Delay with ATI TV Wonder PCI?

[JTalbain]

I have an ATI TV Wonder PCI installed in my comp. When playing with my ps2 using the purple input connector block, I've notice a slight delay of the video. The audio and video are still in sync perfectly, it's just that the thing is delayed enough to the point where it is noticeable and affects gameplay.

Any solutions to this or is this just a normal issue with TV tuner cards?

Thanks in advance.

 

[kylebisme]

What program are you using? I think either VideoLan or Media Player Classic would do the trick.

 

[JTalbain]

been using the ati tv multimedia center.

videolan / mpc have support for tv tuners and input? guess i'll be looking into those programs.

 

[Traire]

Originally posted by: JTalbain
Any solutions to this or is this just a normal issue with TV tuner cards?

This is normal for that type of TV tuner card. The reason its lagging 1-2 seconds is because the ATi TV wonder cards have hardware mpeg2 compression. Meaning there is a dedicated chip on the tuner card that encodes the video into mp2 before displaying on your screen or saving to your hard drive.

Cheapo TV tuner cards (often less than $40) dont have hardware encoding, and rely on the computers CPU to do the encoding when you save the video to disk. If the lag bothers you significantly, you could buy a cheap tuner that does not have hardware encoding.

 

[kylebisme]

TV Wonder cards use software encoding.

Oh and regardless, programs like VLC and MPC read directly from the uncompressed stream, so the method of encoding employed by the card is irrelevant.

 

[eelw]

external USB capturing devices have an even longer delay before displaying the input image on screen

 

[Peter]

These PCI and AIW TV cards do use HARDWARE frame grabbers, and do provide the UNCOMPRESSED feed to the system (unlike those USB gadgets). It's the CPU-driven postprocessing that introduces the lag. Of course, when viewing the feed live, there is no compressing going on. It's the advanced deinterlacers and filters ... but you don't have to use them. Disable all image processing in the ATI application, or use an alternate application that lets you.

 

[Tsosczb]

I'm wondering if any PVR functions are being used. I used Beyond TV before, and it always encoded everything and introduces a delay.

Then when I found DScaler, it doesn't encode anything, and it's all in real time. It also fixed my gaming issue.

If using DScaler doesn't help, maybe there's a hardware option for PVR functionality, so then it would force a delay for any kind of program.

 

[JTalbain]

got Dscaler this morning and it got rid of my delay. only thing is the sound support in that program is kinda iffy. i'm most likely gonna have to just hook up the audio from my ps2 straight into the sound card rather than running it through the tv card.

 

[kylebisme]

I avioded recomending Dscaler simply becuase of weak sound support, but running directly into the soundcard should work fine. Out of curiousity though I am interested in your results with VLC and MPC if you tried either?

 

[JTalbain]

VLC made my system reboot when i tried to open up my ati tv wonder and sb live as a capture device. about to try mpc now.

Edit: got mpc and it showed the video just fine. having trouble getting audio tho... any suggestions?

 

[kylebisme]

Heh, VLC did that with my e-Home Wonder as well but works great with my Theater 550pro. I guess it is just luck of the draw.

As for getting audio in MPC, first you have to open the device with both the video set to your tuner, then right click on the window and select filters > *Whatever it calls your card* analog xbar. On the right part of the options window that is the output section where you can select the audio decoder out, and then in the input section the right you can select the video tuner in. The link streams option should probably be checked as well, then just hit apply and you should be good to go.

Disappointingly, it seems you have to do that each time you open the program as I haven't figured out a way to make the settings stick; but on the plus side MCE works great with ffdshow so you can apply a nice assortment of filters to improve image quality. I'm not sure how much you can do and still keep the lag down, but it could be worth your time to look in to.