Limited support for cards that don't have hardware encoding?

[AJ Bertelson]

This happened today when I visited some of forums that I browse saying that 2.0 was out.

First questions were does this work with winfast deluxe or AIW?


I think this was mentioned sometime before about releasing a limited version that doesn't have any time shifting it just records.

[Brett]

Technically Sage can work with those cards, but it is disabled and can NOT be enabled. Personally both of those cards are worthless when compared with hardware encoders. They also would put severe limitations on multituner setups.

-Brett

[falchulk]

Not really. The ati mmc itself supports multiple tuners as of the aiw9000. Jeff has stated more then once that he might reevaluate it in the future.

[Lester Jacobs]

Originally posted by Brett
...Personally both of those cards are worthless when compared with hardware encoders.
-Brett

Not really. I've discussed adding this functionality at length on this forum before. I won't go into all of the points I've made in the past but I will throw out one use of such functionality.

- a non-hardware encoding card coudl be used to view TV or channel surf if all of the encoding cards in the system are busy recording.

[B]They also would put severe limitations on multituner setups.

I don't see how. You of course would not put more than one non-hardware encoder card in your system, however nothing stops you from having multiple hardware encoder cards in addition to one non-hardware encoder card. How would this limit Sage's operation?

Cheers
Lester

[falchulk]

You can have more then 1 tuner with software encoding. The feature has been available for quite sometime in ATI's own mmc.

[SHS]

Not unless you have one Hardware encoder falchulk
You can't record two channel at same time under Soft MPEG2 encoding that is impossable unless your using Dual CPU where each CPU is doing the Encoding from each TV card and not even with P4 HT stuff will not cut it becuase is not same as REAL Dual CPU.
You can only record one channel and Perview another channel far I know of and still need a fast CPU.
It not same as REAL Hardware MPEG2 Multi-Tuner setup.

[falchulk]

SHS, I have done it. Just to prove it, here are the specs from the 9600 aiw. You are not the first to tell me its not possible.

TV-ON-DEMAND™ records programs, pauses live TV and resumes broadcasts on your schedule directly to your PC’s hard drive.
New! Use FM-ON-DEMAND™ to record radio programs and play them back at the click of a button.
Gemstar GUIDE Plus+™ provides interactive programming guides to select, schedule and record favourite shows
THRUVIEW™ creates live, translucent TV, video and DVD windows for easy desktop access
Radio frequency wireless remote adds the flexibility of a hand held, 30 foot user interface
New EAZYLOOK™ provide easy to read on-screen information for TV and DVDs


MulTView™ enables dual TV tuner capabilities including Picture-in-Picture and independent channel surfing*
*Additional ATI TV WONDER™ is required for this to work

[falchulk]

I just thought of what you mean....I apologize. I did noty mean 2 recording at the same time.

[SHS]

DOA but that ok you didn't need to apologize at lease you are lean a thing or two along the way.
I guest if Jeff want to he could add 4 Picture-in-Picture with 4 PVR card but the downside is we must be runing VMR9 and I'm sure he can add FM Recorder.

[AJ Bertelson]

So does anyone have any comments on support for non-encoding cards?

[Lester Jacobs]

I've thought of a couple of other uses for non-encodign card support within SageTV over the weekend.

I'm planning installing a couple of video cameras in my new house for various reasons. It would be useful to able to hook a feed from these cameras up to a non-encoding card and be able to view these cameras from within SageTV (check on kids playing in the backyard, who's at the front door, etc)

My SageTV display device is a large screen computer monitor (31") which does not include a builtin TV tuner. As it stands right now, I would have to put Sage to sleep and fire up a another TV tuner app in order to play games using my monitor from something lika an Xbox for instance. It's impossible to use an Xbox through an encoding card because of the time delay. It would be nice to not have to switch apps and so including support for non-encoding cards woudl definitely help in this situation.

I'd like clarify that my take on the non-encoding cards is that Sage should not support software encoding on them but use them strictly as a "Live-only" TV source. This would eliminate the current concerns over software encoding reliability and stability.

Cheers
Lester