HDTV Recording

[digdugm]

Anyone out there using any of the variety of the pci hdtv tuner/capture cards (ie. MyHD, Access...)? I've got the MyHD card a couple weeks ago, seems to work fairly well as a tuner(considering antenna limitiaons). I really havn't had time to experiment with the recording capablities too much.  I know when I record the ram usage goes up and up till its maxed out within a couple of minutes. Still playing with it though.

Well just wondreing if anyone else out there that went this route. You only get OTA but thats primairly whats out there any how. And pretty cheap (@ 299 & up) with the recording capabilities (dhs very expensive). Although I realy hope to see an Directv HDTV PVR, by the end of the year.

[rpine]

Greetings digdugm -- I got a MyHD card in December of last year and have been playing with it ever since.  I have it installed temporarily in an old PII-450Mhz machine, and am using it as a HDTV receiver as well as a HDTV PVR.  I feed the Component Out from the MyHD card to my HDTV thru the wall (trying to keep noise down) -- it works well. Threw in a 120GB hard drive for recording since recording is pretty disk hungry.

The MyHD Beta 3 drivers that are out there really have cleaned things up, and work quite well.  My final set-up will be on a much faster machine, silenced, with a nice case so that it can be with the other AV equipment, but for the time being, this at least gets me the viewing and recording capability.

Rich

[digdugm]

thanx for the reply!

I just so happened to get the beta3 today. Took awhile, but got it running, that seemed to do it. I really like the OSD also.

[digdugm]

ya I spoke too soon. I tried to record some of Good Will Hunting last night on abc. It seemed to start off ok but then after a little while it started eating up memory, recorded for about 3 or 4 minutes. When I played it back it look great for the first 1 or 2 minutes, but after that it became  unwatchable, jumping and losing frames. I've been reading the avs forum on the beta3, but havn't read anything on this problem. Now I'm wondreing if its my set-up. I'm running an 1.4 gig celron w/ 256 meg ram.
any help would be appreicated.:bang:

[rpine]

Hmm - I will give it a try.

First - can you provide a complete list of your system? I know that you have a 1.4G Celeron with 256M RAM.

HD:
OS:
Video Card:
Other Cards:

Are you running any other apps at the same time or in the background?

When you say "eating up memory" I assume that you are talking about your 256Meg ram (sorry for the basic question, but a lot of folks call the HardDrive "memory").

And finally -- did you try to un-install the software then re-install the Beta 3 software? If the old stuff does not completely uinstall, it can cause grief.

From AVS Forum:
Follow the instructions below step-by-step to uninstall whatever you currently have installed and to install the beta3 driver and application posted on page one of this thread.

1) Right click on the MyIRC icon in the system tray and select Exit MyIRC.
2) From the MyHD start folder select Uninstall MyHD
3) From Device Manager select and uninstall "MDP-100 Video Capture" driver.
4) Reboot the PC and when Windows finds the new hardware point the install to the folder where you unzipped the driver. Be sure to select the driver folder for the installed operating system.
5) From the folder where you unzipped the MyHD application run "Setup".
6) Reboot the PC for good measure.
7) Make necessary settings in the Config Panel of MyHD and scan for channels with Virtual Channels enabled if you use that option.

Rich

[FreQi]

I have a HiPix card in my Athalon 2700+ with a half gig of pc2700 dimms and a 150gig raid (2x80gig).  I've been setting a few timers to record things (a couple up-shifted shows like Scrubs and She Spies) and in about 30mins I'll be getting Miracles off ABC in HD, that is if "The War" doesn't prempt it.  So far I really like it.  The absolute hardest part was setting up the antenna, but once you go to antennaweb.org and get yoursef a old-school compas, it's pretty simple.  I somehow managed to get an OTD DTV feed of the WB.  I haven't figured out where it's coming from yet, but I am getting ABC, CBS, NBC and WB.  I get a touch of PBS, but I haven't really tried to get that station.  Here's my signal strengths...



I really wish WITI (fox) would get their signal up to par.  According to the image posted in this thread I am right in between the red and blue circles of coverage and I can not get above a signal strength of 5 (and I have an antenna on the roof of my 2 story house in `tosa).

[rpine]

FreQi -- I too am in Tosa (66th & Milwaukee Ave) -- but I only have an antenna stuck in the attic of a bungalow -- not easy to crawl to and adjust. As a result I am sure that I could get better reception if I could get to the antenna more easily; much better if I put up on the roof.


  Channel       Signal Strength
---------------   ---------------------
PBS (10)   8 -  36
IND (30) 22 -  55
UPN(24) 25 -  64
NBC(4)   28 -  69
FOX(6)   33 -  Ha Ha -you must be kidding! ZERO.
ABC(12) 34 -  81
CBS(58) 46 -  58
WB (18) 61 -  44

Odd thing is that so far, the warmer the weather, the lower the signal strenth.  This past weekend, with it in the upper 60's, Channel 10/8 became unwatchable.

[digdugm]

rpine
the hd is a 40 g @ 5400,
running ME,
got an agp-radeon 9000 w/128,
Yes I did mean 256ram, I'm using Analog X MaxMem to monitor the usage of the ram memory. YEp that's exactly how I installed beta 3. Thats with not much running in the background and no apps going. I'll try shutting more down and recording something soon. Need anymore info just let me know. thanx for all the help.

ps I know the hd is small, but I want to work out the recording thing before getting a new 120 g @ 7200 drive.

[rpine]

digdugm -- sounds like you are approaching this the same way I did -- get it working with what you have, then upgrade the hardware (in your case hard-drive, in mine hard-drive, processor, case, motherboard!).

With WinMe and 256Meg ram, you may want to make sure that your disk is defragged before you start recording. If the disk can't keep up (or if it is mostly full) you may have problems.  Also - do you know if your disk is ATA-66, ATA-33, ATA-100, etc?  Also, what is your mobo?  Since you have a 1.4G Celeron, I am assuming that your mobo and disk are at least ATA-66, which should be good.  With my original test set-up, I was ATA-33 and it worked fairly well; once I popped in an ATA-100 PCI card with a 120Gb ATA-100 drive (5400 rpm), things were much smoother.

Sounds like you are going about this the right way. Shutting down any background apps will certainly help.  I am running on Win-XP, which I think works a bit more solidly than WinMe, but everything I have read says that it should work fine on WinMe.  Once you try some more testing you may also want to ask on AVSForum website -- they were helpful to me when I started, and they have a LOT more experience than I.  Good luck, and let me know if you have any other questions and how it goes.

Rich

[digdugm]

I don't know, but I just installed XP on my machine, and recorded a couple of minutes of TA today. It work just fine 12 min, only went up at the beginning and that was it. SWEEEET.
Now I gotta get a big old hard. Woooooo:D

[rpine]

Sounds good!!  Looks like a dose of XP may cure your ills.  Unfortunately, it is expensive medicine, but it seems to work.

I was out of town last weekend, so I tried using TitanTV to schedule a recording of one of the College Basketball games -- and it worked!

Good continued luck!

[rpine]

Say digdugm - saw some hard-drives on sale this week that would fit your bill -- some are more than you actually need, since HD recording works fine on a 5400rpm, 2Mb buffer drive.

CompUSA has a 160GB /7200RPM /8MB Drive for $129.99 after a $50 rebate.

Staples has a 120GB /7200RPM /2MB  Drive for $109.99 after a $30 rebate. If you order $10 more stuff, you can use a $30 off coupon as well (coupon code 34340) to drop the effective cost down to $79.99  for 120GB! free shipping too!

Hope your recording is going well!

Rich

[digdugm]

thanx for the heads up, rpine, just so happens I ordered a 120gb @7200 8MB buffer on friday. But thanx for the help.

now they need to start broadcasting something worth recording. :confused: