Pinnacle 300i in Ireland

[Farzackerly]

I was given an old Pinnacle 300i hybrid card a few months ago, in the hope it might be capable of decoding the Irish DTV setup.

After a lot of messing around with no results on the digital tuner I recalled I had a Transedit demo sitting on my hard drive, so pointed it at the card.

I was amazed the Preview came up with a working picture and sound in a window and even better it could go full screen. CPU load was only 40% and there was no stuttering or breakup at all.

The Irish system is H.264 and mpeg4

 

What I really need to know now - if I purchase DVBViewer Pro, will it take the settings from Transedit and function properly with no further CPU load? This is an old PC - an Athlon 3000 with 1GB memory. I suppose the saving grace of the Irish DTV is they're not doing HD yet, else I'd have no chance of it with this machine.

 

I attach some screenshots...

[Griga]

will DVBViewer take the settings from Transedit and function properly with no further CPU load?

In case of H.264 the CPU load is rather a question of video decoding, not of the app using the decoder. H.264 decoding can be done completely by software, or be accelerated by an up-to-date graphics card. 40% CPU load suggests that your Athlon 3000 CPU is fast enough for H.264 SD software decoding. However, hardware video acceleration (and a decoder taking advantage of it) is mandatory for watching H.264 HD on an old PC .

 

In any case a DirectShow H.264 decoder is required. Neither TransEdit nor DVBViewer contain such a component. Apparently a suitable decoder is already installed in your system, otherwise the TransEdit preview wouldn't work. DVBViewer will use the same decoder, or can be configured to use it. So it should be no problem.

[Farzackerly]

Thanks for the reply, Griga.

I should have mentioned that ffdshow h.264 was already on there and Transedit pulled it up automatically, which was great.

The video card is an nvidia FX5600XT with hardware accel enabled, but whether the decoder was making use of it, I don't know.

The results are encouraging, as I didn't think this 300i was going to work and was near to giving up on it, but the bare specs of the 300i hardware led me to think it should work.

I shall buy DVBV, to make full use of it.

[Cian]

If you have a Satellite dish on your house and a drop cable handy, you can also buy a Sat card for around €80 and get all the Freesat stations too incl. BBC & ITV.

 

If you have any issues, just give me a shout!

[Farzackerly]

If you have a Satellite dish on your house and a drop cable handy, you can also buy a Sat card for around €80 and get all the Freesat stations too incl. BBC & ITV.

 

If you have any issues, just give me a shout!

I have SS2 and DVBDream for that, but Dream didn't want to know about the 300i.

[Farzackerly]

Right, I've got DVBViewer Pro 4.2.1.0 and it's working fine.

So anyone out there in Ireland with a Pinnacle 300i can use with the European scanning settings, no problems.

It installed and ran seamlessly and represents the best €15 I've spent this year - big thanks to the development and support team for this marvellous piece of work.