[mythtv-users] PVR-250 worth the upgrade?

[Boyd II, Willy]

Not sure about your particular CPU, but you should be able to get away with
much higher bitrates with the pvr-250 since it's not taxing the CPU so much.
In away saving CPU is the whole point.  I'm really happy with the picture
quality alone, but my Phoebe TV Master analog tuner wasn't much worse...
it's the compression.  Saving cpu means you can run a much higher bitrate,
meaning better visual quality (assuming disk space is not a concern)

- Willy

-----Original Message-----
From: Ben Curtis [mailto:fmstratk at coronium.com] 
Sent: Thursday, October 02, 2003 11:28 AM
To: mythtv-users at mythtv.org
Subject: [mythtv-users] PVR-250 worth the upgrade?



Hi all,

I'm about to assemble my MythTV box, and have a question about the capture
card.  I searched the mailing lists' webpage, but couldn't find a specific
answer, just that upgrading would save CPU.  I currently have an AverMedia
bt848 chipset card, and will be using an Athlon XP 2100+.  Would there be
any substantial video gains from purchasing a PVR-250 to do hardware
encoding over the use of the AverMedia with software encoding?  While not
bad, I'm not too impressed with the AverMedia's capture abilities thus far
(in a Windows environment, haven't moved it to the Linux box yet).  I'm
pretty anal when it comes to video quality, so I want to do the best I can.


Thanks,
Ben