Wide World of Women

Hi. I somewhat upgraded computers. I now have a Pentium 4, 3GHZ computer. I had an old analog capture card but, my new computer is an "Ultra-slim" case and my old card didn't fit into my new computer. I am looking to upgrade to an HD card or HD USB, but I keep reading...the cards/USB ones I look at are saying "Free To Air" HD or "Over The Air" HD. Now if I have an HD Cable box, Does this still matter? Any idea guys? Also I am not looking to spend more than $60 to $70 tops... Thanks in advance. Legmaster

I believe the only HD channels you'll get with ATSC/NTSC/QAM TV tuners are only OTA channels and I've read in some rare cases a few unencrypted HD cable channels. You can still connect your HD set-top-box directly to the tuner, but it'll only record in analog regardless of the channel source, SD or HD. The best option for recording HD cable channels is the Hauppauge HD-PVR, but that's well over your price range as it costs $200. Another option are CableCARD tuners that will be readily available in a few months, but again, over $200. AVerMedia has a competing product to the Hauppauge HD-PVR called the AVerTV HD-DVR that cost a little under $100, but I'm not too familiar with this particular tuner so I can't suggest a product I don't know about.

Hey thanks for the info. I will look into the AVerTV HD-DVR

If you have an HD cable box you may be able to just use the firewire port and CapVHS along with drivers for the box to get the unencrypted channels. That's the easiest and least expensive way. You won't be able to get encrypted channels, and depending on the provider it will only be a handful of channels. OTA you will need and antenna and you will be limited to broadcast channels. QAM signal from the cable company can be picked by tuner similar to a TV tuner. Hauppauge HDPVR is my favorite gadget for record HD programs from any source with component output. Now that VideoRedo TVSuite V4 has h.264 support and works just as easily as the mpeg-2 version, I think it's the best bet. HDPVR is about $250, and I think VRTVS is about $96 to buy and $47 to upgrade from VRP. Well worth saving for if you want great quality video and the best h.264 editing app.

Make sure you check your system specs with whatever you get. I know the high bitrate h.264 files are a pain to play back. I have a P4 machine that really struggles with it. Upgrading to a graphics card with h.264 decode to enable hardware acceleration can be an inexpensive fix (compared to getting a whole new PC).

At risk of flooding the board with a similar post that I've made today in other sections....




I just installed the AVerMedia HD DVR (Vista64 box, via component cables to a DirecTV HD receiver).


Video example posted: viewtopic.php?f=40&t=119696

The HD output of the card is h.264 or Mpeg-2 - hook up via HDMI or Component *HDMI may cause HDCP issues


I used Premiere to cut the clip I posted, it's output is limited as a standalone product, that's why its a 60mb file for 10secs of video and the output is a m2t file.


I've had a small bug where coming off of a recording, the live stream goes black, then I have to fiddle with pausing, stopping or playing the feed on the card to get the picture back. Says my drivers are up to date, but I'll email their support to see if they have any fixes. Otherwise, set-up and recording is a snap.

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