Closed Captions - recommended setup

[SHS]

Hauppauge is also writing CC support directly into it's drivers for the 150/500 series to

[Steerpike]

Originally Posted by Steerpike

I've now got a 'test' system hooked up, and it's all working! I have a 'server' running SageTVServer, with the appropriate cc setting in the config file. I then have my laptop, wirelessly connected to the server, running SageTV Client, also with the appropriate 'cc' setting in the config file. CC's are displaying on my laptop!

I'm using 'VMR9' as my video renderer; I had to switch the 'MPEG2 Video Decoder Filter' from SageTV MPEG Video Decoder to InterVideo Video Decoder to get this to work. Is there any difference between the two? If the Sage Decoder is better, I could switch to the InterVideo one only when I need to view CC's.

Once I build my final HTPC, with an NVidia card, I'll also buy the NVidia decoder (which you say supports CC).

OK, so on my laptop (Sage Client), I switched from Sage Decoder to Intervideo Decoder, and CC's started to work. But on the 'main' computer, where the Hauppauge 250 card is, I could not get cc's to work in this manner. BUT - if I switched to 'Intervideo NonCSS for Hauppauge' (or similar), cc's did work! Why would the 'regular' Intervideo work on my laptop, but not on my desktop? Obviously they have different video cards/chips, but they are both using VMR9 under XP; and the video cards are not radically different (both ATI 9000 series).

[evilpenguin]

A little off topic, but I have a shuttle SN25P with a Gigabyte Passive 6600 PCI-E running as my Sage Client and I absolutly love it. It may cost a bit more, but you really get what you pay for as the cooling and cabling is all done for you, and done quite well I might add.

[Steerpike]

Originally Posted by SHS

Hauppauge is also writing CC support directly into it's drivers for the 150/500 series to

This sounds wonderful! Is there any chance they will add CC Support to the MVP? THAT would be fantastic news!

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

A little off topic, but I have a shuttle SN25P with a Gigabyte Passive 6600 PCI-E running as my Sage Client and I absolutly love it. It may cost a bit more, but you really get what you pay for as the cooling and cabling is all done for you, and done quite well I might add.

I'm really struggling to pick a case. I want it to look good, and almost decided on the Ahanix D-Vine 5 (or 601), but I now realise it's too tall to fit my TV cabinet! The Silverstone LC11 is promising, but the black version has an ugly fake-wood section on the front. I'm still considering a Shuttle; it's not ideal (I wanted a 'VCR' style case) but it may still work. I was planning to build a Pentium-M based system (Intel's "laptop" processor - low power, etc), but my very latest plan is to use an AMD Turion processor (AMD's "laptop" processors). There is a whole community of folks building Turion-based desktops, since the Turion is socket-compatible with any 754 pin AMD Motherboard, and works in most (though heatsink mounting is a challenge). Using a laptop processor allows you to run with extremely low airflows and therefore in silence.

Originally Posted by cord

If you want the least video card you can get, have you considered the nvidia geforce 6150 motherboards? They have a built-in video chipset that includes hardware assistance for mpeg2 decoding, so they're beefy enough to play DVDs and HDTV, but far too wimpy for serious gaming. They're microATX boards, but they do tend to have one or two PCI slots along with a PCI express or two. All of them I've seen are fanless motherboards, so you wouldn't have to deal with a northbridge fan or video fan. That just leaves the CPU and the power supply.

This sounds interesting. I'm a strong believer in the least video necessary, as I never play games.

[brolling]

have any of you had a problem where closed captions only record from about half of the channels? On some channels it will only save closed captions on certain commercials. I've got pvr250 cards and I wonder if i have it configured wrong. Do most people get every channel to record closed captions?
Thanks for your help.
Ben

[stevech]

case - why not just use a laptop? Close the lid in normal operation.
USB2 tuner
USB2 disk drives

I have a decent unused laptop - my reservation is that when running SageTV, the CPU fan goes full speed and it's a bit loud.