What I really want is a PC equivalent of TiVo, with better control over what it does. As part of our adventures in trying to roll our own Windows Media Center system, we've been looking at what options exist for people who want to get video from their TV into their PC. One of those options is Plextor's external USB2 ConvertX PVR PX-TV402U-NA encoder. This device contains its own TV tuner onboard as well as S-Video, composite video and analog audio inputs. The ConvertX relies on the CPU in your PC to do all of the heavy lifting for the video encoding and decoding. The device comes with WinDVR software from Intervideo, which is used to display the current channel as well as record any incoming video to your PC. Plextor recommends at least a 2.4 GHz P4 system if you intend to use any of the MPEG-4 encoding options, and based on our experiences on our 2.2 GHz P4 testbed, I agree. We're changing over to a 3.2 GHz test system; old "Darth," the 2.2 GHz system, just isn't fast enough.
The ConvertX encodes to MPEG-1/2/4 as well as a variety of DivX codec profiles for home theater and mobile use. Test clips made from the coax input from our Adelphia set-top box showed clean input and no noticeable video noise.
One problem when first setting up the device: Trying to record live TV caused our Windows XP testbed to blue screen on us. After going to Plextor's website and downloading the latest software and drivers the problem remained. When the XP system rebooted from its blue screen the Microsoft Error Reporting service kicked in and notified us that Something Bad™ had happened to our system and did we want to let it notify Microsoft and see if it could offer assistance? Microsoft's error reporter then pointed us to a crash analysis that blamed a faulty device driver, but didn't say which one it was. At this point we looked over our XP system and decided to see if there was a driver update for the Belkin 3-port USB2.0
The Great Debate: PostgreSQL vs. MySQL Common industry perceptions of MySQL and PostgreSQL aren't as true with the current generation of releases as they used to be. DBAs, developers, and IT managers and decision-makers will benefit from this presentation and live Q&A about the pros and cons of using PostgreSQL or MySQL, which will include a discussion about the ongoing trend towards using open source in the enterprise.
Tuesday, October 7, 2008 - 9:00 AM PT / 12:00 PM ET
In this volume of Best of BYTE, we explore the emergence of some heuristic algorithms. Although we have only scratched the surface of this intriguing subject, we hope we've suggested the potential of the synthesis of heuristics and algorithms.
Understand C/C++ code in less time. A new team member ? Inherited legacy code ? Get up to speed faster with Crystal Flow for C/C++. Code-formatting improves readability. Flowcharts are integrated with code browser. Export flowcharts to Visio.
