[mythtv-users] Does it matter which Hauppauge tv-card i buy???

[Jonathan Rogers]

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Brian Wood wrote:
> There are certain situations with certain hardware where using the 350's
> output capability might be a good answer, but I think those situations
> are getting rarer and rarer.

That is generally true, but for a system that will only ever need to do
SD, the PVR-350 is still a good option IMHO, since it provides very good
quality SD playback with very low CPU requirements and no need to tweak
anything to get smooth video. I don't expect to buy another one, but I
do intend to keep using the one in my SD-only system for a long time.
Unless a new MythTV feature suddenly appears that is very compelling, I
don't anticipate wanting to upgrade that system very often.

> As for "superior" SD output I'm not sure. It certainly does a good job
> of MPEG2 decoding, but you lose the ability to use the openGL painter,
> so the overall user experience might not be perceived as "superior".
> Certainly anything from a 5200 on up provides very acceptable
> performance, known compatibility, and an upgrade path to HD should you
> need it.

Not only does the MPEG-2 decoder result in perfectly smooth playback
with no tweaking (something which I've never achieved using a regular
video card), but the color quality is superior to SVideo output from
several ATI- and Nvidia-based cards I've tried. I'm sure some more
recent cards are better, but the "TV-out" capabilities of most VGA cards
is clearly treated as a secondary function most of the time, something
which is visible in the quality. Of course, in the future (and currently
for my LCD TV), I intend to use DVI/HDMI, but for SD on a CRT TV, the
PVR-350 is really good.

What is so great about the OpenGL painter? I've tried it with both
Nvidia and ATI cards and the main difference from the Qt painter seems
to be that menus fade in and out. Sure it looks cool for about five
minutes. However, I question the value of putting so much effort into
making the menus look cool when one typically spends much more time
looking at the video playback. OSD can fade on and off without even
using OpenGL. I haven't tried the new OpenGL video playback code, which
may have advantages over Xv, but for the menus, I really don't see the
point.

Most of the talk about moving to the OpenGL painter and moving away from
PVR-350 seems to reflect the personal preference of a small number of
people and has little to do with functionality or usability.

Jonathan Rogers

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