Will Sage TV picture quality match my DVD recorder?

[hogburgs]

I want to upgrade my office PC to a PVR. I have Comcast cable and a Sony 27 inch analog CRT TV. I plan to stay analog and standard definition TV until my Sony TV dies. I would like to use the Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-500MCE card a Hauppauge MediaMVP.

The hardware specs on the office PC are good, should be no problem there.

I basically only watch recorded TV and am currently accomplishing this with a couple of Panasonic DVD recorders using DVD RAM disks. My question to you is about the picture quality I can expect when I record TV through Sage and watch it on my analog CRT TV by way of the media extender.

"Will the picture quality be as good as my DVD recorder output"?

I forgot to mention that the DVD recorder playback quality is as good as watching live TV straight from the cable, which is very good as SDTV goes.

Thanks

[pjpjpjpj]

As long as you have all of your PQ settings in Sage set correctly, and as long as your capture card works well (I am not familiar with yours personally), you won't lose any quality "because of" Sage. So, yes... your picture quality should be as good as your DVD recorder.

Let's put it this way... Sage knocks HD out of the park (IMO )... so SD shouldn't be a problem.

[matt91]

I wouldn't buy a MVP, though. Get the HD extender. It plays more formats natively, if nothing else.

No reason not to buy for the future.
Matt

[Taddeusz]

It really depends. I've found the TIB's (tuner in a box) that are found on PC tuner cards are quite poor when it comes to picture quality. My STB's produce a much better picture from the same signal. Of course this also depends on the signal quality you're receiving over your cable.

[Jesse]

Hi,

Definitely go for the HD extender.

My ATI tuners rival the picture from my D* STB's. I started with a pvr500 and it never produced what I would call great pq.

Jesse

[hogburgs]

Originally Posted by matt91

I wouldn't buy a MVP, though. Get the HD extender. It plays more formats natively, if nothing else.

No reason not to buy for the future.
Matt

Well you answered what was to be my next question. I wanted to be sure that the HD extender would work properly with my SDTV, I have my answer. Thanks.

[pat_smith1969]

I have been fairly unhappy with my Hauppauge PVR-500MCE to tell the truth. I find the pq if an analog signal to be poor, and the PQ from SVID capture to be better but not as good as watching it through the Set Top Box.

I am watching it all on a 50' HD Plasma so I thing any issues are magnafied. When watching on my 32 SD tube TV (real old Magnavox). The PQ is ok, though analog captures are still not quite as good as SVID captures and it is all not as good as coming straight out of a STB. None of this is an issue with SageTV though, I feel the PVR-500 is not a great card. There are others that are supposed to be better.

[Taddeusz]

Yea, I've never been completely happy with the picture quality from my PVR 150's. Particularly the RF input. The Svideo is much better. I believe because SD video is has such a low resolution and that it's interlaced it doesn't take too well to being digitized. The video digitizer that Hauppauge uses also might not be the best in the world. Of course it's not supposed to be broadcast quality or anything.

[othy]

+1 on the comments about PQ on the Hauppauge 500/150 via RF. My HDHR produces a picture so much better than my 500 that even my wife notices, which is saying something. My ATI 550 falls somewhere between the two extremes.

I actually ended up pulling the PVR500 and it's collecting dust. I figure my HDHR and HD-PVR cover 90% of my recording duties and the ATI provides a safety net for the occasional overflow.

PQ on both the HDHR and HD-PVR seem flawless to me, but I don't have a way of measuring it of course. It is hard to imagine someone watching those recordings and being unhappy with the picture, though.

Tim

[gjvrieze]

I personally find that my ATI 550pro's after a good high quality cable amp, look very close to dvd quality on SDTVs, on HDTVs it is a little more noticeable.... I also to am able to see the difference even in SD Digital channels coming off the HDHRs even on the SDTVs...... I would check signal strength in your cable modem to start with, just to get an idea of how your line is....

[hogburgs]

I have my system installed.

SageTv vr.6.3
HD media extender
Hauppauge PVR-500 MCE

All I can say is wow! The picture quality is, on a scale of 1-10, an 11+ !!!

I'm so glad I went this route, Sage rocks!

[Djc208]

Congrats, gladd you're happy.

All the reviews I had seen had put the ATI cards as having some of the best PQ of a tuner card, but you sure did pay for it. But as everyone has said it depends a lot on your input signal. My 1600 does well enough on analog for me. Since I watch through an HD set it's never going to rival HD PQ, but the stations that don't work well are due to the signal and not the card. Of course it's all subjective and I'm probably not as picky as some.