Re: Is DTV just '***' .. ;-( ?

On Mon, 5 Jun 2006 06:59:11 +0000 (UTC), "John Bailey" <aaa@xxxxxx>
wrote:


Hi John, and thanks for the reply ;-)

Out of curiosity, what is the spec of your PCs?

They are all Sempron 2600+'s (1800Mhz), the latest of which is a 64bit
one. All have 512M+ ram and decent AGP cards for games etc.

Then there is no problem with power or memory. Digital cards tend to
copy the MPEG2 stream as is from the broadcast signal, so no processing
should be needed to convert it to an Mpeg file. On my XP2400, I usually
get away with about 20-40% even when recording from more than one
channel.

Hi John. Ok, funny isn't it that all we have really tried is the live
DTV viewing ... recording being considered a luxury step two. I belive
I did try recording then playback as suggested here previously but
the recording was as broken as the live feed (suggesting deeper
problems).


The cards will function, but not to their full potential.

Well, if the drivers are as lumbering as the application (all 300MB of
it) then I can understand why!

Seems a bit excessive. But different cards will have different
software.

But it takes *ages* to load the configuration app (just timed it, 35
seconds?) and about the same to launch the TV app itself. Another
thing that always bothers me is when they don't follow M$hites
'common look and feel' with their apps .. bizzare icons all over the
place etc ... ?


You get's what you pays for I suppose John <sigh>. Is that card
supported by most of the alternative 'free' TV software you can get
out there do you know?

Not completly sure. They have recently started publishing BDA drivers,
which I think are for Windows media centre, but may work with other
apps too.

If I look at the driver descriptions for this card BDA*** is
mentioned a few times so they could be. Nothing else I've tried seems
to see or have the card in it's manual list though ;-(

The included software is very good though.

Another tick for the Nebula card then ;-)

The latest version
allows multiple recordings on the same mux, and they are working on
getting it ready to accept HD broadcasts when they come out on
freeview.

I have seen talk of test transmissions etc .. I should probably get at
least widescreen TV with at least one SCART connector on it first,
before I venture there though eh! ;-)

One of the things I want to do at some time in the near
future is get one of the slave tuners so I can have a dual tuner
freeview recorder. No more deciding which channel to record.

That looked quite sexy .. and streaming TV over yer LAN ...?


No idea if the Pinnacle cards are any good, so I
couldn't give any constructive comments.

I could say a few things about the month of my life they have wasted
so far ... ;-(

Welcome to the club. I had one of the Nova-T cards before I got my
Nebula. Spent a week of scratch reinstalls, tweaking the registry and
trying everything I could to get the damn thing working. The one time
it worked for more than 20 seconds was when I took out the network
card, which I needed to transfer recordings across to edit and burn to
DVD, so denetworking the video PC was not an option!

Great .. ;-(

I ended up sending it back under the distance selling regulations and
getting a refund. It was either that or a hammer! Trust me.. I feel
your pain<g>

Thanks .. it's good to know you're not alone John ... ;-)


You could try I suppose. Perhaps you could borrow your daughter's sound
card to try it out in case that is the solution, although the
proccessor load mentioned above seems ok.

I could but the way things are going I think I'll leave her PC alone
and find a spare card I must have kicking about somewhere .. ;-)

What actual model of card do you have please John and what sorta money
are we looking at (could you also see what Task Manager sugests is the
CPU performance when watching TV please (assuming you are running
Windows etc))

Just checked, Task manager is reporting 30-50% in both playing live TV
and playing a recording. And between 2 and 12% with nothing running and
the DigiTV software off.

Hmm, ok. Not sure how a 2600+ Sempron stands against your XP2400 but
it sounds similar.

Nebula Electronics only have the one product, and mostly sell direct to
the public. They do a PCI, USB2, and a slave unit for a bit less that
has to have one of the master devices installed in the same PC to work.
The slave goes for about £50ish and gives the option of having up to 4
tuners <I think> capable of recording a mux each at once, with multiple
channels recording on each tuner. From what I hear though, if you have
only USB1 like me at the moment, don't bother with the USB models.

Most of the PC's here (all home made of course) have 6 USB2 ports on
them but I am very wary using USB for anything strenious like DVD
writing or streaming TV (bad experiences with sipsynch years ago with
my first USV 1.1 external tuner ..).

I have the PCI version which is currently going for just under £90,
although I saw an older model on Ebay for about £50-60 last week. They
don't seem to come up nearly as often as the other cards do, which is a
good omen.

Unless you want to buy one that is yes .. ;-)

I have heard a few complaints about the USB ones not
restarting themselves properly after the computer reboots or something,
but can't say if its still a problem.

Hmmm, USB you see .. fine for printers, cameras, MP3 players .. not
networking or TV (except yer low res webcam of course) ;-)

They do update the software from
time to time, and the multiple channel recording was one of the new
features a few months ago, although when they announce a date for the
upgrade, its best to see it as an aspiration rather than a certainty.

That's another 'niggle' (like I need any more) with this Pinnacle
software .. most other 'Check for upgrades' buttons you see in thise
packages take you to the actual area for that particular app (or
sometimes actually check version and do the upgrade if you ok it), not
just take you to the general download page and make you have to go
through various product areas to find the actual list your product is
held under. Then you get the big 'Only install this if you haven't
got that or this or the other ... ", further hindered by not keeping
the same name anywhere along the line <bangs head on desk>.

The card has been known to run a bit hot, so I put a fan beside it in
the computer last summer. My flat gets very hot, so not surprisingly,
the PC was crashing all the time.

"Not surprisingly" John? With decent airflow (which you sound like you
now have) no PC should crash because it's a bit warm out! ;-)

Since then, its been pretty solid.
and turned on 24/7 I use it way more than my set top box for watching
freeview.

As we were hoping to do a month ago ... <sigh>. Well, we sorta can
now .. except she watches Freeview channels in analog *through* out
STB ;-)

Check out http://www.nebula-electronics.com/ for the web site, and

Yep, I found them after you mentioned the card John .. even sent them
a question .. ;-)

http://www.digitv-forum.co.uk/ for the user forum. Might not hurt to
ask any questions in the hardware section to see if anybody has had
problems with specific components before you buy. Might even be someone
there who knows about the pinnacle cards before you give some ebayer
the chance to bang their head against the wall.

LOL .. the way I see it thesre cards might just work if the CrayII has
PCI slots .. ;-)

All the best and thanks for your time ..

T i m
.