Hauppage WinTV-PVR-500 MCE - Hardware Encoding/Playback Configuration

[q7d1I]

I have a Hauppage WinTV-PVR-500 MCE running on Windows XP Home, AMD Athlon +3200, 2GB RAM, RADEON 7500 series video card with Matrox G450 PCI

It's an older PC but does it's job fine. It's my understanding that the WinTV-PVR-500 has hardware encoding, which I had hoped would help relieve the main CPU of a lot of processing.

I am running GB-PVR on a Radeon 7500 series monitor (not matrox G450-PCI)

I am really only interested in playing live TV (although pause/rewind would be nice)

In GB-PVR configuration - Playback, I have 3 choices for Hardware decoder device :
1. None - use software decoder
2. Hauppage PVR350
3. Sigma Designs XCard

Everything seems to work if I select 'None - use software decoder', but my CPU is at +80% with nothing else running which is not what I want on this PC (other applications need to run).

If I select 'Hauppage PVR350' the Settings Button remains disabled and GB-PVR tells me that "No available PVR350 was detected in the system" when it starts.

If I select 'Sigma Designs XCard' the settings button is enabled and I get to choose 'Output Mode' and 'TV Standard'
Regardless of the output mode or TV standard, I get a message saying that 'Video is playing back using TV Out' and Errors 'External component has thrown an exception' or 'Object reference not set to an instance of an object'. Probably because I do not have a Sigma Designs XCard ??


So my question : does the WinTV-PVR-500 MCE really have hardware encoding and if yes can I enable it in GB-PVR so it doesn't use 80% of my CPU ???

Alternative question (possibly not GB-PVR related) : what's the best way to get this card to display live TV using the least CPU ?

Thanks
Jason

[Loomy]

You don't need those options you were playing with. You're mixing up encoding with decoding

What is probably happening is that the card is already encoding the video to mpeg2 (automatically and transparently), and then sending it to the computer, and then the computer is decoding it to display it on the screen. That last part is probably the cause of your 80% cpu. That said, a 3200+ is pretty fast, and if it is running at 80% to decode mpeg2, I'm guessing something is gone wrong. My e6300 uses 10% cpu to decode mpeg2 with mplayer or ffdshow.

Some software decoders might use less CPU time than others, so there might be room to tweak there.

[stustunz]

the cpu is up high as you are playing back using software decoding to make this lower you need a to set you mepg decoder(underplayback tab) to use hardware acceleration

nvidia pure video works really well with the nvidia cards (not free)

[martint123]

Where's you CPU at when just playing an MPEG file? Likewise when just recording a file.
Trying to see if the CPU is getting pushed on the record or playback side of things.

[prouton]

While the CPU is certainly fast, I would replace the Radeon 7500 card with something like a Radeon 9550 if you're limited to an AGP slot (versus PCIe x16). The latter card offers far more decode assist -- which will mean smoother video playback. You will probably also need to install a decoder (DScaler is free and works well) and specifically set it in the GBPVR configuration app.