PVR-250 or PVR-350/MediaMVP

[ditohead]

First of all let me say thanks for all of the great info on these forums. I've learned a ton just by browsing the threads.

I currently have the ATI 8500DV but am thinking of getting rid of it in favor of one of the Hauppauge cards, largely because my system is pretty much useless when recording stuff. I'm considering the 250 and 350 cards and understand from Hauppauge site and reading various threads here that basically the difference is that the 350 adds a hardware decoder and S-Video out. My question is, is the hardware decoder on the 350 used while watching live/recorded TV on my computer monitor, only when video is being output through the S-Video connector, or both? And just to be sure I'm clear, from things I've read it sounds like even live TV watched through the Hauppauge cards is encoded before viewing. Is this correct?

Secondly, I am interested in the MediaMVP. From a posting I read it sounds like Sage is going to add their interface to this device and sell it on their site at some point. Is this still in the works and if so, is there a rumored timeframe for when that might happen? Weeks? Months? A year?

[stanger89]

The 350's HW decoder is only available on the S-Vid out AFIAK.

Yes the 250/350 encode everything, so you're watching encoded video all the time.

As for the MediaMVP Dan has made no promises but said they are working with hauppage. This is the latest post I can find:
http://forums.sage.tv/forums/showthr...amvp#post12134
My guess would be that right now they are focusing on the National EPG rollout and SageTV 2.0 release. Hopefully once V2.0 is released they'll have more time to work on things like the MVP.

[ditohead]

Thanks for the quick reply. Forgive my ignorance, but what do you mean by AFIAK? Also, what does your CPU utilization look like when watching?

[Crazedz]

Apparently from the little bit that HTPC News.com has let out so far of the interview with Frey Tech CEO about 2.0 is that sage will have client software that will run on the media mvp. According to the blurb it will allow you to do everything you can do on the sagetv software itself.

HTPC News Link Scroll down for the news