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DigitalNow DNTV Live! DVB-T Tuner Card |
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TV Playback, Recording, EPG
TV Playback:
Firstly, I should note the software allows you to choose video and audio codecs from the list installed on your system. Although the software is supplied with its own MPEG-2 decoder, using the Cyberlink & Intervideo decoders which had been installed on my system with PowerDVD and WinDVD respectively resulted in better performance, as well as the ability to view HDTV.
The quality of the SDTV and HDTV playback was superb. Now this is not surprising with a digital TV card, since picture quality issues are more related to the software MPEG decoder and display device. So I should go further and say the stability of the card’s reception was outstanding. With previous DTV cards I have used, I have never been able to receive SBS in my area in eastern Melbourne - I also have poor analog reception of this channel. I have also had a number of issues, such as occasional stalls, with the higher frequency VHF channels - namely ABC and Ten. With this card, I had not a single dropout on ABC, Seven, Nine and Ten. SBS was reasonable too, although with the occasional stall.
The card also handled Nine and Ten’s HDTV broadcasts well, with fluid playback and no problems at all with the AC3 sound. CPU usage on the AthlonXP 2500+ test PC was less than 40 per cent. Seven’s Enhanced Definition channel with AC3 sound was also handled without difficulty. The On-Screen-Display (OSD) shows the channel name, but also the video size and sound format. For example, for Nine HD "MPEG-2 Video 1920x1080 + Dolby Digital Audio" is shown.
The Dolby Digital 2.0 and 5.1 audio streams on the HD channels were handled correctly, and worked properly with the sound card configured for analog output (local decode) and S/PDIF pass-through (remote decode), with the external decoder agreeing with the format shown on the OSD.
Some TV captures are provided at the end of this article.
There's also a handy menu for aspect ratio control. Output can be "Original" (which displays the intended aspect ratio correctly on the display device by means of letterboxing/sideboxing). Since Australian DTV content is always 16x9, this means letterboxing on a 4x3 monitor. There is also a handy ‘crop’ mode, which is useful for 4x3 content presented in the 16x9 frame which would otherwise result in a "postage stamp" size picture. This ‘crop’ mode would also be useful for those who prefer a ‘centre cut’ to avoid letterboxing on a 4x3 monitor (this is what happens on analog TV anyway). Finally, there is anamorphic output for those connecting to plasmas or other widescreen displays.
The software also has a Picture-in-Picture function (PiP) similar to some high end TVs which allow you to watch two programs at once. For this to work in DNTV Live! it requires multiple tuners, or you can use it with the DVD playback function. I tested it using both TV+TV (using the VisionPlus card as the secondary tuner - discussed later) and TV+DVD, and it worked for the most part, bar some "Floating Point Overflow" software errors which would sometimes occur on channel change.
Clearly this is a powerful feature, and the PiP program can also be recorded as if it were running in a completely separate piece of software (i.e. the main channel can still be changed and even recorded). The distributor says the PiP support is a unique function not available in other DVB-T software.
The channel choosing window in non HTPC mode.
EPG:
The DNTV Live! software supported the text-based EPG transmitted by many broadcasters. The EPG "Now and Next" information was shown on the OSD when switching channels or when requested by the user. It was also presented on the control panel. However, there was an annoying latency of several seconds when requesting the EPG on-screen display.
DNTV Live! also provides a way to view all EPGs from all broadcasters, which also shows the "Now and Next" descriptions. I understand that it is planned that users will be able to add a program to the recording schedule simply by clicking on it. Unfortunately this was not available at the time of the review.
Recording:
DNTV Live! supports recording to three different file formats:- MPEG2 Program Stream - multiplexes the audio and video from a single channel from a broadcaster. Can be played by almost all media players.
- Microsoft DVR-MS format - format used by the Microsoft Stream Buffer Engine to record TV shows. Playback supported by Windows Media Player or applications that can take advantage of the DirectShow filters.
- Transport Stream - captures the entire broadcasters transport stream straight off the air. This includes all video and audio streams. I was then able to open these recordings with software such as TSReader.
Unlike some of the other digital TV software I have used, the files saved by DNTV Live! appeared to be robust and did not have anomalies which would only make them play on certain players.
Recording is simple: click the record menu item (or press record on the remote) to begin, and do the same to stop. Recordings are saved in the directory chosen in the program’s configuration dialog, and are named by channel name, date and time.
There is also a handy quick record menu which gives options for 30, 60, 90 and 120 minutes. Clicking one of these options starts recording for that length of time. This is useful when a program has just started and you wish to record it without having to go through the hassle of creating a schedule.
The ability to schedule recordings is easy, even if the interface is inelegant from a UI design perspective and has limitations (i.e. limited to 7 items on the schedule). Each ‘tab’ corresponds to a schedule, and you pick the start and end times, the channel and the tuner to use. The last point is worth a remark, as with multiple tuners installed it permits you to overlap recordings of different channels, each using a different tuner.
Furthermore, if the recording starts whilst the tuner is not running, the software does not bother displaying and decoding the stream. This means the use of system resources is very minimal and you can use the PC for other tasks (even CPU intensive ones).
Again, recording was not entirely stable. The program would sometimes crash when starting a recording, although this improved as versions progressed. The software was also ‘fragile’ - for example, changing the channel during recording would result in the record feature popping up an error message whenever a record operation was attempted, until the software was restarted.
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