HVR-2200 recording quality

[OrakelJos]

Is there any reason why a brand new Hauppauge HVR-2200 (PAL version of the HVR-2250) is only recording at 3500 Kbits/sec when I have set the medium quality (default) settings at 6000 Kb/sec and peak at 9000 Kb/sec?
This card is a replacement for a PVR500 which worked o.k. but I had a sometimes the famous timeline problem in spite of the registry patch and was not so happy with the analog picture quality. It was however recording at the correct bitrates.
Is it still true that the HVR-2200 cannot record at more then 6000 Kb/sec?

[OrakelJos]

Nobody? Card is the european (pal) equivalent of the HVR-2250.

[MCEabused]

Hauppauge were limiting the max bit rate of this card in the drivers to much lower levels.
I imagine to avoid thermal meltdown of the encoder chip as they do not have a heat sink on it.
The current driver's direct show maximums seam to be set at 6 and 6.8 Mb/s, but the actuals are what you are getting.
I had run across this earlier for the HVR-2200 and Gbpvr for bit rates, see post below.
It may well have changed now with later Hauppauge drivers, As I have not fiddled with it for a long time.

The Short answer is Quality profiles dont work for the hvr2200, if you go over the Hauppauge Driver's Max Bit rates.

http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php?t=37584

[OrakelJos]

Thanks for your explanation. In your related posting you now say that the quality settings are working in GBPVR after the change in direct.ini which is now standard. What is your current maximum? I only could get 3500.

[MCEabused]

I get 6046 kbps now for video maximum, and the audio rate is fixed at 48000Hz 384kb/s Stereo regardless of any quality settings.
The Actual recorded Bit rates I got from Gspot v2.7

The 2200 driver 7.6.1.27118 from 28/04/2009 is not the latest, but after the driver grief from the 1st releases and when they were adding the 2250 to the driver pack, I'm a little more cautious updating from a working driver set these day

[OrakelJos]

Are you setting this bitrate exactly in GBPVR or just a higher bitrate to force the 2200 to give you the maximum possible?
BTW: did you have another card before you purchased the 2200? If so is the picture quality now better? My 2200's are an upgrade from two PVR500MCE cards in the hope to get a better picture quality and to solve timeline problems. I have never been able to solve this timelineproblem in spite of registry hacks, other drivers etc.

[MCEabused]

As stated previously, the Hauppauge driver limits the maximum video bit rate irrespective of the choosen bit rate either in Gbpvr or in graphstudio/ graphedit. It is a hard limit in the drivers, if you wish to experiment you would need to get an OEM chipset driver for the chip from the chip's actual manufacturer.

I had an ATi 550pro and I perfered it's analog mpeg 2 encoder output as it had better noise filtering and a more vivid and detailed video stream at a given bitrate. Alas it it is now basically fried, after a bad ati driver upped the default bit rate to 15 Mp/s and cooked it's chip before I noticed.

[OrakelJos]

Sorry if I was unclear. I understand that the Hauppauge driver is limiting the maximum bitrate. Just wanted to know what settings you are using in GBPVR because I am only getting 3500 in spite of the fact that I set GBPVR to 6000 and you are getting 6046 according to one of your previous postings which is o.k. for me. So something is obviously wrong in my configuration

[MCEabused]

No worries
I did nothing special in Gbpvr. All I did was edit the "custom 2" profile in the Haupauge HVR 2200's analog "Quality Profile settings", and choose "custom 2" when recording.
For the test, I set bit rate to 9000kb/s. Both CBR and VBR (peak 12Mb/s) worked, but the driver limits both to 6Mb/s. The Audio is fixed for me at 384kb/s 48khz setting ignored.
Both come up in Gspot as 720-576 6Mb/s VBR video 384kb/s audio.
Note that a quiet source video segment in VBR will result in a lower mpeg bitrate, as the bit rate is now the target recording average.
If you can't get around 6Mb/s with a decent off air video source, I would change your driver by trying the latest or rolling back to previous versions.
If you still can't get it going, try the hauppage wintv app and post on the http://www.hauppauge.co.uk site, with a card return as an option too.

Best of luck, but my years of experience of various TVcard drivers have brought me many bugs,glitches, annoyances and BSODs to be worked through. The hvr2200 so far is one of the better ones.

[OrakelJos]

Thanks. I already had my share of problems. After installing newer drivers both 2200's gave an error 10 in device manager. Reverting to the older drivers did not help anymore so I returned them as a DOA and got my money refunded.
Later I discovered on the German Hauppauge site that it was a driver error which caused the driver and/or card not to start
A new WHQL approved driver is now available and should enable higher peak bitrates: average 6Mb, peak 9,5Mb.
Based on your information I will reorder them again. I will let you know the outcome but that could take some time because delivery times here in Holland are problematic.
Thanks again for all your help and information.