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Crappy TV Cards

  • 09-12-2002 2:59pm
    #1
    MisterAnarchy
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 15,952 ✭✭✭✭


    I thought I'd post my thoughts on 2 TV Cards I had the misfortune to buy lately.
    I bought a Win TV Theater PCI card and a Pinnacle Rave card.
    I installed these cards seperately and I must commend both companies on producing completely rubbish products.
    The quality of the picture is dreadful on both .
    The Hauppage card repeatedly caused my system to turn off whenever I activated any of its functions within 5 minutes of power up.
    I tried WDM drivers and now use VFW drivers.
    This has solved the problem somewhat but I cannot view the image fullscreen now.
    The maximum video capture resolution it can manage is 330 by 240 .
    Above this it keeps on dropping most frames.
    This on a 2100XP with 512Mb ,333Mhz Ram !
    The Pinnacle card wasnt much better.
    I managed to tune in the channels once and it didnt save them .
    Now I cant tune them in at all .
    The Pinnacle card is now back in its box where it will stay .
    The Hauppage is in the system but I fear I may rip it out soon and destroy it with a hammer .
    Beware of these 2 crap items.


Comments

  • #2
    Felix Unger
    Closed Accounts Posts: 33 ✭Felix Unger


    I have the WinTV Theatre, it works great (Win98SE,P3-800, 256Mb RAM).
    The drivers are a bit rubbish though.
    Video capture runs fine at TV res (around 640x480) but eats
    disk space. Do you have a slow disk (a 5400rpm?), or DMA turned off on it?
    I normally only drop a couple of frames over 3 minutes, if even.
    Do you have any tasks running in the background, AV software etc?

    The quality of the picture is very dependent on the quality of the aerial/cable coming in. And displaying a TV signal on a high res monitor shows up all the flaws in the underlying TV signal. You've also got to remember that TV uses an interlaced signal, which can tear when played back via a monitor, so scrolling text is very hard to read, especially right to left scrolling (so would left to right scrolling text but as it wouldn't be very readable either way I didn't mention it)

    So we very happily use a 19inch monitor with the WinTV Theatre and supplied remote as our main TV, and it's easy to setup the remote control to control the WINDVD player as well, so I can't complain (once I got it working that is).


  • #3
    MisterAnarchy
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 15,952 ✭✭✭✭MisterAnarchy


    I have a Western Digital 7200rpm HDD with 80Gb.
    The quality of the picture coming in on the aerial is very clear.
    I do have an antivirus working allright in the background, Pc-Cillin.
    The card seems to capture video in avi format which as you said demands alot of hard drive space.
    I have Power VCR 2 which can capture in MPEG 2 but unfortunately this is only compatible with wdm drivers and not vfw,so I cant use it .
    I thought I could play my N64 on the tv card but the quality is too shoddy so I use roms instead . Very good.


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