Video/XCard, Old PIII Question

[alijiwani]

Hi guys,

I have an old PIII-600 sitting around with 320MBs RAM, 80GB HD. Unfortuantely it has an AGP 1.0 Slot with an NVIDIA TNT2 in it. It's TV Out is real crap and nothing is readable on screen. As a college student on full loans, money is a bit tight right now and I was only prepared to spend 60 bucks or so on the new video card which is aparently a moot point now.

I've heard of this mythical XCard and its ability to render TVoutput. I have however, been spoiled by the SageTV-PVR350 bundle setup I have on my current system using its 9550s TV-out (of which the actual system is about to take a long trip far far away and never been seen again).

So the real question is, is it worth while to get an XCard for $100 bucks and will it look as good as my old setup's TV out or will I have a very noticeable degredation in quality making this whole money saving idea a waste of time? For that matter, are there any other suggestions on what I could do without spending too much more money?

thanks for your help!

[Toddly]

You might consider using the MVP plugin that is discussed in this thread. It does not have the ability to use all the features in Sage but if you are mainly using it to watch recordings it works very well. I have one attached to my SDTV and the picture quality if very good.

[Opus4]

The Xcard has excellent video output on my old SD TV. I originally bought it to use on an old p2-400 & had no problems with that setup -- high quality recordings played back w/barely any cpu hit and looked great.

Ironically, the one problem it has on an older/slower system now would be if you use the recent alpha plugin to output the SageTV UI through the XCard onto the TV. The 32-bit image has to be reduced to 256 colors & that uses teh cpu, so on a slow system, the UI delay might be quite noticeable. If you don't use the plugin, then you will only get the video on the TV and will have to have a monitor nearby to see the SageTV menus & such. (The Windows desktop will not be shown on the TV either way.)

- Andy

[alijiwani]

it seems I was more than misinformed on what the Xcard really does Doesn't seem like that would suite my needs. I have a couple of extra 21" monitors in the closet, but no other monitors within 20 feet of the living room TV. Placing on there is not really an option. 256 color UI would really not be all that cool either (btw, why is that limit there? Xcard or plugin?). Guess I am going to have to rethink this whole server business. Too bad I actually need my current PC to stay in my room..it's def much more powerful than the old system or even the new SageTV server thats about to go away.

thanks for your comments & help!

[Opus4]

The 256 color UI is a limitation of what the Xcard can display over the video & isn't really as bad as it sounds, unless you really need to view images on your TV through the Xcard. It is partially transparent & all. But, there is still the fact that there is cpu time spent converting it to 256 colors, so the UI will have a bit of a delay on a slower PC, plus you won't be able to see the Widows desktop w/o a monitor.

For MPEG2 playback, the MVP that was mentioned above does work pretty well -- I have one of those in another room too & recordings play quite well.

- Andy

[alijiwani]

So I have done some cursory reading about the MediaMVP, but need a little info to clear up some of my confusion. The product page for it says that the PC Server creates the menus and transmits it to the MediaMVP. So if I used the old computer as the PC Server, would my crappy video card hurt anything?

The way I see it, from peoples comments, I have two choices:

1) I could VNC into the box to use Windows for setup purposes from the other rooms, but obviously would need the SageUI to work fine on the MediaMVP/TV via its included remote. BTW, does it ship with or work with the newer Remote that the Sage/Hauppage 350 bundle came with?

2) I could place the SageTV/PVR350 on my main machine in my room and use the MediaMVP to stream it out to the living room. I do have an extra HD on its own controller that can be dedicated to Sage, but how sensitive is the recording process to other things occuring on the machine and using the other HDs or the processor power?

3) I gave up on the TVout of the SageTV. With the default setup, TVout enabled only, hardware decode only on the current SageTV box, the live TV and recorded TV would heavily pixellate at times and have all kinds of problems. I did try turning hardware decode only off, that didnt help. Any suggestions on what may have been wrong there? If I can fix it to actually play decently, think the 350sTV out would be sufficient for good quality recoding/playing of TV shows? (For the time being, till I have cash to put in a dedicated box, I am no longer worried about SageTV other useful features of audio and media file playback)

thanks once again for all your help!

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by alijiwani

So I have done some cursory reading about the MediaMVP, but need a little info to clear up some of my confusion. The product page for it says that the PC Server creates the menus and transmits it to the MediaMVP. So if I used the old computer as the PC Server, would my crappy video card hurt anything?

I don't believe the video card will have anything to do with it. The MVP client window doesn't even have to be open on the PC -- I just put it to sleep in the system tray.

1) I could VNC into the box to use Windows for setup purposes from the other rooms, but obviously would need the SageUI to work fine on the MediaMVP/TV via its included remote. BTW, does it ship with or work with the newer Remote that the Sage/Hauppage 350 bundle came with?

I'm not sure what you are VNCing to, but the MVP should come with the newer 45-button remote.

2) I could place the SageTV/PVR350 on my main machine in my room and use the MediaMVP to stream it out to the living room. I do have an extra HD on its own controller that can be dedicated to Sage, but how sensitive is the recording process to other things occuring on the machine and using the other HDs or the processor power?

The encoding is all done in hardware, so it uses very little cpu & just sends the data to the HD. It should be fine, but if some other process is maxing out the HD throughput or the CPU is fully utilized, I suppose you could end up with a problem in a recording.

3) I gave up on the TVout of the SageTV. With the default setup, TVout enabled only, hardware decode only on the current SageTV box, the live TV and recorded TV would heavily pixellate at times and have all kinds of problems. I did try turning hardware decode only off, that didnt help. Any suggestions on what may have been wrong there?

Not sure... maybe bump up the recording quality setting and/or make sure the drive wher ethe recordings are stored is formatted with a 64K block size.

- Andy

[alijiwani]

it took a bit of tampering, but I just placed the 350 into the old box and installed then copied over sage from the other box (to preserve settings). After a little tweaking it works mostly using the 350s TVout and VNC. Been using it for the last 12 hours, no pixellization...so we are all holding our breath. When we fist put it in it pixellated badly - oddly enough the setting that seemed to change that was "hardware decode only" any thoughts on why that would be the case?

the OSD is of course a little slower, but still fast enough my parents couldn't tell the difference. When the recording starts or stops the picture freezes for a full second or so before it it resumes. Time shifting appeared to work without corrupting the recording video. So all in all, not to bad!