Can Sage handle 3 ATI E-HOME WONDER cards?

[medialivingroom]

Can Sage handle 3 ATI E-HOME WONDER cards, because the cost of these cards are only 79 bucks each.


http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...pa=0&section=2

[stanger89]

I'm sure Sage can handle it, Carlo has 8 tuners (various kinds including an E-Home) in his setup:
http://forums.sage.tv/forums/showthr...&threadid=3758

The real question is if ATI's drivers support 3 cards (the problems with Hauppauge cards are driver issues). You could always get 2 and if they don't work you could set one up as a network encoder. If they do work you could get a 3rd.

[Crowdx42]

I presume this is another software encoding card? Would it mix in with a PVR 250?
Patrick

[stanger89]

Actually the E-Home Wonder is a HW card, just like the 250. It's actually designed for MCE but works fine in Sage from what I've heard, although I don't know if there's a way to control recording quality yet.

[medialivingroom]

I am really temped....

[stanger89]

I'm probably getting one after Sage officially supports them.

[salsbst]

I may be getting a whole bunch of them! Can't wait to hear how they play together when more than one is on the PCI bus.

[snoop244]

I have two of them installed. I'm very new to Sage, so I cant' honestly say that I know what it means to have two of them installed and working. They are both physically on the machine. I get no conflicts at the OS layer. When I go through the setup wizard in Sage, it sees both of them. Setup doesn't give me any errors. I only have one video feed near the machine, so I can't say whether it will give me problems when I actually try to watch TV using both, but so far, it seems to work.

I really had to wrestle with the settings in Sage to get good picture quality on the card I do watch. I was getting a lot of motion artifacts. I did something the other day, though, that fixed everything. Being the idiot that I am, I changed a bunch of things at once and I don't know what I did to fix the problem. I think it might have been the switch to DScaler and Elecard for de-interlacing. Overall, these cards look like a good deal. Where I live, they are 1/3 the price of Hauppaugge cards.

S.

[Crowdx42]

So does Sage menus transmit onto the tv with one of these card? Or do you still need a vid card with an output?

[medialivingroom]

Originally posted by snoop244
I have two of them installed. I'm very new to Sage, so I cant' honestly say that I know what it means to have two of them installed and working. They are both physically on the machine. I get no conflicts at the OS layer. When I go through the setup wizard in Sage, it sees both of them. Setup doesn't give me any errors. I only have one video feed near the machine, so I can't say whether it will give me problems when I actually try to watch TV using both, but so far, it seems to work.

I really had to wrestle with the settings in Sage to get good picture quality on the card I do watch. I was getting a lot of motion artifacts. I did something the other day, though, that fixed everything. Being the idiot that I am, I changed a bunch of things at once and I don't know what I did to fix the problem. I think it might have been the switch to DScaler and Elecard for de-interlacing. Overall, these cards look like a good deal. Where I live, they are 1/3 the price of Hauppaugge cards.

S.

Can you tell me where you got them and what is the cost for the ATI E-Home Wonder.

[stanger89]

Newegg has 2 versions:
No FM $66
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...116-309&depa=0
With FM $79
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...116-308&depa=0

These are simply encoders, they have no output so yes, you need a video card.


snoop,

Am I correct in infering that you have no control of recording quality from inside Sage?

[Crowdx42]

But it also says it has a hardware decoder?
What bit rate does it encode at?
Or is that set with ati media center and that is what Sage uses?
Patrick

[stanger89]

Originally posted by Crowdx42
But it also says it has a hardware decoder?

Decoder in this context (Theater 200) refers to decoding the analog video signal.

What bit rate does it encode at?
Or is that set with ati media center and that is what Sage uses?
Patrick

Still trying to figure that out, it's actually designed for Windows XP Media Center Edition and should be capable of at least a few quality settings. For now it sounds like Sage is stuck using whatever the install/drivers default to.

[Crowdx42]

What is the quality like? On fast scenes is there much pixelation?
Patrick

[medialivingroom]

Originally posted by stanger89
Newegg has 2 versions:
No FM $66
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...116-309&depa=0
With FM $79
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...116-308&depa=0

These are simply encoders, they have no output so yes, you need a video card.


snoop,

Am I correct in infering that you have no control of recording quality from inside Sage?

stanger89, Thanks for looking that up. I just ordered 1 to test it out.

[AJ Bertelson]

Correct me if I am wrong but isn't 2.0 supposed to support radio station tuning?

[Opus4]

Originally posted by AJ Bertelson
Correct me if I am wrong but isn't 2.0 supposed to support radio station tuning?

The SageTV v2 beta, right? I don't remember hearing that beyond wishful thinking. (Yes, my memory could be faulty.)

I wouldn't find it overly useful to use the FM tuners on the Hauppauge products, since you can't tune TV and FM at the same time. (Makes the radio pointless if you record a lot.) Now, if there were a TV/FM card that could do both simultaneously...

For now, I just use an old ISA FM card on on e PC and a USB FM radio on the other. Might be nice if SageFM could use those, but that brings up a whole new list of devices to support.

- Andy

[Crowdx42]

Supposedly the E-Home uses the CONEXANT CX23416-12 chip. Which one of the Hauppauge cards also used SO I suppose in theory Sage should be able to adjust it's quality settings. There is a thread about this on the microsoft.public.windows.mediacenter newsgroup.
Patrick

[SHS]

Sorry boys & girls rigth now no 3rdparty support for FM other then MCE I post a How Build a Graph for REALtime FM MP3 Recordeing.

[Crowdx42]

Windows Media Center only supports single tuner cards? I know it can only be initially bought as a new computer, but wondering can it handle 2 tuners?
Patrick