REcording HDTV DVB-T2

aspendl828

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Hi Guys,

For some time now I've been succesfully recording terrestrial DVB-T using my Huappauge Win TV Nova 500 dual tuner in WMC. I then use Video Redo to trim the shows and remove adverts and convert the DVR-MS to mpg. Then, I often use VID2EVA to transcode to mkv for onwards streaming to the EVA9150, EVA9100 and EVA8000 in various rooms.

My question is, I now want to upgrade to HD recording and am planning to buy a DVB-T2 PCi-e card to replace the existing Huappauge. BUT, will my PC be able to record the HD streams using a TBS6280 I am looking at on Amazon.

The PC is a relatively old HP t3660.uk with a 3.0Ghz Pentium 4. It is just used for recording TV and hosting my Logitech Media Server to feed the 2 squeezeboxes I have (data held on a NAS). There will be no TV viewing at all on this PC. The DVR-MS files get copied over the network to my other pc where I do the Video Redo and VID2EVA stuff. In order to install the PBS6280 I will need to remove the graphics card (as supplied when new) and activate the on-board graphics just to be used in case i need to connect a monitor to diagnose problems.

I suspect that the processing power required to 'just' record the stream will be much less that is required to decode it? But am I right? Will the P4 be enough to record HDTV - possibly even 2 channels at once (planned purchase is for a dual tuner).

Thanks in advance

Andrew
 
That depends whether you're just recording it (which should be no more demanding then any other file writing) or encoding on the fly, I don't know how these things work though.

Are you sure the system has onboard graphics? They were nowhere near as ubiquitous those days as they are now.
 
Hi EndlessWaves,
Pretty sure the MB has onboard graphics. Will check tonight.
I don't know about encoding / transcoding when recording either. I would probably upgrade to win7 if I bought the HD card. I beleive Win7 records to a .wtv container but I have no idea if it just dumps the data in there as it comes (h.264 / AC3 ?) or transcodes to something else.

I guess I'll probably just have to buy it and see if it works......

Cheers

Andrew
 
I would say that a P4 would easily be able to record two HD channels because it's only writing the received data to the harddrive. I don't know what software you are using to do the recording, unless it's media centre for the DVR-MS. Transport streams are usually used for most other recording software. Transport streams do allow sync correction, I'm not sure how well the M$ format handles that.

You can get software which will record the transport stream, there might be some freeware that can do it on VideoHelp.

VideoRedo comes in a number of different versions, 2 different V2 Mpeg2 versions, TVSuite and VideoRedo Plus and 2 different V3 H.264 versions. The V3 is more feature limited when editing as it has no preview. V3 does allow import of Hi Def H.264 whereas the V2 does not.
 
Hi EndlessWaves,
Pretty sure the MB has onboard graphics. Will check tonight.
I don't know about encoding / transcoding when recording either. I would probably upgrade to win7 if I bought the HD card. I beleive Win7 records to a .wtv container but I have no idea if it just dumps the data in there as it comes (h.264 / AC3 ?) or transcodes to something else.

I guess I'll probably just have to buy it and see if it works......

Cheers

Andrew

If you mean Windows 7 Media Center, then yes, it supports DVB-S2 and T2 out of the box. XP or Vista won't. The .wtv files contain the H.264 video and multiple audio streams in the original transmission formats. Freeview HD has an odd audio codec (can't remember what now) but MC handles it fine. You would need to check your 3rd party software though.

You need a graphics card that handles H.264 acceleration to take the load off the CPU. I used to have a P4D CPU in my old media PC and it worked fine.

Lots of good information in here:
http://www.avforums.com/forums/home-entertainment-pcs/
 
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