[mythtv-users] Pvr-500 or Plextor ConvertX, reliability.

Abre Chase abre.chase at gmail.com
Thu Dec 29 09:41:30 EST 2005


I haven't tried transcoding the PVR-150's MPEG2 to MPEG4 yet.  But the
MPEG2 looks very nice.  I'm playing it through the xbox xbmcmythtv
frontend on a 43" Samsung DLP.  Of course it all depends on the
quality of the source.  I'm capturing from s-video from a digital
cable box.  The digital and HD channels look great, the analog
channels are not so great.

The quality of the Plextor MPEG4 was also very good.  I had the myth
box hooked directly into the 43" TV when I was setting it up.  It did
have some playback issues, but they were probably related to the
machine being low end.

Since I couldn't get the MPEG4 to playback on the xbox, I decided to
just move to the PVR-150 / MPEG2.  Around the same time, a friend gave
me a better motherboard, proc and ram.  The new setup is much better,
but it makes comparing it to the old system tough since it is really
an entirely new machine.

- Abre

On 12/28/05, Cymen Vig <cymenvig at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/28/05, Abre Chase <abre.chase at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I can't speak for the PVR-500.  But, I just traded out my Plextor for
> > a PVR-150.  The MPEG4 format was more trouble than it was worth for
> > me.  I could not get it to play on the xbmcmythtv front end - even
> > with the patched mplayer.  I also had some performance problems on my
> > machine because its fairly low end - just didn't have the horses to do
> > MPEG4 very well.
> >
> > The Plextor had good driver support from the chipmaker (WIS) through
> > the DIVX device forums, but all the devices features aren't available
> > in MythTV.  You're must use MPEG4 although the device can also do
> > MPEG2.  The Plextor/MythTV integration also did not support changing
> > the audio/video bitrates very well.
> >
> > It seems like there are a lot more people using the PVR150/250/500.
> > Because of the popularity, you get more of the card's features built
> > in MythTV and better support from the community.
> >
> > That was my experience in a nutshell.
>
> How does the Hauppauge MPEG-2 compare to the Plextor MPEG-4? How about
> to transcoded Hauppauge MPEG-2 to MPEG-4? I realize quality is always
> tricky to describe but what would you say?
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