New user.. Love it! Some questions though!

[Yablargo]

Hey all, I recently purchased (and upgrade my ancient Hauppage SW Card) an ATI TV Wonder Elite (550 chip) and was utterly disgusted with the onboard software as well as MMC. being forced to watch the program I was recording while doing other tasks kinda sucks, esp with the audio playing etc.

So, I installed GB-PVR this morning and it worked damn near perfectly right away I am currently running a SATA II Raid array in raid 0, with a pair of 7200 RPM drives(adding more I think with all the recording im going to do with a Athlon X2 4800+ and have got to say that unless something is wrong with what Im reading, the cpu usage while encoding is phenomenal. It goes between 0-2% at most and the harddrive usage can hardly be noticed (which is impressive considering I recorded a 3 gig file already and was using my machine the entire time). My main question is that, is there any support for the hardware encoder on the 550 chip? As well as using the onboard memory/etc? Is it already being used?
The cpu usage seems awful low, yet the setup tells me I am using software mode(as hauppage and ..Xchip or something were the only options?). And it seems to use a static 29mb of ram or so.


Finally, is there a good guide replacement that allows for more categorized searching? The ATI came with Guide+ which had a rather overall crappy interface but the one thing I really liked was the search, movie search, category search,etc. Mostly the movie search.

See, I sit in the night shift in a big ass building all by myself doing night phone support, and have a LOT of time on my hands, so I watch a good bit of movies. I just got done watching the stuff I scheduled from today while I was out having fun (hooray for pvr!) and I gotta say I love it. Its nice to be able to not miss out on good programming again. Infact Ill say its put hours back in my day because certain programs (King of queens every night,Lost,battlestar,Iron chef(woo ) ,etc) that id definately put time away to watch, I can check out while im at work and kill two birds with one stone.

Also, the image quality is freakin wonderful. I never thought it could look so good on the PC /happydance. I wish I got this a LONG time ago. And to think I almost kept the ATI HDTV wonder... Read some reviews online and promptly rushed back to the store and returned it for this.

[bluesxman]

My main question is that, is there any support for the hardware encoder on the 550 chip? As well as using the onboard memory/etc? Is it already being used?

I believe it is supported - how did you set it up? If the hardware isn't supported you'd have needed to setup the software Recorder plugin, which it doesn't sound like you've done!

The cpu usage seems awful low, yet the setup tells me I am using software mode(as hauppage and ..Xchip or something were the only options?)

Sounds like you mean decoding (as in playback)? I'm not familiar with your card but I suspect software decoding is your only option here.

Finally, is there a good guide replacement that allows for more categorized searching?

Check out the Xrecord plugin, it has enhanced searching options. I'm not sure what its current status is regarding compatibility with the new GBPVR release though...

[Yablargo]

I believe it is supported - how did you set it up? If the hardware isn't supported you'd have needed to setup the software Recorder plugin, which it doesn't sound like you've done!

Ill have to look when I get off work. Its the top-most setting that lists software, hauppage, and some other.

The bottom I use DScaler for decoding, and standard drivers for encoding and
the last option which I forget what it was. It may be that because I have about 4 different PVR softwares installed, the driver is using my hardware.

I Think I may have it set to either Cyberlink WinDVR, or the ATI software's driver that came up in the list(I had like 4 or 5, one of which was standard windows something or other)

Sounds like you mean decoding (as in playback)? I'm not familiar with your card but I suspect software decoding is your only option here.

Check out the Xrecord plugin, it has enhanced searching options. I'm not sure what its current status is regarding compatibility with the new GBPVR release though...

Decoding Im using DScaler 5. Im finding it incredibly hard to believe based on cpu utilization and all that its anything but hardware. I guess its using one of the drivers from one of the other PVR programs.

[gEd]

Its the top-most setting that lists software, hauppage, and some other.

Don't worry about this option as this is for some specific mpeg hardware DEecoding devices. Most people do software decoding with perhaps a tiny bit of help from hardware features in their graphics cards.

If you have selected your tv tuner when setting up your capture source, you are using the hardware encoderer and yes, cpu usage can be very low.

The playback tab allows you to select (and sometimes configure) the mpeg decoders that are available you. i.e. it lists the ones you have got installed.
Which ones you select can make a difference to playback quality and performance and is a subject much discussed here.

good luck

[Yablargo]

Don't worry about this option as this is for some specific mpeg hardware DEecoding devices. Most people do software decoding with perhaps a tiny bit of help from hardware features in their graphics cards.

If you have selected your tv tuner when setting up your capture source, you are using the hardware encoderer and yes, cpu usage can be very low.

The playback tab allows you to select (and sometimes configure) the mpeg decoders that are available you. i.e. it lists the ones you have got installed.
Which ones you select can make a difference to playback quality and performance and is a subject much discussed here.

good luck

Ah, thanks for clearing that up. I did most of the setup after work and pretty fargin tired. Works like a charm regardless though