Mini-iTX PVR

Mini-iTX PVR

Anyone using a Hauppauge WinTV-PVR 250 in an EPIA-based system?  I attempted to add the hardware to my Win98SE-based system last night and could not get it to display channels or input from the s-video.  I tried adding the updated drivers and apps from the Hauppauge website but could not get any performance.  Is there a problem with this device and the onboard video?

Any help would be appreciated.

[JamesL]

I found the ATI TV Wonder to work as TV and Record (320x240) on an EPIA M9000 (70-80%CPU).
It wont do TV on demand ( pause live TV, etc.. ), but I think that's because you can't tell it to use
a suitably low resolution for that, anyway it stutters badly for TV on demand. I found the MMC 7.6
beta release for TV Wonder to work the best.

You might get better results with XP? But that's just a guess.

[vincentfox]

The All-in-Wonder also uses more CPU than I thought to do recording. Even simply watching TV it sits at around 30-40% CPU usage. This is with a non-EPIA box though, Celeron 1.0A oc'd to 1.33. Works really well though, not a stutter with this CPU.  With the EPIA you probably need to look at the Sigma card or something with more real hardware acceleration on-card since the EPIA itself is so marginal.

<< ... With the EPIA you probably need to look at the Sigma card or something with more real hardware acceleration on-card ... >>



The Hauppauge WinTV-PCI 250 does have a(n excellent) hardware decoder on-board.  This would seem to be well-suited to the EPIA.  So has anyone gotten this combination to work?

<< ... The Hauppauge WinTV-PCI 250 does have a(n excellent) hardware decoder on-board... >>



D'oh!  That should say "ENcoder"!

[JLang]

XP is pretty resource hungry, Win2k is probably the best bet.  

[walibe]

<< XP is pretty resource hungry, Win2k is probably the best bet. >>



Those two are one in the same.

[ansalmo]

XP? 2K?  Surely you want to find the least resource-hungry OS for a task like this?  There are a large number of Linux-based PVR tools available and in development, which ought to run like a dream on the EPIA boards.

As one example, check out VDR.  This is for the DVB (digital satellite + terrestrial) cards, e.g. the Hauppauge Nova-T, Nova-S.  The developer of the software runs his PVR machine with a K6/2-450, 128MB RAM, UDMA-33 drive!

Also, take a look at  Freevo - nice!

Lots more useful info at LinuxTV

[Connor]

I wouldn't think there would be much difference between
XP and 2000, although XP can come with better software
for handling PVR functions, and with some work you could
make XP as lean as 2000, personally I use 2000 because
my Input card Vodoo3 3500 has no fully working drivers
for XP, although some work has been done to create these.