CLICK THE FOOTNOTES AND OTHER LINKS
ON THIS WEBPAGE SINCE SOME OF YOUR
QUESTIONS ABOUT THE CREATIVE VIDEO
BLASTER DIGITAL VCR CARD MAY ALSO BE
ANSWERED IN THE FOOTNOTES AND THE
OTHER LINKS AS WELL AS ON THIS PAGE

Oliver W. writes in: "Very cool stuff. Just like your article said: a Tivo-like system for a fraction of the cost." (Oliver uses the Creative Video Blaster Digital VCR card to "drive the computer video into my entertainment system" and he has added an infrared extension cable so he can use the remote control to manage his on-demand personal TV watching.)

Creative Video Blaster Digital VCR card comes with
a remote control, easy-to-follow instructions, and the
personal video recorder (PVR) software is included.

RUEL BUILDS A PC-TV PVR:
HE REALLY LIKES THE CARD
FOR BUILDING / UPGRADING
PC TO A PC-TV PVR SYSTEM

I really like the Creative Video Blaster Digital VCR card. I'm calling this card the # 1 best TV Tuner card in the $100-and-under price range out on the market. After I received the card from the good folks at Creative Labs towards the beginning of 2002, I took several days to really play with this TV card and play with its "personal television" capabilities. [Note: This review was first posted back in March 2002 and I've constantly updated this webpage including changing screenshots and updating the companion footnote page with new information since the first posting -- so bookmark this page as one of your favorites and visit again in the future.] This is a really good card. I've been using this TV card on a daily basis ever since I've received the card and I am even more convinced that this TV card is the most TV-like and the most TV-friendly solution out on the PC market for those folks who want a "personal video recorder" (PVR) solution for watching "personal television" on their own "personal primetime" schedule.

This Creative Video Blaster Digital VCR card is a no-fuss, no-muss, most tivo-like straight-out-of-the-box PVR card available without having to buy any other PVR software. Various users have compared the Creative Video Blaster Digital VCR card to be very close to what you have with a DirecTivo box for watching PVR television. If you want to watch TV on your own schedule and have a "wife-friendly" PVR card, then this is the TV card for you.

I have three TV cards installed on my PC (I use all three TV cards on a daily basis), I've seen other TV cards, and I've tried out other personal video recording (PVR) software solutions for the PC. And I personally think that the Creative Video Blaster Digital VCR card has the best TV-like interface and the best personal television recording capabilities in full-screen mode when compared to the other TV cards and the other PC PVR tivo-type solutions out there in the marketplace. My criteria for being the most TV-like is that any windows-type aspects have to be minimized if not eliminated -- the only time you may see windows-type menus is when you have the TV in a resizeable window. But when you are in full-screen TV mode, the Creative Video Blaster Digital VCR card fully emulates the TV-simplicity that TV watchers expect in any sort of TV device. When you are in full-screen TV mode, you can simply operate the TV as a TV should be operated with a remote control. If you have your PC-TV connected to a regular TV set (via a either a PC-to-TV scan converter or via a video card with a TV OUT port), then you really don't want to see windows on a TV set. You want the TV to look like TV and you want to use a remote control when watching TV. IMHO, the Creative Video Blaster Digital VCR card provides the best TV-like interface that I've seen for a PC-TV system.

The TV show is paused. You can pause & instantly replay
"live TV." The Timeshift Bar appears in the lower left-hand
corner of the screen when you pause or rewind a TV show
or when playing a recorded TV show. You can press "Info"
a few times on the remote control to cycle through different
displays at the bottom of the screen including turning it off.

Personal television capabilities were first introduced with personal video recorder (PVR) set-top boxes (such as TiVo, ReplayTV, and UltimateTV) -- you simply click on the remote control to schedule and record TV shows for watching later, and for pausing and replaying "live" TV. The PVR is light years ahead of the VCR. VCRs are great, but PVRs are much more flexible and much more addicting to use if you are an avid TV watcher who loves to channel surf and who loves watch a lot of television. Don't get me wrong -- I still use a VCR and I don't expect the VCR to go away anytime soon but having a PVR is the way to go for really flexible personal TV watching. And with a PVR, you don't have to worry about whether or not if you have an extra videotape to record with.

Instead of getting a set-top box with PVR capabilities, you can "build" your own "PC-TV" with PVR capabilities by getting the right TV Tuner card that has PVR capabilites -- just install the TV Tuner card into your PC. And, yes, you can make your PC replace any Tivo-like standalone personal video recorder device for a fraction of the cost. So, if you are technically-inclined at all and if you are handy with a screwdriver, then you should find installing a TV Tuner card into a PC to be relatively easy (if not, you are probably better off getting one of the aforementioned PVR set-top boxes). If you already have a PC that you can devote to being a PVR (or if you simply want to have TV and PVR capabilities on your PC), then all you will need to do is get a TV Tuner card like the Creative Video Blaster Digital VCR card and install the card into your PC. I really, really, really like this card. You can use it with regular terrestrial-antenna over-the-air broadcast TV, cable TV, and satellite TV. Install the card, install the software, and you are ready to go. No new subscriptions that you have to pay for -- and since there are no new subscriptions to pay for, then you don't have to worry about any subscription price increases like some PVR services have been imposing on their subscribers. Just watch the TV shows you are already used to watching but with the new personal television capabilites. The power to pause-and-play live TV is so terrific. You can schedule your system to record a show for later playback. This is as close as you can get to those standalone Tivo-like PVR boxes and you get the TV-like and TV-friendly TV-simplicity when you are in full-screen TV mode that you would expect in TV devices. And if you wanted to, you can export your recordings to your harddrive to be transferred to CD for later playback. More later on in this review about TV recording and personal archiving.

INSTALLING AND
USING THE CARD

Creative Video Blaster Digital VCR card
(Click picture for larger view of the card)

When you get the Creative Video Blaster Digital VCR card, what you get is the card which fits into a PCI slot on your PC's motherboard, the handheld remote control (with two AAA batteries which are included), an infrared receiver cable (aka "IR Blaster" cable) for receiving the signals from the handheld remote control, a S-Video-to-RCA cable to connect from the RCA-composite connections on a cable TV box, satellite TV box, or on some other box to the S-Video jack on the card (if you can't do a straight RF cable connection or S-Video connection), a stereo sound cable for connecting RCA-composite stereo cables from another box, and a CD with the installation software. (footnote 1) .

It is all easy to install. There is a simple one-sheet of fold-out instructions (on both the front and back of the sheet) for you to follow. There is a more detailed "manual" in PDF format which will be installed on your PC that you can read using the Adobe Acrobat reader program. So, what do you do?

1. Open PC Case
2. Install card all the way into PCI slot on motherboard
   (be sure that you have inserted the card all the way into the slot or else the motherboard may not recognize the card)
3. Close up PC Case
4. Hook up TV antenna (or cable for cable TV or satellite TV) and then hook up the infrared receiver cable and place the infrared receiver cable's sensor somewhere near your PC monitor since that is where you are most likely going to be pointing your remote control
5. Turn on PC, install software and configure the card
6. Point your remote control at the sensor
7. Press Guide button on remote control and manually set up the channels you want to watch
8. Start watching TV

Note if you have a cable box / satellite box: You may want to click HERE for important information if want to control a cable / satellite TV set-top box via the IR Blaster cable. Generally, if you have a cable TV set-top box or a satellite set-top box, or if you have a digital cable or digital satellite set-top box, you will have to connect your set-top box to the Creative Video Blaster Digital VCR card by connecting the coaxial cable or the audio-video cables between the box and the card -- and then place the IR Blaster cable on your box (put it by the infrared sensor on the box) to control the channels on the box using the remote control for the TV card and so you don't have to use the remote control for the box. If you want to enable the IR Blaster to control a cable / satellite TV box, then you may have to do a little extra work by going into windows and using your NOTEPAD program to edit the BT1.INI file in the C:\Program Files\Creative\Videoblaster Digital VCR\ directory to change the line "IrEnabled=0" to "IrEnabled=1" but without the quotation marks and then run the TV card's configuration setup program to change your tuner input selection -- use the wizard and not the advanced setup when using the configuration setup program so you can get the dialog for setting up the remote. Again, please click HERE for important information if want to control a cable / satellite TV set-top box via the IR Blaster cable. If you can't get the IR Blaster to control your cable TV box, and if you can receive regular standard cable without a box on a regular TV set, then try setting up a connection without the box to the Creative Video Blaster Digital VCR card to get standard basic cable television where you have to specify "cable" in the configuration program. (You can also click here for another note on satellite TV and PC-TV cards in response to an email from "Sanjay.")

6-foot infrared receiver cable (the IR Blaster cable)
and the SVideo-to-RCA-composite adapter cable.
If you want to extend the length of the infrared
receiver cable, then you may want to look into
getting a 10-foot long 8-pin mini-din extension
cable or two like the cables made for the Mac.

If you don't have a cable / satellite box, you
can use the IR cable and sensor for remote
control with antenna TV and basic cable TV

When you boot up your computer the first time after you insert the card into your PC, you may be asked for the driver for the card and you may have to tell windows to look in the D:\CTRUN directory on the installation CD (where "D:" is the letter for your CD drive) or you can skip that and later have the software automatically install the driver and the rest of the software for you. When you install the software, you will be presented with an installation wizard leading you through the installation process (even if you have already installed the driver, the installation process will install the driver again). (footnote 2)

After you have the software installed, you should expect your PC and windows to start up as they normally would. As a default setting, the TV software loads on windows startup but is in background until you activate the TV (you can change the settings in the config program so the program doesn't load on windows startup). You press the red "Menu" button on the remote control to activate the TV. You should go into full-screen mode where at first you will be asked to specify the TV channels (you have to type in the number and the name of each channel using your PC's keyboard). After you have done that, then you can just click through the channels and do some TV watching.

YOU ARE ALWAYS WATCHING
TIME-SHIFTED TV WHICH IS ON
AT LEAST A 1-SECOND DELAY

The TV picture is pretty good. And you also get stereo sound. The caveat is that your TV picture is only as good as the TV reception that you can get. So if you get good reception via cable TV or satellite TV, then you should have a good TV picture when using this card (or any other TV Tuner card for that matter). If you only have an antenna, be sure you have the antenna pointed in the right direction for the best reception. If you don't have your antenna pointed or oriented in the right direction to receive the best reception, then the picture will be not so good or worse.

When watching TV with this card, you are actually watching the time-shift TV recording which is ALWAYS at least one second behind actual live TV. (footnote 3) The card is ALWAYS making the time-shift recording so you can immediately pause and play the "live" TV. (To those who are thinking about hooking up to a videogame console, please see footnote 3 for a warning.) If you pause the TV for a moment (or more), then you would be several moments (or more) behind actual live TV. You can press a "Live TV" button on the remote control to skip back ahead to "live" TV which will be on a one-second delay if you were to compare watching TV on a regular TV set. The time-shifted TV picture is pretty good.

THE TV-FRIENDLY MENU
AND THE REMOTE CONTROL

The menu interface in full-screen mode for the Creative Video Blaster Digital VCR card is apparently made for use with a real TV set without the typical windows-type menus. When you have the TV in a regular window, you do get the usual windows-type menu pull-down selections that you can access for operating the program. When you are in full-screen mode, you can activate the menu which pops up in the middle of the screen and through which you navigate using the handheld remote control. The interface is great to use in full-screen mode. And that's good. Using the Creative Video Blaster Digital VCR card would be really great if you have PC-to-TV scan converter or a video card with a TV OUT port so you can hook up an actual TV set (to use as a monitor) to your PC -- you will need to get a either a PC-to-TV scan converter or a new video card with TV OUT in order to hook up a TV set to your PC. If you want to extend the length of the six-foot long infrared receiver cable (the IR Blaster cable) so you can still use the remote control by putting the infrared sensor on your TV set or on your entertainment system where either one could possibly be sitting far away from your PC, then you may want to look into getting a 10-foot long 8-pin mini-din extension cable or two such as those extension cables made for the Mac. Of course, you can just use your regular PC monitor for watching TV. Nonetheless, whether watching TV on the PC monitor or with a connection to a regular TV set, you get a pretty good personal TV watching experience using this card.

Menu that shows up in the middle
of the TV screen when you press
menu button on the remote control

Normally, when you press the red "Menu" button, you will get a menu in the middle of the screen where the selections are for "Recorded Shows," "Watch Live TV," "Scheduler," "Options," "Standby" and "Quit." Except for "Watch Live TV" and "Quit," those menu selections lead to various sub-menus for you to go through. Suffice it to say that the menu system is not difficult to understand and not difficult to navigate.

Similarly, the handheld remote control for the Creative Video Blaster Digital VCR card is relatively self-intuitive as to its use. In the top section of the remote control, you have the typical remote control navigation circle with the channel up and down buttons, the volume up and down buttons, with an "Enter" button in the middle of that circle. Above that you have the red "Menu" button, with two buttons to the left for "Guide" (currently for a simple menu for changing channels) and "Back" (to go back to the previous channel you were watching, or to back out of a menu), and with two buttons to the right for watching "Live TV" (if you don't want to watch a time-shifted recording anymore) and "Favs" (for quickly going to your favorite cable channels instead of wading through 90+ channels on regular cable TV).

It is with the "Guide" button that you would set up your "active" channels that you would normally cycle through when you are channel surfing -- you can set certain channels as "hidden" that you don't cycle through when you are channel surfing but instead you can only get to any "hidden" channels by either pressing the "Guide" button or by punching in the channel number on the remote control. You can consider setting the channels here to be your master set of channels.

And then you have the "Favs" button that you can very quickly, in an on-the-fly fashion, set any subset of channels as your favorites that you can cycle through when you click the channel up and down buttons. This is for those times when you only want to surf through a very limited number of channels. I really like the "Favs" button because you can use it to set your channel surfing to cycle only through your favorite channels skipping all of the other channels. Very nice.

Below the navigation circle is number keypad so you can quickly punch in a channel number. And then you have buttons for "Play," "Pause," "Stop," "Replay," "Skip," "Rew" (Rewind), "FF" (Fast Forward), and "Record On/Off." Those buttons are pretty much self-intuitive as to their use. For instance, as you may guess, the "Skip" button lets you skip ahead 30 seconds so you can skip past a commercial (there's a slight freeze-frame pause while the it moves quickly ahead 30 seconds). The "Replay" button is very nice -- you can call it a ten-second rewind-and-play button, i.e., it immediately goes back ten seconds and replays from that point of whatever TV show you are watching. And you will have to note that when you rewind and fast forward, there are several speeds for quickly going backward or skipping ahead: 3x, 15x, 60x, and 300x. Tap the "Rew" or "FF" to go through the different speeds -- tap once to get the 3x speed, tap again to move faster to the 15x speed, etc. You can also do slow motion by pressing the "Pause" button and then tapping on the "Rew" or the "FF" buttons for slo-mo speeds of 1/8, 1/4, and 1/2 speeds (you can also simply tap the "Pause" button again to move ahead frame by frame). Using the slow-motion capability is great for when you are watching sports and you want to see a certain play in extreme slow motion.

When watching "Live TV," press "Info" on the remote control to pull up
the info status bar with the timeshift bar & the current time. When watching
a recording of a TV show, you will be able to see the title & description of
the recording. You can keep pressing "Info" to cycle through the different
"Info" displays at the bottom of the screen. Here, the TV is 19 seconds
behind actual live TV because Ruel did a short rewind of the TV show.

Towards the bottom end of the remote control, there are two more rows of buttons with one row of buttons for "Info," "Device," "Mute," and "Bookmark" and another row of buttons for "Find," "A," "B," and "C." Pressing the "Info" button gives you an "Info" status display at the bottom of the screen that tells you the time (I really like this) and also tells you the name of the recording you may be watching (if there is no name, then you are watching "live" TV). You can cycle through the different "Info" status displays at the bottom of the screen (including turning off the "Info" status display) if you keep pressing the "Info" button on the remote control. FYI, if you simply press the "Enter" button in the middle of the navigation circle, then you will see the number and name of the channel you are watching on the screen. Also, if you paused the "live" TV or if you are watching a recording, there will be a little measuring bar in the lower left corner of the screen telling you how far back in seconds (or in minutes and seconds) you are from actual "live" TV or at what time mark you are in the recording. The "Device" button is not being used for anything at the moment. "Mute" of course mutes the sound.

You can use "bookmarks" and a "thumbnail" map in
a TV show to navigate to a point within the TV show.

"Bookmark" will let you set bookmarks within a recording. You can even set bookmarks within the current session of your "live" TV watching since you are really watching time-shifted "live" TV. This can be handy for setting bookmarks within a show that you can easily go back to -- without having to hunt for the exact point in the show. You can also use something called "Thumbnails" as another navigation aid within a recording. Press the "B" button while watching a recording and the screen will fill up with a multi-block grid of small thumbnail screens showing sequential scenes throughout the recording. Navigate through the thumbnails to where you may want to start watching if you want to skip ahead using this visual thumbnail map of a recording.

The "Find" button is suppose to help you find channels but I haven't really used that button yet. The "A," "B," and "C," buttons are also useful when going through the menu interface when in full-screen mode because you may be presented with selections such as for deleting (or "recycling") a recording by pressing one of the letter buttons.

There is a software remote control that is graphically represented by a remote control on the screen (usually minimized) when you are back in regular windows. The graphical onscreen remote control has the same layout as the actual handheld remote control. I find myself using the handheld remote control instead of the graphical remote control.

WATCHING PERSONAL TELEVISION
AND PERSONAL VIDEO RECORDING

You can watch TV in resolutions of 640x480, 320x240, 160x120, and in FULL-SCREEN mode even if the actual screen resolution of your monitor is much larger. For those keyboard-and-mouse users, you can switch back and forth between a TV window and full-screen mode by double-clicking the screen / window with your mouse. If you switch from 160x120 to full-screen mode, use the double-click method or click the maximize icon. If you switch from the smallest resolution at 160x120 to full-screen mode using the handheld remote control and the middle menu interface, the picture may become a little pixelated (not as clear) -- just use your mouse to double-click back and forth to clear up the picture. This very minor problem doesn't occur if you go back and forth between full-screen mode and the other resolutions (if you use your mouse all of the time, then you shouldn't see this problem at all). Most of the time, I actually find myself using the remote control to simply go between full-screen mode and standby mode (no TV on the screen at all when in standby) instead of switching between resolutions.

Screenshot of the Scheduler menu of various
TV shows that are scheduled to be recorded.

You can set the "Scheduler" to easily record shows at any time on any channel that you can receive. (Also, click here for IPG / EPG information.) I've found that by using the Scheduler that although you may become more selective as to what you watch that you may still watch a lot of TV even if you focus in on a very few number of channels because you can schedule TV shows to be recorded whenever they are broadcasted during the day, at night, late night, or over night -- and that can add up to a lot of recordings waiting for you to watch them whenever you want to watch them. Anyways, you can either set a one-time recording, or you can set a "Group" recording which can automatically record on either a daily basis, a weekly basis on a certain day of the week, or on an every weekday basis (such as Monday through Friday only). You simply set up the times and enter in the names of the shows (and you can edit the names of the shows later). Group recordings are normally "recycled" (deleted) to free up disk space whenever disk space is needed. But you can turn a group recording into a "Keeper" that will not be recycled unless you manually choose to recycle the recording.

You can manually schedule recordings where you can set
the time, channel, and the recording quality for a TV show
that you want to record. You can also schedule individual
or automatic group (weekly & daily) recordings. (You can
also use an EPG / IPG to schedule TV show recordings.)

You can also press the "Record On/Off" button on the remote control to manually record whatever show you are watching right now for an impromptu unscheduled recording (note that any impromptu unscheduled recording would show up as an "Untitled" show in the Scheduler but you can edit that to put in the actual name of the show). The manual recording using the remote control is for 30 minutes by default unless you press the "Record On/Off" button again for additional 30 minutes -- press the "Record On/Off" button again and again if you want to further extend the recording in 30 minute increments or use the left and right buttons to extend your recording in 5 minute increments. To stop recording, just press the "Record On/Off" button and then press the "Stop" button. Manually scheduling and recording is easy with the Creative Video Blaster Digital VCR card. (You can click here for an unofficial IPG / EPG if you want to be able to click on online TV schedule listings to automatically schedule TV show recordings instead of manually scheduling the times and names of the TV shows you want to record.)

For whenever you are watching a previously recorded TV show, you can be record yet another TV show at the same time. Let me repeat that for emphasis: YOU CAN WATCH A RECORDING OF A PREVIOUSLY RECORDED TV SHOW *WHILE* YOU ARE RECORDING A NEW TV SHOW AT THE SAME TIME.

Screenshot of the Recorded Shows menu. You can go into
each group of different TV show series to select episodes
to watch. You can also go into "Keepers" section to select
from different individual TV show recordings to watch.

With regard to the quality of recordings, You can set a recording quality setting to Best (SP), Better (LP), Good (EP), Economy" (XP), and Custom. The recording quality settings determine the quality of your picture and how much disk space you use on your harddrive. I suggest you keep the default recording quality setting (under Options from the main menu) set to Best (SP) so when you are watching "live" TV (which is always on a one-second delay) that you get the best picture possible otherwise you may notice some pixelation in the screen using the lower settings. Use the lower settings when you are in the Scheduler setting up recording schedules for individual shows which you may want to record and that you may want to archive to CD or DVD (see below for more on exporting to .MPG files and archiving to disc) -- if you are NOT going to do any archiving then keep the recording quality setting on Best (SP) when you are in the Scheduler. You have to also keep in mind that the video on a PC monitor is much sharper than what you can see on a regular TV set. So, if you have a regular TV set hooked up to your PC-TV via a PC-to-TV scan converter or via a video card with the TV OUT port, then you can get away with the lower settings if you primarily plan on using the regular TV set as a monitor and not complain about how dull or pixelated a low setting may look on a PC monitor. You can also set a playback quality setting to "Fastest" or "Best" (note that the playback setting is different from the recording setting). On my system, I've found the "Fastest" playback setting to be a good setting to use when playing back a previously recorded show while also recording another show at the same time. Otherwise, I would set the playback setting back to "Best." You will have to experiment with the settings yourself to see what is appropriate for your particular system.

You can also pull up ALL recorded TV shows at one time
from all groups (for multiple recordings of a TV series)
and from keepers (for one-time individually recorded TV
shows) to select a show to watch. (In this example, "The
X-Files" episode was recorded at the "Economy" setting.)

HERE'S THE NITTY GRITTY ON
RECORDING AND ARCHIVING
YOUR PERSONAL VIDEOS

Please keep in mind whenever you read anything about the Creative Video Blaster Digital VCR card that the card is very successful at what it is officially sold for: Namely, the Creative Video Blaster Digital VCR card is excellent for recording TV on a PC. If you want to do anything substantially more with those recordings beyond the PC, like making DVDs and SVCDs, then you are pretty much on your own. But don't be discouraged by that since you can definitely attempt to do a lot more with the recordings beginning with the official MPEG2 export program included with the card. Creative Labs is giving you the keys to help you to at least open the MPEG2 door. And, now, you can attempt to do the rest.

However, before you think about doing anything like making DVDs and SVCDs, you should keep in mind that you can also simply keep your recordings under the control of the PVR software for the Creative Video Blaster Digital VCR card instead of exporting the videos to MPEG2 files. If you want to export the videos to MPEG2 files, you should seriously consider simply keeping the exported MPEG2 files (see below) on your PC's harddrive and setting up an on-demand instant-access video library on your PC's harddrive. There are a lot of people who keep their videos on their harddrives and those folks set up their video files in sophisticated catalogs on their PCs. You can do the same thing using a frontend software system like the myHTPC frontend which can provide you with easy access to a catalog of your video files and also let you click a button to pull up the TV from the Creative Video Blaster Digital VCR card in full-screen mode. Also, keep in mind that after you do the exporting that any subsequent conversions, editing, and burning to DVD or SVCD can take up your time. Exporting one video to one MPEG2 file is quick and easy to do, but if you have a *LOT* of videos sitting on your harddrive, it can very time consuming to export *ALL* of those multiple videos, and then convert *ALL* of those videos to the proper format for DVD or SVCD, and then edit *ALL* of those videos, and then burn *ALL* of those videos to DVD or SVCD.

I can tell you that I have a *LOT* videos on my harddrive and it can be huge job if I wanted to really put *ALL* of those videos on SVCD or DVD. Exporting videos to MPEG2 files is easy and quick to do. It's everything else that can really take up your time. So, think about the time you will have to spend on this sort of activity as you learn about how to export videos and learn about what else you can do with the videos. As you read this section and read footnote #5, you will see that I take the easy route by either leaving the videos on a harddrive or making simple archival copies to CD (but not SVCD or VCD). For me, the most time-consuming activities that I'm willing to devote to the videos are DIVX conversion / compression of the videos to save on disc space and maybe a "smart rendering" of a video if I run into a pesky glitch on a video. Keep reading this section (and also read footnote #5) and you will see what I'm talking about as well as touch on some tips for if you really want to burn DVDs or SVCDs.

As for making the video files, let's first look at how the Creative Video Blaster Digital VCR card records in the first place before we then step into the starting blocks when we can try to do something with exported MPEG2 video files. The working video files, when TV shows are first being recorded, consist of a lot of sequential segmented .BTS video data files which are saved in subdirectories within a "MPG" directory and those files can be "exported" to .MPG (MPEG2) video files that you can save to your harddrive and then transfer to some sort of archival storage. What I've been finding is that the working files for ninety minutes of video, consisting of a 1-hour show and a 30-minute show, takes up 2.8 gigabytes of space using the "Best" recording setting. Add about roughly two gigabytes for an hour of time-shifted "live" TV (note, you can make the time-shifting a much longer period of time or as little as five minutes). One word of advice: Don't ever manually delete the MPG directory, its subdirectories, or its files -- otherwise you will most likely lose the ability to watch and record "live" TV -- just "recycle" the shows from within the TV program. I know that just about every PC user gets into the mood to "clean up" his or her harddrive by exploring around the harddrive using Windows Explorer and deleting files in order to free up space (hey, I'm like that too and that's why I'm telling you this). If you get into the mood of "cleaning up" your harddrive and decide to delete the MPG directory and / or its files, you will most likely have to reinstall the software if you want to get your TV working correctly again. Instead, you should do any deletion or "recycling" of the video files using the Creative Video Blaster Digital VCR software.

For your own personal archival storage purposes, you can use the DVREXPORT.EXE program included with the Creative Video Blaster Digital VCR card to export / save your files to your harddrive and then copy them to CD or DVD storage discs if you have a CD-RW or DVD-RW drive to write the discs with. (Be sure to get the update of the software for the Creative Video Blaster Digital VCR card that includes an updated DVREXPORT.EXE.) Exporting files is easy to do and doesn't take up too much time. However, this simple exporting and copying of the files is for archival storage of the files either to the harddrive or to a CD or DVD archival storage disc. You can play the exported .MPG files (and other .MPG files) off of the harddrive or off of the CD / DVD archival storage disc by importing the files using the Creative Video Blaster Digital VCR software or by directly playing the files using PowerDVD (or another DVD software player) as mentioned in the next few sentences. Note that the exported files are huge in size. (footnote 4) A 1-hour episode of "Enterprise" recorded at the "Best" setting was exported to three files of approximately 640 megabytes each -- those files would fill up three CDs or you could store all of the files on one DVD disc. Roughly speaking, a half-hour is a little less than one gigabyte at the "Best" setting -- so, you can do the math using half-hour increments. In the DVREXPORT.EXE program, you can change the size of the exported MPEG2 files, by clicking File and then clicking Preferences from the menu bar. You may want to pick "Unlimited" if you don't want the exported MPEG2 file to be split up. You can use DVD player software -- I recommend using PowerDVD -- to play the exported files in sequential order if you have all of the exported files on the harddrive or off of a storage data disc, but if you play the exported files off a CD storage data disc then you may have to change the CD at the end of an exported file if you have to divide up a large exported video file between different CDs.

(FYI, PowerDVD software is included with many DVD drives, video cards, and new PCs -- but if you didn't get PowerDVD with your DVD drive, video card, or new PC, then you can click here to get the PowerDVD software. For those asking about WinDVD, I've had some success with WinDVD but WinDVD could not play all of my recordings. WinDVD is similarly included with many DVD drives, video cards, and new PCs -- you can click here if you want to get WinDVD. I personally prefer PowerDVD over WinDVD because PowerDVD can play *ALL* of my video files from the Creative Video Blaster Digital VCR card, and just about any other video file for that matter. Meanwhile, WinDVD may choke on some files. NVDVD may similarly not be able to play all recordings.)

Please note that PowerDVD plays the exported video files flawlessly without any need for additional software or codecs. However, if you don't want to use PowerDVD (or WinDVD) to play the exported video files, then you can click here or here or here to get a MPEG2 codec (look for the mpeg2codec_installer.zip file) if you want to try using Windows Media Player to play the exported files. Or you may wish to use the shareware Elecard MPEG2 Player from Moonlight which is recommended by Bill Ingram (note: a small 3x3 box logo appears in the Elecard MPEG2 Player from Moonlight until you pay for the shareware registration fee).

TO NEWBIES: Do not be confused by the screen resolution
numbers on this chart. You can always watch in FULL-SCREEN
mode with the correct aspect ratio (even if your PC's monitor is
using a higher screen resolution & without having to manually
change your monitor's screen settings). The various numbers
found on this chart are for video quality & recording purposes.

Use the Best (SP) (640x480) and Better (LP) (480x480) settings in
FULL-SCREEN mode (no matter how big your monitor resolution is)
and you should have an excellent picture in FULL-SCREEN mode.
NOTE: If my monitor is at 1024x768, I can still watch the videos in
FULL-SCREEN although the video was made at a smaller resolution.

Recording quality settings of Best (SP), Better (LP), Good (EP), and
Economy (XP) use the same terminology found with VHS videotape
recording settings. Note that 1/2 hour at the Good (EP) setting should
fit on a CD -and- about 2 hours 25 minutes (maybe 2 1/2 hours) at the
Best (SP) setting should fit on DVD for archiving personal recordings.

SUGGESTION: Try the Better (LP) or Good (EP) settings if you want
to make recordings to later convert for playable SVCDs & DVDs.

 
What I have been doing with regard to making discs of videos is to simply copy the exported video .MPG files (without any other conversion) of half-hour TV shows to CD and adding a simple AUTORUN.INF file to the disc to automatically run PowerDVD to play the .MPG off of the CD when you insert the CD into the drive -- but this can only be played on the PC and NOT on a standalone DVD player. I've been exporting half-hour TV shows, which I set to be recorded at the Good (EP) setting, to .MPG files resulting in a file that is about 550 megabytes (more or less) in size that can easily fit onto a CD. Note that you will have to experiment with the aforementioned recording quality settings of Best (SP), Better (LP), Good (EP), Economy (XP), and Custom to optimize the size and quality of your recordings to fit the CD -- Good (EP) should fit a half-hour show on CD. For each show you schedule, be sure to go into the Scheduler and check the quality settings of each show that you think you will be archiving to CD. I mostly try not to bother to edit the files such as taking out commercials nowadays -- just copy the file over to disc. It can be a lot of extra work and very time-consuming to do anything else to the video (unless if I really want to squeeze an hour-long show for archiving to a CD for the PC -- see footnote 5). Simple exporting of video files, copying to disc, and adding a simple AUTORUN.INF file to the disc is the quick and easy way to put video on disc that you can play on your PC. If you have a DVD burner drive, then you should be able to set the recording quality to Best (SP) for longer TV shows / movies and simply copying the exported video .MPG file to the larger DVD and adding the AUTORUN.INF file to the disc to automatically play the .MPG video file on the disc when you insert the disc into the drive on your PC. However, again, this would be for play on a PC since the CD or DVD in this situation would be a data disc for a PC -- this would NOT be a playable video disc for a standalone DVD player.

As for the AUTORUN.INF file that would also be put on the disc with the video file, for Windows 98, I was using an AUTORUN.INF file that specifies using the PowerDVD program -- you can click here to see the text commands in the AUTORUN.INF file specifying PowerDVD that you can download but save it using "AUTORUN.INF" as the filename and be sure to edit that .INF file with notepad to change the actual name of the exported .MPG file. If you want to automatically play multiple .MPG files off of a CD / DVD storage disc, then look at another AUTORUN.INF example file also for Windows 98 by clicking on this link. If you can get WinDVD to play the files (I've found WinDVD couldn't play all of my video files), then you have to change the program (and its directory location) in this first example of the AUTORUN.INF file and you may have to specify that the MPEG2 video file on the CD is on a particular drive by specifying D:\ (or whatever is the letter for your CD drive or DVD drive) at the beginning of the filename for the MPEG2 video file. For this setup under Windows 98, you would simply burn the video file and this particular AUTORUN.INF file to the disc.

For Windows XP, I couldn't get the above AUTORUN.INF example to work at all. So, for WinXP, I have to use a different format for the AUTORUN.INF file which activates an AUTO.BAT which then runs the video file. I think this different AUTORUN.INF and AUTO.BAT setup is maybe a little easier to use than the format mentioned in the preceding paragraph. The AUTORUN.INF file that I would use under WinXP would have the following two simple text lines in the AUTORUN.INF file:

TVHolic (previously known as TV-EPG) is a XMLTV-based EPG that developed a little bit of a following. You can get TVHolic by clicking HERE and downloading the TVHolic.msi file. Prior to installing the TVHolic.msi file, you will also need to install Microsoft .NET on your PC. You can click HERE or HERE to get the Microsoft .NET Framework software. After installing Microsoft .NET, then run the TVHolic.msi file to install the program. TVHolic comes with the XMLTV downloader, but if you need a new one then you can click here to get the latest one -- you may want to stick with the one that comes with TVHolic if it is working okay. You may have to reboot your PC after installing TVHolic. Then try running TVHolic. If you get an error message that says something like the program is not associated with a file, then re-run the TVHolic.msi file again and specify repair.

The other program you will need for TVHolic and most of the other XMLTV-based EPG is Hocky's X-EPG which is a program for interfacing the EPG with the scheduler for the Creative Video Blaster Digital VCR card. (Note that Hocky's X-EPG is "donationware" meaning if you use the X-EPG software, then please consider making a donation to Hocky via the X-EPG website to compensate Hocky for all of the hard work he has done in developing X-EPG.) So, in addition to getting TVHolic and the Microsoft .NET Framework software, you should also get X-EPG.

After installation, when you are able to run TVHolic for the first time, TVHolic will most likely tell you that it needs "Guide data" and that it will attempt to download the XMLTV data. If you get an error message in the DOS window when the XMLTV downloader attempts to run, then you may want to use this Run_update_TV_listings_-_US.bat file (right click the link and save the target file with the same exact name with the blanks in the name) to replace the .bat file with the same name in the C:\Program Files\TVHolic\xmltv directory. If you use this file, you may want to change the parameter of the number of days (currently set to 3) to whatever number you want, but you may want to put in 8 days at most since I found that anything higher seemed to cause TVHolic to crash. I found that the original .bat file that comes with TVHolic may not work properly. So, I hardcoded the parameters into the .bat file. There are two timezone settings in the .bat file. You may want to change the second timezone setting and leave the first line alone since TVHolic is going to overwrite that first line to say that you are in the MST Mountain Standard Time Zone -- the second timezone setting will take precedent. Note that sometimes not all channels are available when the Guide data is downloaded. They will probably be available the next time you have to download the Guide data. Also, if you get a bad download or an incomplete download, then you may have to delete the TVData.xml and TVDatapre.xml files in the C:\Program Files\TVHolic\xmltv directory and then start over again in downloading the Guide data.

X-EPG dialog panel (click the image for full view).
Before pressing the Schedule button, click the box
to restart / reset the Creative Video Blaster Digital
VCR card's software to put the recording schedule
EPG information into the software's Scheduler.

As previously mentioned, you will also need to install Hocky's X-EPG which would catch the .TVPI file that is generated by TVHolic. Once Hocky's X-EPG gets the .TVPI file, then it takes the scheduling information from that file and sends it to the Scheduler for the Creative Video Blaster Digital VCR card. The scheduling will not show up in the Scheduler unless if you restart the software for the Creative Video Blaster Digital VCR card -- which means you will have to check the box for "Reset DVCR on Schedule" when you see the X-EPG dialog panel on the screen. The restart / reset should work if you are using WinXP, but if you are using Win98 then you may have to manually turn off the software for the Creative Video Blaster Digital VCR card and then manually turn it back on. Or instead of using Hocky's X-EPG, you could instead use TVHolic with the Asha perl script which doesn't require restarting the software for the Creative Video Blaster Digital VCR card. You may want to check out Kmallick2000's instructions for setting up the Asha perl script with TVHolic (previously know as TV-EPG).

After you have TVHolic installed and the Guide data downloaded, then you can go into the program to use the EPG. Some of the navigation commands include: "F" jumps to the next day, "B" goes backwards a day until you get back to Now (current time and day), "N" brings up the navigation control, the Home key jumps forward a time block, the End key jumps back a time block, the Enter key will select a TV show to give you the option to schedule a recording of the TV show (or to cancel a recording), the arrow keys will let you navigate the grid, and the Backspace key will bring up the TVHolic menu.

myHTPC EPG

Another XMLTV-compatible EPG worth considering
is using the EPG in the myHTPC Frontend Software.
You can CLICK HERE for Robogeek's tips for setting
up the myHTPC EPG with a PERL script for use with
the Creative Video Blaster Digital VCR card.

A XMLTV-compatible EPG worth considering is the EPG in the myHTPC Frontend Software. You can click HERE for more information about the myHTPC Frontend Software. And you can click HERE for Robogeek's information and tips for setting up a PERL script for use with the myHTPC EPG and the Creative Video Blaster Digital VCR card. You may find using myHTPC to be worthwhile since it provides a very nice "Frontend" application to hide the rest of windows from your display screen. Setting up the PERL script may be tricky for *NEW* users, but take your time and follow Robogeek's instructions if you want to follow Robogeek's method for setting up an EPG.

DIGIGUIDE EPG

DIGIGUIDE had U.S. coverage which was suspended
but users in the U.S. can use XMLTV to get TV listings
for use with DIGIGUIDE. FYI, you can change the color
scheme for DIGIGUIDE. Ruel uses the Kiosk_Like and
EXTREME_XP color schemes. To make the TEXT FONTS
LARGER, turn on the "Description Pane" (under "View"
on the Menu Bar), do a CTRL-plus (+) or CTRL-minus (-)
using the plus & minus keys on keyboard number pad.

And then there is DigiGuide which is a very good EPG. For a short period of time, GipsyMedia (DigiGuide's parent company based in the U.K.) did provide U.S. coverage for DigiGuide until May 16, 2003. Then recently beginning in December 2004, GipsyMedia partnered with the MyTVinfo company in the United States to provide a U.S. version of DigiGuide with U.S. television listings. You can click here to get the U.S. version of DigiGuide for $49.95 for a one-year subscription. However, if you choose to use the U.K. version of DigiGuide but want to have U.S. TV listings, then you'll have to use a XMLTV-DataDirect procedure (as described below) as a substitute for providing TV listings in DigiGuide. Note that the cost of the U.K. version of DigiGuide is £8.99 for a one-year subscription which is approximately $16.93 per year according to the Yahoo currency converter but you would have to do an additional set-up of the XMLTV-DataDirect procedure to get the listings. So, if you are in the U.S., then you are better off getting the U.S. version of DigiGuide. DigiGuide is well worth the price whether you use the U.K. version or the U.S. version. The DigiGuide software is great in terms of its functionality and is available as a 30-day trial demo if you want to check out the software. If you can't get TVHolic with X-EPG to work, then you may want to try using DigiGuide using the installation procedure described below.

[ WHAT FOLLOWS IS WHAT WORKS FOR ME when using the U.K. version of DigiGuide. I've been using this procedure because I have been using the U.K. version of DigiGuide long before the U.S. version came out. If you get the new U.S. version of DigiGuide, then you don't have to use the XMLTV-DataDirect method described here. New version builds of XMLTV2DG now include sample .BAT files that you may want to use. So, you may want to follow any installation defaults, instructions, whatever else the Fatbird website tells you, and the sample .BAT files that are now included in XMLTV2DG. Nonetheless, I can tell you that what follows is what works for me to get TV listings into DigiGuide using the additional XMLTV and XMLTV2DG software programs. After you get the TV listings into DigiGuide, then you have to get DigiGuide to talk to the Creative Video Blaster Digital VCR card and that is described AFTER the below discussion about how I've been using XMLTV and XMLTV2DG to get TV listings into DigiGuide. ]

NEW ZAP2IT DataDirect Information: If you are a U.S. user who is using the U.K. version of DigiGuide, as well as getting that version of the DigiGuide software, you will also have to register with the new Zap2it DataDirect service at http://labs.zap2it.com (CLICK HERE) where you will configure your channel listings that you would be downloading from Zap2it DataDirect. XMLTV is migrating from "scraping" the Zap2it website to instead officially downloading TV listings data from the Zap2it DataDirect service as of XMLTV version 0.5.31. So, when you register at the Zap2it DataDirect service, use
TGYM-ZKOC-BUTV
as the certificate code for all XMLTV users. The XMLTV program (with the help of the XMLTV2DG program) will download and set up the TV listings data for DigiGuide. Zap2it DataDirect is a free service but you will have to answer a survey of questions every three months. Your Zap2it DataDirect subscription membership will have a 3 months expiration date. So, after you answer the survey questions then your subscription is extended 3 months. The survey questions are not intrusive but are instead questions to help Zap2it understand the users who are using PVRs and EPGs. Also, you will be getting a great super fast service with the cooperation of the Zap2it folks for free and which is better than how XMLTV used to slowly "scrape" data off of the Zap2it website.

In order to use DigiGuide with XMLTV, you will have to get the XMLTV downloader by clicking here. (Again, if you are a U.S. user who wants to use DigiGuide, you can ignore this XMLTV discussion and instead simply get the U.S. version of DigiGuide to avoid doing this extra XMLTV procedures.) Install DigiGuide (if it is not already installed on your PC) and then make a new directory named XMLTV in the DigiGuide directory so that you have the C:\Program Files\DigiGuide\XMLTV directory. Also make a new directory under that named C:\Program Files\DigiGuide\XMLTV\.xmltv -- that's a period "." right before the second "xmltv" in the directory name. Extract the files XMLTV.EXE and XMLTV.DTD and TV_GRAB_NA_DD.TXT to the C:\Program Files\DigiGuide\XMLTV directory. And you will also need to get Russ Freeman's XMLTV2DG software by clicking here (scroll to end of Russ Freeman's Fatbird page and click the link for the installer) and install the software to the C:\Program Files\DigiGuide\XMLTV directory which is where I have all of my DigiGuide-XMLTV files stored. (The XMLTV2DG installer defaults to a C:\Program Files\XMLTV directory and if you want to use that directory then you would have to change all of the directory settings mentioned in this paragraph.) FYI, Russ works for GipsyMedia (which is the publisher of DigiGuide) but he independently provides the XMLTV2DG program at his FatBird website. Then download this XMLTV-DigiGuide-US.bat batch file and this XMLTV_US_DST_Profile.txt profile import file and this CATEGORY-MAP.DAT category map file -- do a right click on each link and save target to the C:\Program Files\DigiGuide\XMLTV directory. Then download this TV_GRAB_NA_DD.CONF configuration text file which you will have to edit with NOTEPAD to insert your Zap2it DataDirect username and password (do a right click on the link and save target to the C:\Program Files\DigiGuide\XMLTV\.xmltv directory). For the XMLTV-DigiGuide-US.bat batch file, you may also want to change the parameter for the number of days to download. The batch file is currently set for 12 days to download. (You could edit the batch file to do as little as 1 day or as many as 12 -- or maybe even 14 days.) Run that .BAT file to download your XMLTV television listings to get 12 days of TV listings starting with today.

(Also, here is my other XMLTV-DigiGuide-US-semi-daily.bat batch file for adding 5 days of TV listings to DigiGuide when I download new listings every 2 to 4 days where my current listings stop after about 6 to 12 days from today -- general rule for me is to run this semi-daily batch file after every 2 days).

In the unlikely event that your cable provider is not showing up in the Zap2it DataDirect site, then you may want to select DirecTV or DISH satellite TV, pick your channels and then later renumber those channels in the left-side channel column in DigiGuide -- right click the channel and select Change Channel Number. The .BAT file will also set up the data for use with DigiGuide. You will know that the .BAT file has completed its tasks when DigiGuide is run and appears on the screen. Then in DigiGuide, you will have to click "Tools" on the menu bar, then click "Change Your Channels", and then under "Get Personal Providers" scroll down the list to pick "All Independent Channels", and then pick your channels that you want to have in DigiGuide. You may have to press F5 or click "File" on the menu bar and then "Get New Listings" to update the DigiGuide EPG grid with the TV schedule listings. Also, in the left column where the channels should be, if you don't see any channel numbers, do a right-click on a channel, then click "Change channel number..." on the popup menu dialog panel, and then input the correct channel number. You may also have to restore the color-coding of TV shows on the schedule. You may want to get some DigiGuide Markers, such as markers for "Favourite Movies," "Favourite Dramas," "Favourite Comedies," etc., and once you have those new markers installed, then do a right click on your favorite TV shows and movies, and then select your favorite category on the dialog menu to mark the show or movie. Each "favourite" marker should color-code the show. But if you don't get a color or if you want to change to another color, after a show is marked then you can do a right click again on the TV show again and select "Edit ... marker" after which you will get an "Edit Marker" panel and then click the "Display" tab and change the color and click "Update Marker."

For daylight savings time, when the time changes on the first Sunday of April (spring forward) and on the last Sunday of October (fall backwards), you may want to get TV listings for only up until the Saturday before time change and then on the Sunday of the time change then get the new TV listings from that Sunday onwards (you may have to delete your programs.dat file if you have to start over with totally new TV listings). You can try editing the XMLTV_US_DST_Profile.txt profile import file to have a 1 hour offset ("0100" and "-0100") instead of the zero offset if you want to try making the time change more automatic.

Here, DIGIGUIDE is using XMLTV-downloaded TV listings.
The EXTREME_XP color scheme is used by DIGIGUIDE in
this screenshot where desktop has a 1024x768 resolution.

(FYI, the RIGHT BLUE COLUMN is a separate DASHBOARD
application with a Media Player component under the clock
playing a DIVX video of a TV broadcast of the "CHARLIE'S
ANGELS" movie made from an Exported Video which was
originally recorded by Creative Video Blaster Digital VCR.
SUGGESTION: Remove (Do Not Add) the Email Checker
Component since it may cause noticable pauses when
watching TV with Creative Video Blaster Digital VCR.)

You may also want to fix the channel-map.dat file, which should be found in the same directory as the XMLTV2DG program, so that you have the correct channel names-numbers-logos in the left-channels-column in DigiGuide. The following example is a channel-map.dat file with only one channel where the HGTV channel is on channel 71 where the setting for that channel would be on one line (although below it may wraparound once or twice). XMLTV may say the HGTV channel is "Channel 71 HGTV" (for prior to XMLTV version 0.5.15) or XMLTV may say "71 HGTV" (for XMLTV version 0.5.15 and after) but you may want DigiGuide to only say "HGTV" in the left-channels-column. Your channel-map.dat file will require that you input many more settings for all of your channels.

After you get the right-click menu panel, there will be three menu options that you can choose from: (1) Watch on Live TV; (2) Remove from DVCR schedule; and (3) Schedule recording with DVCR. For the first option to work, you have to have the TV up and running on the screen so you can change the channel in "live TV." The second option is self-explanatory -- if there is already an existing schedule for recording a TV show then you can remove it if you want to. The third option for scheduling a recording will also provide you with the ability to restart the TV (either restart the TV software with the TV showing up on the screen afterwards or restart the TV software in background sleep mode), or to send the appropriate keystrokes to the built-in Scheduler in the software for the Creative Video Blaster Digital VCR card without any need to restart the TV software. FYI, if you select the restart, the restart by the DVCR-DigiGuide-addon should work with all versions of windows. When scheduling recordings, you can also select the recording quality.

DVCR-DigiGuide-addon dialog panel
to schedule individual show recordings.
Click image for full view of dialog panel.

You can also schedule "Group" recordings of TV shows which you want to be recorded on a weekly or daily basis. When you schedule "Group" recordings of the same TV show for every week or for every day of the week, you will have to click the "Group Scheduling Mode" button on the main "Schedule a Recording" dialog panel in order to get the "Schedule a Group" dialog panel.

DVCR-DigiGuide-addon dialog panel
to schedule weekly & daily recordings.
Click image for full view of dialog panel.

DVCR-DigiGuide-addon is very versatile and very smart in how it operates. For instance, the DVCR-DigiGuide-addon can detect if there is a previously scheduled recording going on or if what you are trying to schedule will conflict with another recording.

You can resize DIGIGUIDE to fit your screen.

FYI, I have been using either the KIOSK_LIKE or the Extreme_XP DigiGuide color schemes. To help to make the Text Fonts look Larger in DigiGuide, you can use the commands CTRL-plus (+) and CTRL-minus (-) [ try pressing down the CTRL key with the plus (+) and the minus (-) keys on the number keypad ] to increase and decrease the size of the text fonts in DigiGuide -- be sure to also click the setting for "Use large fonts in DigiGuide user interface" in the DigiGuide settings (from the toolbar, click Tools, Customize, then click the View tab, and then check the box for the setting). You may also have to turn on the "Description Pane" (under "View" on the Menu Bar) to make the Text Fonts larger.

You may want to assign a windows shortcut hotkey command for activating DigiGuide, TVHolic, or whichever other EPG that you may be using) that you can use to activate the EPG at anytime. To do that you may want to make a new icon for the EPG program in your start menu, right click the icon and on the shortcut tab then specify whatever shortcut key you want to assign as a hotkey to the EPG. Note that you may want to minimize or turn off any other windows non-TV program that may be on the screen because when you activate the EPG.

As previously mentioned, if you want to check out any of the other XMLTV-based EPGs, you can click here and skip to the section on XMLTV-based EPGs. And if you want to look at an integrated EPG built into PVR software that can be used with the Creative Video Blaster Digital VCR card, you can click here to check out SageTV with it's built-in integrated "SageGuide" EPG.

Please note that whether or not you use an EPG, the Creative Video Blaster Digital VCR card does have its built-in onscreen Scheduler function to manually schedule your recordings -- the Scheduler is easy to use and I would say that it has a basic elegance as to how it looks and operates in full-screen TV mode. (Click here for the previous discussion about the Scheduler.) You can still manually schedule all of your TV show recordings if you want to. When you manually schedule recordings, you would manually schedule the times for the recordings and that would include manually typing in the names of the shows.

If you're like me, then you may find yourself using the Creative Video Blaster Digital VCR card with the built-in scheduler and with an EPG to schedule shows to be recorded and then watching the "time-shifted" recordings of your favorite shows during your own personal "primetime" schedule instead of at the TV shows' regularly scheduled times. The Creative Video Blaster Digital VCR card when combined with a good EPG such as DigiGuide are a good combination that should satisfy most TV watchers.

MORE ABOUT THE CARD AND
THE SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

The Creative Video Blaster Digital VCR card has an onboard hardware MPEG2 recording processor -- that's a lot of power in the card. This is different from other cards you may look at. For instance, if I were to use my other TV cards for recording and if I wanted to record in MPEG2, then I would have to use software that had some sort of MPEG2 software engine when recording with the other TV cards. The Creative Video Blaster Digital VCR card's MPEG2 hardware recording engine will provide you with a better personal television recording capability -- having a hardware-based MPEG2 recording engine is preferable over having one that is software-based. I found this useful when the Creative Video Blaster Digital VCR card is recording in the background while in "standby" mode. I would just have to remember it may be recording in background so I don't turn off the PC.

Whether you have a hardware-based or software-based MPEG2 recording engine, also remember to not perform some sort of other overly intensive PC activity that could interfere with the PVR recording system or that could crash the PC -- you wouldn't want the PC to crash or have some sort of disturbance while the PVR is recording. For instance, I was once trying out a freebie software program named FreeRAM XP that that operated in background to automatically free up memory but by doing so would ocassionally take over the system thus causing an ocassional stutter in the PVR recording -- so, needless to say, I uninstalled that freebie software program. Please note that I've been able to use my PC-TV system for normal PC activities while the PVR was recording in "standby" background mode, but software like that FreeRAM software program caused the stutter-like interference with recordings.

A clean harddrive on a new PC-based PC-TV
PVR system waiting to record TV shows. Four
gigabytes is minimum storage space required,
but you may want to have a LARGER harddrive
that is 20, 40, 60, or more gigabytes in size to be
dedicated as a video drive for your recordings.

You can adjust the amount of space to use for
your personal video recordings on the drive.

(There are people who are actually using
120 gigabyte harddrives as dedicated video
drives on their PC-based PVR systems.)

The minimum hardware requirements for the Creative Video Blaster Digital VCR card as recommended by the folks at Creative Labs include using a PC with an Intel Celeron, Intel Pentium II, or AMD-K6 processor running at least at 400 MHz or better with at least 64 megabytes RAM and at least a 4 gigabyte harddrive (20 gigabytes suggested) with a good video graphics card that can support at least 65,000 colors also known as 16-bit "high color" (nowadays, most video graphics cards go up to 32-bit or more for "true color"). (footnote 7) So, if your PC's hardware meets at least those minimum requirements, then you should be able to use the Creative Video Blaster Digital VCR card. For those folks who are confused as to whether the Creative Video Blaster Digital VCR card will work on PCs which have BETTER than those requirements, YES the Creative Video Blaster Digital VCR card will work on your PC if you have better than those requirements. So, don't be confused: The faster and the larger in capabilities that your PC may be, then the better for you in meeting the minimum requirements. The minimum requirements are for the bare minimum type of PC that the Creative Video Blaster Digital VCR card will run on. The card supports Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows 2000, and Windows XP, but note that Windows XP will be using the Windows 2000 driver software for the card. FYI, I've used the Creative Video Blaster Digital VCR card and its default software with both Windows 98 and Windows XP on PCs with CPUs ranging from a Celeron (600 MHz) to a Pentium 3 (900 MHz) to a Pentium 4 (2.4 GHz). In general, the more powerful and the faster the CPU plus the more memory and the largest harddrive you can afford to use as your video drive, then the better and happier you will most likely be. But if you are using the bare minimum hardware requirements and particularly if you are using Windows 98, then you may want to dedicate your use of that PC to only PVR, TV, and EPG functions and not for much of anything else.

YES, YOU CAN BUILD
YOUR VERY OWN PVR

If you want to build your own PC-TV system with PVR capabilites for your home that you can devote to your personal TV watching, then this is the one card to get. If you want a good all-in-one card for your personal television needs that you can easily use as a very TV-like and TV-friendly PVR (and without having to cobble together any extra software), then look at the Creative Video Blaster Digital VCR card as an affordable card that gives you the most bang for the buck. (footnote 8) The Creative Video Blaster Digital VCR card can be a replacement for your VCR videotape machine although you may most likely hook up the VCR to your PC-TV PVR system as many people seem to be doing. (footnote 9) Go ahead and look at other TV cards --- I think you will see that you will get more bang for the buck with this card in one complete package for Personal Television capabilities. The Creative Video Blaster Digital VCR card is made by the folks at Creative Labs and they are the folks behind the Sound Blaster cards which have already set a standard for PC sound cards. The folks at Creative Labs have another good card with their Creative Video Blaster Digital VCR card. I am really impressed with this card and I think you will be too. You can click here for more information about the Creative Video Blaster Digital VCR card.

Happy PC-TV Watching!
Ruel

NOTICE: Ruel provides many free links seen on these pages. If you buy anything, your purchases would be from a linked third-party website(s). The links are for your convenience since everyone asks for suggestions about products. The products should come with their own guarantees and warranties. As for return policies, the various online vendors who are linked should have return policies -- look at the specific vendor information carefully and decide for yourself what card, device, or other product you may want to get.