[mythtv-users] PVR-350 output support being dropped!

[John Harvey]

> If you're going to use XV instead of the MPEG2
> output, why not just use the
> hardware acceleration on a normal nvidia card with
> TV out? That's the reason
> that the "support" is being dropped, as far as I can
> tell - everything
> that's more advanced than "just playing an MPEG" is
> difficult to maintain
> with this card.
> 
> Besides, the only thing the PVR-350 has over a
> normal video card for output
> is the MPEG2 decoding, and the only way to get the
> good myth features (and
> to get the normal features to work) is to not use
> the MPEG2 decoding and
> stick with XV, thus defeating the purpose.
> 
Apart from this particular bug the quality using Xv or
mpeg decoding is similar and the cpu usage is similar
so there is no real loss in using Xv and the gain is
that we don't have to maintain 2 sets of code.


> I also recently found out that as of x.org 6.9/7.0,
> you can run multiple
> simultaneous X sessions and have them both be active
> at the same time! I
> haven't installed it yet (because the package
> structure changed and this
> means major changes in gentoo), but it looks like I
> should be able to get as
> many TV-Out cards as I want and have them all be
> running separately,
> provided that I can assign each of them a unique
> input (remote or keyboard).
> There goes the other benefit of the PVR-350, which
> was that you could have
> MPEG2 decoding to TV going on while using another
> X-session (but not XV
> display)

Yes this is true but i am not convinced (haven't
looked at it) that i can use the svideo output and the
vga output of a single nvidia card from 2 different X
sessions so i would need to go and buy a second VGA
card to replace the 350 i allready have. Also the
output quality is typically lower as well.

So the main thing is really that most people have
working hardware and don't want to change it and have
to buy new hardware.

John