Hauppauge 1600 Live TV

[trock]

I have had consistently poor quality with my PVR-350 when viewing live tv. I am planning an upgrade to a PVR-1600 and am curious if live tv quality will improve, particularly in regard to the HD tuner since the newest addition to the media center was a 42" plasma .

Anyone having a high quality live tv experience?


Current setup:
1.8 Ghz Core 2 Duo
1 GB Ram
Hauppauge PVR-350
Gigabyte Radeon HD2400 Pro (fanless)
250 GB hard drive
Gyration MediaCenter Remote with Air Mouse
Gyration Wireless mini keyboard

[sub]

I have had consistently poor quality with my PVR-350 when viewing live tv. I am planning an upgrade to a PVR-1600 and am curious if live tv quality will improve

"quality" is very subjective.

The analog side of the HVR1600 should produce approximately the same quality MPG encodes as your PVR350. The digital side is obviously capable of producing much better captures, as it captures the original bitstream transmitted by the broadcaster. It's digital captures have the potential to produce a picture as good as any set top box receiving those same broadcasts.

I'm careful to say "potential" in there because you can still lose a lot of picture quality trying to playback those recordings (ie, in the video decoder and video card you're using).

[trock]

That's reassuring about the digital capture, which is the main reason for the upgrade. Thanks!

[sub]

Whether your PVR350 captures were good or bad in the past was also subject to playback quality of those recordings. To test whether your recordings were any good you can burn one of your recordings to a DVD then play it in a regular DVD player.