First steps - looking for requirements and advice

[folkboat]

MOST people using the PVR-150 have good/excellent picture quality, unfortunatly some of us do not.

Now in all fairness, it could be my cabling, internal case noise, drivers, power supply, video card...................etc.

I have done quit a bit of tweaking and before I run out and plop down $100.00 for a new card, I will continue to tweak. I am not suggesting that Hauppaug's cards aren't good, I am suggesting their card is not good in my system.

One final note - if everyone's system ran flawlessly we wouldn't be posting on this board nor others...........this is till emerging technolgy for the masses!!

[triplet]

Sorry for the newb question. But am i correct in assuming from reading these posts that the quality of a video card will not make the picture on the tv better? I was going to go buy a ati9250 128. Will that get me better quality to my tv.

I just finished setting up my pvr and hooked s-video out from my 64mb ati video card to the input on my 47" rear pro (4:3). I wasnt satisfied with the quality. I am using sapphire theatrix 550 cap card. Input from a satellite receiver through composite.

I guess i may have to tweak the settings a bit.

[gEd]

the quality of the s-video out signal does vary, probably by quite a lot. As to whether the 9250 will be better than what you have atm, is hard to say.

One problem you do have tho is that the quality of composite signals is not that good and may be your limiting factor. Have you tried playing a dvd to see what that looks like?

[Zeus]

Ommina
One of this issues that I frequently mention (or bang on about!) to people considering a new pvr pc for their living room, is that of noise.

A VCR or DVD player is virtually silent and a standard PC will sound like a hairdryer in comparison. To make a pc virtually silent takes carefull selection of products and costs more to achieve. check out quietpc.com for more info.

Noise is another reason why many people use an MVP instead, with the pc located elsewhere in the house. However, they do make it difficult/impossible to watch dvd's and divx files.

Reliability: The software is extreamly reliable, my pc less so. Most problems I encounter are usually caused by my messing about with things when I should just leave well alone...

I think this is really key and extremely important for WAF. I evolved my PC to pretty much all heat synchs once I heard all those damn fans buzzing. I'm using a quite power supply and case fans and Zalman CPU fan, but then the little NorBridge fan on my motherboard was humming. Next my video card, so I bought all heat synch replacements and now you really have to stretch to here it.

When building the PC, make sure you test it by watching the bios temperature stats to make sure you have good air flow.