Which better for my intended use - 250 or 350?

[mikestanley]

I've had a Celeron 850 (oc'ed 566) running as a playback-only HTPC for some time now - running XP with a Radeon AIW . I have the AIW because I originally thought I'd use the HTPC to "back up" the shows from our Tivo or record shows when the Tivo was recording something else. Quality mostly stunk, which is why this machine became playback only for divx and other content, including dumps of my own dvds.

Anyway, now I would like to get a hardware-based MPEG2 encoder card to turn this machine into more of a second PVR (still love the Tivo and not planning on giving it up) - again, primarily for conflict resolution but also for recording shows we want to archive since Tivo's so unhelpful in that respect. I just have analog cable so I've essentially just split it to go to the Tivo and the computer, and I will run one set of outputs from the Tivo to the computer to dump the content we already have saved over to it.

My question is, do I want a 250 or 350? I know the 350 accelerates the output from Sage (my PVR content, mainly?) but wouldn't I have to use the AIW output for divx, xvid, or anything else I rip myself and also general PC content?

I have this computer connected to a 36" Toshiba standard television (well, indirectly, it goes through my receiver first) via S-video and am not dissatisfied with the output right now. No monitor connected to this machine.

Thanks for your suggestions!

[dgage]

Once SageTV V2 is released, you will be able to see the menu over the 350. Right now, it will just display the video with no menu overlay.

My recommendation would be to look at getting the 250 for encoding and an XCard for playback. The XCard will decode MPEG2 as well as Divx and a few others so it is more future proof. The XCard won't be supported with SageTV V2 at first but I expect it will be supported fairly soon. Quality and flexibility will be with the XCard. If you hadn't mentioned Divx, the 350 would probably be a good choice.

Take a look at the XCard.
http://www.sigmadesigns.com/products/xcard.htm

David

[dgage]

One other thing to note is that the 350 will playback MPEG2 files but won't play DVD movies. Therfore, you would have to rely on your regular video card for DVD playback or look at the aforementioned XCard, which will also play DVDs back.

David

[framage]

>> Once SageTV V2 is released, you will be able to see the menu over the 350. Right now, it will just display the video with no menu overlay.

Snap mentions that this would negate onboard mpeg encoding... any thoughts?

I bought the 350 and BeyondTV3, but it doesn't support the s-video out (and the reason for buying the 350). The s-video on my nVidia6400 would require dumbing-down the resolution from 1280x1024 (used for my LCD), I assume.

Thanks,

-Frank

[justme]

Snap mentions that this would negate onboard mpeg encoding... any thoughts?

Do you mean snapstream has said that if you use OSD on the PVR350's video output that the Hardware encoding of that PVR350 would be disabled whenever the OSD is used?

As for Sage2 Jeff has already stated in the Sage2 info thread that the HW encoding and decoding of the 350 would be seperate. Also since Sage only supports Hardware encoding cards there would be little point to an OSD on a 350 if it disabled the 350's encoder. So I would say that Sage2 would support OSD while still allowing the use of the 350's HW encoder. This is all just reading betwen the lines of Jeff's public posts on this site. But I believe this is the correct assumption about Sage2.

As for Snap they may be chosing to try to do OSD in a different manor since they support softare based encoding cards*. They may even be looking at just encoding the UI into an Mpeg stream. This was talked about long ago by users for Sage, but Jeff made it clear there was a better way. Although this method is used by Joveplayer to display the Windows desktop on the Xcard. But even Joveplayer supports an OSD over the Xcards hardware decoded video.

*I'm not trying to say one company is better than the other, that conversation has happened too many times. All I I'm trying to point out is that the two companies have different market strategies and this effects the way they impliment their own unique features.

EDIT: Here's the thread where most of the info I rembered above came from. Specifically check out this post by Narflex as a reponse to a question from haptomhills. It gives a very clear cut answer about how all the different parts of the 350 will be able to be used at the same time in Sage2.

[dgage]

Since this post came back up, I wanted to add some info on the XCard that I learned.

I read somewhere that the XCard has an MPEG chip for output but uses the computer to convert a DIVX stream to MPEG for output. This means, if you are planning on using the XCard to play DIVX, you will need some processing power.

I expect to see some cards with true MPEG4 output in the first half of 2004. Bring them on!

[justme]

Bring on the tuner cards that can use HW encoding/decoding for both Mpeg1/2 and Mpeg4(Divx/Xvid). I'd love to have the option to encode some shows directly to Mpeg4. All the parts are out there we just need a vendor to put them all together.

[framage]

http://kb.snapstream.com/Kb.aspx?kbid=1155
-----------------------------------------------------------

TV-OUT doesn't work on Hauppauge WinTV PVR-350 when used with Beyond TV
Created 9/30/2003 5:39:53 PM
Last Modified 12/19/2003 6:42:28 PM

Article #: 1155
Product: Beyond TV 3
Category: Advanced Settings and Features
Keywords: 350,out,pvr,pvr-350,tv,tv-out

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Problem
TV-OUT on PVR-350 does not display Beyond TV 3's output.

Solution
The PVR-350 only recognizes overlay images from media playback, in conjunction with its hardware MPEG-2 decoder, for use with its TV-OUT.

PVS doesn't use overlays; it uses VMR9 so that it can overlay its menus and user-interfaces on top of the video being played back. In order for Beyond TV to use the PVR-350's TV OUT, it would have to format all of its visual output as an MPEG-2 stream and pass it to the overlay, which would completely negate the effectiveness of using a hardware encoding tuner device.

The TV-OUT on the PVR-350 will therefore not be able to display the output that Beyond TV can.

-Frank

[mikejaner]

Yeah, they are saying the way they coded their interface is why they cannot take advantage of the output of the 350 properly. Sage is coded in the way that supports overlay and therefore output to the 350 is supported.
What they mean by negating the effectiveness, is because the encoding will get the video, but the stream will have to be reencoded to put the interface over the video.

mikejaner

[justme]

WOW, this could be a real feature differentation between Sage2 and BeyondTV(SS). At least for people who are after a Tivo like device that hooks up to SVHS inputs. For higher end video connections like some of the newer HDTV sets it would not really matter as you could use a DVI connector. Still very interesting how one early design descision can effect what can and can't be done in the future.

I love competition, these two companies are really pushing each other to both make better products. In the end we, the customers, always win. Though I do have to admit I root for Sage.