<br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 1/23/06, <b class="gmail_sendername">John Biundo</b> <<a href="mailto:johnbiundo@sbcglobal.net">johnbiundo@sbcglobal.net</a>> wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
I've been wanting to add a second capture card almost since the moment<br>of deploying my Mythtv box a couple of weeks ago. I held off because I<br>wanted to stabilize things, but I'm now anxious to go ahead and shop for
<br>the second card.<br><br>I'm still having a few problems, but feeling confident in my ability to<br>work through them. Since I've been putting this off, I'm going to beg<br>your indulgence and ask the list for some recommendations on a second
<br>capture card.<br><br>Currently I have a PVR-150 that mostly works fine (my main complaint is<br>some motion-blurring in fast-action sports) and an nVidia FX5200 TV-Out<br>card, for a SD/analog cable setup. Running Ubuntu with an AMD64 3200+
<br>CPU and 512MB RAM.<br><br>I guess I've narrowed my choices to a second PVR-150 or a PVR-350. My<br>basic questions are:<br>1. Will I likely be happier with a PVR-350 for watching livetv sports<br>(and I'd move the 150 into a backup/recording role)?
<br><br>2. If I get a 350, should I use its TV out, or continue using the FX5200<br> (i.e., is the 350 likely to give better output for fast-action sports)?<br><br>3. If I get a 350, do I have to handle sound differently than I do with
<br>the 150 (i.e., do I have to capture audio via line-in on my sound card)?<br> Is all of this handled automagically by mythytv if I'm recording<br>different shows on each card?<br><br>(With questions 2 & 3, I'm trying to get at how much trouble I'm likely
<br>to run into going with a 350 instead of a second 150).<br><br>4. I seen a fairly steady low-level stream of issues popping up here<br>when people add a second card to a system. Any cautions or things to<br>look out for in advance of adding the second card would be appreciated.
</blockquote><div><br>
The blurring you are referring to is deinterlacing artifacts and has
nothing to do with the capture card- rather the video
card/display. I recall reading on the list when the PVR-150 and
PVR-500 came out that these "new" cards should in theory offer slightly
higher quality capture than that of the PVR-350 or PVR-250, but to tell
you the truth, I cannot tell the difference between my 500 and 350 as
far as capture goes- they are the same to me. <br>
<br>
You will probably hear more to the contrary from this list as this
question has been asked before, but in my hands, the TV-out of the
PVR-350 cannot be beat for SD tv viewing... When I
ran the TV-out of my PVR-350 I saw no deinterlacing artifacts and no
stutter on the CNN ticker. My machine is an XP2900+ and since
adding an HDTV tuner I've switched to a FX5200 via DVI to a 1280x768
LCD panel running at native resolution. While HDTV looks great,
running at about 65% CPU without XvMC for a 1080i stream, in my opinion
the TV-out of the PVR-350 offers better SD picture without
deinterlacing artifacts than the DVI out of my FX5200. SD programming
displayed via DVI of the 5200 shows some stutter on tickers and
deinterlacing artifacts. Fortunately for me, much of the
action/sports I record is broadcast in HDTV and 720p doesn't need
deinterlacing. Playing around with the different deinterlacing
options within mythtv can help some, but If I did not have an
HDTV tuner, I'd still be using the PVR-350 tv-out...<br>
<br>
As far as issues when adding another card, if you're staying within the
Hauppauge PVR-XXX world of IVTV, it should be pretty
straightforward. I had via KT400 mobo that didn't like a PVR-350
and PVR-500 in the same box, but that was with 0.2 series drivers and
I've not gone back to see if they'd cooperate with the more mature ivtv
drivers and that motherboard. The nforce2 motherboard I currently
use has no problems with the 3 analog tuners of the PVR-350 and PVR-500
and DViCO HDTVFusion 5 lite.<br>
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