Mailing List Archive

jungle@saphire.dk wrote:

>Hello,
>
>I was wondering if anyone could point me to sources that describe the
>quality of the mentioned card, and MythTV's support for it, and if it
>really is worth the price of it. Anyone with any experience with it?
>
no sources for quality, but imho it is very good. the dnr makes the
sometimes noisy picture i have much less grainy, the compressed image
quality is very good, the sound quality is fine (for a stereo only
signal) and when i'm capturing i use next to no cpu (on an athlon 1GHz).
the file sizes are larg(ish) for the time being, but i like that,
record at the best image possible.

the driver is in alpha/pre-alpha state, but it works quite well for me.
sometimes it gets stuffed up, but it hasn't really been a problem for
me yet. mythtv supports it quite well now, except for the things that
aren't ready in the driver yet: you can't change the image quality,
audio quality, colour/contrast/brightness (at least not without
recompiling something).

and i like the remote, except it also doesn't play too well with the
keyboard layout default in myth, but joseph and i working on doing
something to improve that.

overall, i'm pleased with it.

cheers,

CraigL->Thx();

You're asking a very subjective question. I have a PVR250 and
2 WinTV 401 cards in the same machine. Right now, the
PVR is my 3rd card in priority for a couple reasons...
1. Support is still in the experimental stage, but stable.
2. I can't change the capture resolution on this card
different than the 401s; I need to do this because of
cpu performance limitations and also because I haven't
hacked the code to allow multiple profiles yet. As such
the quality of the PVR at 640x240 is much lower than
at something like 480x480, it seems much worse than
the 401s at the same resolution.

The good side is the recording CPU resources are almost
nill, making it much more likely you can handle multiple
cards (although multiple PVRs is still very experimental I
think), or a much slower cpu with 1 card. My P2-450 finally
hits a limit of 592x480 for playback, but that's much
higher than the 401s can record.

The sound quality is good, but the 401s support btaudio
so they have very good quality also.

In summary, its pretty clear to me the PVR cards will only get
better in the months to come. The classic dumb cards are
pretty static. So if you are looking for a slam-dumk
drop in card you won't have to be messing with, the
PVRs are probably not the way to go; especially considering
their extra cost. If you are willing to go through the
growing pains to and perhaps get a better final solution,
they become much more attractive. Or you can start with
a classic card and add the pvr at a later time either as
a second card, or replacement.

BTW... IMHO, people are making a mistake to not build
a machine(s)/system that can support multiple cards.
Having 3 cards in my machine gives it sooo much more
flexibility.

Brian

On Wed, 21 May 2003 jungle@saphire.dk wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I was wondering if anyone could point me to sources that describe the
> quality of the mentioned card, and MythTV's support for it, and if it
> really is worth the price of it. Anyone with any experience with it?
>
> Thanks
>
> Kim Pedersen
>
> --
> Value your freedom!
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> mythtv-users mailing list
> mythtv-users@snowman.net
> http://lists.snowman.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
>
>

At 11:47 AM 5/21/2003 -0400, you wrote:

>and i like the remote, except it also doesn't play too well with the
>keyboard layout default in myth, but joseph and i working on doing
>something to improve that.


Craig, did you see the suggested .lircic config file I submitted to the
list for the light grey remote of the 250? I have been using that config
for a few days and find it relatively intuititive (I used the spare button
last night to become D so I could delete shows from the playback screen,
other than that it is the one I put out laread).

-Jeff

Jeff C wrote:

> At 11:47 AM 5/21/2003 -0400, you wrote:
>
>> and i like the remote, except it also doesn't play too well with the
>> keyboard layout default in myth, but joseph and i working on doing
>> something to improve that.
>
> Craig, did you see the suggested .lircic config file I submitted to
> the list for the light grey remote of the 250? I have been using that
> config for a few days and find it relatively intuititive (I used the
> spare button last night to become D so I could delete shows from the
> playback screen, other than that it is the one I put out laread).

yes i did see that, thanks. i'm referring to the vol+/- and left/right
being shared on the remote. and the play button is impossible to map to
do 'the right thing' in all cases. its just too hard to map keys to
remotes and keep everyone happy, especially when you're dealing with
dozens of remote key layouts. that's why we're trying to come up with a
more configurable system for it! stop bitching and fix it, that's what
i say! so thats what i'm going to do. ;-)

cheers,

CraigL->Thx();