[mythtv-users] OT: Hardware decoders (was Re: completely new and have questions before I buy hardware)

Brad DerManouelian myth at dermanouelian.com
Tue Sep 9 02:06:07 UTC 2008


On Sep 8, 2008, at 5:25 PM, Michael T. Dean wrote:

> On 09/08/2008 06:51 PM, Brad DerManouelian wrote:
>> On Sep 8, 2008, at 3:46 PM, Nick Morrott wrote:
>>
>>> On 08/09/2008, Michael T. Dean wrote:
>>>> The main point of my post, though, was that the PVR-350's hardware
>>>> SDTV decoder is a waste, and I firmly stand by that assertion.
>>>>
>>> Back in 2004/05 when my PVR-350 was the only straightforward way to
>>> connect my Asus Pundit-R machine to my CRT TV (the ATI fglrx driver
>>> had broken PAL TV-Out) it was worth every penny of the premium over
>>> the then-current PVR-250, even if it didn't support OpenGL or Xv.  
>>> Now
>>> I use it as a regular MPEG-2 capture card, but, for me at least, it
>>> served - and serves - a useful purpose. The picture quality was  
>>> pretty
>>> amazing too - easily beating regular TV-Out over composite/S-Video.
>>>
>> Enough said. ;)
>
> Well, I'd say hardware SDTV decoder != TV out (sure, the only way to  
> use
> the SDTV decoder is through the TV out, but the decoder is not the  
> only
> way to use the TV out--if it were, there would be no MythTV GUI or
> MythTV OSD or ... on the PVR-350 TV out).

You clipped out the important part of my post that indicated I was  
agreeing with you where I quoted:
On Sep 8, 2008, at 3:46 PM, Nick Morrott wrote:

It's 2008. PVR-350 was great in 2004/2005. Now it's 2008. I also have  
a PVR-350. It's actually quite a bit better than my PVR-150 for  
capturing and I used it for playback for about a year back in 2005. I  
think it's definitely worth getting a PVR-250 over a 150. 350 if you  
can't find a 250. 150 as last resort. I'm going to toss my 150 in a  
dev machine now that I have HD-PVR capture happening from one of my  
satellite boxes.

-Brad



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