Best TV card w/o delay (For PS2)?/

[ShyGuy91284]

I'm looking to replace my Leadtek TV Expert TV tuner because it has a split-second delay (enough so that action games are not really playable). Has anyone here used a capture card on their computer that can confirm that it has no (human noticable) delay because they have played action games on it? I'd rather not get a line doubler for the monitor. I like the sound of the latest ATI Theater 550 chip (because it's picture quality looks great compared to normal capture cards, and seems to have hardware encoding, which I'll want a year or two down the road), but I've heard it has a delay (most likely from the hardware encoding), so that probably isn't an option (unless DScaler can get rid of the delay somehow). So what opinions do you have for the best picture quality w/o delay?

 

[ShyGuy91284]

*Bump* Someone must at least have a cheap card they know has no delay and decent quality...

 

[Traire]

The best option for playing games would probably be to skip the TV tuner all together, and just get a plain old video capture card with s-video or RCA inputs and no hardware encoding. You should be able to pick something up for ~$20-30

 

[erwos]

Originally posted by: Traire
The best option for playing games would probably be to skip the TV tuner all together, and just get a plain old video capture card with s-video or RCA inputs and no hardware encoding. You should be able to pick something up for ~$20-30

That's no guarantee about latency, though.

I use a WinTV Go (no FM), and it works like a charm for my PS2, using DScaler. My gut feeling is that the program being used often has more impact than the card itself. DDR on our HDTV Wonder is utterly unplayable, for instance, despite it being the better card _by far_.

-Erwos

 

[Peter]

If it's a PCI card that doesn't have onboard MPEG encoders, then it'll deliver the stream with no delay.

Your viewing software can link the TV card's output stream directly into the graphics card's overlay buffer, and let the GPU render that to the main screen. Deinterlacing and filtering will put you a frame or two behind at most.
Any "software based" deinterlace/filter method will put you further behind, because the TV card has to feed into system RAM, before the CPU can work on the already completed frame and then feed it to the graphics card.

Cards like KWorld's 7131E (less than $30) should make you think twice about "skipping the tuner". Tunerless cards use exactly the same kind of videograbber chip, only with fewer input channels on the card and, obviously, no tuner chip or module.

 

[ubercaffeinated]

Hmmm this would actually help me alot too. ShyGuy91284... or for that matter, anyone. If you find a card that works could you link it up to newegg or a product description page? Thanks a bunch.

 

[Peter]

Newegg have said KWorld card.

 

[ShyGuy91284]

Yeah. I tried getting DScaler to work w/ my Leadtek, but I wasn't able to tweak the settings to minimize the delay. And it is not a card with hardware encoding, so I feel kinda gypped that it has the worst of both worlds. I just bought a Cheapo KWorld from newegg last night for $27 that has three reviewers saying they use it for PS2 playing, so I'm hoping this will do the job for now(7131R, not 7131E). If not, $27 is cheap enough so it's not a huge loss. Card makers really need to include this spec. It's extremely difficult to find out, since the only way you usually hear of it is word of mouth.

 

[Peter]

DScaler does too much CPU work - unless you set it to "Scaler Bob" rendering.

Re the KWorld card, I said 7131E because that's the name of the main chip ... sorry for the mixup, I meant exactly the card you possibly bought.

Again, the videograbber chips ALL deliver the incoming video frame in realtime - they don't even have enough buffer for a single line of display, let alone an entire frame.

Any lag you see is in what your application software does with the incoming stream. If it lags too badly, change the software, not the card. The more primitive the software, the better. DSCaler's raison d'être is display quality - and advanced deinterlacing and filtering inherently means lag.

 

[ShyGuy91284]

Yeah, I've tried my current with DScaler with all deinterlacing algorithms, even with settings turned off in the card settings (and with pixel width or whatever set to 320), from the card and not the DPlay in, and it still has a slight delay (I've compared it to the TV, and I can still feel the delay). I'd like to say I might just be being too picky, but the ATI AIW I got years ago had zero delay (I prefer to have an up to date GPU though). Same thing happens in Linux, which I'd imagine it quite a raw connection to the card. Hopefully this other card will do the trick.

 

[Peter]

The AIWs don't have zero delay either. They do have a shorter path from TV-in to the overlay buffer, but even going from PCI through northbridge into AGP or PCIE, you don't get a single frame of lag, just a few microseconds.

It's all in the software.

 

[ShyGuy91284]

I'm well aware, but since this is on a real-world usage basis, It can be considered no lag.

 

[Peter]

You'll never get EXACTLY no lag, unless you are using a really old TV that feeds the incoming signal straight through to the CRT beam, without any buffering.

Any digital solution (and that includes LCD TVs as well as "flicker free" or widescreen CRTs) gets you at least one frame behind, 1/30th or 1/25th of a second. For gaming, this is totally irrelevant.

As long as your software is doing the "direct to overlay" method, you'll be that one frame late. More sophisticated image enhancing software will make it even later, typically five to ten frames.

 

[Ichigo]

Find something in dscaler to enable preview mode.