Pro's and Cons of PVR-350

[srothwell]

OK...

I've pretty much thrown in the towel trying to use my PCs video card with its TV output.

I Don't want any de-interlacing to occur, but I've had many people tell me I have no choice. This makes absolutely no sense to me.... TV is an interlaced item. To de-interlace it then re-interlace it again to display it completely destroys the picture quality.

So, I've decided if I can't beat them, I'll join them.......

If I break down and buy the PVR-350, that apparently has a TV output that nothing can mess with (i.e. de-interlace), what will I lose that I'm enjoying now.

My guess is I won't be able to use any other picture features. Also, I guess that my video imports won't work any more.

I guess that MP3's won't make a difference becuase I'm getting the sound from the PC no matter what anyway, right?

Do I lose the cool small video window on the TV guide?

Man, I think I'm talking myself into staying with my ReplayTV :-)

I'm just confused because I hear SO MANY people ranting and raving about using a PVR like this, but I find the picture quality unacceptable.

Any information would be very helpful (has would a phone number for sageTV. This business of writing an e-mail to tech support and waiting 48 hours for a response is nuts).

Thanks,

Stacy

[Opus4]

How about another idea? If you want a hardware decoder, the Xcard _might_ be an option to consider -- and it can play DVDs using other software. BUT, before you look into it at all, be aware that the SageTV UI is NOT displayed on the TV, so you have to view the menus on your computer's monitor. All video output (and only video output) then goes directly to the TV, fullscreen.

- Andy

[mlbdude]

The 350 will make setup much easier. You don't need to know anything about decoders and how to configure them.

The down side you pretty much listed.

However, based on some of your other posts you seem to not even know what decoder you have installed let alone how to configure it. I would suggest starting with learning a little about that before spending more $$$.

[srothwell]

The decoder issue is now fixed. It seems that I never installed the decoder when I installed the drivers for the USB2.

Now, I will say that made a little bit of a difference. The field order thing is solved, but there's still the issue of the decoder de-interlacing the picture then the PC's graphics card's TV out re-interlacing it.

There has to be a way to tell the decoder to leave the thing alone and don't touch the interlacing. This is post I saw, but when I try to follow his instructions, I don't have the decoder. Where do I get it? This is EXACTLY what I want to do. Can someone please tell me how to accomplish what Jeffrey is suggesting? I do not have a Elecard.

-------------------------
There is a way to disable deinterlacing in SageTV. Just use the Elecard filter and don't select DScaler. Then set
HKLM\Software\Elecard\MPEG2 Video Decoder\SoftwareBob to 0
in your registry.

Then you'll have a completely interlaced output for the video.

__________________
Jeffrey Kardatzke
CTO
Frey Technologies, LLC

---------------------

[mlbdude]

That reg setting is for the Elecard decoder. Each decoder has a different setting.

What decoder are you using?

The problem will be that your video card is going to resize the image so when you output to the TV the scan-lines don't match up.

The 350 or XCard does not have that problem.

[srothwell]

I am using the Hauppage one that came with my Win-TV PVR-USB2. Under SageTV it is called "Intervideo Non-CSS Video Decoder for Hauppague"

I did find Hauppage in the registry, but couldn't figure out which entry said DON'T DE-INTERLACE.

Thanks,

Stacy

[mlbdude]

For that decoder, first do these registry settings.

http://forums.freytechnologies.com/f...=&threadid=284

This will enable DXVA.

Then you can ADD a key to the same location called BOBWEAVE, DWORD value of 2. This will turn off deinterlacing.

[pcuoco]

srothwell,

The elecard MPG2 decoder can be found here:

http://www.moonlight.co.il/cons_player.php

[nielm]

I understand your frustration, but throwing in the towel after a few days? It took several weeks of on-and-off playing to get a good picture out of my Sage box...

The problem is that the Windows desktop is effectvely progressive display, so if you are sending any video ot the desktop it has to be deinterlaced and scaled to the size of the desktop. The GFX cards tv-out then has to rescale and re-interlace to display it on the TV.
A secons problem is that GFX cards have a very low quality TV signal (only a very small proportion of their users really use it anyway), with very poor interlacing of the desktop.

To get a good picture on my PC's TV-out involved trying pretty much every combination of settings in the decoder, in Sage, and in the Windows Display adapter...
Eventually I got something where I cannot notice any interlacing artifacts (1024x768 desktop, Overlay redenderer in Sage, PowerDVD decoder, with HW decoding enabled and BOB/Weave deinterlace, DXVA mode B and DXVA bob/Weave deinterlace). You may have better results with different settings.

It is also useful to find some video with really noticable interlacing so that you can notice when it is better or worse... Horizontal scrolling of solid objects (such as car racing) was usually the worst for me!

Some people have reported running at 640x480 (for NTSC) was best, but even then the video has to be zoomed to 100% to avoid scaling... I live in PAL land and my video card does not support 576 line resolution so I was out of luck.

[srothwell]

I did the registry entires for Hauppague and it didn't seem to stop the de-interlacing.

Then I've installed the eveluation version of elecard. However, there is no registry entry at all as follows (and was posted earlier):

There is a way to disable deinterlacing in SageTV. Just use the Elecard filter and don't select DScaler. Then set
HKLM\Software\Elecard\MPEG2 Video Decoder\SoftwareBob to 0
in your registry.

Then you'll have a completely interlaced output for the video.

Is there a new reg entry for this?

In reponse to the guy asking me not to throw in the towel.... this has just been two solid days of frustration. Mostly becuase of what you're talking about...... Which is why I'm considering using the PVR-350 but it has its own issues. I like the idea of seeing pictures on my TV. I'm assuming that playing MP3s won't really make a difference becuase they're playing out of the PC's sound card anyway.

If I use the 350 will I get the menus? I'm still unclear what I get and what I won't.

Thanks

[mlbdude]

That Elecard setting is for the older decoder version.

To disable it, open up the Elecard player and set Deinterlacing to Force Weave. This will also enable the DScaler options, but that is more deinterlacing.

I think the 350 has its own audio out as well so that could mess that up.

You can't do DVD's (unless they are ripped to the HD and encryption is removed first), any kind of MPEG4 like Divx, or Xvid. You also won't get any of your desktop so you may need some other kind of option to do anything in Windows.

Also, that BOBWEAVE key will disable deinterlacing. You can verify on your PC since you should be able to see the scan-lines during motions scenes (especially scrolling text).

[pcuoco]

With the 350 output you will get the OSD and menus in Sage only. No windows desktop. You can view pictures with Sage's picture library, but it's really not the best option.

DVD, Divx, etc. watching has been covered above.

As for MP3's, if you feed your audio out of a 350 into your sound card line in, and then to your receiver (or PC speakers) you can have the 350 audio, MP3 audio, and windows audio, all out of one source.

Hope this helps clarify.

[srothwell]

Thanks for the info.

I now understand about the desktop being progressive, etc. Although turning off all de-interlacing doesn't really help becuase of the desktop resizing ever so slightly still seems to screw everythnig up just enough.

So, pitfalls or not, would it be safe to assume that using a PVE-350 would avoid that particular problem and the video would look smooth as silk?

If I had other videos that I translated to MPEG2, would they work out of the 350's Output?

Sorry to be a pain asking about the 350, but no store carrys them in town and I really don't want to risk $200 buying on the internet just to find out it doesn't work then I've got a paperweight.

Thanks!

[kny3twalker]

As for MP3's, if you feed your audio out of a 350 into your sound card line in, and then to your receiver (or PC speakers) you can have the 350 audio, MP3 audio, and windows audio, all out of one source.

this is only one way to do it
personally I would use the sound cards audio out and just fix the sync problems if there is one with the setting in sage
that way you are not reencoding the audio again

also if you do this with ripped DVDs then you will lose the AC3 surround sound and get stereo only since it has been encoded to that

[kny3twalker]

actually you can get them for about 150 from
http://www.pcalchemy.com/index.php/cPath/43

[mlbdude]

Originally posted by srothwell
Thanks for the info.

I now understand about the desktop being progressive, etc. Although turning off all de-interlacing doesn't really help becuase of the desktop resizing ever so slightly still seems to screw everythnig up just enough.

So, pitfalls or not, would it be safe to assume that using a PVE-350 would avoid that particular problem and the video would look smooth as silk?

If I had other videos that I translated to MPEG2, would they work out of the 350's Output?

Sorry to be a pain asking about the 350, but no store carrys them in town and I really don't want to risk $200 buying on the internet just to find out it doesn't work then I've got a paperweight.

Thanks!

Please keep in mind that the 350 is NOT the only way to get video playback smooth on a TV. Most of us don't use a 350 (I used to but did not like to downsides so I stuck mine in the closet for now) and have excellent playback on the TV.

However, it is the easiest way since you don't have to know anything about decoders.