jolson
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| posted on 11/1/07 at 07:13 PM |
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PC Freeview cards?
Does anyone us a PC Freeview PCI card or a USB Freeview box??
I'm wondering if PCI has any advantage over USB 2.0?
The card I'm looking at is this one. Its to be a replacement for a USB Freeview stick I was
given for Christmas; badly made antenna socket made it almost impossible for it to see a decent signal. Its gone back now. Has anyone used one of
these??
Cheers
John
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geoff shep
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| posted on 11/1/07 at 09:43 PM |
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Yes, had one of those and kids have one now. Works well, software is ok, better than other ones I've seen - better than the stuff that shipped
with my acer laptop. USB has the advantage of portability/flexibility eg to use with different computers etc but for that price its worth it to have
it fitted and out of the way. You will need a reasonable signal for the freeview but if its good enough for a TV in my experience its good enough for
that pci card. (Not true with my acer - I have a high gain digital aerial connected solely to my laptop and signal is still poor.
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Donkeymatt
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| posted on 12/1/07 at 09:25 AM |
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I have had both a USB and Freeview card - from my experience, the cards provide a much better picture - they also have the advantage of doing some of
the processing themselves - whereas the USB devices use your computers processor - slowing it down and sometimes making the picture "jump"
if a lot happens on-screen. Go the card route!
Hope this helps
Matt
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mcerd1
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| posted on 12/1/07 at 11:38 AM |
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Never tried a USB one but I've had two pci ones
- a V-stream ? one that works but came with crap software
- and my new asus one (does Freeview, analoge and FM) worked well in my old house (I haven't got a signal at all in the new house yet, not even
analoge  )
came with WinCinema software which is alright
http://uk.asus.com/products4.aspx?l1=18&l2=83&l3=252&model=547&modelmenu=1
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Noodle
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| posted on 13/1/07 at 09:31 AM |
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I bought that card from EBuyer last year. I used that PCI card and a USB stick, both on an external aerial for a media box I built for the kids.
It is excellent. Most people don't realise, but Freeview actually broadcasts in an MPEG2 stream at 768x576, i.e. it's DVD format!
Therefore there's virtually no processing to be done by the PC, it justs writes the data it receives directly onto the hard disk.
I coupled the card with GB-PVR, a free .NET program for scheduling and managing recordings. It'll even recompress the MPEG2's into xVid
format for you.
I tried a USB stick (from Maplins) and it was pants. With skids on.
Neil.
Your sort make me sick
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ChrisGamlin
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| posted on 13/1/07 at 06:51 PM |
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Ive got a USB2 Hauppauge NovaT Freeview Stick and the picture is excellent. I run it plugged into a 933Mhz Pentium 3 Desktop PC (small form factor so
PCI wasnt an option) with a small form factor USB2 PCI card as the original USB sockets were only USB1.
Whatever card you decide on though, its worth having a look at DVB Webscheduler for programming
recordings, much better than the OEM software and uses less than 30% CPU even recording on my comparatively slow PC. You can also get 14 Day EPG
information into Web Scheduler using XMLTV GUI which scrapes RSS information from the Radiotimes website
via a scheduled task and populates the EPG.
It takes a bit of time to set up correctly but it works really well once up and running, Ive even set up my firewall so I can log onto the web front
end from the internet (either another PC or my mobile phone), ideal when you're down the pub and forgot to record Match of the Day.
Having said that I might have a play with GB-PVR as that looks pretty good as well 
[Edited on 13/1/07 by ChrisGamlin]
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