Computer Built for Recording TV

J

josh088

New Member
OK guys, here is the situation I have. The company I work for monitors and tracks coprorates sponsorships during live and taped sporting events. We currently run 5-10 satelitte dish's and DVR's to record channels between 8 and 24 hours a day and then burn them down the next day.

I am doing a study to determine the cost effectiveness of switching over to recording directly to a hard drive for storage and then we can burn down to a DVD if needed or the editor can transfer a file to a USB drive or take an external drive with them.

So I need help on estimating the cost of a PC that can accept video input, both composite cables and HD picture (not even sure if that is possible, if not just bypass the HD part). That has a DVD burner and can run for days straight while recording programs.

Any ideas???
 
All i can say is look on newegg, tiger direct, ebay, etc. Until you have found all the parts that you would need to build this pc.
 
I'd say about $500 would get you a PC that can do all that. The most crucial part would be the TV tuner, make sure you get a ATSC one.
 
Are you expecting 5-10 video inputs in a single computer? What sort of signal do you want to input - straight A/V (component, HDMI) or something that requires a tuner (coax cable)?
 
Yeti said:
Are you expecting 5-10 video inputs in a single computer? What sort of signal do you want to input - straight A/V (component, HDMI) or something that requires a tuner (coax cable)?
Click to expand...

We had not decided how many we would run thorugh 1 computer, i guess it would be a mix of what a single computer can handle while running well. No coax is needed we run mostly on composite, however it will include HDMI in the near future 6-12 months depending on when the company that makes our scanning software upgrades the system to HD.

Based on the setup we currently have in our office we need to be able to reccord up to 8-10 feeds at one time, how many systems do you think we would need to run this effectively? My guess is we would record to a combination of external USB hard drives and internal drives. The idea is to be able to have programs stored on a hard drive if we ever need to go back to them 6-12 months down the road, currently we record tot dvd's and i am thinking in the long run this may be the most cost effective method.
 
Configuring a PC like that won't be too hard. Just find a pretty good PC and then add an awesome TV tuner to it. Done.
 
Calibretto said:
Configuring a PC like that won't be too hard. Just find a pretty good PC and then add an awesome TV tuner to it. Done.
Click to expand...
Yes, that would definitely work, but having 5-10 computers dedicated to video capture wouldn't make much sense financially. It would be possible to put a few capture cards in a PC, maybe up to 4 or even 5 depending on the number of PCI slots in the motherboard. Then there's the cost - most capture cards are made more as tuners, not straight video capture. You could buy something like a Hauppauge HVR-1600 which has analog input, but you'll be paying for features you won't use. Other video capture cards are for video editing (and therefore are meant for quality of video, and the audio routes through your soundcard) and multiple video inputs (typically for surveillence) which don't typically have sound. Going through HDMI would be fairly costly as well - Blackmagic Design cards run $250+. You could go the external route with something like the Hauppauge HD PVR which will accept component input, but again you're running at about $250 per input and you might have USB bandwidt issues with multiple units. I would recommend deciding on a definite format and number (8 feeds could be doable with 2 computers, 10 probably not). Another possibility is getting external PVRs that can transfer the stored video to a computer. Some have this capability through firewire, though it is blocked by some providers.
 
Yeti said:
Yes, that would definitely work, but having 5-10 computers dedicated to video capture wouldn't make much sense financially. It would be possible to put a few capture cards in a PC, maybe up to 4 or even 5 depending on the number of PCI slots in the motherboard. Then there's the cost - most capture cards are made more as tuners, not straight video capture. You could buy something like a Hauppauge HVR-1600 which has analog input, but you'll be paying for features you won't use. Other video capture cards are for video editing (and therefore are meant for quality of video, and the audio routes through your soundcard) and multiple video inputs (typically for surveillence) which don't typically have sound. Going through HDMI would be fairly costly as well - Blackmagic Design cards run $250+. You could go the external route with something like the Hauppauge HD PVR which will accept component input, but again you're running at about $250 per input and you might have USB bandwidt issues with multiple units. I would recommend deciding on a definite format and number (8 feeds could be doable with 2 computers, 10 probably not). Another possibility is getting external PVRs that can transfer the stored video to a computer. Some have this capability through firewire, though it is blocked by some providers.
Click to expand...

Thanks for all the great information. Based on the exact setup we have now we spend around $17,000 a year on DVD's just for the 8 systems in our office, not including what gets recorded by editors at home. As I said before we record to a DVR and burn to disk currently. We have basically 1 channel we record 24 hours a day, 3 we record 16 hours a day, and another we record 8 hours a day. We then have 3 others that we use to capture events not on those channels. All of it needs to be recorded at a quality of at most 2 hours per DVD because of our scanning system. (Anything of less quality doesnt work on the system and must be manually done) That's how we amass a DVD bill of $17,00 per year.

This is why I am doing a study to see if it is financially feasable to transfer to computer capture and storage as opposed to DVR and DVD's

What kind of computer specs would I need to be able to run 4 PCI tuner all at one time? Or perhaps it is better to go with only 2 per machine and run 4 machines. Any more ideas?

Thanks again everyone!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top