[mythtv-users] Hardware Question

[Andrew Dodd]

Quoting Dex West <dexwest at yahoo.com>:

> Newbie alert!! Sorry, but I've been reading the
> mailing list for the last week and have read through
> several hardware manufacture's websites, about
> hardware specs.  I'd like to build my first mythTv
> box, but first need to buy some hardware.  I'd like to
> make sure whatever hardware I buy will A.  Give me
> good quality B.  Straight forward to install.
> 
> After reading through the user list and looking at the
> hardware DB, I get the feeling Hauppauge 350 is the
> best bet.  
> 
> My question is:  If I go with the Hauppauge 350 should
> I also buy a gfx card with TV out?  Looks like
> according to Hauppauge website the 350 can record OR
> playback video but not both.  Is that True?  Or should
> I get a 250/350 and a gfx card with TV out??
> 
> My goal is to get the system up and running soon so I
> can add some applications/programming help.  I'm very
> excited by this project.

The 350 can record and play back simultaneously, BUT:

On some people's systems this causes problems and will make the recording end
prematurely.  On many people's systems it works fine.

On some people's systems bringing up the EPG during playback with the PVR-350
will cause a hang.  (Like the other problem, on other people's systems such as
Isaac's, no problems occur.)

The 350 will also not work with non-MPEG2 video (MythVideo), and won't work well
with MythGame either.

On the other hand, when playing back MPEG2, its quality is FAR better than the
TV-out of most video cards (although the TV-out of NVidia cards is pretty good,
the PVR-350's is still better.)

Some people have reported good success with external VGA-to-TV converters.  Even
the cheapest ones seem to do better than even the NVidia TV-out.

The best non-PVR350 quality encountered so far has been a specific type of
VGA-to-NTSC (or PAL) converter that only does signal conversion but not timing
conversion, developed by Cory (Papenfuss?  That's his email userid...).  Thiss
requires a video card that can output NTSC/PAL timings - Problematic currently
with NVidia cards due to the fact that the drivers don't support interlaced
modes at the moment.  "Coming Soon" according to NV though.