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[Kurt Young]

A couple days ago, my cable was disconnected (long story).  No internet, no TV.  Kinda boring around the house, but I'm getting a lot of cleaning done.

I know that it's disconnected becuase my roomate was watching TV when it happened.  He's tried with the vendor-supplied cable boxes and without them, but still no joy.  We can pull down PBS and Fox though.

Well last night I installed the newest build of MC (no internet, so I had to download it at work, put it on my iPod, and carry it home that way -- did I mention that iPods make outstanding portable hard drives?).  So, on a lark, I fired up the TV tuner and told it to scan.

It found 69 channels.

Woooooooohooooooo!!!  I don't know if it's MC or if it's my TV tuner (VisionTek Xtasy Everything), but I can still watch standard cable channels on my PC!  It won't work on the cable-ready VCR downstairs, it won't work on the cable-ready TV, either.  But MC's still kickin' it!

So, thanks to MC, I was able to watch the new episode of South Park on Comedy Central last night.  Huzzah!!

Massive Respek,

Kurt



On a related topic, I tried some TV recording last night.  Recording and timeshifting both produce very poor results on my system.  Terrible deinterlace lines, gaps, skips, pauses, and audio de-synchs on the recorded playback; all around bad quality on the timeshift.  

I greatly suspect that it's my TV tuner card -- it's not the best in the world, especially when compared to "top-end" models like Hauppauge or eMused.  

I guess I'm just asking to hear some users out there say "Yes, Kurt, these functions are working fine, and if you get a better tuner, you'll be able to enjoy them."  Or, barring that, to hear some folks from the dev crew say "No worries, Kurt, it's not completely done yet, just sit tight."

[JimH]

Kurt,
Quality depends on the speed of the machine and the resolution/codec you're using.  Try some lower res settings and other codec choices.  

Glad you were able to get South Park.

Jim

[Kurt Young]

It's a P4 1.6GHz with 768MB PC133, Windows XP SP1.  The video card is a VisionTek Xtasy Everything; it's a dual-head Geforce2 MX (64MB) with a little green "pod" that you attach via a proprietary cable to the card itself.  The "pod" has the TV tuner in it, as well as a bunch of line in and line out ports (composite, stereo, svideo).

Like I said, it's no real worries that the PVR features don't work for me.  And I fully suspect that it's my tuner that is to blame.  The only things that I would want to record are the South Park episodes, but I can find them on Kazaa, and they're usually higher-quality encoded than I could do myself.

On that note, do y'all have a list of "tested" or "supported" or even "reccomended" TV-tuner cards that y'all have used?  Have you tried the Xtasy card?

[JimH]

Yaobing will have more to say on this, but ATI and Hauppauge should work fine.  I am using an AverTV card on one machine and it's good.  It's $50.

Did you fiddle with settings?  It can make a huge difference.  I think the problem may be solvable there.

BTW, what's South Park?

[Kurt Young]

South Park is an animated series on Comedy Central, rated TV-MA because of its often offensive and shocking (but thought-provoking) content.  It's about four 8-year olds who very often have more sense than the adults.  Again, very offensive and shocking content abounds, so view at your own discretion.  You can explore it a bit at http://www.southparkstudios.com

Long ago, right before MJ became MC, I did a lot of fiddling with settings, and could never come up with any good quality results.  Last night, I used the default settings (it created a .wmv file).  I'll play around a bit tonight and let you know how it goes, but I have very little faith in my TV card -- I just get the feeling that it's very poor quality.

(Thanks for chatting about this stuff, by the way, Jim.  Hope you're doing well, )

[JimH]

Kurt,
Thanks for the description of South Park.  

There is an instruction thread here on TV that might help.  Check the instruction thread near the top of this thread for a link.

Jim

[Kurt Young]

Coolies, got 'em.

I've noticed that the .135 build has some good enhancements for TV; I'll take it home and give it a shot tonight.

Thanks again,

Kurt

[Yaobing]

I waited a little today so I can tell you to try the latest build. There is a quality setting in the JRiver Video codec.

Also, try Advanced Properties->Video Capture Pin... and make sure you have selected the right Color Space setting. YUY2 or UYVY should be the best.

We have not tested the type of TV card that you use. Among the cards we used ATI cards seem to be good. The All-In-Wonder cards are good, but expensive since they are TV/Video card combo. ATI TV Wonder cards are inexpensive and work fine. Hauppauge cards are generally good too. Their drivers do not seem to be as refined as they should, but work fine on my computer anyway.

I recently tried an AverTV card. It works fine except a small noise when changing channels (it may be something I need to try harder to eliminate in my program).

Some cards (AverTV, some Hauppauge, Pinnacle System's PCTV) are not capable of displaying video in high resolution while recording. This probably is common among many lower priced cards. I have not tested them enough to say more about this.