[mythtv-users] PVR-350 vs. Component video through AA adapter

Jarod C. Wilson jcw at wilsonet.com
Sun Feb 1 03:47:44 EST 2004


On Jan 30, 2004, at 15:03, Blues Guy wrote:

> --- "Jarod C. Wilson" <jcw at wilsonet.com> wrote:
>>
>> I expect to be able to make a pretty good
>> side-by-side comparison between the
>> quality of a PVR-350's TVOut and VGA to Component
>> video through an Audio
>> Authority adapter sometime this weekend, because I
>> just picked up a PVR-350
>> while out to lunch this afternoon.
>>
>> Full-out Fedora/Red Hat-centric guide documentation
>> for the 350 to follow
>> shortly thereafter. ;-)
>
> Oh sure, now you go ahead and get a 350, after it took
> me a whole Saturday to get mine tweaked out a few
> weeks back...  :-)  Ok.. some of that time was
> creatively fitting both the 350 and 250 into my
> Pundit...
>
> Can you tell that everyone's gotten spoiled with your
> guide and Axel's RPMS? :-)

Heh, not sure if that's good or bad. To complicate matters, in addition 
to trying to add stuff about the 350, write something about controlling 
cable boxes, add more links to relevant info, post a page 
containing/enhancing Ian's "HDTV in 20 steps", etc., now there's a new 
release of Myth... Oy.

On the bright side, I didn't find getting the 350 to work very hard at 
all. Just a few minor deviations from the ivtv wiki's instructions for 
Fedora, and off to the races.

However, I'm honestly not that impressed with the video quality of the 
350's TVOut, at least when juxtaposed to the VGA->Component method I'm 
using to feed my HDTV. My wife participated in the visual evaluation, 
and she likes the VGA->Component method better also. I did notice that 
it was a little better with high-motion scenes (sharper edges to 
everything), but the difference certainly isn't worth giving up the 
ability to play back all my divx files.

That may change if/when mplayer can play divx files acceptably out the 
350, but then I rip all my divx files with ac3 audio and feed a raw ac3 
stream to my amp, which then does the 5.1 decoding, so I'm not sure how 
that would work out... (I presume I could use the 350's video out, and 
my Audigy audio out, or something).

I had two systems hooked to my HDTV all day, my primary via 
VGA->Component, the secondary via the 350, so comparisons were done 
watching the same shows on both systems, simply flipping from input to 
input on the TV. Tomorrow, I move the secondary system back upstairs to 
my analog set, where I'll do a bit of GF4 TVOut vs. PVR-350 TVOut 
comparative analysis. I'm already fairly certain I'm going to stick 
with the GF4 for that system also though, because my kid watches movies 
up there on a regular basis (divx rips of kids movies, and/or recorded 
stuff transcoded to mpeg4).

Now that I think about it though, I wonder if playback through the 350 
would be better for some of my divx files if I tried using mythtv as 
the player... (I was able to watch some HQ dvd->divx rips w/mplayer, 
but they looked like they were playing at about 80% of the normal 
frame-rate).

More tomorrow, time for sleep...

-- 
Jarod C. Wilson, RHCE

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