Digital VCR TV boards

[downhiller80]

Is digital VCR a software or hardware function?

What boards come with the right software/hardware?

Given that I've got a dolby 5.1 setup is it pointless to buy a dolby TV card, just plug the stereo signal into my dolby decoder?

What's the picture quality of TV cards like? (and FM radio quality)

Seb

 

[Noriaki]

ATi TV-Wonder is a decent quality Stereo TV Tuner. The image quality on it is pretty good. But the Digital-VCR feature is software. The same is true for Haupagge or most others in the $50-100 range, I personally like ATi's image quality better than Haupagge's, but there are many others I haven't tried.

You can get dedicated video capture boards that have hardware digital-VCR, but they are quite expensive AFAIK.

 

[MWink]

I also have an ATI TV Wonder with the software digital VCR. I use it everyday. I love it. That is the only reason I bought it and I have not been disappointed.

 

[downhiller80]

And that lets you pause live TV etc? Must take a hell of a CPU load to compress & playback videos. Can you check the CPU usage for me?

Seb

 

[Noriaki]

You have a choice with the ATi TV-Wonder (not the VE, only the full) you can record to MPEG-1 or a lesser compressed form (It's just AVI if I recall correctly, but I havne't paid much attention).

Recording to MPEG-1 uses a pile of CPU time, but lowers hard drive space, using the other mode there is less compression so it uses less CPU time, but uses more hard drive space.

"pausing" live TV is the same thing as recording a show. I'm not at home right now so I can't test the CPU usage, but when I'm at home I'll try and work something out for you, see what it uses. I'm pretty sure going to AVI is fairly low overheard though if you are worried about your CPU time.