PVR-350 video output?

[mlar]

My SageTV system is an EPIA M-9000, which is limited to two PCI cards. Ideally I'd like to be able to use dual tuners in this box, while also using some kind of hardware MPEG decoder. It looks like SageTV supports the X-card (although without OSD). How about the PVR-350? Can I use the PVR-350 as a second tuner and TV output device at the same time in SageTV? Or could I potentially get a PCI X-card and use the USB version of the PVR as the second tuner? If the PVR-350 output is support - does it have OSD support in SageTV? If not, is it planned?

[Narflex]

Where'd you get an M9000 that can handle 2 PCI cards? I know the earlier mini-itx boards could, but the M9000 I just bought says in the manual it only does 1 (where in the other manual I have for the older board it says 2).

PVR350 tv-out and OSD is not supported yet, but will be in the future. I don't believe there is a USB version of the PVR 250 or 350.

I use an M9000 and don't need any extra hardware MPEG acceleration, there's enough already built into the motherboard. Works great without it.

Jeff

[mlar]

There is a PCI riser card available for the M9000 which will give you two slots on the EPIA board (www.idot.com sells them). I know that the EPIA has hardware acceleration (although sometimes I wonder if it's really in use), the output from a real hardware decoder is so much better though. I've never seen the output from the PVR-350, but I know the Sigma X-card (with component outputs) really surpass anything I've seen so far. I haven't had a chance to tweak the EPIA output too much yet, but if I compare the output from the EPIA with the output from my TiVo, it's easy to pick out the TiVo. Ideally it would look at least as good as the TiVo.

The USB version I'm referring to, is the WinTV-PVR-USB, but it might be that it is using a different chipset (probably the same as the 880 model of WinTV PVR).


My second question would then be.. Would it be possible to have a separate EPIA backend machine with two PVR-250 cards, and then another EPIA machine with an Xcard to use as a frontend?

[Narflex]

Try adjusting the display colors using control panel for the EPIA box. A little tweaking made HUGE differences in the picture quality. I couldn't believe the default was where it was.

For your 2nd question, not yet, but in future versions we will be supporting that.

[SHS]

WinTV-PVR-USB come with iTVC12 there are two rev of USB PVR one with 6MB and one with 12MB memory, The 12MB USB PVR dose higher capture but only dose 44.1 audio. it should very possable for jeff add support for USB PVR but being I don't have USB PVR I can't say for sure on that.
I don't think the EPIA board has a ture Hardware MPEG-2 decoder I think it only as some Hardware Acceleration like iDCT, MC I look at the drivers my guest it is software base decoding making use of the iDCT, MC features on integrated s3 graphics chip becuase there was directshow drv so most like have use WinDVD or PowerDVD MPEG2 codec.