Cost Effective Replacement For A PX-M402U

[Selfdestruktor]

Recently upgraded from 1.0.something to the latest version and found that this was no longer supported, so i'm looking for a replacement that is, and hopefully will be into the future.

If you don't know, it's simply a USB2 box with composite inputs with 'hardware' (important) MPEG2 compression.
It has to be USB, unfortunately, because the two PCI slots in the box are taken up with Hauppauge Nova TD 500's (which have been great).

Anyone had experience with something good?

Keep in mind, I want to get out of it as cheap as possible

No real hurry because i've rolled back the software and it still works fine.

[Selfdestruktor]

Bump.
Any suggestions?
Surely something suitable has been released since my last post

[Selfdestruktor]

Wow, the HVR-1950 looks ideal, but I need PAL

[sub]

There is a HVR-1900 that is almost identical to the 1950, but does PAL and DVB-T.

[Selfdestruktor]

Thought i'd better bump this up again.
Unfortunately the system in question still hasn't been upgraded, so it's still running an old version of GBPVR.
Still working beautifully, but I want to start looking at options to upgrade to Windows 7 and therefore the latest version of GBPVR.

Have any other USB based options, compatible with the latest versions of GBPVR, surfaced in the last year or so?
The HVR-1900 is obtainable, but seemingly in short supply. A few dollars cheaper would also be good, but I seem to remember paying some huge amount for the PX-M402U.

[johnsonx42]

I suppose I would suggest trying it with NPVR instead? You'll need to find the hauppauge softpvr bits and register it so that it will create the requesite .ts files; poke around in the NPVR forum and you'll find the needed file(s).

[Selfdestruktor]

I haven't purchased the HVR-1900, so I can't say that it doesn't work, so don't need to try anything else yet.
I'm just wondering if it's the only option out there for PAL analog > usb > GBPVR, as I can't just go throwing ~AU$200 around.

[johnsonx42]

No, I was suggesting trying the PX-M402U with NPVR. I'll admit I don't know anything about the device, but NPVR is new and different so what didn't work with GB-PVR may work with NPVR. I mentioned the Hauppauge softpvr components because ALL analog devices, hauppauge or otherwise, require the softpvr mux to produce .ts files now required with NPVR.

For an less expensive alternative device, NPVR does also now support analog capture devices without hardware encoders. The last revision or two of GB-PVR had support for a couple of soft-encoding devices as well (the USB HVR-900 would appear to be of most interest to you).

Wtih NPVR, primarily Hauppauge devices are supported via the SoftPVR components of WinTV7, but I think other soft-encoding devices can be supported as well.

[sub]

No, I was suggesting trying the PX-M402U with NPVR.

Unfortunately the PX-M402U wont work with NPVR. These are quite different devices, and need special support.

[Selfdestruktor]

Besides, I believe driver support for the device ended with Windows XP anyway.
Pity, it worked extremely well.
I really don't want to go down the path of soft encoding, I haven't had a whole lot of good experiences in the past and am concious that the PC will need to redirect as much power as possible to other tasks.

Despite the additional cost, I think the HVR-1900 will be the best way to go.
I've had pretty good experience with the Hauppauge gear in the past.