PVR-250 with Freesat STB or NOVA-S Plus

[garywood84]

I have a six year old computer, which has a 3.06Ghz PIV processor and 1Gb RAM, fitted with a WinTV PVR-250 card. This card has a hardware MPEG2 encoder.

I've just got a satellite dish, and want to be able to hook this up to the computer to record TV programmes from the satellite, in the same why I've been able to record analogue programmes through my aerial.

As I see it, I have two options. I could buy an external Freesat box, and connect this via S-Video cable to the PVR-250. Alternatively, I could replace the PVR-250 with a NOVA-S Plus card, and connect the satellite dish straight to that.

I'd welcome some comments on which of these is likely to be the best route. I realise that connecting a Freesat box to my existing card is going to be taking a digital signal via analogue inputs and then redigitising it to record the file. However, since the NOVA-S Plus doesn't have a hardware encoder, and my computer is relatively old, I wonder if it will struggle and therefore whether the better (or only) option, might be to go with an external Freesat box and keep my PVR-250.

Any comments and suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Gary

[cdldt]

The DVB-S streams are already encoded to MPEG2, so lack of an encoder on the Nova-S-Plus is not a problem. I would recommend getting a Nova-S-Plus to replace the PVR-250 because it is a far simpler set-up and will give better quality too.