Planning to PVR - some questions

[rcg]

Hello to All -

Have been researching setting up a PVR system and was really happy
to find GBPVR and this forum. From what I've seen, it's one on of the
friendliest and most helpful tech/user forums I've ever come across.

My plan is to put a tuner card into my existing system (home made
P4 3 GH, 1 Gig Mem) and do recording and DVD burning to start.
When time and funds allow, I'll wire-up a couple of MVPs.

A few questions.

1. Though I won't be watching much TV on my computer, I will of course
have to interface from it. My rig has only Intel's on-board video chip.
(GMA 900 or something - does handle Direct X 9.0). Just want to be sure
this will work. As I said, it's not really for serious TV viewing.

2. Haven't seen much here about the ATI Theater 550 cards. Mostly
Hauppauge hardware. But everything I've been reading seems to
indicate that the 550s give a better quality image. Also, the cards
are smaller, and the one I'm looking at comes with a Firefly RF remote
which would work across the 15 or 20 ft. to my bedroom TV when
it gets MVPd. So, just looking for opinions on that card, both from
a hardware point of view, and compatibility with GBPVR and MVP.
(There's a Diamond card + remote now at New Egg for $70 after rebate!)

3. What's the deal with .NET and where do I get it?

4. Info, tips and recommendations on MPEG decoders also appreciated.

Thanks in advance for your input on this.

[lewis6681]

.Net 1.1 can be downloaded from Microsoft: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/detai...laylang=en

There are several mpeg decoders available but the Nvidia Pure decoder is supposedly a little better than the others.

That's all I can give you info wise.....

[ricklous]

1) looks alright to me. Unless you're going HD, the video card requirements arnt the same as for gaming. Im using integrated graphics on my system which isnt fully DX9 compatible and it works ok. The IG on yours looks like its a better spec than mine so you should be fine.

2) over to someone else, dont have the ati.

4) in addition to Lewis' recommendation, Cyberlink and WinDVD are also quite popular. The best advice with decoders is to 'try them' as their performance is reliant on so many variables its impossible to recommend a specific one. Once you find one that works well on your system, uninstall the other ones to ensure your favorite one is always being used.

[dazzyb2k3]

Your specs look fine, and the on board GFX should be quite capable. Unfortunately I don't know much about the ATI 550 but i've seen there are quite a few other people using them so that's a good sign. As Ricklous siad it'd hard to reccomend specific decoders as they work differently for different people. I'm currently settled on nero for the video and intervideo for audio - nero probably doesn't give me the best quality but I find it very stable and tolerent to 'blips' in recordings.

Just try them all and see what works best for you.