350 Tv-out vs Video Card TV-out vs MVP

[zorro]

I'm debating myself which one I should buy for my SDTV. For me the quality is first preference and then the price. So the options I have are:
1. 350
2. MVP
3. Video card with tv-out

What do you recommend? I only care about Live TV, recordings, EPG and scheduling. I'm not much interested on other stuffs like DVD, Music etc.

So, do I loose any native SageTV functionality if I use 350 or MVP? Will the custom skins work on MVP and 350?

I'm leaning towards 350.

Thanks

[stanger89]

I'd take a look at the Xcard. The 350 has a few bugs, that I'm not sure will (or can) ever be worked out. The only thing you loose with hardware decoders, is non-MPEG playback (DVDs, DivX, etc).

[zorro]

Originally Posted by stanger89

I'd take a look at the Xcard. The 350 has a few bugs, that I'm not sure will (or can) ever be worked out. The only thing you loose with hardware decoders, is non-MPEG playback (DVDs, DivX, etc).

Infact I had the xcard for 1 week and tested with ErsatzTom xcard plugin. I just returned it because of poor OSD response.

As I said in my previous thread I don't care much about non-mpeg playback.

Is the OSD response good on 350? You say the 350 has few bugs. Can you please point me the links so I understand more about them?

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by zorro

Infact I had the xcard for 1 week and tested with ErsatzTom xcard plugin. I just returned it because of poor OSD response.

As I said in my previous thread I don't care much about non-mpeg playback.

Is the OSD response good on 350? You say the 350 has few bugs. Can you please point me the links so I understand more about them?

I don't really know about the 350 or the MVPs response time, but my understanding is that they all work in a similar fassion so there's a delay with all of them. Hopefully someone with a 350 will chime in on that.

Re: the 350, if you look around you'll see that it's still not 100% stable. Some are still reporting EOF crashes and such.

[dnlmln]

I've been using an MVP for about a week now; I find the PQ excellent and the playback totally smooth. I also like is the new Hauppauge 45 button remote that comes with it. I'm using the SageMC skin with the MVP and it works very well.

Advantages:
-Lack of noise.
-Cheaper than a second pc.
-No OS to maintain.
-Easily moved from on tv to an other.
-Will be officially supported by Frey when SageTV 3.0 comes out.

Disadvantage:
-A .5 second delay when using the ui.
-A slight overscan issue on some channels (NOT a big deal).

I don't have a large widescreen tv (I have a 27" SDTV), so I don't know what the PQ is on one of those.

I've only been using mine for a week so there might be other disadvantages I'm not aware of.

So far, I'm completely satisfied with mine.

Hope this helps.

[jptaz]

I could be wrong, but the PVR350 should not have any OSD lag since it has a 32 bit OSD. The reason the XCard is slow is that it has to convert the 32 Bit SageTV OSD to 8 Bit Palette that the Xcard uses this is a very processor intensive process so you are not seeing a remote response issue, but rather and OSD lag issue.

I use the MediaMVP on 2 Standard Def TVs and I find the OSD response better than the XCard, but not the same as on the PC. The Video output is very good. Again the only issue I have is Horizontal stretching (Basically an Overscan issue). It is most noticable on News shows because the edge of banner text will be cropped.

If have a PC already or plan on building a PC and OSD response is absolutely critical to you (Again the Lag on the MVP is much less than with the XCard), then go with a PC and a Video card.

But if you can live with a slight lag on OSD and Fastfroward and rewind then go with a MediaMVP. It and any of the output methods you mentioned can support any of the custom Skins. I personally only use the Default since I am sick of the custom one breaking with new SageTV releases.

John

[ToxMox]

I had a 350 and used its TV out for about a day but I couldn't stand the response time lag between commands.

[jptaz]

I stand corrected...

I am confused why a PVR 350 would be slow...I am wondering where SageTV is introducing the lag?

I am experimenting with the DVI out on my Main Client again to see if things are better since 2 betas ago when things were very bad. So far it seems better...but actually the XCard at 720P seems like it looks better in terms of quality.

John

John

[bartley9]

I have a PVR350 and do not have any noticable lag on the OSD.

The EOF problem can be a real problem though.

My system was up for over 2 weeks recently with no problems until I let a file got to EOF and it crashed soon after...

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by jptaz

I stand corrected...

I am confused why a PVR 350 would be slow...I am wondering where SageTV is introducing the lag?

You might be surprised just how slow it is to render a UI non-accellerated. EG pretty much everything in the Windows UI relys on your video card to accellerate the rendering, if not accellerated, it's painfully slow, even on an Athlon 64 3400+.

[Crashless]

My 350 has noticably slower GUI response than the GFX card out, but not unusable by any means. The 350 is also much faster than the MVP. But using Meekell's STV w/ the MVP mode turned on, it is MUCH better. His STV basically disables the GUI while watching a show unless you use FF2/RW2, or pause. This really speeds up the quick scans for commercials etc. But if you use Comskip, you'll hardly touch the remote anyways.

The end-of-file crashes are definitly the 350's biggest drawback, Frey has been looking into it for some time, but there is no schedule for a solution. I still use the 350 and have gotten quite good at pausing before a show actually ends, the only shows that really screw me up are Real World (because MTV sucks and shifts their programming by 2 minutes) and '24' because I never seem to get the scenes from the next show.

I LOVE the 350 because it basically gives me a dedicated sage monitor and can use the desktop for whatever else I want - I have Meedio running there, and it's rigged to a different TV input, this makes it a very easy setup for both me and my fiance. Not to mention only using 10% of my CPU durning live TV, that part is absolutely invaluable.

To summerize, the UI performance difference between the 350, and GFX card for me is negligible, but the MVP is also pretty good if you use the Meekell STV. Does that help?