n00b experience in PVR land

[elneckio]

<essay>
Hi,
I used to have a Dazzle PVR card which 'almost' worked with Sage tv and inspired me to get a proper PVR card I decided upon the PVR-350 because it seemed to be the most supported card out.

Not having much luck with this however, a brief summary of my findings so far ...

Snapstream - I knew this wouldn't support the PVR350OSD but I still wanted to check it out. Good install, excellent setup wizard (which showed the tv signal picture for me) however main application appeared as a blank screen full of empty boxes and no picture.

MythTv - Tried the knopp packaged version as linked from hauppauge's site. Install seemed to sense a few things when booting and looked promising but ended up at blank desktop. Will go back to installing this by hand if I can't find any other solution.

myHTPC TV plugin - Couldn't get a picture through this, doesn't look to have OSD 350 support so haven't tried for long.



<problem>
Sage (and the reason for this post) - Find out now I have the card that external OSD is actually in the beta, must have read posts from the beta forum before that confused me . 5 days left on my eval, setup it up to 90210 area code as I am in the uk, gets listings I didn't really need , set it to use anttena channel 87 only, no picture just static.

The wintv32 app can show a picture on channel 87 ok. I have turned off the software preview and enabled the 350 ouput but just get static on the output.

Any ideas or things I could check ?

Also once working how do you fine tune the PVR from sage ala wintv tuning's option ?

</problem>

Is there anyway to get the beta without purchasing ? OSD support was one of the main reasons I went for the 350 and I can't actually see it yet.



</essay> thanks for reading

[elneckio]

Forgot to say I did try the composite connection with the convertor but could not get a good picture from it at all in winttv.

The supplied convertor gave black and white, another did colour but had terrible quality hence using the antenna connection

[mikejaner]

Not even us paying customers can get a hold of the beta yet. It will probably be the beginning of December before any of us can see it. Trust me, us PVR 350 owners are waiting with antici..................................................................................................................................pation like you wouldn't believe.

mikejaner

[elneckio]

Good news - Got XMLtv listings to work
Bad news - still no picture

[elneckio]

Ok so I got bored and spent another few hours on this... tried to get a different input to work correctly.

Sat Box Scart -> Composite -> Supplied Adapter -> PVR 350 = poor black and white picture

Sat Box Scart -> Composite -> Old Geforce Adapter -> PVR 350 = poor colour picture

Sat Box Scart -> Supplied Scart Lead -> PVR 350 = Good picture/stereo sound, but cannot input and output at same time as sat box takes control when turned on so no chance for pausing feed. Therefore what is this cable designed for ?

Sat Box Ariel -> Old ariel Lead -> PVR 350 &
PVR 350 -> supplied 4 wire adapter -> s-vid cable -> TV = Good picture but mono sound but can do paused live feeds.


I know this is turning a bit hardware based but its all related so I've stuck to the same thread.


HELP !

[elneckio]

Gave up and rang Hauppauge. Very helpfull chap is emailing me 'something to try'.

If that fails I'm on the hunt for a custom connection lead

[dkardatzke]

Did you do a search through the forums on this? I vaguely remember this coming up in the past with a solution.

[elneckio]

I have done search's (many!) both here and on shs, myth, snapstream etc. Found a registry fix for B&W which didn't work. Installed all latest drivers etc.

I am guessing that by making a new scart connection cable I may be able to get a full setup, for the time being I am happy to carry on with tuner/mono.

However I still can't get Sage to display a picture from the card where wintv does successfully.

Potentially this card has huge potential, having played with the wintv2000 software the picture quality is superb.

btw if anyone does have hardware hassles the Hauppauge support staff I spoke to was very helpfull - much impressed.