[mythtv-users] pvr350, dxr3, g400-tv & nvidia TV-out quality ?

[Ray Olszewski]

If you look through the archives, you will see that the relative quality of 
different display choices gets discussed a lot. Unfortunately, much of the 
discussion uses terms like "sucks" or "pretty good", terms that I at least 
find hard to interpret even when used by the same person, and impossible to 
assign meaning to when different people use them.

Also, there are many nvidia cards out there, and two X-driver options, 
leaving me unclear as to what it actually is that you think "sucks". I've 
personally been happy with the display of full-motion video playback using 
an nVidia GeForce4 MX440-SE with the proprietary nvidia X driver and an 
old-but-good 25" TV set ... the characerristics of the TV screen (its 
anti-aliasing, maybe? I don't know) seem to cancel out some of the image 
blurriness I see on a VGA display ... though the X display itself (xdm and 
a blackbox desktop, hence the Myth menus as well) looks blurry and has a 
"shimmery" quality that I usually associate with moire effects. I've never 
seen the output of a TiVo, so I cannot use that as a basis of comparison 
(even if we agreed on a capture quality setting to base comparisons on).

Last I read, the PVR350 doesn't yet work with Myth for video out, so there 
is no way to compare its quality to other options.



At 12:24 PM 7/7/2003 -0500, Heikki Julkunen wrote:
>Has anyone done any comparison of the above TV out quality ?
>I'm currently using nvidia, but compared to my dxr3 card the quality sucks...
>(dxr3 is well supported by mplayer, so for watching movies I simply start
>mplayer from the command line, but it would be nice if mythtv would 
>support it as well)
>
>I also have the G400-tv, but in the mythtv supported mode (xawtv can 
>apparently
>use a better one, but haven't tried it at all myself) its about the same 
>as the nvidia,
>but a lot slower (since it seems to lack glx support).
>
>I know using the dxr3 has been discussed (and rejected) before, but
>that was more from a 'not so elegant' solution perspective, not from a
>'I really want good quality picture!' perspective...
>http://www.snowman.net/pipermail/mythtv-dev/2002-December/002224.html
>
>So, the question is what should be used for a picture quality similar to 
>what the
>Tivo has ? And how good does the pvr350 look like ? And what about the 
>standalone
>monitor->tv converters ? Anything else I've forgotten ?