Few hardware/general questions

[jerd]

1. Will SageTV work with my Radeon AIW 7500, or will I have to get a new card? If so, which would you reccomend for a resonable price? (>$100)

2. Does SageTV support divx, xvid, etc..?

3. Is there any way to control games? (emulators for nes, snes, etc..)

4. Are there any programs that would currently work with my Radeon AIW 7500?

I really don't want to spend the money right now for the extra card, so if worst comes to worst, can I just control everything else with SageTV (or a different application), and not use any TV feature? Is there a program that does this without the TV/recording/etc.. that would be better? I suppose I could just switch to regular TV if I want to watch it and not record anything, since I'd prefer to stick with the card I have.

[stanger89]

Originally posted by jerd
1. Will SageTV work with my Radeon AIW 7500, or will I have to get a new card? If so, which would you reccomend for a resonable price? (>$100)

The AIW can be used as a video card, but the capture portion is not supported. Sage only supports cards with hardware encoders, the best card to get now is the Hauppauge PVR 250 (or MCE). There have been a few specials recently, I believe the 250 was $90 at Frys, do a search here, I'm not sure where exactly. There are other options, such as the Rosly which is generally slighly less than the 250, and the ATI E-Home Wonder which runs $50-75.

2. Does SageTV support divx, xvid, etc..?

It can play them back from the "Library" but they are not supported as a recording format.

3. Is there any way to control games? (emulators for nes, snes, etc..)

I believe you can launch mame.

4. Are there any programs that would currently work with my Radeon AIW 7500?

BeyondTV supports non HW encoder cards like your AIW, but regardless of app, you're really at a dissadvantage with a non-HW encode card. IMO they just aren't a good choice for a PVR, they can't match the quality of a HW card, and require a great deal of CPU power to record. HW encoders like the 250 don't use any CPU to record.

I really don't want to spend the money right now for the extra card, so if worst comes to worst, can I just control everything else with SageTV (or a different application), and not use any TV feature? Is there a program that does this without the TV/recording/etc.. that would be better? I suppose I could just switch to regular TV if I want to watch it and not record anything, since I'd prefer to stick with the card I have.

As much as I hate to recommend anything else, but SageTV isn't really a frontend, it's primarily a PVR. For purely a frontend, myHTPC/Meedio, Xlobby, Mainlobby would be better choices.

FWIW, SageTV with a HW encoder card, is the best PVR available, anywhere, IMO. It's well worth the investment.

[invisible_ink]

Out of curiosity, are there plans to make multiple encoders available? Weren't there all kinds of issues with VMR9, for example? I was really impressed with the xviD compression/quality ratios that I saw recently, and couldn't help but pining for that kind of quality and getting much smaller file sizes. You know, for those of us that don't have a spare 250GB HD lying around. And I am fully aware that I have no idea what coding it would take to make this happen... so if I'm asking for the moon, forgive me.

[stanger89]

SageTV does no compression on it's own, it relies purely on the HW encoder on the TV card to do the compression. Currently 99% of HW encode TV cards are MPEG 2 only (or MPEG1) as such Sage only supports that (MPEG2) as a recording format. AFIAK, there are no plans to support software encoding. And I'm not sure how much demand there is for SW encoding, even with BeyondTV, which supports SW encoding, such as XviD, I've heard a number of reports of people being unhappy with the quality and getting PVR 250s. Oh, and FWIW, BTV doesn't support timeshifting of anything but MPEG2, AFAIK.

I realize XviD/DivX/WM9 are very efficient codecs, however to reach the 1/2 or 1/3 MPEG2 file sizes with decent quality it takes a great deal of CPU power, and usually mulitple passes, something that's impossible to do with realtime encoding.. With software encoding you either have to sacrifice quality or small file size to do the realtime encoding necessary for a PVR, and especially to do so with reasonable CPU usage such that you can play something at the same time, or record multiple things simultaneously.

For example, with HW encoders, you can record a near unlimited number of shows simultaneously (record is 8-tuners in 1 PC so far, not sure if he ever used them all at once or not) and use almost no CPU, so there's plenty left for playback. Something similar would be impossible with SW encoding probably.

Oh, and VMR9 is a completely separate issue from encoding, it's a playback issue that will affect whatever codec you use.

[invisible_ink]

That's a very good explanation, I appreciate the clarity.

Could SAGE then "easily" be set up to re-encode all recorded files on a regular basis? For example, if at 4AM and no applications have been started by the user in 2 hours and/or the screen saver is active, replace all newly recorded MPEG2 files from the day that occur in the Saved Recordings directory with xivD re-encoded versions? Tangentially, are Divx/xivD encoded files easier, harder, or require the same CPU/RAM requirements to play or edit?

I'm reading other threads in the mean time, is MLBDude trying to do this currently? I got lost in the links somewhere.

Thanks,
ink.

[kny3twalker]

Weren't there all kinds of issues with VMR9, for example?

also these playback issues are only a problem with a HD compatible TV

not old SDTVs
most video cards do a fine job with VMR9 on older TVs

usually a 5200/5700/9600 are the minimum

[stanger89]

Originally posted by invisible_ink
That's a very good explanation, I appreciate the clarity.

Could SAGE then "easily" be set up to re-encode all recorded files on a regular basis? For example, if at 4AM and no applications have been started by the user in 2 hours and/or the screen saver is active, replace all newly recorded MPEG2 files from the day that occur in the Saved Recordings directory with xivD re-encoded versions?

There are a couple users (including mlbdude) trying to get recompression going, but last I saw, they were having a hard time getting a good command line encoder working.

Tangentially, are Divx/xivD encoded files easier, harder, or require the same CPU/RAM requirements to play or edit?

It depends, given the same resolution/quality advanced codecs (DivX/XviD/WM9) are harder to decode than MPEG2 due to the more complex algorithms used, plus with MPEG2 most video cards over DXVA hardware accelleration, where they do part of the MPEG2 decoding so CPU usage is even lower.

Editing, I'm not sure, the best MPEG2 editors (talking commercial cutting type use) is either Womble MPEG VCR or VideoReDo, both of which can chop commercials without re-encoding the whole file so cuts can be done in a few minutes. With advanced codecs (DivX/XviD) there's virtualdub, but I don't know if it can edit w/o re-encoding, if not it would be a substantially longer process.

I'm reading other threads in the mean time, is MLBDude trying to do this currently? I got lost in the links somewhere.

Thanks,
ink.