What capture card do you recommend?

[spitfire9137]

Looking to build my own PVR what capture card do you guys recommend?

[jonb1974]

Well, it all depends on a few things. What country you're in? what you want to record? etc. I'm in the UK so record digital TV (freeview) and as such have hauppauge digital tuners. I think a lot of people that record analogue use a PVR-150.

[djtaylor]

My vote, if you're in the UK is to go for a Hauppauge Nova-t PCI. They just work and that's all there is to it in my opinion.

I have 3 of those in my box plus one Freecom USB DVB stick

The only bit you've got wrong in your question is you asked which capture CARD, you'll be needing an 'S' on the end

Hauppauge do a dual Nova-T on one card now but you don't save anything financially as it's about twice the cost as two singles except that it does save a slot for future expansion.

David.

[rscheller]

I'm in the US and I've only had experience with the Hauppauge PVR-150MCE. Except for the rarely occuring timestamp issue on recordings (a Hauppauge driver problem), it's worked perfectly and the video quaility is excellent.

Like djtaylor said though... If I had it to do again, I'd get the Hauppauge PVR-500 dual tuner card. There's times when I'd like to record different simultaneous TV shows.

[spitfire9137]

Im in the US. I guess I need a rundown of everything I will need in the computer to make a PVR, besides ram, processor, motherboard, hard drive, dvd-rw. Why do I need 2 capture cards? I was looking at the PVR-150 will it be fine, I just want to record shows that im not around to watch, then view them later. I noticed while looking at the PVR-150 they have a NTSC and PAL version how do I figure out what version I need?

[gEd]

If you are in the US you need NTSC (Never twice the Same Color :-) - PAL is for Europe.

With 2 tuners you can record 2 shows at the same time which is a definate plus. Very occasionally I hanker after a 3rd tuner. The PVR-500 gives u 2 tuners on one card.

[spitfire9137]

Ill get a pvr-500 to save space, im trying to build as small of a system as I can. Do I need a high end graphics card to get the video out to the tv? What about sound card, will onboard sound be ok to get it to the tv, or do I need some better?

[gEd]

sound: depends on the onboard sound chip. Most sound chips are "fine" nowerdays. You can always get something like an M-Audio card at a later date if you want better sound and have a good stereo system.

Graphics: If it is a regular CRT TV, no you don;t need an especially powerful card. I use an old ATI 9600 pro and the picture is fine for me. Many people go for either an ATI 9550 or one of the Nvidea 6200 (or above) cards.

I always urge people to think about noise levels - do you mind if the pc make a noise or do you want a silent pc. The later takes planning and possibly $$. for example I would encourage you to get a passively cooled graphics card (i.e. big heatsink and no fan).

You don;t need an especially powerfull cpu either and 512MB ram is enough for a gbpvr only system.

good luck and welcome!

[jonb1974]

Graphics: If it is a regular CRT TV, no you don;t need an especially powerful card. I use an old ATI 9600 pro and the picture is fine for me. Many people go for either an ATI 9550 or one of the Nvidea 6200 (or above) cards.

I use a ATI 9550 (my version has no fan), before that an ATI 7000 PCI. I only upgraded because I wanted to go AGP so I could fit another PCI tuner card in. You don't need a high end videos card. I bought mine for £18, so very inexpensive. Both cards have crystal clear output to my CRT TV.