Hauppage PVR-350

[Donner]

I about to finally purchase my card for use with GB-PVR. I want to make sure I purchase the correct one.

I've decided on the PVR-350, mostly becuase it has a TV out and I am sick of trying to get the TV out to work correctly on my Radeon 9500 Pro.

So, am I correct in assuming that the 350 has TV out and are there other reasons to choose it over the 150?

[reven]

the 350 only does tv out of the gbpvr gui, and mpeg video files (for divx youll have to convert them on the fly, which isnt good). the 350 is a good card, and the tv out is excellent, however since it only does mpeg i would suggest using a normal gfx card so you can play divx/dvds etc (i have a 350 and no longer use the tv out).

[stefan]

What he said. However, many people have had issues with the tv-out on the 350 (system hangs and such). I'm one of them. I don't use tv-out anymore. It was too unstable for me. But for some people it works flawlessly, so... if you can try before you buy, that would be your best bet :-)

[cameluk]

The PVR350 is a good card but the drivers are a bit unstable

Found I got better results with it on a nForce chipset motherboard than VIA based motherboards, I had no end of lockups on the VIA motherboard, same version of driver, same installation of XP, all the problems disappeared when I changed the motherboard

Even so I wouldn't recommend purchasing this card without being able to try it in your current setup

[gEd]

it also has a hardware based mpreg encoder which makes it great for creating mpg files from external analogue sources such as vhs.

Do like the others said, i wouldn't recommend getting it just for the video out - sub isn't actively supporting this any more.

[stefan]

it also has a hardware based mpreg encoder which makes it great for creating mpg files from external analogue sources such as vhs.

But that is true for all the (analog) cards that are supported by gbpvr.

[gEd]

But that is true for all the (analog) cards that are supported by gbpvr.

ok, fair point!

[Koopa]

the 350 has it's haters, but you can't beat it with an s-video connection for playback of recorded shows (analog cable source). It's way better than any connection from a video card (9700 pro in my case). And even though he keeps saying he doesn't support the 350 anymore, Sub has added divx playback through the 350 in the latest release (using a frameserver if I understood things correctly) which rocks (after tweaking config.xml)

Plus if your machine hasn't the horspower, the hardware decoding means you can use it for something else whilst it's recording/playing

[stu8080]

Given the cost of the PVR-350 though, buying a PVR-150 would give you £50 - £75 spare to spend on a new CPU or graphics card?

Im glad i switched to graphics card output as you avoid the delay whilst watching live TV (5 secs between each channel change), get visualisations and playback of most video formats.

Id quite happily sell my PVR-350 if i thought id get enough for it...offers? lol

[gEd]

awakening old threads - yeh!

I would be interested in what tweaks you did to get the divx transcoding working.

Once I get rid of the vhs machine I can then use both scart inputs on the tv for the 350 and video card output (it's very handy to be able to access the desktop on the tv even tho i use vnc most of the time).

I am interested that you find the 350 output better than the 9700, I was never too sure about it when compared to my 9600 pro (it looked a little noisy) but that was a long time ago. Do you use the DIN to Scart cable supplied with the 350?