Best DVB-T card with hardware MPEG encoding for use in United Kingdom?

[simonm]

Hi,

I just discovered GBPVR this weekend and my first impression is that it looks awesome - Breathing life into my otherwise unused Media-MVP.

I want to buy a DVB-T card (or, ideally, an external USB2 device) to receive digital terrestrial broadcasts. I'm currently a little confused because I've read that GBPVR requires the card to have hardware MPEG encoding, but also that the Hauppauge Win TV Nova-T USB2 is suitable (which, as far as I know, doesn't have hardware MPEG encoding). Is it the BDA driver that makes that possible?

Is it worth considering a card without hardware MPEG encoding? How CPU intensive is software encoding? I'm ultimately aiming to have two capture devices and would like the PC to be usable for other tasks at the same time.

Which device would you recommend? I'm looking to spend less than £100.

Cheers,
Simon.

[herbs]

DVB-T cards do not have hardware encoding as the broadcast is in mpeg2 format already, and your correct in the assumption that BDA drivers are how the dvb-t side of gbpvr is handled. Hardware encoders are generally for analog tv cards such as the pvr x50 series from hauppauge.

[simonm]

Thanks Herbs. I was thrown by the fact that the Nebula DVB-T card has a hardware encoder, but that must be due to the inclusion of an analog input.

I'm going to try the Hauppauge WinTV Nova-T USB2 and see how I get on.

Thanks again.

[herbs]

The Nebula does not have a hardware encoder, I have a nebula and the analog part is BT878 which is a software encoder.

[simonm]

Thanks for clarifying that, Herbs.

I've noticed that the Nova-T USB2 is Windows XP only (or at least the Hauppauge site states that - I have W2K), so I'm looking around for an alternative. As far as I can see, the BDA drivers haven't emerged for the Nebula yet, so that isn't an option.

Cheers,
Simon.

[herbs]

I think you can use the nova usb2 with 2k if I remember correctly there is post from Chris day either at tv-cards.com or hauppauge uk forum about it. Have wonder around the forums at the 2 sites see if you can find the post.