List of cards and delays

[M-80]

I thought maybe this would help in some of your homebuilt PVRs.

I dunno if this has been addressed or not (I see a lot of questions in the troubleshooting forums). What cards have delays and what cards don't.

The scenario: You're playing a videogame console through your video in on your tuner card and notice a delay.

Now, I have both a eVGA nVidia Personal Cinema FX 5700 and an ATI HDTV Wonder. I notice that both have delays, but that's where they differ. While the HDTV Wonder has a significant delay, a half second, the PCFX5700 has only a slight one and it doesn't impact game play at all. For instance, in racing games it's hardly noticeable on the PCFX5700.

Now, I've been told this dealy is because of the recording features in any tuner viewer. But I'm trying this out in Live TV in BTV4 with a faux external tuner setting in the inputs settings.

I'm not asking a question and this is not a troubleshooting post. It's intended to be a list of what cards have delays in Live TV and what don't. Obviously there's a difference between cards. Or at least card busses (AGP vs PCI).

[Jkramer5]

The delay is caused by the timeshift buffer needed by Beyond Tv. Not the card.

[M-80]

Ok, so why is it worse in some cards and not bad in others? Even in other TV tuner viewers other than BTV? I buy the timeshift buffer, but apparently it's either not a problem or non-existant with some cards.

Is the timeshifting targeted at one tuner and not the other if one has two tuners? I have to say, and it's not a problem (I'm cool with it), that's how it seems with my setup. Or maybe it's the cards themselves. Because the ATI card I have delays video in the ATI Multimedia Center program as well. Or could it be the busses? AGP versus PCI? If I had an AGP ATI All In Wonder would I see the same non-delay effect as my PCFX5700?

I'm just curious because apparently I have examples of both situations. People who complain about a delay and get the same answer is what I'm experiencing with my ATI HDTVW. But I'm not experiencing it (or maybe very slightly but I can't tell) with my PCFX5700, So, where's the issue and where's the timeshifting side effect?

This got me thinking. If the timeshifting side effect (which by the way, and I'm repeating myself for clarity, happens in other TV tuner viewers/PVRs as well) is not equal on both cards then it's gotta be the cards or the busses or the timeshifting is focused on one tuner, but not the other.

I swear I'm telling the truth that I'm not getting the timeshifting problems with my PCFX5700 AGP card, but I do get it with my ATI HDTVW (which obviously is a PCI card). I'm happy with it and there is no problem (that's not what this is about. Again, that's not what this is about). As I said it is not a troubleshooting issue from me. I'm just curious. Please see it that way.

[RobertH]

on cards with a hardware encoder such as your hdtv wonder the delay is higher because the cards encoder buffers the video to its internal memory before passing it to beyondtv, it does this to provide better compression in the video itself. a software card like your personal cinema the video goes directly from the card in raw format to beyondtv wich is then compressed in realtime via software and then buffered to disk, once buffered into the disk it is then played back to the gui. Beyondtv and similar DVR software is designed to record tv and view tv not play video game consoles the inherent delay caused by the tuner card (if its hardware) and by beyondtv's shifting engine make it almost impossible to play most games.

additionally for cards like the all in wonder or personal cinema, they have problems that cause beyondtv to have to display livetv without the timeshifting ability thus you get the raw video data in some setups wich would cause it to have no apparent delay.