Hauppauge WinTV PVR-350 vs AIW 7500

[Howard Roark]

Just curious if anyone here has done a hands on comparison of the
Hauppauge WinTV PVR-350 and the AIW 7500? Specifically with regards to
the quality and compatibility of real-time MPEG-2 captures, and possibly
compatibility with 3rd party apps, like snapstream. The machine would be
a PIII-1 GHz, 512MB, dedicated to PVR tasks and nothing else. I'm not
interested in AVI captures, just real time MPEG-2. I would like to be
able to trim the MPEG files however. I already have access to the AIW
7500, but I'm wondering if the newer PVR-350 would be a better card.
Anyone tried both?

 

[Dale Green]

I've got the PVR-250... the drivers are hyper-sensitive to failure. I
really can't recommend this line of cards to others. I've never used an AIW
card but it's hard to imagine that it's worse than the Hauppauge cards.

It's a shame because up until now I've liked Hauppauge stuff.

D.

 

[Jon T]

I've got the PVR-250... the drivers are hyper-sensitive to failure. I
really can't recommend this line of cards to others. I've never used an AIW
card but it's hard to imagine that it's worse than the Hauppauge cards.

It's a shame because up until now I've liked Hauppauge stuff.

D.

Can you tell me what format the pvr-250 records in? Could I transfer
it over a network and then edit in Womble or some other mpeg editor?

Thanks

jtt

 

[J.Clarke]

MPEG-1 or MPEG-2.

IIRC only MPEG-2 is hardware accelerated (I could be wrong on that)...
anyway you're not going to be able to capture to WMV or other with the
bundled software.

FWIW, with the PVR-250 all output is hardware accelerated--there's no
raw access provided by the chip, the only output it has is hardware
compressed.

The chip it uses is the Conexant CX23416--you can find more information
about it at <http://www.conexant.com/products/entry.jsp?id=836>

 

[Dale Green]

Can you tell me what format the pvr-250 records in? Could I transfer
it over a network and then edit in Womble or some other mpeg editor?

Thanks

jtt

MPEG-1 or MPEG-2.

IIRC only MPEG-2 is hardware accelerated (I could be wrong on that)...
anyway you're not going to be able to capture to WMV or other with the
bundled software.

D.