ok im not ver knowlegable on this subject so please bare with me. i have a freeview set top box, and want to be able to record off it and watch it on my computer. i want to be able to record off it onto my comp, and if possible pause and rewind live tv. i was thinking of the pvr 350 but am uncertain of its capabilites. thanks alot.
Wire up your Freeview box to you PC and use something like Power VCR to record/pause etc. If you have a graphics card with video in (svid) your half way there. Get a scart to svid convertor cable with phone for left and right, get a phono to 3.5mm stereo jack lead. Connect to your graphics card and sound card and thats about it. If you have an nvidia card you will need the WDM drivers. You will still have to control the channels from the set top box, but you will be able to watch, record etc on your PC.
Buy yourself a freeview tv card it will be cheaper than a pvr 350. My advice is to avoid the Avermedia dvb-t range as support is shite and drivers are just as bad. Look at getting a nebula dvb-t (www.nebula-electronics.com) which is expensive but has the best software out of the box, which still needs a bit of work, also the tuner is not the best as it is sensitivitive to picture break up randomly (well mine is). Or you could try the nova-t or twin vision dvb-t cards which have shitty software but have BDA drivers so you could use Windows Media Centre Edition 2004/5 if you wanted. Also it will be more than likely www.gbpvr.com will soon be supporting the nova-t. Showshifter DVB beta also supports cards with BDA drivers. Watch out as there are two versions of the nova-t pci card, one is the older one which is more widely supported and the new one which I don't know too much about. Visit http://www.hauppauge.co.uk/board/index.php to find out more. You will be able to pause and rewind etc with these cards depending on the software you use. If you do want to go with the pvr350 and a freeview box, I would suggest the pvr150 instead as its under £60 but doesn't have the tv out on it or hardware decoding which only works on the tv output on the pvr350. I would suggest using gb-pvr as your software as it's free and fairly good. You will be able to pause, rewind and schedule recordings as you wanted. There is one problem which is if you want to record a freeview channel from the freeview box is that you willl have to manual set the channel on the stb box. You can over come this with a ir blaster (i.e usb-irt) which will allow the pc to change the channel on the freeview box. Actually the pvr150 comes with an ir blaster built in but other than MCE 2004/5 and the default wintv software people haven't been able to get it to work.
Hello, Would it be easiest if you get a normal TV card and connect the box to it if you already have it? If not i expect buying a Freeview PCI card is going to be the best bet. If your going to want to pause live TV make sure you get a good TV card Michael
I currently record "freeview" via a normal RF feed taken from the back of my VCR.. that takes a feed from my Freeview box. Quality is "not bad" .. Feeds into a WinTV (analogue) card. Have tried a couple of PCI "freeview" cards, but took them back for refund... the software was not really up to the job and the picture breakup was cr*p. Anyone recommend a really good Freeview PCI card... ???
thanks alot herbs, i think i will buy the pvr 150 as it will be cheaper than one of the freeview cards and i already have the freeview box.
I'm building a shuttle HTPC and I'm adding a freeview card to it (when I can buy components ) Doing it because i was just so sick of all the controllers I needed (TV, digibox, AV, DVD, Hifi) that I'm combining all into 1 box. The cheaper card + box combo is certainly cheaper but it's gonna be fiddly to use unless you have a multicontroller gismo.
