HTPC - TV Tuner Reviews
by Jarred Walton on December 7, 2005 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
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More MyHD MDP-130
Once the card is properly configured, you can get around to actually using it. The setup is a bit tedious - both in waiting for the channel scan to complete as well as in properly configuring analog capture settings - but the card works well once configured.
The quality of the HD reception is great, and in the HD/bypass mode, it is impossible to tell the difference between the output of the Comcast box and the output of the MyHD card. Those with decent OTA DTV reception will find more to like with the MyHD. TitanTV works properly with no need to configure your channels manually, and you can even use antenna 1 for OTA HD and antenna 2 for analog/digital cable, with the card switching between the two inputs as necessary.
Speaking of TitanTV, MyHD includes a utility called "TitanTVHelperApp.exe" to allow you to schedule recordings within TitanTV. While it would be nice not to have to go through the training process, it's better than nothing. The way you "train" MyHD and TitanTV to work together is another somewhat complex interface. You have to select the "record" link within TitanTV, which brings up the top dialog shown above. You also need to know the virtual channel maps to the desired program. In the example image, NBC HD shows up as channel 105-1 in TitanTV, but the real channel is 83-1. Once you select the new channel and press OK, you're greeted with the MyHD update confirmation dialog (the lower image). If you choose "Yes," MyHD will remember your change for the future. Once this is done for each digital channel you want to watch, you can then forget about remembering sub-channels.
There are still some items to address, though. While watching digital channels works very well, the analog reception is clearly worse than the other two cards. Besides the performance issues, image quality at best is perhaps a tie or slightly better than the Fusion5, and clearly inferior to the Theater 550. Timeshifting (pause/play of live TV) works fine, but only for digital channels. Given the issues with recording analog channels, that's not too surprising, and the FusionHDTV software has the same problem. Still, people used to TiVo or the Windows MCE interface will find this to be a less-than-perfect solution, and unlike the other cards in this article, Windows MCE is not supported with the MyHD.
Something else that we felt was lacking was the overlay/preview window. This apparently shows 720x480 content, scaled to however large you make the window. We wish that an option for the full content was available, but even if the preview window only shows a 480p version of the content, the ability to simply maximize the overlay window would be a good addition. (Completely eliminating the overscan of the Toshiba HDTV is pretty cool and can be done with the FusionHDTV software, for example.) This is really a minor complaint, though.
Another slightly confusing interface issue comes up with the video output and aspect ratios. As mentioned before, the HDTV is a 1080i device. We have the computer set to output a 720p (actually 1152x648) signal, so that text remains legible in Windows. Switching to HD mode bypasses the PC output and goes straight from the MyHD card, so a separate output setting takes precedence (and unfortunately, we get overscan from the TV). There are quite a few resolutions available, but the most useful are 1920x1080i, 1280x720p, and Native. Since most HD broadcasts are in either 720p or 1080i, selecting "Native" seems like it should provide the optimal result. However, this actually causes all of the analog channels to end up stretched or zoomed, and sometimes the digital channels get skewed as well.
Selecting a specific widescreen resolution solves these problems, but this isn't immediately clear and you might also wonder how to proceed. The FusionHDTV software has an option for aspect ratio called "Original", and it works properly for all HD and analog channels. The "Native" AR in MyHD tries to accomplish that, but it doesn't work out as well (and you would end up with your TV often changing resolutions every time that you change the channel). The UI on the MyHD card has options for video resolution, screen ratio, and screen format on the AV page. We feel the best result comes from choosing a standard resolution for your display (1920x1080i or 1280x720p most likely), and then check the "Auto" box in the aspect ratio. It may not get every AR correct, but that's probably due to the lack of tight standards in the US market more than anything. You can also set up the overlay size on the VGA dialog tab, and we selected "Fixed Aspect Ratio" and "16:9 Display".
The MyHD card ends up being the reverse of the Fusion5. It has issues with analog video, but the digital quality is better (and uses fewer system resources) and there are few major bugs/problems. The card lists the minimum system requirements as a Pentium II 400 MHz, and while that might work for DTV content where the hardware decoding is a factor, watching and recording the analog channels requires an excessive amount of CPU power. Of course, most people are going to be interested in the HD aspects of this card, and the analog is only a fringe benefit.
With a fast system and once configured properly, the MyHD worked very well and didn't give us any cause for complaint. The cost is substantially higher, but right now, it would definitely be our pick out of these two HD-capable cards. It's better to spend an extra $100 for a device that works well more often than not than to save the money and end up fighting with a problematic interface. Considering the cost of equipment used in many entertainment centers, $270 for the MyHD + DVI really isn't that much - you can even throw in a dual core processor for $330 and you're still only up to the price of a good set of speakers, and nowhere near what some people pay for high-end speakers. If you enjoy checking out the latest home theater equipment, the MyHD card isn't likely to disappoint.
Once the card is properly configured, you can get around to actually using it. The setup is a bit tedious - both in waiting for the channel scan to complete as well as in properly configuring analog capture settings - but the card works well once configured.
The quality of the HD reception is great, and in the HD/bypass mode, it is impossible to tell the difference between the output of the Comcast box and the output of the MyHD card. Those with decent OTA DTV reception will find more to like with the MyHD. TitanTV works properly with no need to configure your channels manually, and you can even use antenna 1 for OTA HD and antenna 2 for analog/digital cable, with the card switching between the two inputs as necessary.
Speaking of TitanTV, MyHD includes a utility called "TitanTVHelperApp.exe" to allow you to schedule recordings within TitanTV. While it would be nice not to have to go through the training process, it's better than nothing. The way you "train" MyHD and TitanTV to work together is another somewhat complex interface. You have to select the "record" link within TitanTV, which brings up the top dialog shown above. You also need to know the virtual channel maps to the desired program. In the example image, NBC HD shows up as channel 105-1 in TitanTV, but the real channel is 83-1. Once you select the new channel and press OK, you're greeted with the MyHD update confirmation dialog (the lower image). If you choose "Yes," MyHD will remember your change for the future. Once this is done for each digital channel you want to watch, you can then forget about remembering sub-channels.
There are still some items to address, though. While watching digital channels works very well, the analog reception is clearly worse than the other two cards. Besides the performance issues, image quality at best is perhaps a tie or slightly better than the Fusion5, and clearly inferior to the Theater 550. Timeshifting (pause/play of live TV) works fine, but only for digital channels. Given the issues with recording analog channels, that's not too surprising, and the FusionHDTV software has the same problem. Still, people used to TiVo or the Windows MCE interface will find this to be a less-than-perfect solution, and unlike the other cards in this article, Windows MCE is not supported with the MyHD.
Something else that we felt was lacking was the overlay/preview window. This apparently shows 720x480 content, scaled to however large you make the window. We wish that an option for the full content was available, but even if the preview window only shows a 480p version of the content, the ability to simply maximize the overlay window would be a good addition. (Completely eliminating the overscan of the Toshiba HDTV is pretty cool and can be done with the FusionHDTV software, for example.) This is really a minor complaint, though.
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Another slightly confusing interface issue comes up with the video output and aspect ratios. As mentioned before, the HDTV is a 1080i device. We have the computer set to output a 720p (actually 1152x648) signal, so that text remains legible in Windows. Switching to HD mode bypasses the PC output and goes straight from the MyHD card, so a separate output setting takes precedence (and unfortunately, we get overscan from the TV). There are quite a few resolutions available, but the most useful are 1920x1080i, 1280x720p, and Native. Since most HD broadcasts are in either 720p or 1080i, selecting "Native" seems like it should provide the optimal result. However, this actually causes all of the analog channels to end up stretched or zoomed, and sometimes the digital channels get skewed as well.
Selecting a specific widescreen resolution solves these problems, but this isn't immediately clear and you might also wonder how to proceed. The FusionHDTV software has an option for aspect ratio called "Original", and it works properly for all HD and analog channels. The "Native" AR in MyHD tries to accomplish that, but it doesn't work out as well (and you would end up with your TV often changing resolutions every time that you change the channel). The UI on the MyHD card has options for video resolution, screen ratio, and screen format on the AV page. We feel the best result comes from choosing a standard resolution for your display (1920x1080i or 1280x720p most likely), and then check the "Auto" box in the aspect ratio. It may not get every AR correct, but that's probably due to the lack of tight standards in the US market more than anything. You can also set up the overlay size on the VGA dialog tab, and we selected "Fixed Aspect Ratio" and "16:9 Display".
The MyHD card ends up being the reverse of the Fusion5. It has issues with analog video, but the digital quality is better (and uses fewer system resources) and there are few major bugs/problems. The card lists the minimum system requirements as a Pentium II 400 MHz, and while that might work for DTV content where the hardware decoding is a factor, watching and recording the analog channels requires an excessive amount of CPU power. Of course, most people are going to be interested in the HD aspects of this card, and the analog is only a fringe benefit.
With a fast system and once configured properly, the MyHD worked very well and didn't give us any cause for complaint. The cost is substantially higher, but right now, it would definitely be our pick out of these two HD-capable cards. It's better to spend an extra $100 for a device that works well more often than not than to save the money and end up fighting with a problematic interface. Considering the cost of equipment used in many entertainment centers, $270 for the MyHD + DVI really isn't that much - you can even throw in a dual core processor for $330 and you're still only up to the price of a good set of speakers, and nowhere near what some people pay for high-end speakers. If you enjoy checking out the latest home theater equipment, the MyHD card isn't likely to disappoint.
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nastasin - Tuesday, August 8, 2006 - link
I am trying to choose the right tuner card for my HTPC and could use some advice. My top three choices are: MyHD MDP-130, ADS Tech PTV 380-ef, Kworld ATSC 110. All have strengths and weaknesses. this is used exclusively for HT except when doing HTPC maintenance.Specs: AMD 3800, 1g RAM, 500g HD, 6800GT, Panasonic AE-900 HD projector (DVI) w/110" Firehawk screen & 17" dell flat panel (analog).
OS: Windows MCE
Requirements:
PCI based card (no PCI-e)
Must operate with windows MCE
Able to operated using a remote
Able to display using digital cable (no OTA necessary)
Able to display in near original picture resolution and clarity
Record shows from digital cable
Priced under $200 is possible
Thanks
nvmarino - Thursday, December 8, 2005 - link
First off, thanks for the article. I have been spending quite a bit of time with various HTPC components over the past few months/years with HD capture cards being the one big hole in my research. Your article definitely helped clear up a few questions I had about the MyHD and DVICO cards. Thanks for that.I am still slightly confused about the functionality of the MyHD card though. You mention when switching to "HD" mode on the card it "bypasses the graphics card and uses the output of the MyHD card instead." Is this the *only* option for outputting HD, or can it be output directly from the graphics adapter without using the pass-through? If you can output directly via the PC graphics card, is the decoding still done by the MyHD hardware, or is it then the responsibility of the CPU/Graphics card? With old school MPEG2 decoder cards that worked via pass-through (like the Sigma Designs Hollywood+), the card could only output via its own video output. So if you wanted the output of your graphics card and MPEG2 video decoded by the H+ on the display, your only option was to use VGA pass-through. Just curious if this card works the same way.
One tip on getting HD output from your graphics card - in my experience a little utility called powerstrip (http://entechtaiwan.net/util/ps.shtm)">http://entechtaiwan.net/util/ps.shtm) is something you simply cannot do without. Powerstrip offers fine tuning of your video way beyond what you get from the card manufacturers and it operates independently of the manufacturers drivers so you won't get all those annoying issues with the resolution bouncing around when rebooting and such - at least once the application loads (your resolution might be screwy until you log in to the box and powerstrip kicks in though.) I've been using it for years to get HD resolutions out of my cards. The most useful resolution for me - 960x540 (or some derivative of to accommodate for overscan) output in 1080i. My TV isn't capable of 720P and, as you mention, 1080i is terrible for outputting anything but video. But 960x540 (essentially 540P) output using 1080i timing is crystal clear and rock solid with both text and video. I am at a loss as to why ATI and NVIDIA drivers are still painful and limited when dealing with HD resolutions while a third party utility is able to achieve such impressive results.
On another topic, I think there is another important option to consider that is not mentioned in your article - firewire capture directly from your cable box. This option can capture both SD and HD video, provides quality at least as good as any of the tuner cards and is much less expensive (possibly *free*). The beauty of firewire capture of analog channels is all the hard work of encoding is already done for you in the cable box - resulting in virtually zero overhead for recording. Of course, the PC still does have to decode the MPEG2, so if you want to watch HD you will still need some horsepower. However, if you don't care much about HD, you can get away with some VERY low end hardware - especially if you've got a dedicated MPEG2 decoder. Using firewire, I've been able to capture and playback smooth SD video on an 330Mhz Pentium II paired with my trusty Hollywood+ card. Of course as always there are a few caveats to firewire capture.
First off, your cable company has to offer a set top box with firewire output enabled. I've got no idea how common this is, but my cable provider (Comcast in Burlingame, CA) provides a Motorola 6200 with active firewire ports when you subscribe to HD service, which costs $5 a month. If you’re already paying the $5 a month for HD, your cost is zero. I have always subscribed to HD so I have no idea if this box would be provided to non-HD subscribers. Also, rumor has it there is some FCC mandate that requires cable companies to provide STB's with firewire output enabled, so you might even be able to get one of these boxes just by calling your provider and asking for one. Also, take in to consideration that you would need one STB for every channel you wanted to access simultaneously. So if you want to record one channel while watching another, you need two STB's - not quite as simple as splitting your cable line to multiple tuners and could incur additional costs.
Second, depending on your provider, firewire capture will most likely only work with non-copy protected channels. This is thanks to a DRM scheme known as 5C. The net net of 5C is that if the device connected to the STB is not 5C compliant (which your PC firewire port is not), the cable box will only allow channels which are allowed to be copied freely (most likely broadcast channels only) to be output via the firewire port. I have read that cable providers in some areas have not turned on 5C content protection yet, so you can get every channel via firewire, but rest assured they will at some point. As I only subscribe to basic cable I cannot comment on whether pay channels are accessible via firewire in my area. The solution to this of course *might* be when cablecard finally comes to the PC, but we'll see if that ever happens - even if it does, I'm sure the devices will implement 5C properly so you will only be allowed to record shows the provides want you to - and other restrictions such as the number of times you can copy a show will be enforced - but these restriction will also be enforced on all DVR's at some point so at least PC capture solutions will be on equal ground.
And finally (for those of you still with me) setting up firewire capture is a royal pain in the ass. I definitely wouldn't recommend it for the non-technically inclined, but if you are willing to invest the time, I've been able to get great results with both SageTV on Windows and MythTV on Linux. It is also possible to configure firewire capture with MCE but, as far as I understand, it is a bit of a kludge in that you need an analog tuner for every firewire device you want to capture from, even though you aren't using the capture card. I have no experience with configuring MCE with firewire so I could be completely off base here.
For those who are interested in pursuing setting up firewire capture and/or HD output from their video cards, www.avsforum.com is definitely the best place to start. I'd also recommend checking out the forums for SageTV if you want to pursue that option, the forums at www.thegreenbutton.com for getting MCE running with firewire, and http://wilsonet.com/mythtv/">http://wilsonet.com/mythtv/ for a great "how to" on getting MythTV up and running, which includes info and further links on both firewire capture and HD output.
--Nino
JarredWalton - Thursday, December 8, 2005 - link
Great post, nino!I actually have thought about the firewire aspect, but I didn't mention it as I haven't actually attempted it yet. Everything I've read points back to your one comment: "setting up firewire capture is a royal pain in the ass". LOL - and that might be somewhat understated. Firewire also doesn't allow you to do the tuning on the PC, as I understand it: the STB has to be tuned into the channel. It's more like using an old VCR to manually record something, but that's still better than nothing, right?
For the MyHD card, it does hardware decoding and outputs its own signal in bypass (HD) mode. It appears to be the straight DTV content, which is a good way of handling that I think. The card has an overlay mode that shows a preview of the content in a window. Due to the PCI bus bandwidth limitations, though, it is limited to 720x480 resolution (at 30/60 FPS depending on how you configure MyHD). I mentioned this above, as basically 720p and 1080i uncompressed signals can't be piped via overlay since they contain too much data.
nvmarino - Friday, December 9, 2005 - link
Thanks, Jarred. Not bad for my first post, eh? :) I've been reading Anand on a regular basis for years so I guess it's about time I contributed something to the community!As for channel changing, it is now supported via firewire, so no need to do anything manually. Firewire capture works just like any other tuner in SageTV or MythTV - just a little trickier to get setup.
Ah yes, it makes sense the MyHD card couldn't decode and then pass the video via PCI due to bandwidth... Thanks for the clarification
On another note - After taking a second look at the article, I found the results of Digital TV performance very confusing. My understanding is that a digital stream is already encoded and compressed, which you also mention in the article, so I would expect the only overhead when recording - assuming you are not doing any transcoding - would be writing to disk - which I would expect to not be much overhead at all. Since the real work with a digital stream is in decoding the stream for playback, that's where I would expect any significant overhead to kick in - at least when doing the decoding in software such as with the Fusion. However, unless I'm misinterpreting something, the Fusion graphs tell a very different story. I am confused even further by how DxVA could affect the performance of capture, again unless there was some trascoding or some other processing going on.
In an effort to figure out if I was misunderstanding something I did some testing with one of my boxes (a 2.4GHz P4) and the results are much closer to what I would expect. When capturing via firewire (I'm using VLC media player for the capture), my CPU usage hovers between 4% and 10%. I have VLC saving the stream as PS, which is about the only work I would expect the cards to have to do when capturing a digital stream. So where is all that extra overhead coming from?
When playing back the stream on the same box (I am using the NVIDIA PureVideo decoder on an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro) my CPU hovers between 25% - 35% usage with HW acceleration enabled. When I disable acceleration, CPU usage shoots up to about 80% and over 100% with lots of motion, resulting in choppy playback.
On a side note, these results are with HT disabled. I was originally testing with HT enabled on my P4 and it *looked* like the CPU was only sitting at about 40% when playing back with no acceleration, so I couldn't understand why playback was getting choppy. As soon as I disabled HT it became clear the CPU was over taxed.
The only conclusion I can come to is something is misbehaving when capturing with the Fusion - either the driver or the capture software. Thoughts?
--Nino
JarredWalton - Friday, December 9, 2005 - link
I probably didn't make this clear: "recording" was really "watching and recording" - basically a worst case scenario. I believe both the Fusion and MyHD can be setup to record a channel without displaying the content, in which case the CPU use drops to 5 to 10% or something. Basically, I was watching a channel and then I would press the "record" button.I'll have to give Firewire a shot in the near future - of course you need to have a digital cable + HD STB in order to capture that way, which is $25 a month extra over the cost of basic cable, but I have that regardless.
nvmarino - Saturday, December 10, 2005 - link
Gotcha - now I understand the numbers.For cable service, the a bare minimum is basic ($12) + HD ($5), at least in my area - bringing my grand total to $17 hard earned bones a month. Comcast doesn't require me to order digital to get HD. Of course I'm only getting very basic service but as long as I get football and Lost in HD I'm happy as a pig in sh.... I spend much more time in front of the PC than the telly anyway which is how I justify paying nearly 4x that for my broadband connection. :)
Also, my recent testing uncovered something I was unsure of earlier. I can capture pretty much every basic SD channel via firewire, but I can only capture the major broadcast networks in HD. ESPN HD, INHD, and Discovery HD, for example, are DRM'd so no FW capture is possible.
Here are a few pointers that will hopefully save you (or anyone else who wants to give FW capture a shot...) some time getting started.
The firewire drivers can be downloaded here:
http://www.thegreenbutton.com/community/shwmessage...">http://www.thegreenbutton.com/community...6&Me...
Once you get the drivers installed, I've found the simplest way to test is to use VLC (download here http://www.videolan.org/)">http://www.videolan.org/) to either watch or capture the stream. Once you have VLC installed, you can watch the stream like this:
File --> Open Capture Device
"Video device name" --> click the "Refresh list" button
In the "Video device name" dropdown, you should now see two options for your STB, a "tuner" device and a "Panel" device. Choose the "Tuner" device.
Click "OK" and that's it. If all went well you should be watching the firewire feed on your monitor. Oh yeah, make sure the STB is tuned to a basic channel so you don't have to worry about 5C DRM.
One thing to consider - as far as I know VLC doesn't support DxVA so if you're not on a beefy box, playing HD streams directly in VLC will be choppy.
Which brings me to my next topic - capturing with VLC...
Follow all the steps above except clicking "OK".
Once you've got your tuner selected as the video device, check the "Stream output" box and click the "Settings" button.
In the settings screen, check the "file" box and put the file where ever you want it, just make sure you save it with a .mpg extension
Click "OK" and "OK" and now you're capturing!
To stop capturing, just click the stop button on VLC.
Now, to play back the capture, I'd highly recommend the NVIDIA PureVideo decoder - even if you have an ATI card. You can download a 30-day trial here:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/dvd_decoder.html">http://www.nvidia.com/object/dvd_decoder.html
I've had mixed results with other decoders handling an HD capture properly, but I'm sure there are others out there that would work as well.
Once you've installed the decoder, you should have no problem playing the .mpg file you captured in Windows Media Player.
That's about it for the easy part! You're on your own from here. There are instructions for getting FW working in MCE in the driver download package, or you can view the readme directly online here:
http://www.thegreenbutton.com/community/download.a...">http://www.thegreenbutton.com/community...load.asp...
And for SageTV, you can find an excellent setup guide here:
http://forums.freytechnologies.com/forums/showthre...">http://forums.freytechnologies.com/foru...owthread...
Good Luck!
--Nino
JarredWalton - Sunday, December 11, 2005 - link
Thanks again! I'll be giving that a shot in the relatively near future. (Got a few other articles to finish first.)JarredWalton - Wednesday, December 7, 2005 - link
You can download some demo files to test out how the DVICO card would fare on your PC if you want. A reader sent me this tip. http://www.fusionhdtv.co.kr/ENG/Download/Demo.aspx">Here's the link, if you're interested.xtknight - Wednesday, December 7, 2005 - link
Great review, I enjoyed the downloadable stream clips from all the cards in the different modes.JarredWalton - Wednesday, December 7, 2005 - link
Last I checked (this morning), about 125 people had downloaded the video clips. I'm actually curious to what the readers feel about using BitTorrent for this. It seems like a natural fit to me, as even a fast data center connection can be overwhelmed by a bunch of people downloading video clips. How was the speed? Did you like this? (Maybe we can get some sort of Torrent server on an AnandTech server in the future so that I'm not using my home network. LOL)