I was considering giving it a lash at using the laptop with a suitable TV tuner device to create a PVR (Personal Video Recorder) setup. I've done a bit of research but was wondering if anybody here had done anything similar and if they had any tips? I was tending towards a USB 2.0 tuner device with hardware MPEG encoding capabilities such as the Hauppauge WinTV-PVR USB2 or the [broken link removed] (includes h/w DivX encoding) but was wondering if a cheaper (and nastier?) card using software encoding would do just as well. The hardware encoder based devices are about €130-€150 (e.g. from Pixmania - not much dearer than buying in the US) but software based cards are half that or less (e.g. on eBay). The laptop is a Sony Vaio PCG-K23 - 2.8GHz P4, 1GB PC2700 RAM, 120GB 5400RPM hard drive, 15.4" WXGA XBrite display and ATI Radeon IGP 345M video card. In general it's a great workhorse (especially since I upgraded from the original 60GB 4200RPM to a 120GB 5400RPM drive) but the memory bandwidth and video card are no great shakes by standards these days. I'm just curious as to whether or not software encoding would be too much for it and if the video card (and in particular its support for DirectX which I can't ascertain clearly) would be up to it. As it happens I would also be connecting the video output on the Vaio to the VCR for playing back recordings on the main TV rather than on the laptop. Any advice especially from people with first hand experience would be welcome.
DIY PVR - any tips?
- Thread starter ClubMan
- Start date
Hi ClubMan,
I'm using an Adaptec hardware encoder and find it excellent; I haven't used a software encoder so I can't compare, just tell you what I know. The Adaptec box also has A/V inputs on the front as well.
I don't do a serious amount of recording, it just takes up waaaaayyyy too much space. I record MPEG2's at the "Best" quality settings (can't remember details offhand, but will post when I get home tonight - Amazon says it's 720 x 480 at 30fps) from both a regular TV feed and the second RF out from a Sky box - an hours worth of recording comes in at about the 3->3.5 Gb mark.
For the stuff I want to keep I shovel it off to an external hard disk, if you're keeping them all on the one (on your laptop) it will probably slow quite noticably as the disk fills up.
If I had to offer an opinion, I'd say go for a hardware encoder, simply because it's a dedicated device to do the encoding, rather than a software one, which has to share the processor/memory/disc with whatever else happens to be running at the time....
Hope this helps
Spock
I'm using an Adaptec hardware encoder and find it excellent; I haven't used a software encoder so I can't compare, just tell you what I know. The Adaptec box also has A/V inputs on the front as well.
I don't do a serious amount of recording, it just takes up waaaaayyyy too much space. I record MPEG2's at the "Best" quality settings (can't remember details offhand, but will post when I get home tonight - Amazon says it's 720 x 480 at 30fps) from both a regular TV feed and the second RF out from a Sky box - an hours worth of recording comes in at about the 3->3.5 Gb mark.
For the stuff I want to keep I shovel it off to an external hard disk, if you're keeping them all on the one (on your laptop) it will probably slow quite noticably as the disk fills up.
If I had to offer an opinion, I'd say go for a hardware encoder, simply because it's a dedicated device to do the encoding, rather than a software one, which has to share the processor/memory/disc with whatever else happens to be running at the time....
Hope this helps
Spock
Thanks Spock. I hadn't seen the Adaptec device before. Where did you buy yours and how much? From reading some of the AV/PVR forums/sites it looks like a hardware encoder is generally the way to go. I was just trying to gauge the trade-offs in relation to a software solution. I see that some devices also have hardware decoder capabilities so that they can decode MPEG etc. in hardware when feeding it out to an external device (e.g. VCR, TV etc.) thus freeing up the host PC/CPU from that work too. One thing about DivX is the advantages it gives in terms of compression for the same level of quality. My recording would most likely be disposable (i.e. I would not retain recordings long term) or else maybe archived to DVD. I have some external USB hard drives (10GB and 60GB) for temporary storage purposes. Also I would not envisage using the laptop while using it for recording or playback of digital video. Anyway, thanks again for the feedback. 
I think there's a new forum on this on boards.ie as well as existing threads on "media PCs" & such like.
I considered going down this route as well, but didn't have a suitable PC. Most PC's would be too noisy, plus do you want to wait for it to boot up every time you to watch TV? The vaio looks like a nice machine though.
It depends on what you're requirements are. If you want to be able to pause or record TV, then a DVD with HDD will do the trick & they start at about €300 now.
In the end, I got one of second hand for a decent price. Has an ethernet port so you can ftp files on/off it & connect to an EPG (electronic program guide) among other things.
With digital & high definition TV "around the corner", you probably don't want to spend too much on this either.
I considered going down this route as well, but didn't have a suitable PC. Most PC's would be too noisy, plus do you want to wait for it to boot up every time you to watch TV? The vaio looks like a nice machine though.
It depends on what you're requirements are. If you want to be able to pause or record TV, then a DVD with HDD will do the trick & they start at about €300 now.
In the end, I got one of second hand for a decent price. Has an ethernet port so you can ftp files on/off it & connect to an EPG (electronic program guide) among other things.
With digital & high definition TV "around the corner", you probably don't want to spend too much on this either.
You might want to have a look at the LG RH7500 HDD recorder.
Comes with 80Gb disc but it is really easy to replace it with any size HDD which gives you a really high end machine at a fraction of the cost.
Very easy to us. DIY solutions end up so fiddly and in the wrong place, they just don't get used imho.
Along the same line Sigmatek PVR 820 might be worth a look. this has a Usb input/output
Both have Divx and I think that would be a priority for the future.
Hope it helps
Comes with 80Gb disc but it is really easy to replace it with any size HDD which gives you a really high end machine at a fraction of the cost.
Very easy to us. DIY solutions end up so fiddly and in the wrong place, they just don't get used imho.
Along the same line Sigmatek PVR 820 might be worth a look. this has a Usb input/output
Both have Divx and I think that would be a priority for the future.
Hope it helps
Thanks again for the feedback. I don't really want a dedicated DVD/hard disk recorder and am as much interested in the techie as the usage side of this (and probably more of the former than the latter!) Hibernation mode on the laptop means that booting up is not a big deal. And it's even possible to schedule a task to wake up from hibernation to do a scheduled record if necessary - and then return to hibernation when finished. I've found one of those Adaptec boxes on eBay for €90 including shipping (from Spain - looks like the electrical standard is 230V/50Hz there too and the box supports Irish PAL I as well as Spanish PAL B/G so I guess it should be compatible but have asked anyway) which looks like a bargain (not clear if it's new or used) but then I'm still wondering if I should go for the Plextor and DivX etc. for about €160 including P&P from Pixmania. Hmmm...
Hibernation mode on the laptop means that booting up is not a big deal. And it's even possible to schedule a task to wake up from hibernation to do a scheduled record if necessary - and then return to hibernation when finished. I've found one of those Adaptec boxes on eBay for €90 including shipping (from Spain - looks like the electrical standard is 230V/50Hz there too and the box supports Irish PAL I as well as Spanish PAL B/G so I guess it should be compatible but have asked anyway) which looks like a bargain (not clear if it's new or used) but then I'm still wondering if I should go for the Plextor and DivX etc. for about €160 including P&P from Pixmania. Hmmm...I finally bought the [broken link removed] on eBay (€104 including P&P in the end) last night so it'll be interesting to see how it goes. Thanks for suggesting that device Spock - I hadn't come across it in my searching. In the meantime I also purchased on eBay a [broken link removed] (c. €8 including P&P) which is required to connect the Vaio to the TV/VCR and have been using the Vaio as a DVD player. Works great.