[mythtv-users] PVR-350 and DVD playback?

[Torsten Schenkel]

On Thu, 2004-02-05 at 11:22, J. Donavan Stanley wrote:
> *sigh*  This comes up waaaaaaaaaaay too much.
> 
> The PVR350 can be used to playback MPEG2 content to the TV.  Yes this 
> included DVDs.  However you must use a program that support the 350, to 
> my knowledge only Mplayer does and that's with a patch.  Using Mplayer 
> means you don't get DVD menus.
> 
> The PVR350 can not be used (at least not well) as a general purpose 
> framebuffer device.  Which means playing games, MPEG4 playback etc are 
> pretty much out of the question.
> 
> For the record:  I don't own a 350  (I decided not to buy one after 
> reading this list.) so all of the above is just from the numerous 
> messages on this list.

And you're perfectly right with your statement. One addition though: It
will be possible in the future. What's needed is an equivalent to xv on
the pvr. This is not possible via the framebuffer since that's too slow,
but the firmware supports output of decoded video (yuv format). This
feature is not yet in the driver, but once it is, the tv-out should be
equivalent to xv or directfb. So, if your cpu can decode it, you will
eventually be able to play it back using the pvr350 (when there will be
support by mplayer or xine). At the moment I still use a standalone DVD
player for DVD. And my workstation can transcode divX/mp3 to mpeg2/mp2
in realtime :-) so the mythbox can play the mpeg stream from NFS. 

Torsten
-- 
Walkthrough: MythTV on Epia with PVR350 using Debian:
http://www-isl.mach.uni-karlsruhe.de/~hi93/myth/mythtv_debian_epia_pvr350_walkthrough