Hauppauge vs. Radeon

[wacki]

I'm in the process of building a HTPC. I'm currently eyeing the Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-250MCE, WinTV-PVR-350, and the ATI all in wonder 9600. The nice thing about the Hauppauge 350 is that it's fanless and you only need a 600 Mhz Pentium II to do realtime TV encoding. This means that I can build my HTPC with a Via C3 or Eden chip, slap a big heatsink on it, a zalman fanless PSU, and go completely fanless!!!!!

What I'm wondering about is the quality. How is the video encoding quality of the Hauppage vs. the ATI all-in-wonder cards. I've heard great things about the Hauppauge, but I don't know how the Radeon compares when it comes to video encoding. Any comments?

 

[Quixfire]

Won't your power supply have a fan?

 

[wacki]

No zalman makes a fanless PSU

 

[bagaki]

i too would like to know which has the best encoding

 

[0roo0roo]

whats a htpc without a hdtv card?

 

[thedarkwolf]

I have the PVR-250 and it works great but I have no idea how it compares to a AIW. I bought it based on what most poeple over on AVS Forum said. Look around in their HTPC section.

BTW the 250 is fanless aswell. The 350 just has a hardware decoder for its tv-out and the 250 doesn't have a tv-out.

 

[Cerb]

Originally posted by: thedarkwolf
I have the PVR-250 and it works great but I have no idea how it compares to a AIW. I bought it based on what most poeple over on AVS Forum said. Look around in their HTPC section.

BTW the 250 is fanless aswell. The 350 just has a hardware decoder for its tv-out and the 250 doesn't have a tv-out.

I cna only compare an old WinTV to a 7500 AIW...the tuner app quality is where it's at. Both have good capture quality, which is mostly limited by the source, and neither are major CPU hogs when doing it. If you're only worried about TV-in, go Hauppauge w/ no fan and save a few $ compared to the AIW.

The other thing is that Hauppauge, unless they've seriously changed in the last year or so, have excellent email support.

 

[Snoop]

Just a thought, but I wonder if it would be possible to take an Athlon XP mobile 2500 and down clock it from the defacto 1.83 ghz to 1.4ghz (and reduce voltage from 1.25 > 1.15.....I wonder if any boards even support voltages this low) or so and run it fanless as well. From all I have read it may be pushing those C3 eden setups to even match up with a p2 600 and further, I would be concerned about the compatibility issues you may face from putting a Hauppauge in with an off the wall chipset / cpu setup.
Just my 2 cents

 

[rbV5]

Originally posted by: wacki
I'm in the process of building a HTPC. I'm currently eyeing the Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-250MCE, WinTV-PVR-350, and the ATI all in wonder 9600. The nice thing about the Hauppauge 350 is that it's fanless and you only need a 600 Mhz Pentium II to do realtime TV encoding. This means that I can build my HTPC with a Via C3 or Eden chip, slap a big heatsink on it, a zalman fanless PSU, and go completely fanless!!!!!

What I'm wondering about is the quality. How is the video encoding quality of the Hauppage vs. the ATI all-in-wonder cards. I've heard great things about the Hauppauge, but I don't know how the Radeon compares when it comes to video encoding. Any comments?

The Radeon's have very good encoding, but even with hardware assist with the 9600+ models, but definately take a more powerful platform. Honestly I would rethink that platform for a HTPC if you want decent performance in something other than video encoding, like a jukebox or other video format playback, or perhaps gaming.

The Hauppage will be less CPU dependant, but less flexable as far as video formats and configuration is concerned. It will also require an additional graphics card to work. The AIW is a single card solution. If you wait a bit, the new AIW 9600np should be able to run fanless, even the pro would be able to downclocked I would think. Linux support would probably favor the Hauppage as well, so if thats a consideration.

A decent HTPC could be built around either.