Can anyone recomend a TV Capture Card/USB Stick for recording programs?

[Richard_Finnigan]

Hi

 

We want to set up a simple Freeview TV recording facility at St Johns using a networked PC and a TV capture card or USB stick.

 

What is particularly important is the software, we need something that can scedule recordings and hopefully give us some options for the recorded file format, we dont want huge hi res files that will be very time consuming to convert into a compressed format.

 

Any suggestions would be welcome.

 

Regards

 

Richard Finnigan

 

St Johns School

Northwood

[sparkeh]

I've used one of these http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B004F1MPYY/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Works great. The included software is ok but I use Media Center anyway which is good.

[twin--turbo]

I personaly use

 

MythTv using a Hauppage NovaT-500 dual tuner.

 

3 Cards would cover all 5 UK SD muxes, you will need a HD Nova T to record on the HD channels.

 

The Nova-T can support virtual recorders on one MUX channel so you can record more than one station at a time.

 

 

If you don't want to use MYTHTV then teh Nova-T does come with some basic recording software.

 

 

Rob

[AngryTechnician]

Hauppage or PCTV are my personal choices for hardware brands. I have had 3x Hauppauge dual tuner PCI cards and a PCTV HD USB tuner streaming Freeview onto our network 24x7 for over a year without problems.

 

(Edit: just checked and the Happauge cards have been going non-stop since July 2010. They are rock solid.)

 

Windows Media Center is easy to use and pretty reliable, so if you already have it with Windows Vista or 7, try it out. The only real downside is it only supports 1 channel per tuner at a time, unlike MythTV which can record multiple channels simultaneously if they are on the same multiplex (e.g. BBC1 and BBC2 can be recorded simultaneously with 1 tuner, but BBC1 and ITV1 can't).

Edited March 20, 2013 by AngryTechnician

[shayan_doust]

I use a trancend 1 TB HDD.