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<blockquote data-quote="payload" data-source="post: 270200" data-attributes="member: 18993">Hello fellow NZ MP users. I am a long time MP user but I haven't been overly active on the forums. I was hoping to get some advice regarding connecting to the Freeview Terrestrial service. My current setup is a backend server with 2 Hauppauge PVR-150 cards. This is a pretty old PC, a P4 1.6. I have 2 front-ends. which are elderly 1.1 GHz Celeron laptops. These are connected to a SD TV and my Infocus projector which is also only SD. Despite the age of the hardware, its all working pretty well. I am now looking longingly at Freeview, with it's Picture Quality, Wide Screen and Digital Sound malarky. But I do have some doubts and questions.1. What card? The Hauppauge Nova T 500 looks like a good start. Seems pretty cheap and has dual tuners, but is there a catch?2. Codecs? This has got me really confused. Freeview broadcasts in MPEG4, but the cards all have MPEG2 encoders. Will the card convert the MPEG4 data into MPEG2 in realtime or does it need to be done by the PCs CPU? This could be my biggest issue I suspect.3. HD or SD? I will admit that my current hardware won't handle HD, but can the tuner card be configured to encode in SD? I don't really need HD yet and probably not for a while.Any input would be appreciated.Justin</blockquote>

[QUOTE="payload, post: 270200, member: 18993"] Hello fellow NZ MP users. I am a long time MP user but I haven't been overly active on the forums. I was hoping to get some advice regarding connecting to the Freeview Terrestrial service. My current setup is a backend server with 2 Hauppauge PVR-150 cards. This is a pretty old PC, a P4 1.6. I have 2 front-ends. which are elderly 1.1 GHz Celeron laptops. These are connected to a SD TV and my Infocus projector which is also only SD. Despite the age of the hardware, its all working pretty well. I am now looking longingly at Freeview, with it's Picture Quality, Wide Screen and Digital Sound malarky. But I do have some doubts and questions. 1. What card? The Hauppauge Nova T 500 looks like a good start. Seems pretty cheap and has dual tuners, but is there a catch? 2. Codecs? This has got me really confused. Freeview broadcasts in MPEG4, but the cards all have MPEG2 encoders. Will the card convert the MPEG4 data into MPEG2 in realtime or does it need to be done by the PCs CPU? This could be my biggest issue I suspect. 3. HD or SD? I will admit that my current hardware won't handle HD, but can the tuner card be configured to encode in SD? I don't really need HD yet and probably not for a while. Any input would be appreciated. Justin [/QUOTE]

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