Re: [OT}: how to make PVR any ideas welcome

[Kim Wall <kim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

LeeUKHA wrote:

> I'd disagree with one of the other posts about the Hauppauge 350, from
> my reading the general thinking seems to be that it's a waste of cash,
> as while it has good TV output doing hardware mpeg2 decoding, but it's
> expensive and  it's not that good at outputting the menus etc that you
> need, and if you transcode the mpeg2 recordings to xvid/divx, to save
> drive space, then you've missed the main selling point of the 350.
> Better for buy 2 x 250's and a cheap Nvidia graphics card...

A friend of mine (who's never been one for forward planning[1]) built
himself a mythtv box with a PVR350, using his existing freeview STB via
S-video as a source.  After a while, he got a DVB card for a second
tuner, and quickly sold off the 350 for another DVB card, as the
improvement in capture quality made such a massive overall difference,
compared to the 350's output vs a standard graphics card.

In summary, the PVR350's output quality's great, if and only if you're
only working with MPEG2 and have a use for the analogue capture (eg.
cable STB, or just plain over-the-air analogue).  Otherwise DVB tuners
and a basic Nvidia card will probably give better overall results.


Kim.

[1] Same guy who built a nice shiny combined frontend/backend in a quiet
'multimedia' case, then after a few months decided he wanted to use a
mac mini as a dedicated frontend, and moved the shiny backend to his
computer room.