PVR350 DiVX and Avi's

[hamster-man]

After trawling through a lot of the posts I thought I would ask my question directly. I am putting a HTPC together based around a PVR350 that I have aquired and would like to be able to play DiVX and Avi's trhough the one TV connection.

From what I have read the PVR350 ONLY out puts Mpeg2 streams and the GUI (not xp desktop) due to its hardware ecoding constraints. I can live with that! But after finding the 'video in' daughter card for the PVR350 I got thinking...

Why can't I play the DiVX (through GBPVR) -> output via the Graphics card & soundcard -> into the PVR350 Daughter card and then out via the PVR350 to the TV?

I know that is a big chunk of data looping but I may as well use the onboard encoder/decoder of the 350 to do the work!

Is this possible? or won't GBPVR be able to switch between the two 350 video inputs?

Any Yes/no/maybes would be greatly appreciated before I buy more hardware. I would have thought that I am not the only one to come up with this concept... so someone must have some experience!

Cheers

[sub]

GB-PVR wont now or ever allow you to play DiVX files via your PVR350 tv out.

But after finding the 'video in' daughter card for the PVR350 I got thinking...

What is this you are referring to? What is a the video in daughter card for the PVR350?

Why can't I play the DiVX (through GBPVR) -> output via the Graphics card & soundcard -> into the PVR350 Daughter card and then out via the PVR350 to the TV?

I know that is a big chunk of data looping but I may as well use the onboard encoder/decoder of the 350 to do the work!

Is this possible? or won't GBPVR be able to switch between the two 350 video inputs?

Yes, in theory it is technically possible to cobble together something like you described, but you wont be able to do it via GB-PVR. I had concidered doing this sort of thing myself when I first got my PVR350 about two years ago, but I decided it was ugly hack (especially considering I only use MPEG2). I was also experimenting with on-the-fly transcoding avi files to MPEG2, and had it sort of working, but this was a pain in the butt and I was running into bugs in the PVR350 decoder drivers.

Times change... my PVR350 has now been consigned to a desk draw, and shall never be dusted off again - no new features. Sorry.

[hamster-man]

Hi Sub,
Thanks for your prompt reply! The daughter board I am refering to is http://www.pcalchemy.com/product_info.ph...34735a4650 basically a second audio/video input for the PVR150/250/350/500

I also seem to have gotten my wires crossed as I thought that feed from the TV out on the graphics card could then be encoded to Mpeg2 by the 350 (hence bypassing the DiVX format) which would then allow the TVput on the 350 to be used.

Doesn't the 350 encode any 'TV in' signal it gets to Mpeg? If so how is this different to replaying a cable/TV feed?

Thanks again for the help... as I am a bit confussed!

[sub]

Remember, just because you plug your video card's 'tv out' into the 'video in' on your PVR350, this doesnt mean the video cards picture will be displayed on the PVR350's tv out.

It wouldn't just magically work. Consider the following which would need to happen for this to work.

1) Something would need play the divx using your video card. I assume you're thinking GB-PVR. In it's current form, if GB-PVR is configured to use the TV out on the PVR350, then in doesnt display any video on the video card (so there would be nothing to loop back). This would need to be changed.
2) For video to be captured via the PVR350's 'video in', GB-PVR would actively need to initiate a recording. In it's current form, playing a divx video file isn't going to trigger this. I would need to change GB-PVR to do this special case recording if playing a divx file and configured to use this special new PVR350 loopback mode.
3) Something would then need to be playing the recorded MPEG2 video (of the divx input) and sending the output to the PVR350's tv out.

These are actually quite substantial changes. Particularily when you consider GB-PVR can currently only play one file at at time, and this process would require the system to be able to play to two files simultaneously (the divx to the video card, and the temporary MPEG2 file to the PVR350) - not to mention the effort for adding the special logic for performing a recording during divx playback...

Hopefully you can follow this? Its confusing I know...

As I said, I'm not planning on doing these changes.

Alternatively, you may be happy to rig some very manual process together yourself using a fake channel which is your desktop video in, which can be viewed via live tv, but then you'll find yourself with some very manual process requiring you to use some external player etc on the desktop, and you'll lose the ability to control playback via GB-PVR (ff/rw/skip/resume etc).

[hamster-man]

I thought I had myself confused! Thanks Sub that clears up my understanding of how GBPVR outputs video... I should have twigged that I would be trying to get GBPVR to do two playings at once!

Righto then - The PVR350 stays as the output... and my other computers are going to be very busy transcoding all of my Divx and Avi files into MPEG2 format so they can be on the HTPC!

Thanks again for such dedication to keeping HTPC'ers happy!!