Epia users

[malgernon]

Thanks for the info everyone. It's a priviledge to get advice from experienced users. :o

The PVR150 should meet my needs. And there'll always be alternative uses for the M10000 if I'm tempted to upgrade to the Epia SP1300. A great resource btw turajb which I'm currently exploring.

T.

[malgernon]

Just wanted to give some feedback on this thread I started.

I went for the PVR150 and have to say I think that coupled with the Epia-M 10000 and GB-PVR it makes a fine entertainment centre.

I did encounter some problems, mainly because my STB from Telewest only supports RGB and composite output, both via SCART. I was using an RGB-to-S-video converter and I now realise this is where all my problems sprung from.

Picture quality was indistinguishable from television on Live TV (no preview), but when I did any kind of recording to hard drive there was a poorer quality. Watchable, but slightly blurred.

Recordings with large swathes of colour, like a football pitch, was poor because it would reduce the green to two shades and make them look terribly blocky.

I tried every combination of driver upgrades, settings, mpeg decoders etc.

Another problem with using s-video was occassional loss of colour when starting up.

Eventually I tried composite input. The picture quality is as good as the 'RGB-to-S-video' input for Live TV, which is to say great - though sometimes I think its slightly less crisp. And the recorded quality of the composite input is vastly superior. The result is that its difficult to tell between recorded, Live (no preview) and STB direct to TV, with the naked eye. Its possible but only with a fair amount of scrutiny of particular types of TV content.

The only thing I'm a little disappointed with is Epia's lack of native support for the PAL screen resolution, for a board marketed as an media player.

Anyway - thanks for the advice and resources posted on this thread, I doubt I'd have bothered otherwise. In conclusion I think the Epia/GB-PVR/PVR150 set-up is a good combination.