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CAPTURE,CONTROL,CREATE
Posted Date: 21 Mar 2008 Resource Type: Articles/Knowledge Sharing Category: Computer & Technology
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Posted By: arunkumar Member Level: Gold
Rating:  Points: 5
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If you have a TV-Tuner, you need PVR software. Here's a little
comparison of some of the better ones out there
More and more people are using their PCs
as TVs, and software is being developed
by the dozen to help you get the best from
your TV-Tuner card. With Media Center PCs
becoming more popular, TV-Tuner software are
also being better designed; however, Personal
Video Recorder (PVR) software hasn’t entirely lost
out on presence. These software tune in to TV
channels, and capture screenshots and video in a
compressed format. Some can pause a TV show.
The interface apart, the thin line that separates
PVR software from Media Center software is the
latter’s additional functionality that integrates
DVD, radio, picture and music playback capabilities
using a remote control, while retaining the
capabilities of PVR software.
The major parameters that we based our
comparison of PVR software on were ease of use,
features and performance. We took a detailed look
at six software in all—ChrisTV, iuVCR, NeoTV,
PowerVCR II 3.0, WinDVR, and WinVDR.
ChrisTV
ChrisTV is a unique contender in the category of
PVR software—unique because the interface is so
dull! But make no mistake—all the functionality
is there: everything you need is a right-click away.
Ease Of Use
Installation is wizard-based, at the end of
which you’re prompted to configure the
settings. The process also includes setting up a
video capture device. This is an important step;
make sure you select your TV-Tuner card, since
your graphics card can also serve as an input
source for PVR software.
The interface is compact and the colour
combination dull, like we said. It looks like a
failed attempt at aping the Mac OS user interface!
The buttons on the panel make all the
important functions accessible. Advanced
settings become accessible with a right-click.
Clicking the “gear” icon button opens the
‘General Settings’ menu. This menu is at the
heart of ChrisTV’s configuration.
Features And Performance
ChrisTV probably has almost all the features
you’d look for in a PVR software. It has the timeshift
feature by which you can pause a telecast,
forward through ads, and create your own TV
replay. This feature has three modes of operation:
software DV encoder, software MPEG
encoder and hardware MPEG encoder. (The timeshift
feature works only with Windows XP,
Windows Media Center Edition or higher.)
Recordings can be stored as MPEG, AVI,
XviD, and more; recording is supported with
many codecs to choose from. The channel
preview and the recorded video quality are
satisfactory, whereas the snapshots (which can
be taken in the JPEG and BMP formats) give
remarkably better results.
Another prominent feature is the scheduler.
ChrisTV allows a user to schedule recordings
for the entire week. Just select the day of the
week and set a timed recording for that day—it’s
that easy!
Link: www.chris-tv.com
iuVCR
iuVCR features a simple interface, beneath
which lies a variety of features and options.
This software also features radio tuning (if your
tuner card supports it).
Ease Of Use
Installation is, again, wizard-based. The interface
design is so sober, it looks like software from the
Windows 95 era. The configuration options are
classified under the ‘Video’ and ‘Audio’ tabs. An
‘Info’ tab shows the important settings for
recording and compression. It also displays other
technical information, such as file size and
frame rate in fps along with a graph. Overall, the
interface may be confusing at first glance, but
you’ll find it is very organised once you’ve understood
the classification of the settings.
Features And Performance
Basic features include TV channel tuning, TV and
video capture, and compression of captured content
to various formats including DivX. You may
need to install a codec pack on your Windows
machine before you can choose from various
compression formats for your capture. (We
installed K-lite Mega Codec pack.)
Capture/Recording can be controlled by
limiting it within a time frame, or by punching
in the maximum file size. Moreover, captured
files can either be saved in a particular folder in
a partition or in different locations across hard
disk partitions.
This software offered scheduled and timer
recording. With timer recording you can set the
software to record for, say, the next one hour; with
scheduled recording, you can instruct the software
to record from, say, 5 pm to 7 pm for any specific
channel or input!
The schedule feature wasn’t very impressive,
though—it restarted the iuVCR software at the
scheduled start time, and it often recorded from
the wrong input. Overall, iuVCR is just about OK.
Link: www.iulabs.com/iuvcr/index.shtml
NeoTV
NeoTV needs to be tweaked by the developers;
there is plenty of room for improvement in
video recording as well as the user interface.
Ease Of Use
When NeoTV is run for the first time at the
end of the easy installation process, it requests you to set up audio/video sources and channels.
You are taken to the ‘Configuration
Options’ dialog box. After you’re done with
setting up the software, the rather ordinary
blue user interface shows up. Moving the
mouse pointer over the buttons reveals their
functions. There aren’t too many options on
the panel for setting up the software, which
makes NeoTV good for first-time users.
Features And Performance
A unique feature in NeoTV is the reconfigurable
Hotkey option. User-defined keys can be set; this
helps you easily remember the keys you set for
various functions such as record, stop, next
channel, previous channel, etc.
NeoTV can handle recording of telecasts in
MPEG, VCD and DVD formats, and snapshots are
saved as BMP files. The quality of snapshots is
really good, but we couldn’t judge the quality of
video capture—the saved file turned out to be
corrupt. Our repeated attempts to capture video in
different formats were in vain. Given the fact that
we weren’t even able to capture video, we can’t
recommend NeoTV.
Link: www.mediostream.com/products/
index_neotv.html
PowerVCR II 3.0
CyberLink’s PowerVCR II is the most commonly
bundled software with most TV-Tuner cards.
With the advent of Media Center PCs, CyberLink
now supplies PowerCinema. Nevertheless,
PowerVCR II still has the punch to be amongst the
most-sought-after PVR software.
Ease Of Use
The procedure for installing PowerVCR II 3.0 was
somewhat lengthy—it installs the Intel Indeo
codec pack right in the middle of installation.
The option to not install Indeo wasn’t offered.
Those who have used CyberLink products
earlier will know the characteristic interface
scheme—it resembles an actual DVD player with
knobs and buttons. A similar scheme is used here,
more like a blend of a set-top box and a DVD player.
The preview screen looks like a flat plasma TV.
A side panel bar is provided to directly access
certain features such as the recording scheduler
and the DV Tape Transcoder. Overall, the interface
and the software are elegantly and professionally
designed.
The software starts with a hunt for channels
and stops at the very first signal it detects; detection
is so fast, you’ll notice it only if you disconnect
the TV cable and connect only the composite
input. This is of immense help, because you don’t
have to dig around in the configuration settings to
set an input mode for the software—the available
signal is quickly detected.
Features And Performance
Despite the professional look of the software,
PowerVCR seemed to be lacking on the features
front. Its closest contender is WinDVR, which
impressed us with its performance and features;
read on to see whether PowerVCR can keep its
winner tag from a couple of years ago.
The snapshot feature took images only in
BMP format, and although the clarity of the
images was commendable, it would have been
nice to have an option for JPEG.
The ‘Instant TV Replay’ feature allows you to
pause a live telecast while it (the ongoing telecast)
is being recorded to disk. You can, therefore, replay
and even forward ads at will. The file converter
helps convert a captured file from MPEG to other
formats such as AVI.
If you want to record everything on your
camcorder to DVD, you can use the ‘DV Tape
Transcoder’ feature, which converts your DV files
to MPEG. Creating a DVD from this is accomplished
via the ‘Direct burn to DVD’ feature.
The TV channel preview quality was very
good; in fact, PowerVCR and WinDVR were the
only two PVR software that showcased grain-less
picture reproduction. Video captures are stored
by default in the MPEG format. The quality of the
capture was also very good—we didn’t see any
jerks, nor did we notice any pixelation.
All in all, PowerVCR might well be the best
PVR software out there—which is also probably
reason for it being bundled with most
TV-Tuner cards!
Link: www.cyberlink.com/multi/download/
trials_2_ENU.html
WinDVR Version 3
Two years ago, we did a similar comparison.
WinDVR finished as the challenger to
PowerVCR. Now we’re back to our testing desk,
looking for something new in WinDVR!
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