Edit: How is this Sapphire TV tuner for playing consoles?

[Ichigo]

short review would be nice. =p

I've seen some TV tuners that seem like they would work, but I couldn't know how well. Picture quality isn't a huge concern, as long as it's not total crap, and I can see everything okay. Video lag is a definate no-no, but that's about it.

EDIT: Will this work without lag? http://tinyurl.com/8qbr3

EDIT: Is this work the extra $8CDN? http://tinyurl.com/bbxmv

 

[keeleysam]

http://www.canadacomputers.com/index.ph...ESSID=2c6d46544d319ca20fb47d22601e18fa

FTW

 

[eelw]

I use my ATI 8500DV AIW to play my GC on the computer. Have also used Hauppauge WinTv-PVR 150 on my friends computer. Neither one has lag. And I also have a modded GC component cable so I can play 480p games directly to the monitor without going through the TV capture card. Picture quality is on par with playing on a TV.

 

[Ichigo]

Originally posted by: keeleysam
http://www.canadacomputers.com/index.ph...ESSID=2c6d46544d319ca20fb47d22601e18fa

FTW

Anything cheaper? T-T

There were a few near the `$50 mark. Do those work at ALL?

 

[Ichigo]

Hell, this seems to be the exact same card, without the extra stuff. If you're sure nothing else cheaper on that page will work properly, this for less than half the price of the one you advised (same card right?) seems cool.

 

[DarkPrime]

I use a Leadtek USB PVR card on my laptop and an Avermedia UltraTV 1500 PVR on my desktop. Both do not have any lag and look awesome.

 

[MercenaryForHire]

Direct PC input >>> tuners.

Dreamcast does it natively, Xbox has X2VGA.

- M4H

 

[Ichigo]

Direct monitor you mean?

Besides, I need this for an Xbox as well as a PS2. The OEM Sapphire Theatre 550 seems to use the exact same card as the ATI Wonder Elite, which the 2nd post seemed rather ecstatic about. Plus, it's an ATI reference design, so it seems like it'd be great for my purposes. Just need some confirmation from people with experience with these kinds of products.

 

[Ichigo]

bump

 

[Ichigo]

bump

 

[Ichigo]

bump

 

[3chordcharlie]

I would say spend the extra few dollars to get something that does hardware mpeg-2 and has a remote, BUT if you just want to game on your monitor, the Leadtek is pretty good (I have one, it seems a little underpowered on my xp1800 system), and I've heard very good things about the $40 MSI card; the ASUS cards are complete crap.

Overall I really like Canada computers (I can see one from my appartment window).

 

[Ichigo]

I've heard that hardware encoder cards suffer from video lag. Now, if this statement is false, or there is some way around it, that would be fine. I will eventually watch tv on the monitor, but the first use for the tv tuner will be console gaming. At this point, I'm just not sure what has and doesn't have video lag.

 

[Peter]

MPEG2 is exactly what NOT to have if you fear lag (and you should!).

The most primitive setup is best for this: Raw-capture PCI card pushing straight into the graphics card's overlay buffer, and the GPU just doing basic deinterlace.

The $30 KWorld 7131E card does an excellent job for this.

 

[3chordcharlie]

Originally posted by: Peter
MPEG2 is exactly what NOT to have if you fear lag (and you should!).

The most primitive setup is best for this: Raw-capture PCI card pushing straight into the graphics card's overlay buffer, and the GPU just doing basic deinterlace.

The $30 KWorld 7131E card does an excellent job for this.

Do all mpeg-2 cards encode and then playback (causing lag) or can they also just pass-through?

I'd like to upgrade to an mpeg2 card sometime soon, but I'd rather not be stuck running both that and my non-hardware card just to be able to 'do everything'.

 

[Ichigo]

I've heard that the PVR150 has a registry mod to enable "Live Preview", which basically cancels out all lag.

Certain programs like ChrisTV also have this option for ALL cards. If I can find this "Live Preview" option for the ATI card, I'd be a happy camper.

 

[Bull Dog]

I have a Theater 550pro card and with Intervideo WinDVD software, you will get zero lag.

 

[Peter]

Not zero, definitely. There is at least a one-frame lag if you're going straight from the PCI card into the graphics card, and many more if you go through an image enhancing software stage like the deinterlacers found in WinDVD.

In 3D games this isn't quite as noticeable as in more classic arcade-style action shooter games wherein being a frame or two late in bullet dodging is fatal. Playing those works perfectly fine as long as you use the pure-hardware path I described above (normal TV setups aren't any faster either, since they're doing the exact same thing), but with "image enhancers" enabled in an "advanced" TV viewing application, you're dead meat more often than not.

 

[v8envy]

Quickly looking at the ivtv driver source code for my Hauppage PVR-150, I didn't see anything which would enable skipping of the mpeg2 encoding. I don't think it'll do it, even when you skip the tuner and use the svideo in.

The 'live preview' feature could be implemented by simply not buffering X number of seconds of video on disk in the playback application.

One of the laws of computing is When You Do More Work, It Takes More Time. I second the recommendation for the cheapest possible frame grabber card with the fewest features you can get.

 

[eelw]

Well as I said, I play with absolutely no issues my GC on my 8500DV AIW and friends PVR-150. And this includes Ikaruga. So if anyone is experiencing lag issues, it's not fault of the above HW. PEBKAC maybe?????