Pintmaster

Building the Ultimate (cheap) HDTV PVR – part 1.1

This is just a minor update to Part 1. I ran into some problems and wanted to document them.

First, let me give you my relevant system specs as these may be partially responsible for some of the problems Im having.

Case: Antec Sonata
Motherboard: Asus A7V8X
Processor: AMD Athlon XP 2600+
Video Card: EVGA e-GeForce FX 5500 (256mb Ram)
HDTV Tuner: ATI HDTV Wonder
TV Tuner: Hauppage DVR150 MCE
Sound Card: Turtle Beach Montego DDL
Problems

• HDTV decoding is choppy, both when transcoding and recording
• Changing channels on the HDTV tuner is very slow (approximately 20 seconds before a new picture comes up)
• Turtle Beach Montego DDL crashes the system - freezes the cursor on screen requiring reboot

• Tried to use the drivers for c-media 8768 as recommended elsewhere on the net

Screen bugs (see them here)

Possible Remedies

• Purchased Auzentech HDA X-Plosion to replace the Turtle Beach Montego

• Provides Dolby Digital Live
• Provides DTS Connect
• Much more expensive than the Montego

Purchased Sapphire x1600 PRO 512mb AGP to replace the e-GeForce FX 5500

• Claims to provide Hardware decoding of HDTV signals when combined with ATI HDTV Wonder - so it could solve the issues of choppiness and slow channel changing.

Stay tuned! I should have my final system by the end of this weekend.