Video Card Selection??

[SideShowCecil]

Nvida GeForce FX 5500 or ATI Radeon 9550?

Which would perform better for a PC based PVR?

[Bollux]

They are both basically the same thing, just really a matter of preference. I personally like Nvidia and have an nvidia card myself. They have yet to steer me astray.

[Don-Dad]

I have used both Nvidia carda and ATI, not the ones you mentioned though. But the ATI had some neat tools, I use it to watch TV on the PC and it has a nice tool for getting weekely tV listings and recording tv programs. Those can be played back on the pc and they have a tool that convets the video to mpg format.

If using for PVR, did you look at the hauppauge cards.

[SideShowCecil]

I’m sold on the Hauppauge PVR 150 Tuner/Capture card. I’m using Snapstream Media Beyond TV4 software and they strongly recommend the Hauppauge. They don’t however provide much guidance regarding Video Card selection, particularly for HDTV.

All of the reviews and documentation I’ve found for video cards has been strictly for gaming. I’m more interested in TV Out DVD and HDTV performance.

<RANT>
I do have a bug up my butt about ATI. I argued and fought with them for over nine months over a $30 mail in rebate. I eventually went directly to the retailer and threatened to never shop there again unless ATI honored their rebate. I got far more co-operation from them then I got from ATI. I received my rebate a few weeks later. No apology, no explanation.
</RANT>

[seattle]

I have a cheap PVR card and plain old onboard video and it works good. I don't think you need a very fast video card for PVR but if you want to play games too then you do. I use SageTV for my PVR software and it works well.

[vertygo]

But if he's wanting to record HDTV, I think the video card needs to be pretty beefy. The amount of data is HUGE for HDTV shows, I would assume it would need to encode to mpeg/xvid/whatever on the fly ? Of course, compressing it would reduce quality.. which might defeat the purpose of HD.

I've read that the Hauppauge cards are the only way to go.

I googled free dvr software, and I thought this (http://www.tv-cards.com/apps.php) site might be worth checking out (in terms of what software is out there, might help with vid card selection)

[Don-Dad]

I have the haupauge 350 but really have not played with it much. Another good site for pvr, http://gbpvr.com, I tried the software and it's ok but the foruyms have alot of good info. I think http://www.chris-tv.com/, is suppose to be another good one. I like, video-help.com for file conversion help.

[vertygo]

I finally found this again.. I'm not sure how outdated it is NOW, but it's still really interesting.

It's a video on how to make a linux based MythTV system for under $500

Kevin Rose is a pretty neat guy.

MythTV Video from Systm/Rev3 (http://revision3.com/systm/mythtv/)

[Don-Dad]

You can do it for less than that with some of the free software out there :) Even with buying a used pc dedicated for pvr and mp3's and buying a brand new hauppauge card I spent about $400.