PVR-350 display questions

[7up]

I would like to purchase a WinTV PVR-350 for a family member as a gift to use with SageTV. If the s-video output on the 350 is used as the video connection to the TV, will it display the full OSD, channel guide, etc? Ideally what I would like is for him to plug in the PCI card, connect an S-video and audio cables to the TV and install the program.

Thoughts?

[RobDMB]

Yes it will display the full UI of Sagetv. It looks great too. Its not the most stable card but when it works it works well. Some people seem to have better luck with it than others.

[Wheemer]

As a gift I'm not sure it should be recommended. I don't have any personal experience with a 350, but I've read about a few major bugs. If he's just getting into HTPCs and he's not the type to tinker with his setup all the time, then maybe a PVR 150 and a good video card would be a better choice.

[cummings66]

I second the idea of a pvr150 and a good video card for the gift.

If you didn't like the person a pvr350 would make an ideal gift, but if you value them don't do this with a 350.

I have one, I don't like it. Shortly I'm going to be getting the XCard to use in place of the 350's tv and audio out. It's also not the most stable of cards and requires a fan to keep it cool so it doesn't lock up. That fixed all my lock up issues, but not audio sync issues.

I have heard of a few success stories with it, but many more problems than successes. Not worth the chance.

[Crashless]

As an owner, I can say that the PVR350 is an awesome card - when it works.

I know there is a large number of users who have no problems with it, but there seems to be an equally large number of users who are having issues. Do some searches, check your current setup, and calculate your own odds of success by comparing your configuration with those who are currently using it.

If he has a dedicated Sage box, and it has over a couple of GHZ, then I'd have a hard time reccomending the 350. But if he either has a smaller CPU, or plans to do a lot of other things with the HTPC, then the 350 becomes a LOT more attractive, even with it's issues.

So that's the best I can do. Check his odds, and don't buy being 'wishfull'.

All that said, as a gift, a pvr150 is a much safer choice. Safer still is a USB model, like the plextor, or the hauppauge usb2. I've seen little to no issues posted with those. The PCI cards don't work with some motherboard chipsets, and the external models don't have that issue.

[zz5]

Originally Posted by Crashless

I know there is a large number of users who have no problems with it, but there seems to be an equally large number of users who are having issues.

Virtually everyone has problems with the 350. There are not a large number of people who have no problems. Find me one user who hasn't had problems.

[cummings66]

Yeah, I'd like to see one user who hasn't had a single problem. That means no lockups, no OSD lockup/go away problems, wake up issues, audio sync issues.

I don't believe there exists a single person out there with a 350 that's 100% troublefree.

I'm running on an ASUS P4PE with an Intel P4 2.5 Gig system with 1Gig of SDRam, no other PCI cards. I've changed slots, assigned a unique IRQ to it, put a fan on it, yet it's still a POS card. Hauppauge admits to having issues with it and say there is no fix for them. People claim it works on an Intel chipset, I'd like to see that in person. I've had my card exchanged, same problems.

For what it's worth, the fan did pretty much eliminate the lockups, but it didn't fix anything else. I'm going the XCard route, which means I could have bought the 150 and XCard for the same price. Now I'll have more money in it than need be, and I won't be using the features I bought the card for. In short, the card is garbage. Maybe someday in the future I'll have another motherboard that works with it, who knows. Hauppauge won't say anything about that issue, beyond they know it doesn't like the VIA chipset.

I'll put it this way. If you think you have Sage problems and you have this card, you probably have hardware problems instead.

[Crashless]

krutaw, AFAIK, has no issues. My only issue as of right now is the EOF problem. Other than that, it's a rock.

[zz5]

Crashless, did you know there was a workaround for the EOF problem? If you enable software decoding and 350 output, the problem goes away. So, if you did that, your system would be 100% stable. Can you hold down the ffw/rew button and jump back and forth throughout a recording without it locking up? If I do that, it will lock up after half an hour or so. Normally, I only get a lockup once a week.

I knew about krutaw and I know of at least one other person (Hector) that has no problems. I've seen krutaw post that he doesn't have any problems, but a few other people have posted that they don't have problems, and it turned out they really did, it's just that they didn't considering locking up to be a problem for some strange reason. Hector had the lockup problem and it was fixed using better cooling. On my system, I use the Card Cooler and it really hasn't helped. I probably need better cooling.

[carlgar]

ZZ5, while I cannot rule out the cooling being the cause of the soft lockups, I have serious doubts about that. I still use version 1.4 of SageTV and have spent much time looking at the soft lockup issue. I can always solve it by putting SageTV into sleep and then waking it up, but sometimes it takes many attemps. I can now usually tell when it is going to work properly because I see the color bars hiccup on my TV. This leads me to believe that the driver or card gets itself into some type of loop that takes something to kick it out. I find it had to believe that a heat related issue would be that consistent. Also, when it fails to restart I get some error indicating some display type error which I believe is because the software cannot communicate with the 350 card until the card gets itself out the loop it appears to be in.

[zz5]

carlgar,

Until recently, I also was very skeptical of heating being the problem, but now I'm pretty convinced that heating is the problem. The EOF problem is definitely a bug, but the FFW/REW problem seems to be heat related. While I agree that a software loop could explain the consistency of the way the 350 emerges from a lockup, it could also be explained by a hardware lockup because the color bars is the original state of the 350, so you would expect to see the color bars after a hardware lockup also.

Here are two fairly recent threads. These two threads convinced me that heat was the problem.

http://forums.freytechnologies.com/f...ead.php?t=8302

http://forums.freytechnologies.com/f...2&page=1&pp=20

Make sure you read Hector's posts. They're very convincing because he used the "house-fan" method to make sure that it was really an overheating problem and gives lots of details. Other people don't give quite the detail but their experiences generally seem to confirm overheating.

When I take my system down sometime, I'm going to try out the house-fan method to see if I get the same conclusion.

[Crashless]

Originally Posted by zz5

Crashless, did you know there was a workaround for the EOF problem? If you enable software decoding and 350 output, the problem goes away. So, if you did that, your system would be 100% stable.

I've tried that but it doesn't resolve my problem. My system HARD RESETS at the end of a file. Bluescreen flash, reset.

Yes, I can lay on the ff/rew keys with no issues though.

I wish my system would live up to my username. I feel like a fraud.

As far as cooling, I put a temp probe under the heat sink once and it went way over 70 deg C. i don't keep it there because I don't like the alarm, but that chip gets very hot. I bought a SLOT cooler that exhausts air out the back of the case, and I never get lockups mid-show anymore.

[cummings66]

You know my system reboots, no blue screen or anything, just a reboot upon reaching the EOF if I try to stop it a couple seconds before the stop.

Using the higher priority bat file means I can let it go to the end with no problems, as long as I don't try to stop it.

I'm not sure if it's sage or something else at work here.

When you said you put the probe under the heat sink, how did you manage to do that? Hauppauge indicated to me that the heatsink does not come off, if it does I know of easier fixes for the heat problems.

[Crashless]

By "under", I should have said, "almost under". There's a small overhang, and the probe I was using was one of those tape type ones, so it slid under like a piece of paper.

I'm using a bat so mine starts at abovenormal. I might try one more, but then my other programs will start suffering. I figured that by giving it a slight edge, it would help. I might try that tonight.

[dblaine2]

I have never had an issue with my 350 locking up or crashing the system. The output is awesome. What I do have problems with is the 350 and the promise controller in my A7V don't like each other. It was a simple workaround to avoid using the promise controller for now.