HI guys.

Me and a mate are wondering if you need a dedicated encoding card like, Haupage pvr with hardware mpeg 1/2/4, to do hardware mpeg encoding.

You see the thing is we did a test on a pretty decent system using software encoding, and it killed the cpu it was close to 100% usage all the time, this causes heat problems and lag on the system.

My buddy reckons with a decent 3dcard like an Nvidia 8800 or similar one, with Video In, you can do hardware over the video in? By using the card's gpu and not the cpu?

Is there any truth in this, or should I just go and buy a capture card, we have satellite so I can't "tune" to any channels anyway, you have to use the decoder, so the card will just be used for its hardware encoding.

Hi QMAX,

Depending on where you live, you might find it cheaper to buy a hardware encoding card then buying a decent graphics cards.

Not having satellite myself, I assume you use a remote to change channels? You can rig up an irblaster so you can change channels using Knoppmyth.

That being said I suppose if the software supports off-loading the encoding to the graphics card it should work fine, but I'm not aware that Knoppmyth can do this.

Have fun,
Kirk.

The right tool for the job is a tuner card with an mpeg decoder/encoder on board.

The benefits far outweigh the cost a number of different ways. One of which is the ability to use low-end commodity/old hardware. Another is it's kind of future proof. I'm free to switch to almost anything since the heavy lifting is done by the card.

Hi guys,

Yeah i use the remote to switch channels, will take a look at irblaster, I built myself a lirc receiver not so long ago. works like a charm!

I figured a tvtuner/capture card would be best, the thing is my buddy wants to use his setup as an all in one job. One were he can game on and boot from knoppmyth to do media stuff, he doesn't even own a TV just a nice big LCD and also satellite TV. So he didn't want to go and buy a capture card and a decent graphics card just to find out that the graphics card can do most of the work.

But, I am very happy with my Haupage pvr.

Thanx for the comments and advice, it really helped.