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Hauppage PVR -- the full hardware on-card MPEG2 compression has fewer dropped frames and audio sync problems compared to software-based capture cards.

Note: as a search of "Hauppage" here will tell you, the PVR-150 is just as good as the older PVR-250 that it replaces, it just costs less. One place to buy it is www.PCAlchemy.com, another is CompUSA.

 

[Lonyo]

Make sure to get a hardware MPEG-2 card though.
Since you are doing ~50% video capturing though, hardware encoding is a must.

 

[ambihl]

Thanks for the quick responses.

I was expecting more AIW supporters, but the reasoning above makes sense.

I will definately look more closely into the Hauppage card option.

AMB

 

[DaveSimmons]

The AIW cards used to be a very good choice, back when hardware encoding cost $400 - 1,000 for a real-time hardware MPEG2 card. Now that MPEG2 cards are under $100 using less reliable software encoding no longer makes sense.

 

[Childs]

AIW is a terrible choice. Get one or two Hauppage PVR 150/250s. Then when you upgrade your video card, you can keep your tuners. Plus, these are hardware mpeg2 cards as others have stated. On my PVR system I can watch a show and record two with no dropped frames or stuttering of any kind.

 

[Philippine Mango]

I have an AIW Radeon 9800 Pro and I like it a lot. I don't get dropped frames and I think its got hardware mpeg 2 encoding. I also had a Rage 128PRo that was running on a PII 450MHZ and I was able to capture at 320X240 with no dropped frames at all. When I brought the 450 up to 1GHZ I could capture at any resolution. Then I rebuilt the system with all new components and it's running at 3.5GHZ was able to capture at an even higher resolution with no problem (card supported higher). Then decided I didn't need all that speed so I switch it with another R9800PRo I had and its currently in my 1.7GHZ system which runs fine. That my personal experience though it does piss me off that you can't capture sources with macrovision. If your going to get an external capture device/separate get one that CAN capture sources with macrovision otherwise there will be no advantage.

 

[Childs]

Originally posted by: Philippine Mango
I have an AIW Radeon 9800 Pro and I like it a lot. I don't get dropped frames and I think its got hardware mpeg 2 encoding. I also had a Rage 128PRo that was running on a PII 450MHZ and I was able to capture at 320X240 with no dropped frames at all. When I brought the 450 up to 1GHZ I could capture at any resolution. Then I rebuilt the system with all new components and it's running at 3.5GHZ was able to capture at an even higher resolution with no problem (card supported higher). Then decided I didn't need all that speed so I switch it with another R9800PRo I had and its currently in my 1.7GHZ system which runs fine. That my personal experience though it does piss me off that you can't capture sources with macrovision. If your going to get an external capture device/separate get one that CAN capture sources with macrovision otherwise there will be no advantage.

Hows the performance when you record one thing and watch another? Or record a show and play a video game? Also, the main disadvantage to the AIW is that they its tied to the video card. Also the quality will suffer when you up the resolution, bitrate, or filtering. Realtime software encoders always sacrifice quality to achieve realtime.

 

[Philippine Mango]

Its very customizable. I could set it so it was fully uncompressed, you don't have to choose one of those tabs. I generally choose VCD because its essentially VCR quality (obviously a little better) and doesn't take up too much space. Are you saying that the AIW series is strictly software encoding? Because on the TV Wonder VE I have I am unable to record very high resolution mpeg2 or mpeg1. And the quality is much worse, also I am more likely to get dropped frames because I can tell you THATS software encoding.

The AIW 128 PRO I can record high resolution 720X480 captures and on the R9800pro even higher. You have the advantage of the AGP bus when recording with the AIW series and with any other stand alone card you don't. You either have the slow PCI bus or a USB/firewire bus and yes they are fast but anyone who knows anything or two about those buses is that you don't want to run your mice/keyboards on it because it can slow things down. I always run my keyboard and mouse on the PS/2 ports because they don't have to worry as much about the USB bus, the usb bus is a lot more likely to cause problems/lag then PS/2. So agian thats why the AIW series isn't that bad of a choice especially when you have the bandwidth of the AGP bus.

 

[Philippine Mango]

Here is a link to other people with experience with the AIW series. http://www.videohelp.com/forum/archive/t192348.html

 

[Coherence]

I will warn you, for my personal use I?ve been a Mac user since 1983, and this will be my first home Microsoft OS machine, so be gentle.

The Mac didn't come out until 1984. And the Lisa doesn't count. (I had the original 128k Mac when it came out, and though it was later upgraded to a 4MB Mac Plus, it is still in my closet, waiting to be turned into an aquarium.)

Nitpicks aside...

Are you going to run Windows Media Center Edition? Just curious, because I have been considering a similar upgrade for a second PC that I may turn into a PVR. None of the AIW cards seem to specifically say they have MPEG-2 encoding built-in, which MCE requires. Those Hauppage cards sound promising, and being able to upgrade the graphics card separately is nice.

 

[Childs]

Originally posted by: Philippine Mango
Its very customizable. I could set it so it was fully uncompressed, you don't have to choose one of those tabs. I generally choose VCD because its essentially VCR quality (obviously a little better) and doesn't take up too much space. Are you saying that the AIW series is strictly software encoding? Because on the TV Wonder VE I have I am unable to record very high resolution mpeg2 or mpeg1. And the quality is much worse, also I am more likely to get dropped frames because I can tell you THATS software encoding.

The AIW 128 PRO I can record high resolution 720X480 captures and on the R9800pro even higher. You have the advantage of the AGP bus when recording with the AIW series and with any other stand alone card you don't. You either have the slow PCI bus or a USB/firewire bus and yes they are fast but anyone who knows anything or two about those buses is that you don't want to run your mice/keyboards on it because it can slow things down. I always run my keyboard and mouse on the PS/2 ports because they don't have to worry as much about the USB bus, the usb bus is a lot more likely to cause problems/lag then PS/2. So agian thats why the AIW series isn't that bad of a choice especially when you have the bandwidth of the AGP bus.

Yes, I am saying that the AIW products are software encoding. The only hardware encoding tuner ATI makes I believe is the ehome Wonder. Also, I think you are somewhat confused the nature of AGP in relation to video encoding. AGP is simply just PCI with quicker access to system memory for textures, ie 3D. Not really, but for the sake of argument it is. 3D Video is one thing, but what the encoder card actually does is quite another. Software encoders rely on on general purpose CPUs to do encoding tasks, where as the hardware encoding card has those functions optimized, and set in hardware. Hardware is always going to be faster with better quality than software. I suppose conceivably if your AGP card had hardware encoding, with superior encoding algorithms, it would be faster than a PCI version, but the AIW doesn't, so its moot.

 

[rbV5]

Hardware is always going to be faster with better quality than software. I suppose conceivably if your AGP card had hardware encoding, with superior encoding algorithms, it would be faster than a PCI version, but the AIW doesn't,

Thats not exactly true.

Software encoders simply rely on the host CPU for encoding, the quality itself is dependant on the source quality and the encoder algorithms and settings, not whether its hardware or software doing the work.

Hardware encoders simply rely on the hardwired codec and supporting software to do the same thing. Neither is any indication of quality at all.

The DX9 AIW cards going forward use MPEG hardware encoding assist and hardware filtering, so its not completely a software solution either. I use both hardware encoder cards and AIW cards, and the AIW is definately capable of every bit as high quality captures.

The AIW falls short when used for a PVR...granted, but it is more capable out of the box and does everything quite well...plenty capable of what the OP is looking for with the exception of decent scheduling or (remote administration)

Coming from a Mac will likely be a big hurdle from a ease of use standpoint.

 

[Childs]

Originally posted by: rbV5

Hardware is always going to be faster with better quality than software. I suppose conceivably if your AGP card had hardware encoding, with superior encoding algorithms, it would be faster than a PCI version, but the AIW doesn't,

Thats not exactly true.

Software encoders simply rely on the host CPU for encoding, the quality itself is dependant on the source quality and the encoder algorithms and settings, not whether its hardware or software doing the work.

Hardware encoders simply rely on the hardwired codec and supporting software to do the same thing. Neither is any indication of quality at all.

The DX9 AIW cards going forward use MPEG hardware encoding assist and hardware filtering, so its not completely a software solution either. I use both hardware encoder cards and AIW cards, and the AIW is definately capable of every bit as high quality captures.

The AIW falls short when used for a PVR...granted, but it is more capable out of the box and does everything quite well...plenty capable of what the OP is looking for with the exception of decent scheduling or (remote administration)

Coming from a Mac will likely be a big hurdle from a ease of use standpoint.

Heh, I was actually thinking about that over my smoke and was going to edit. I was going to bring up clustering and encoding on a Mac using compressor or CCE on the PC as far as great quality using software is concerned. Should have known rbV5 would reply faster than I can edit! But, I'd take the pepsi challenge with Hauppauge's hardwired codecs versus AIW's hardware assist any day. The AIW are CPU dependent, where as you get the same speed and quality on the Hauppage cards whether you have a P2 200 or a P4EE. Of course you can always encode slowly and still get great quality, but as far as the AIW versus a hardware PVR card is concerned, the hardware PVR (PVR 250) is the better way to go.

If someone can produce a D1 DVD compliant stream from an AIW using a common CPU in realtime that has equal or better quality than the PVR 250, I'll reconsider. But the fact that AIW is CPU dependent and the video cannot be upgraded without a new AIW makes me think its a bad way to go.

 

[Philippine Mango]

Buy a good VCR for VHS playback, and a TBC if you want to remove Macrovision (an artificial error) as well as as the true errors on the tapes. That's good advice for almost any card.

The ATI AIW 9800 is the best one...

But I get by just fine on my 7200 cards. In fact, I plan to add a 128PRO here soon (a gift, plus a chance to hack the drivers for ATI MMC 8.x), so nothing wrong with the older cards, not at all. The capture chips on the 128PRO-9600 cards are the same. Only the 9700-9800 are different (more MPEG hardware).

As indolikaa's said though, the graphics chips are faster with the higher the card. Fast games suck on my old cards, but I don't play games anyhow. So if you need games too, grab a newer card like the 9000s.

To beat the quality of an ATI AIW card's MPEG capture, you'd need to jump up to a $700 Canopus MPEG Pro or $1100 Matrox card. The Hauppauge are decent too, but have known issues with the MPEG's it makes being non-compliant or flawed. No other real contenders in the MPEG capture arena.

Outpost.com and newegg.com have good prices. Also eBay for older boards. Or just find a user that upgraded to a new card and buy his/her old one.

From the link I posted. If you look further into ATI's website you will see that they mention hardware encoding/hardware encoding assist. Just go to the link I posted above and read some of the posts. The AGP bus will help because your not tied to a 133MB/s (Max) apposed to 266MB/S+ bus. Its even worse when you have other PCI devices on that bus because then its reduce to something like 80MB/s. I just don't trust devices using the PCI bus or that run externally. I mean high end servers use PCI-X buses because they know the PCI bus can't handle much especially for those raid+scsi cards. Yes your absolutely right that the AGP bus is meant for moving textures back and forth to and from the video card but it obviously has to aid in the transferring of the video from the card to the HDD (goes through system bus etc..)

Also BTW I know for a fact in the assumption with personal experience and not just specs is that when I record on the horrible quality with the TV Wonder VE my CPU goes from 6% when the TV Tuner is running to 9% on a 3.5GHZ System which isn't that terrible. Thats 352X240 VCD quality and no video soap. I am unable at this time to do a test on the 1.7GHZ system because currently the CPU is running at 6% despite everything being closed...

 

[rbV5]

The AIW are CPU dependent, where as you get the same speed and quality on the Hauppage cards whether you have a P2 200 or a P4EE. Of course you can always encode slowly and still get great quality, but as far as the AIW versus a hardware PVR card is concerned, the hardware PVR (PVR 250) is the better way to go.

I would agree that for PVR duties, you just can't beat a hardware encoder and good software. I am using MCE 2005 with 2 eHome Wonder hardware cards and just set it on high quality and forget about it, the EPG is excellent and scheduling is painless. In the same breath I will tell you that for the exact same reason, my "software" HDTV Wonder card is superior to my "hardware" MyHD card even though the MyHD card is an excellent DTV tuner card..the software holds it back.

For transfering VHS to DVD (non macrovision protected home movies), the AIW with MMC's library and hardware video soap filtering are superior to my hardware encoder cards in virtually everyway, even over my DV cameras pass-through (which is pretty easy, and nice if you are going to edit before encoding). The Pinnacle Studio software that ships with the AIW is actually good (slow encoding though) consumer level editing software also.

Its not a clear-cut call either way. If PVR duties were a priority, I would say without a doubt, hardware encoder card + good software...after that....the AIW is a pretty attractive package that does it all very well.

 

[Childs]

Originally posted by: Philippine Mango
...

That was one guys opinion. If you look throughout the rest of the forum you'll hardly see an AIW consensus. If you look at what the OP originally said, TIVO and converting to VHS were most important:

TV Capture / TIVOing 20%
Copying VHS Tapes to DVD (tons of old family crud): 25%
Gaming 20%
General Surfing: 25%
Work (general MS office stuff): 10%

This has PVR 250 written all over it. He can tivo/convert, while playing a game or doing work. Can't really do that in realtime with the AIW. The only AIW advantage I can possibly see is if he wanted to capture to DV, then do multiple pass encodes to something other mpeg. But then, all you'd need the AIW for is video in without encoding, so any VIVO video card paired with a PVR 250 would be better IMO. The one thing I really hold against the AIW is the software. I had one in the past (AIW 8500DV), and essentially gave it away. I've currently use dual 250s for PVR duties, as well as converting VHS to DVD, and I couldn't be happier. The good thing is, I can still fully use the PC while encoding. For me, the days of waiting for hours to use my PC are long gone. Anyhow, my $.02.

 

[Philippine Mango]

http://www.hauppauge.com/html/wintvpvr250_datasheet.htm

This is entirely bull... It says that it doesn't use the CPU at all but requires a 733mhz processor! Hello, a minimum of a 733MHZ processor! It clearly show it uses much more CPU than you would originally have thought. I could easily kick that thing's ass with my PII 450 ati rage 128 pro. That uses a PCI card, there is no way you can get very good recording if your playing a game. ATI AIW series spells PVR all over it... If the card was sooo shitty, why would I buy another one? I love the new feature of Easyshare TV, where if I have an ATI card in any of the systems on my network, I can watch TV on that computer as long as the server is up.

BTW the ATI cards have to have an mpeg decoder/encoder for it to be able to do TV on demand on a PII, I originally thought that TV on demand would be a huge system hog, forcing you to dedicate all your resources to it but after actually trying to do other things while it was running it turns out it isn't half as bad. How can you compare WinTv with an AIW card? The WinTV card is the equivalent of a TV Wonder Pro, claims the exact thing but just crappier. You know I didn't actually bother to check out the happauge card until I hear what childs said above. Just get the AIW card or if your really serious fork out 1K for a dedicated card that can do everything you could possibly imagine and probably runs off the PCI-X bus.

1. External sucks, period.
2. Anything off the PCI bus will have a very large bandwidth restriction
3. If you are serious about this, get a $1000 dedicated card that probably runs off the PCI-X Bus (Essentially a Video editing workstation)
4. Get the AIW card or get a very serious contender (Matrox cards)
5. The AIW cards are seriously the best bang for buck, if agian you serious about this don't even consider anything we've mentioned (under $500)

 

[Philippine Mango]

If your read it carefully, it says:

Pentium® II processor 733MHz or faster for TV pause with full screen playback

That clearly shows it cannot do the encoding on the board it's self (process the Video on demand with out using serious CPU cycles). I can do Video on demand on a PII 266MHZ System. I remember running this card a much slower PII and it ran very well, it was probably because it's not as CPU dependant like the PCI cards are. Just because a creative sound card is less cpu dependant then an onboard solution, doesn't mean this hunk of crap will be too. It's video encoding for christsakes, you can't expect a PCI solution to deliver all of this with out using some serious CPU cycles. I dont know why they say PII 733MHZ processor because all PIIs stop at 450MHZ but they probably meant PIII.

 

[Childs]

Read the rest of the line:

Pentium® III processor 733MHz or faster for TV pause with full screen playback

thats for pausing live TV while in full screen playback. The PVR 250 is a hardware encoder, not decoder. Just about all cheap agp cards have mpeg 2 decode acceleration, so believe me, its not an issue. I've seen the mythtv pvr db show lower cpus than p3 733 with the PVR-250. link Heck, even a P2 200 on the PVR 350 (search for it). I thought you had the intelligence to get the gist of what I was saying. Believe me, whatever version of your AIW 128 is not in the same league, even if its doing its precious 320x240. Heck, I don't even think those cards did real MPEG. It was some sort of ati mpeg in an avi container!

Originally posted by: Philippine Mango
If your read it carefully, it says:

Pentium® II processor 733MHz or faster for TV pause with full screen playback

That clearly shows it cannot do the encoding on the board it's self (process the Video on demand with out using serious CPU cycles). I can do Video on demand on a PII 266MHZ System. I remember running this card a much slower PII and it ran very well, it was probably because it's not as CPU dependant like the PCI cards are. Just because a creative sound card is less cpu dependant then an onboard solution, doesn't mean this hunk of crap will be too. It's video encoding for christsakes, you can't expect a PCI solution to deliver all of this with out using some serious CPU cycles. I dont know why they say PII 733MHZ processor because all PIIs stop at 450MHZ but they probably meant PIII.

You are an idiot. Good night.

 

[Philippine Mango]

Originally posted by: Childs
Read the rest of the line:

Pentium® III processor 733MHz or faster for TV pause with full screen playback

thats for pausing live TV while in full screen playback. The PVR 250 is a hardware encoder, not decoder. Just about all cheap agp cards have mpeg 2 decode acceleration, so believe me, its not an issue. I've seen the mythtv pvr db show lower cpus than p3 733 with the PVR-250. link Heck, even a P2 200 on the PVR 350 (search for it). I thought you had the intelligence to get the gist of what I was saying. Believe me, whatever version of your AIW 128 is not in the same league, even if its doing its precious 320x240. Heck, I don't even think those cards did real MPEG. It was some sort of ati mpeg in an avi container!

Originally posted by: Philippine Mango
If your read it carefully, it says:

Pentium® II processor 733MHz or faster for TV pause with full screen playback

That clearly shows it cannot do the encoding on the board it's self (process the Video on demand with out using serious CPU cycles). I can do Video on demand on a PII 266MHZ System. I remember running this card a much slower PII and it ran very well, it was probably because it's not as CPU dependant like the PCI cards are. Just because a creative sound card is less cpu dependant then an onboard solution, doesn't mean this hunk of crap will be too. It's video encoding for christsakes, you can't expect a PCI solution to deliver all of this with out using some serious CPU cycles. I dont know why they say PII 733MHZ processor because all PIIs stop at 450MHZ but they probably meant PIII.

You are an idiot. Good night.

Uh, look at who the idiot is.... TV PAUSE IS TV ON DEMAND BUT PROBABLY A MORE SIMPLIFIED VERSION!!!! TV ON DEMAND: You watch tv and say "OOO I need to go pee", "pause" go to the bath room, and come back then hit play agian. It's still recording ahead of you but at the same time its PLAYING video thats already been recorded. It's friggen FULL SCREEN PLAYBACK WHEN IT'S TV ON DEMAND!

You clearly have never ever had an ATI AIW card because if you did (assuming you weren't that friggen dumb) you would know that you don't have to use ati's proprietary recording codec. The new MMC has support for MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG4, AVI and ATI VCR recording. Yes it is true MPEG because I have had to record video off of the tv and then I happened to edit it on another computer with out the software and it was pure mpeg1.

 

[winterlude]

I've been interested in buying an AIW, but I have satelite DTV which needs a set-top box. In other words, as far as I know, I can only record the chanel that the set top box is tuned to. So I still use a VCR. Is there a work-around for the AIW?

And what's the CPU usage when doing mpeg 4 (divx or xvid) encoding on slower processors? I've got an Athlon XP 1800 and I'm thinking of getting a 9600 AIW.

 

[Theguynextdoor]

Can somebody tell me what a PVR is?

 

[winterlude]

PVR=Personal Video Recorder (usually digital e.g. using a harddrive in a PC or electronics)