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DigitalNow DNTV Live! DVB-T Tuner Card |
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TV Captures, Conclusions, Further Information
Other observations:
The software claims to also support the DVICO DVB cards. I was unable to test this functionality as I did not have access to the DVICO card during the period of review.
The infamous VisionPlus card is also now supported. Curiously, you need the non-BDA Twinhan-supplied drivers for it to be detected by DNTV Live!, where it shows up as an additional tuner. The downside to this approach is the multitude of other BDA-ready software can’t use this card when setup with the Twinhan drivers. This means if you have other (BDA) TV software installed, it will happily see the DNTV Live! card but not the VisionPlus. When capturing with the VisionPlus card, damaged files were produced which would skip when played back, and the software also frequently froze. I am told this is a result of issues with the thsource.ax DirectShow filter which remains to be fixed by Twinhan.
TV captures:
These pictures have been JPEG compressed to make them a reasonable size for downloading. Please note that as a result this compression, these images cannot completely represent the quality of the original MPEG-2 capture.
 
Seven SD, Tennis
 
Left: Seven ED - Loop. Right: Nine SD - News.
Ten HD - Totally Wild
For those who really want to see a full-quality image and have the bandwidth to do so, here are two uncompressed samples in TIFF format.
Nine SD - News (1.7MB) - Ten HD - Becker (6.2MB)
Conclusion:
This card and software have great potential to provide a software home theatre solution, when paired with a suitable PC and large screen display device such as a plasma or projector. As mentioned, the card had solid tuner performance superior to other DVB cards I have used. Video decoding, even at the High Level used for the HD channels was smooth and flawless. The EPG also proved capable, compared to other products I have used.
Unfortunately, the software needs improvement. As mentioned, stability improved as the software progressed, I still had occasional ‘Access violations’ and ‘Divide by Zero’ errors when performing certain tasks, such as recording or channel changing. Furthermore, if the product is to be seriously considered for home theatre use, the IR remote control use needs to be improved.
A positive aspect is the BDA compliance of the kernel drivers. This allows use of the card with any software supporting the BDA subset of DirectShow.
Fortunately, during the course of this review, the software was updated several times, often just a couple of days apart. A number of bugs disappeared in each release. I’m aware that this is early days for the DNTV software, nevertheless using the version "1.x" numbering scheme already was perhaps too ambitious. I am confident this will be an exceptional product when it has had a chance to mature.
Pros:- Excellent picture and sound quality
- HD playback excellent when using 3rd party MPEG decoders
- Solid tuner
- Picture-in-picture support and support for 4 tuners, allowing complex program scheduling and viewing arrangements
- Analog video inputs (S-Video, composite)
- Reliable time-shifting
- Record to TS, MPEG, DVR-MS
- Support for DVICO & VisionPlus (still unstable) cards (when using Twinhan drivers)
- BDA support for use with other software
- Linux support
Cons:- UI needs work, particularly remote control
- Still has stability issues
Further Information:- DigitalNow DNTV Live! product pages here and here, and software support page here.
- DVB Owners forum here is an excellent resource, and there is a forum for DNTV Live! Owners here.
- Chris Pascoe’s Linux support here.
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