Re: Freeview PVR from old PC
- From: Not Me <not.me@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 10:24:51 +0100
M wrote:
Would like to turn an old PC into a multi tuner PVR based on freeview and
analogue and I am interested in using in using Windows MCE.
Have a few questions.
Would like to use at least 2 digital tuners (i.e. watch one record another)
- Is there a dual tuner PCI card available which is MCE compatible?
- Can I just use multiple USB tuners?
I just use a single pci dvb-t card currently, and when I asked a similar question, I was told it's probably better to mix usb/pci cards and different manufacturers... the idea being then they use seperate driver packages so less chance of conflict.
Am concerned about the amount of disk space that MCE will take up, can it
use compression for storage to save on space? e.g. Divx (I already have a
licence for this encoder)
for your dvb-t cards, the stream is saved as it comes down the wire (mpeg2 - although wrapped in some ms-format) so you can't alter the bitrate/etc. channels vary but you get around an hour per GB I think? Programs exist which work in the background converting your recordings to another format each night when idle...
Is my PC meaty enough to record/playback multiple streams or am I wasting my
time, maybe a hardware accelerated card would help?
AMD Athlon 2400
1Gb RAM
ATI 9800 Pro
80 Gb (I will add more if it works OK)
as above - the dvb-t cards just save the stream so little power is required (I was using an athlon 2000+ easily), if you're wanting to use analogue then one with a hardware encoder is pretty much essential (don't think you can get software encoders that use the BDA drivers necessary for MCE to work)
Note I've never taken the analogue route... well I tried but it was too much hassle, the dvb-t card was plug and play. the MCE interface is bloody good too :)
hope that helps,
Chris
.
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- Freeview PVR from old PC
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