TotalMedia 3.5 alternative for DTV capture

spapakons · 28 Jul 2021

Hello!

I have an Asus My Cinema Hybrid TV tuner card (both analog and digital TV PCI card) that came with Arcsoft's TotalMedia 3.5 application for TV viewing and capturing. I had recently reinstalled Windows 10 due to a problem, so I had to reinstall all my applications. The problem is I have lost my Arcsoft TotalMedia DVD, so I cannot install the application. I can view TV with Media Player Classic (Open Device) or capture with VirtualDub, Nero Video and others, but I need an application for using the EPG and scheduling recordings. I found TotalMedia 3.5 and downloaded it, but it asks for the CD key which was printed on the CD sleeve, and I cannot use it without it, not even for a few days as trial. So I am looking for an alternative application. I found some software, but they load in a browser without an obvious way to view live channels or capture or schedule. Others require SQL. Please recommend a "traditional" application for DTV viewing and recording without SQL or web interface. I want a standalone application, just like the good old days. Any help appreciated.

PS: Should I ask Asus about giving me a new CD key for TotalMedia?

spapakons · 30 Jul 2021

From all the software I found online, only Sichbo PVR 4 was what I wanted. I also managed to download and install Windows Media Center 8.8.5 which is free. So unless I find my CD to use TotalMedia 3.5, probably I can use Windows Media Center.

Try3 · 30 Jul 2021

spapakons said:

Please recommend a "traditional" application for DTV viewing and recording without SQL or web interface. I want a standalone application, just like the good old days.

I use DVBViewer for viewing, scheduling & recording. I think it is very good.
It has some editing facilities of its own but I prefer to use VideoReDo for that [I chop out leading & trailing sections and advert breaks].
I set it to record .ts files and, once edited in VideoReDo, I can play them in WMP.

spapakons said:

Should I ask Asus about giving me a new CD key for TotalMedia?

If you have an old system image that you wouldn't mind temporarily reloading for the purpose, perhaps Belarc will retrieve your old Product key.

Denis

spapakons · 10 Sep 2021

I found the old CD-ROM, it installed without asking for a serial. But I now have a different problem. It finds my hybrid TV tuner and I then proceed to tune the TV channels. I select the digital tuner (there are no longer analog channels in Athens, Greece) and I click next to start he search. It then displays a message that the tuner is used by another application and cannot proceed!

As a workaround I installed Windows Media Center 8.8.5 and recorded some footage in WTV (Windows TV) format. This created more issues, as this weird format cannot easily be edited or converted to another format for editing. The original VirtualDub could not open it directly, not even with the DirectShow plugin. VirtualDub 2 could open it using FFMPEG, but I could hardly edit the video since every attempt to go to some location takes too much time. I tried to load the WTV file in VirtualDub 2 and convert it to another format before editing, but the process it extremely slow and VirtualDub 2 crashes after some time. Other applications such as Nero Video, Windows Movie Maker, MultiAVCHD do not support WTV files!

I did a little search with Google and I found Bigasoft WTV Converter that can convert WTV to any other format, so I converted the video to MP4 with as high settings as possible to minimize the quality loss. This is not as convenient as recording to MP4 or MPEG directly and edit the original file, but it is a good solution.

I will mark the thread solved, but any suggestions appreciated.