HTPC - TV Tuner Reviews
by Jarred Walton on December 7, 2005 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Mobile
DVICO Fusion5 Gold (cont'd)
The Fusion5 card can function in multiple ways, and how you plan to use the card will affect the configuration process. FusionHDTV supports standard analog TV reception, OTA DTV reception, and the ability to decode digital cable content (provided that it isn't encrypted). These last two features are also referred to as the ability to decode 64/256 bit QAM content (for digital cable) and 8VSB content (for OTA DTV).
When you first launch FusionHDTV, it will ask if you want to scan for channels. Say "no" and then specify the type of connection that you're using first: cable or antenna, and then select analog, digital or both for the channel type. At this point, you can click the "Start Scan" button and wait a few minutes. (It took about 4.5 minutes to scan through the digital channels and another 1.5 minutes for the analog channels.)
Most of the configuration options are pretty much self-explanatory. You can see several of the screens above. Timeshifting is grayed out on analog channels but is available for digital channels. Depending on which station you're currently tuned in to, you may or may not be able to check the timeshifting box.
The video options allow you to specify how the content should be shown. "Original Ratio" is our preferred choice, as any form of stretching tends to look bad. Some people don't like having black areas on widescreen displays, though, so the ability to switch to a stretch or zoom mode will keep them happy. The remote actually has a button that toggles between these three modes, which can come in handy.
Digital and analog recording have separate options, although the computer speed may play a role in what you select. You can capture digital streams as either the raw transport stream (with a .TP extension) or as a "Native MPEG" stream. "Native MPEG" mode converts the transport stream to a program stream (.MPEG extension), which usually has very little impact on performance or file size (and no impact on quality). However, it can save a lot of space if you're capturing an SDTV show where there are lots of extra bytes for other subchannels or null packets in the TS that are stripped from the PS. Given this information, Native MPEG seems to be the better choice, though in our sample videos (which were of HDTV), we chose to capture the raw TS.
Analog capture only allows MPEG2 encoding, but with several quality presets available. Choosing 640x480 and Highest Quality result in a data rate of 4000 Kbits/s and little to no loss in quality, so that's what we chose. That will use around 30 MB per minute of video - that's one-fourth to one-fifth the amount of disk space as a typical 720p/1080i HD transport stream, in case you were wondering. With hard drives costing around 40 cents per GB for the best deals, we recommend grabbing a 250GB drive (or several) and using higher quality capture options rather than worrying about disk space.
The Fusion5 card can function in multiple ways, and how you plan to use the card will affect the configuration process. FusionHDTV supports standard analog TV reception, OTA DTV reception, and the ability to decode digital cable content (provided that it isn't encrypted). These last two features are also referred to as the ability to decode 64/256 bit QAM content (for digital cable) and 8VSB content (for OTA DTV).
When you first launch FusionHDTV, it will ask if you want to scan for channels. Say "no" and then specify the type of connection that you're using first: cable or antenna, and then select analog, digital or both for the channel type. At this point, you can click the "Start Scan" button and wait a few minutes. (It took about 4.5 minutes to scan through the digital channels and another 1.5 minutes for the analog channels.)
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| Click to enlarge. | |
Most of the configuration options are pretty much self-explanatory. You can see several of the screens above. Timeshifting is grayed out on analog channels but is available for digital channels. Depending on which station you're currently tuned in to, you may or may not be able to check the timeshifting box.
The video options allow you to specify how the content should be shown. "Original Ratio" is our preferred choice, as any form of stretching tends to look bad. Some people don't like having black areas on widescreen displays, though, so the ability to switch to a stretch or zoom mode will keep them happy. The remote actually has a button that toggles between these three modes, which can come in handy.
 |
 |
| Click to enlarge. | |
Digital and analog recording have separate options, although the computer speed may play a role in what you select. You can capture digital streams as either the raw transport stream (with a .TP extension) or as a "Native MPEG" stream. "Native MPEG" mode converts the transport stream to a program stream (.MPEG extension), which usually has very little impact on performance or file size (and no impact on quality). However, it can save a lot of space if you're capturing an SDTV show where there are lots of extra bytes for other subchannels or null packets in the TS that are stripped from the PS. Given this information, Native MPEG seems to be the better choice, though in our sample videos (which were of HDTV), we chose to capture the raw TS.
Analog capture only allows MPEG2 encoding, but with several quality presets available. Choosing 640x480 and Highest Quality result in a data rate of 4000 Kbits/s and little to no loss in quality, so that's what we chose. That will use around 30 MB per minute of video - that's one-fourth to one-fifth the amount of disk space as a typical 720p/1080i HD transport stream, in case you were wondering. With hard drives costing around 40 cents per GB for the best deals, we recommend grabbing a 250GB drive (or several) and using higher quality capture options rather than worrying about disk space.
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JarredWalton - Wednesday, December 7, 2005 - link
Does DirectShow encoding plug into the VFW interface? (I think I've only used it for decoding, not encoding.) Same goes for AVI.NET - I haven't ever heard about that one, but then there's all sorts of stuff I've never heard of. :)xtknight - Thursday, December 8, 2005 - link
DirectShow doesn't necessarily use VfW. It's a separate interface for the most part, although you can still plug in VfW codecs in DirectShow filter graphs (basically flowcharts for video playback/capture/etc). You probably have only used it for decoding because there are not many DirectShow encoders.Homepage for AVI.NET: http://www.clonead.co.uk/">http://www.clonead.co.uk/
xtknight - Wednesday, December 7, 2005 - link
Realtime encoding can also be done by DirectShow, but I'm not aware of any apps that use it.sprockkets - Wednesday, December 7, 2005 - link
if it supports divx it supports xvid usually as well.Of course I could be wrong, but the way it works is they encode differently, but both can be decoded the same, right? Xvid can decode divx, so isn't like the same with mp3, different encoders but one decoder can do it all, since it is just mpeg-4?
segagenesis - Wednesday, December 7, 2005 - link
There is good reason for using Divx despite the fact xvid/ffdshow exist. Primarily from experience I should say taht xvid/ffdshow (with the latter of the two being particuarly bad) are slower than Divx as far as playback speed. This becomes more noticeable on slower computers, actually making a difference between full speed and jittery playback on some. If you have the CPU power, however, go for using xvid/ffdshow combination.bofkentucky - Wednesday, December 7, 2005 - link
Problem is, my cable boxes (Motorolla 6412, Dual tuner, DVR) can only output HD signals on the component, DVI, and HDMI ports, anyone know of a HDTV tuner card than has component or DVI in or a converter box that can take a component in coax out without mangling the signal?Griswold - Tuesday, December 13, 2005 - link
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The Boston Dangler - Wednesday, December 7, 2005 - link
There is no such beast, nor will there be.gibhunter - Wednesday, December 7, 2005 - link
I too have the Moto 6412 Dual Tuner HD box. It is so good that it has kept me from actually building an HTPC. Now regarding your question, I don't think there is a way to do it. I do know from reading the www.avsforum.com that there is a driver for windows that will allow you to hook up a PC to the Moto DVR using the firewire connection. Then you can just copy the recordings straight from the DVR instead of re-recording them on the PC.Beenthere - Wednesday, December 7, 2005 - link
As in NO I have never considered using my PC as a home entertainment center. I guess some folks do but for me I'd prefer to build an "entertainment center" from commercial hardware components, not from add-ins to my PC.I could see a college student or someone with limited space combining their PC and movie viewing into one piece of hardware or maybe for viewing at work, but for the home, I don't see the advantage of using your PC for the basis of an entertainment center when it's not the best "tool for the job".