SageTV + PVR350 + TV-out = What gives ?

[r4qm4n]

Hi folks,

I can see looking at other posts that the PVR-350 tv-out has issues, just wondered if anyone knows what the secret is to get it to work with SageTV.

The quality of the output it absolutely brilliant with SageTV and MythTV, but as soon as I set hardware decoding on in SageTV so that the OSD is also on TV-out, I get BSOD after 5 or 10 minutes of channel hopping. I also have nasty flickering picture on the video menu.

These seem to be symptoms reported by others back in 2004-2005, but I'm using the latest SageTV, latest Hauppage drivers, latest mobo BIOS, latest mobo drivers and WinXP patched up to the eyballs...

....are there different hardware versions of this card ?

Or, alternatively, can anyone recommend a card with TV-out on a par with the PVR350 in terms of quality (that works) ?

Currently, while I set the box up, I'm using FX5200 for tv-out, reliable, but shite quality.

cheers

[BobPhoenix]

I would recommend a MVP and SageTV MVP client. For most it works as well as the PVR-350 display wise. Those that get a dark picture can usually get around it by going through a VCR or in my case a Phillips piece of #$%# DVDR to eliminate the problem. I would recommend wired version however.

BobP.

Edit: Also I can't say I've ever experienced the dark MVP picture. I just use the DVDR as a switching device between different inputs. That is about all it is good for.

[r4qm4n]

Well to answer my own question, the problem turned out to be the Intel 845GRG mobo I was using. After a few months fighting it I decided to go for an NForce based mobo, and picked up a bargain on eBay, an AOpen MK79G-N for Athlon XP CPU, and now I have a stable PVR350, have spent the last couple of days rebuilding the PVR from scratch with SageTV 6, and had no crashes with TV-out + OSD, picture quality rocks !

...but I still have a couple of the other common problems:

1) The small menu preview window flickers
2) The deaded EOF bug - wasn't this fixed ages ago (or is that and STV thing?)

...but now I'm happy