BTV and hardware decoder

[dgeffs]

I'm a newbie to BTV and PVR and have been looking around here for some ideas of what I need to set up a system. It seems the Hauppauge TV cards are highly recommended. However, I've read (elsewhere) that the best way to output PC video to a standard def TV is via a card that has hardware decoding. It appears to me the 350 has this and the 250 does not but comments in this forum lead me to believe BTV does not support hardware decoding. Am I lost? Does this really matter? I am looking for the best possible quality output to run a large screen TV using s-video. Of course I realize s-video isn't the best but it's my only option at this point.

Dale

[rmccormi]

The 350's hardware decoding will only output full screen MPEG-2 to your TV. It can not display BTV's menus or your Windows Desktop. You don't really have to have hardware decoding, but a good AGP video card (good for TV-out, not speed [ie: All-In-Wonder / nVidea Personal Cinema / Matrox]) is what you want if you do think you do need it.

Your options for hardware recording are:
PVR-250 (Model #980 or MCE, but don't get an old one with a heatsink)
PVR-USB2
Pennicle PCTV Deluxe USB2
Adaptec DVD Media Center USB2 (not the PCI one)
and now the PVR-150 (back-ordered / may have issues)
(plus soon the PVR-500 with dual tuners in a single card)

If you want USB2, you can pick up a PCTV or Adaptec model for about $80-$100 on E-Bay.
If you want PCI, I'd say $92 shipped for the PVR-250BTV off the SnapStream Store is a pretty good deal (especially since it comes with an additional BTV tuner licence).

If you can wait, the PVR-500 or a cheap PVR-150 might soon be your best option.



Hey, you think they might upgrade "Medusa" with 6 PVR-500's once they come out? Mmmmmm, 12 tuner PVR! I wonder if a single, really-fast computer with lots of SCSI hard drives could record all 80 (or so) analog cable channels simotaniously using USB tuners / hubs? Do it SS! Now that's good advertizing.

[dgeffs]

That's what I was afraid of. Is this an issue with most or all programs like BTV or does Sage etc. have the same issue. Glad I posted here before buying or I would have been pissed. I do like the BTV interface and it looks easy enough for the wife. I just need to make a decision on which hardware will give me the best picture. I don't need a PC that will do mulitple things - it will be dedicated to HTPC but not powerful enough to run MCE.

I've got an ATI 9600xt AIW card in another PC and the video out from it just isn't as sharp as a I'd like. If I record something off the satellite I want the picture to look just as good as the original. Thanks for your comments, they were helpful.

Dale

[mikem]

SageTV and Myth both support the TV out on the 350, but I believe that it is due to the way that they draw there UI and I am not sure how they do it.
The new 6600/6200 series of graphics cards have a Video Processor in them that apparently works (6800 only seems to support MPEG2 acceleration). As these are controlled through the NVIDIA graphics driver then I think (but am quite happy to be corrected) that these should offer the MPEG2/MPEG4 decode without any need for special programming.

Of course you would need a PCI-E board,but it may be a good combo with an Intel HD-Audio solution. This is the combo I am thinking of looking at myself, now there is no soundstorm on the nForce4 boards.