WinTvPVR-Which one?

[CarlG]

I've been fooling around with a few capture cards for a long time, and since I've come here It's looking like I want a Hauppage, but I'm trying to figgure out what the heck the real difference is between the 150,250 and 350?? Lookin at the specs they all seem to record at the same rates and that so I'm a little puzzled why one would be any more expensive than the other when all the features are the same lol. I have an Ati aiw 7500 right now, which I was never really extatic about but it did a soso job in my opinion but the reliability has been horrible due to their bucking bronco drivers. The pxm402u is unreliable too, IMO, but the quality is there and I'm hoping there'll be a firmware update or sumthin that will fix all that. I think the best card i've had for reliability and quality (although it has to be setup properly and LONG encodes to other formats) is my Pinnacle DC30 hardware Mjpeg board, but now i just want sumthin I can use. Could someone please clear this up for me?


TIA,

Carl G

[Lucas]

As far as capture goes the hauppage cards are almost the same.
The 150 is an update of the 250, an also has an IR blaster on it.

The 350 is a 250 plus an FM radio and a mpeg2 hardware decoder that feeds an S-Video TV-OUT.

I don't know about the rest. I have a PVR250 and a PVR-USB2 and they are very reliable. The USB drivers seem to be more stable.

The

[CarlG]

I just saw future shop out here has the 250 for $149 Canadian (which is probably about $110 U.S.) for the boxing week sale so I was thinking about grabbing it, but I thought the 250 would have been better than the 150 lol guess not. I still think that's probably a pretty good price?? I'll probably go grab it anyways but the only thing I'm wondering now is if the software will be subpar, or better yet, if I'd ever even use the bundled software. I hate going and spending my hard earned $$ just to discover a month later I wish I would have spent the extra to get the next model up
Thanks for that speeeedy reply Lucas

[zz5]

Only the 250 and 350 support closed captions.

[mdmint]

Originally Posted by zz5

Only the 250 and 350 support closed captions.

Also the 150 cannot be used in Network mode while the 250 & 350 can.

[CarlG]

Thanks guys, looks like I'm gona grab the 250. I wouldn't have minded grabbing the usb2 one but I already have a convertx, so i don't know if that would be a great idea having two usb2 devices like that on the same box. So obviously going for the pvr250 isn't going for a subpar product right? What do you guys think about that price?

[SHS]

Part ture (Also the 150 cannot be used in Network mode while the 250 & 350 can) and part not ture only becuase jeff hasn't gotting a round to update SageTV Recorder so that it will work with new hardware encoder.

[mdmint]

Originally Posted by SHS

Part ture (Also the 150 cannot be used in Network mode while the 250 & 350 can) and part not ture only becuase jeff hasn't gotting a round to update SageTV Recorder so that it will work with new hardware encoder.

I disagree. It's 100% true that TODAY, using what is currently available for SageTV, the PVR150 cannot be used as a network encoder. Who cares if it's theoretically capable of doing it if in fact it can't because the SageRecorder software doesn't support it. Bottom line is the PVR150 is not a network encoder solution today, nor has Frey made any annoucement stating it will be supported in the furture IRRC.

[mdmint]

Originally Posted by CarlG

Thanks guys, looks like I'm gona grab the 250. I wouldn't have minded grabbing the usb2 one but I already have a convertx, so i don't know if that would be a great idea having two usb2 devices like that on the same box. So obviously going for the pvr250 isn't going for a subpar product right? What do you guys think about that price?

PVR250 subpar, absolutely not. More like it's the "standard" PVR to go with when not being used for video out. I've been running 5 of them since May no problems. Seem to read about much more PVR problems dealing with cheaper PVRs. Price wise $110us seems decent for PVR250, they're currently $139us at Newegg.

[CarlG]

Ok thanks very much guys-I got one more question, sorry if im being a PITA, but I was thinking maybe I should wait to get my hands on a 350 just for the tv out, but the thing I'm wondering is really, how good is the tv out for use with sage? I for one right now use the tv out on my ati AIW, and sit there looking at the guide on sage right on the tv, looks like i got a hot new receiver If the tv out on the 350 is anything like the tv out on the nexus-s it will only show the tv picture, not the guide and stuff like the desktop and that, which means I would have to look at the computer to switch channels. Am I correct on this? Might anybody have some info I may be missing out on?

Again, thanks for all your help guys

[Opus4]

You can display the SageTV UI through the 350's TV-out (there are options in Detailed Setup; p. 132 in the v2.1 manual), but the 350 itself seems to be a bit hit or miss regarding whether it will operate flawlessly for you.

- Andy

[zz5]

The only reason you need to think about the 350 is if you've got an SDTV. If you have an HDTV or are happy with the quality on the SDTV, you definitely don't want to get a 350.