[mythtv-users] 2 quick Q's - best PVR-350 price and does MythGame work with TV out on PVR-350?

[Michael T. Dean]

Dave Bush wrote:

>On Wed, 4 Aug 2004, Michael T. Dean wrote:
>
>>IMHO, you're much better off going with a PVR-250 or PVR-250MCE ($80 -
>>$125) and a GF4MX440 (or similar) video card ($20 - $40) if you want to
>>do OpenGL (including MythMusic visualizations and games).  There's no
>>hardware acceleration, so it's not just something missing from the
>>current drivers.
>>    
>>
>Hmmm.... That would be a problem because of the system I am going to use.
>It's a little Shuttle XPC system (specifically the SS40G SiS 740) that
>doesn't have a spare AGP slot. I'm already using one PCI slot for a second
>NIC, and the PVR-350 will go in the second PCI slot.
>  
>
Other options include on-board TV out (which you mention below) and VGA 
to NTSC converter (but do some research before getting one of these 
since most affordable commercial versions are garbage).

>I have tested the S-Video out and it works fine with my TV, but when I
>tried to play a DVD with MPlayer it showed on the monitor but not on the
>TV.
>
It's quite possible that if you only use the TV out (i.e. no monitor 
defined in XF86Config or xorg.conf and, possibly even, no monitor 
connected), your DVD will appear on the TV.  Some video drivers support 
Xv (X Windows Video Extension), but only on the first screen.

> I don't think this system will do accelerated video, nor am I really
>looking for that. (MAME/NES/SNES doesn't exactly need OpenGL to work
>properly.)
>  
>
Don't know about this--I've never tried MAME on my 350--but writing 
anything to the PVR-350's framebuffer is slow, so coupled with the 
software emulation/software rendering in MAME, it may still be a 
problem.  Someone else who has tried it would have to let you know how 
MAME works on the 350.

>With this in mind - what do you think? Should I back it down to a PVR-250
>and spend time messing with getting DVD's, etc. to display correctly on
>the TV through the S-Video port or is the TV out on the PVR-350 probably
>just as good or better than what I have now?
>  
>
Just as good or better for anything recorded by the PVR-350 (i.e. Live 
TV and Myth's Recordings), but much worse (IMO) for _everything_ else.

Mike