PVR-350 and XCard Questions

[Gomer]

I'm sorry if these questions have been asked before but I really can't seem to find any direct answers:

1. If I buy a PVR350 will I be able to view ALL program output over the TV-Out? (by ALL I mean LiveTV, Timeshifted, GbPVR GUI, any Video files I have on my harddrive (including AVI), DVD, music playing and more) I really don't care whether it will do Hardware decoding, although it would be nice, as long as it outputs everything over the TV-Out...?

2. Same Question but regarding the XCard (although I'm very reluctant to install it given the crappy drivers for it)

3. If the answer is no to any of the above: How come?

4. Are there any disadvantages to choosing the PVR350 over the PVR150 except for the price of course?

5. Is the TV-Out of the PVR350 anywhere near as sharp as the TV-Out of the XCard?

That's it for now, sorry once again if this has been asked but I really would the clarification as the Hardware decoding is not my primary concern (the PC is easily fast enough to do it), the quality of the TV-Out however is and the possibility to use anything other than a normal PC graphics card would be excellent...

Thanks!


PS. GbPVR really is a magnificent piece of software! DS.

[reven]

1. If I buy a PVR350 will I be able to view ALL program output over the TV-Out? (by ALL I mean LiveTV, Timeshifted, GbPVR GUI, any Video files I have on my harddrive (including AVI), DVD, music playing and more) I really don't care whether it will do Hardware decoding, although it would be nice, as long as it outputs everything over the TV-Out...?

the onscreen display (ie menus) will be visible on the 350, not your computer desktop. you will be able to view timeshifted tv (not live preview mode, so changing channels will take a few seconds), you will be able to play music using a loopback cable, ie use the audio out of the 350 into the line in on your pc, and then use the line out (which will include mp3 audio etc) to your tv. you WONT be able to watch dvds or avi files. it only supports the same format mpeg1/2 files (ie if its a PAL card you wont be able to watch ntsc recordings).

2. Same Question but regarding the XCard (although I'm very reluctant to install it given the crappy drivers for it)

the xcard will allow you to watch avi and dvds, plus everything the 350 can.

3. If the answer is no to any of the above: How come?

dvds are encrypted, and need to be decrypted inorder for them to play, the 350 doesn't do this. and the 350 has only got a mpeg decoder, avi's arent mpeg so it cant play them back.

4. Are there any disadvantages to choosing the PVR350 over the PVR150 except for the price of course?

if you get poor reception on a few channels, the pvr150 will work better than the 350 (i have crap reception and recordings are far better on my 150 than on my 350).

5. Is the TV-Out of the PVR350 anywhere near as sharp as the TV-Out of the XCard?

i dont have a xcard, but the 350 output is extremely good. but since it doesnt playback dvds/avi etc, i use hdtv output of my 6600, but the 350 is really good.


i would recommend you get a 150 and a good graphics card, they allow for more stuff, and you wont have to worry about driver issues (there are issues with the 350 and certain motherboards).

[Gomer]

the onscreen display (ie menus) will be visible on the 350, not your computer desktop. you will be able to view timeshifted tv (not live preview mode, so changing channels will take a few seconds), you will be able to play music using a loopback cable, ie use the audio out of the 350 into the line in on your pc, and then use the line out (which will include mp3 audio etc) to your tv. you WONT be able to watch dvds or avi files. it only supports the same format mpeg1/2 files (ie if its a PAL card you wont be able to watch ntsc recordings).

the xcard will allow you to watch avi and dvds, plus everything the 350 can.

Okay, so basically with the XCard there are no drawbacks except the 8bit OSD, EVERYTHING else in GbPVR can be viewed? Regardless of codec used in VIs and such? (I know, no desktop and stuff, but that's not interesting to me anywy)

dvds are encrypted, and need to be decrypted inorder for them to play, the 350 doesn't do this. and the 350 has only got a mpeg decoder, avi's arent mpeg so it cant play them back.

So there is no way to simply use the TV-Out of the 350 as an output port and simply feed it video... it has to pass through the 350s MPEG decoder I guess...?

if you get poor reception on a few channels, the pvr150 will work better than the 350 (i have crap reception and recordings are far better on my 150 than on my 350).

I think my reception is okay but not good... I tried a PVR250 a few years ago and was not a bit impressed by the recordings, they were really bad quality and the 150 I'm trying now is waaaay better...

i dont have a xcard, but the 350 output is extremely good. but since it doesnt playback dvds/avi etc, i use hdtv output of my 6600, but the 350 is really good.

Unfortunately that definately is a showstopper... Not being able to output anything makes it quite useless for me...

i would recommend you get a 150 and a good graphics card, they allow for more stuff, and you wont have to worry about driver issues (there are issues with the 350 and certain motherboards).

Very true BUT, the regular TV-Out suck on every single card I've tried since I had to ditch my trusty old ASUS V3800 Deluxe (TNT2 but with Philips chip for TV-Out I think)... I've heard people say good things about ATI TV-Out but both my current AIW 8500DV and my previous 7500AIW are pretty crappy, not even close to my V3800. Matrox also not an option due to the extremely poor 3D performance...

Too bad I really, really dislike the drivers for the XCard. They even managed to somehow mess up the drivers for my DVD-ROM which refuses to start after installing them

Perhaps I'll just have to give up on getting good TV-Out until I buy myself an LCD-TV with DVI input

[reven]

Okay, so basically with the XCard there are no drawbacks except the 8bit OSD, EVERYTHING else in GbPVR can be viewed? Regardless of codec used in VIs and such? (I know, no desktop and stuff, but that's not interesting to me anywy)

it does dvd,mpeg, and avi files, im not sure about .mov files (and any future format, thus my recommendation of using a normal graphics card).

So there is no way to simply use the TV-Out of the 350 as an output port and simply feed it video... it has to pass through the 350s MPEG decoder I guess...?

not really, sub has said he has stopped development for the 350 (ie adding any more features to it, but if a bug comes up he'd probably try and fix it).

I think my reception is okay but not good... I tried a PVR250 a few years ago and was not a bit impressed by the recordings, they were really bad quality and the 150 I'm trying now is waaaay better...

the 350 has the same encoder as the 250 (i think there were a few variations over the years) but the 150 has a brand spanky new encoder, which i think is much better.

Very true BUT, the regular TV-Out suck on every single card I've tried since I had to ditch my trusty old ASUS V3800 Deluxe (TNT2 but with Philips chip for TV-Out I think)... I've heard people say good things about ATI TV-Out but both my current AIW 8500DV and my previous 7500AIW are pretty crappy, not even close to my V3800. Matrox also not an option due to the extremely poor 3D performance...

martrox cards do have extremly good ouput, yeah but they suck with 3d.

i have a geforce 4 6600, using the hdtv ouput, but the svideo output was also there good, i do recommend this card, the output is excellent, the only drawback is if using the hdtv cable your kind of forced to use 720x576 resolution (if using 576p) otherwise you get screen scrolling. but chances are that wont effect you, so yeah its an excellent card. if you are using component output, well then im not sure, only tried the svideo and hdtv output.

[Gomer]

it does dvd,mpeg, and avi files, im not sure about .mov files (and any future format, thus my recommendation of using a normal graphics card).

Yup, I see your point, it's just that I know just how sharp the XCard output can be and it's so much better than any graphics card I've seen... Since I only have a normal TV (no HDTV support) HDTV output is not an option, a good SCART RGB connection I guess would be the best. I do think it's a bit tragic that an ancient TNT2-card (the V3800Deluxe) can be so superior to any newer cards I've seen...

the 350 has the same encoder as the 250 (i think there were a few variations over the years) but the 150 has a brand spanky new encoder, which i think is much better.

Okay, then the 350 is even more out of the question for me

i have a geforce 4 6600, using the hdtv ouput, but the svideo output was also there good, i do recommend this card, the output is excellent, the only drawback is if using the hdtv cable your kind of forced to use 720x576 resolution (if using 576p) otherwise you get screen scrolling. but chances are that wont effect you, so yeah its an excellent card. if you are using component output, well then im not sure, only tried the svideo and hdtv output.

Unfortunately my TV doesn't have HDTV input....the best would be SCART RGB but it seems support for that is non existant in the graphics card world Otherwise I agree the 6600 would be a good trade-off between performance and heat though, it's got enough 3D power to run most games at least at the 640x480 or something that the TV can take...

[sub]

Personally, I'd stay away from both the PVR350 and XCard. They produce and excellent picture, but are just too limited.

Even though the XCard provides more than the PVR350, it still has serious limitations:
- 8 bit OSD (which looks pretty ugly)
- no OSD during DVD playback
- many AVI files wont work. (e.g. files using qpel, new divx6 standard etc).

Why cant the video card manufacturers get their act together and produce a video card with a similar video out performance to these hardware decoder cards?

[angryant]

Hi,

I've only clocked up 4 days of playing with GB-PVR, with a Hauppauge PVR-350 and Hauppauge Nova-T-USB2 but I thought I'd give you my opinion anyway. At the moment I'm very disappointed with the TV-Out performance of the PVR-350 and I'm regretting having spent the cash on the card - I may put it on eBay soon. I thought the hardware MPEG would be a great improvement, but I find I get better image quality/sharpness on my system by using a software MPEG and the S-Video TV-Out on my rather cheap ATI graphics card.

I've been very careful to ensure I'm working with a S-Video signal all the way through the system (Sky box SCART goes into a ShinyBox RGB -> S-Video converter (Maplin £34.95), S-Video IN to PVR-350, PVR-Out to SCART (S-video mode) input on my Panasonic. Even the on-screen menus via the PVR-350 are fuzzy compared to displaying it through the ATI TV out. Perhaps I have some composite in the mix and I haven't realised it, but I'm pretty sure it's S-Video all the way.

From my limited experience I would exercise caution when buying a TV card with TV-Out as they seem to be pretty dodgy, even if you spend £100+. Of course, this is after just 4 days of fiddling so I'm certainly no expert, just initial results so far have been very disappointing on the PVR-350 and I'm sticking to the TV-Out on my graphics card instead. The previous recommendation by another poster on a good graphics card and good capture card is sound advice.

In regards to a previous poster saying that onscreen menus are not available on GB-PVR if you don't use TV-Out on the PVR-350, I'm a bit confused as all the OSD seem exactly the same, regardless of whether it's output via the PVR-350 or the graphics card.

Just my 2 cents, after fours day of playing around

[SFX Group]

Ive found the TV out on the PVR350 is just as good as real live TB, as for switcher and SCART boxes, be carful, i used £40.00 versions which used to allow signal through from other scarts to make the image bad (grainy).

I now use a £100 digital switcher, cured the whole problem with the same cables.

Problem with the PVR350 is the slight voice to video encoding issue (after about 1.5 hours its out by about 0.2 seconds). Also it locks the PC up.

I will be remove the PVR350 i have and replacing with possibly the PVR150 as it seems like the newest and putting MVP's in place.

Many Thanks
Ashley