AVI playback on the PVR-350

[jfox95]

thanks for the info - does the native remote support not work well?

[gEd]

yea know i can loop back but i guess i have to use the loop, huh?

i run a pvr 500 right now (dual tuner card) and svideo out from my video card, and sound out from the sound card. I thought (still think, i dunno - will let ya know when i get it) I could do it with the 350. so in the end i will have 3 tuners... so i could record 2 shows and watch one at the same time or record 3 shows at the same time...

This should work but tbh I don't thing you are going to see the advantage of the 350 over the 150 when using svideo out via graphics card (same with me). i.e you should probably have gone for the 150 instead but the 350 should still work fine. If the 500 uses different drivers to the 350 (likely) you may have some fun trying to get them all to work. When I added a nova-t to my 250 I had to remove and re-install the 350 drivers before it would work. No idea why.

btw: the heatsink on the 350 chip gets mightly hot (almost too hot to touch). Make sure you have good airflow in your case, preferably with air blowing over the heatsink. make sure the heatsink is not next to the back of another PCI card.

[jfox95]

hmm... maybe i will just sell it on ebay and get a 150. i didnt even think about the tv out issues with the 350. all i wanted was the decoder and the remote. o well....

thanks (btw - i think i have pretty good airflow - have intake in the front of the machine and output thru the back (it lays down flat), and my processor has like a duct off the fan/heatsink right right to the top and out of the case)

EDIT: should i go with the 250? whats the difference between it and the 150?

remote: it uses the included ir blaster right? no external units like usb uirt right? i have a USB-UIRT now for my harmony 659 ( i was planning to sell both once i got to using the hauppauge remote)

[betlit]

the 250 has an antenna/cable Plug for Radio (like the 350). the 150 does not.
so if you do not plan to hear FM radio with gbpvr, you probably want to buy a 150.

[gEd]

hmm... maybe i will just sell it on ebay and get a 150. i didnt even think about the tv out issues with the 350. all i wanted was the decoder and the remote. o well....

well you DO have this functionality but unfortunately with a bunch of caviats (sp?). Like me you have perhaps payed more than was required for a tv tuner in the context of using gb-pvr. However, I believe that there are still people here who cherish the high quality mpeg output of the 350 on their systems. (comments?) e.g. they may have divx/wmv.xvid files but transcode them to mpeg so that they can play them via the HQ 350 output whilst enjoying a low cpu overhead, with perhaps a low power cpu. However, if you have a decent processor,this advantage is largely erroded me thinks as software decoding via graphics card does work well.

Are you sure that you will get your money back selling the 350 for x and then having to buy a 150 + postage+tax?

This is the kind of thing that happens with roll your own HTPC system but the results are worth it.

[jfox95]

i wont get the money back from the 350 alone, but i was goin to get almost all of the money back from the selling of the harmony remote and usb-uirt if they werent needed. if i sell all and get a 150, i will get enough back... o well, it happens.

i dont know how decent a processor you would need - i have a amd 2500, 256 ram pc3200 , fx5200 128mb, nforce2 motherboard. i was thinking i could dish out a few more bucks for another 256 in memory since its cheap.

[Lucas_24]

250 does not have an FM tuner.

[gEd]

i dont know how decent a processor you would need - i have a amd 2500, 256 ram pc3200 , fx5200 128mb, nforce2 motherboard. i was thinking i could dish out a few more bucks for another 256 in memory since its cheap.

the cpu is just fine but yeh, grab some more ram when u can

[cabel1975]

Ok, I surrender. I have serached for two days on how to force the PVR-350 to play avi files. The only thing I found that MIGHT work is a program called MPLAYER (http://www.mplayerhq.hu), but it is a command line interface and I have no idea how to make it go. If someone knows, plase post the answers. Otherwise it looks like I am stuck transcoding my AVI's to MPEG's. Looks like TMPGEnc might work ok, but it works on a 1:1 time ratio...which sucks. Other ideas/suggestions on a way to convert these AVI files to a MPEG2 format that my PVR-350 can actually play? Thanks again in advance.

[gEd]

just in case you haven't seen this site:

http://www.videohelp.com/