Two quick questions (PVR250 vs. 350, and Upgrading)

[dkurlander]

I have two (hopefully) quick questions:

I'd like to purchase the PVR-250 or PVR-350 card to work with Snapstream. Is there any benefit of the 350 over the 250 (or do you think there will be in the forseeable future)? Is it worth the ~$30 extra to "future-proof" my computer?

Also, if I upgrade from 3.0 to the latest version, and I first uninstall 3.0 (following instructions from the upgrade page) will I lose my programs?

Thanks,
DJ

[cmasters]

350 will give you hardware decoding and TV output but this is not supported by SS for some time yet (have heard nothing on it). However, since the 350 only outputs 480i via svideo it is not really future proof itself.

Save the money and get a 250.

[jkoon]

1). Personally, I say go for the 250, I don’t see them adding full support for the 350 anytime soon (and without output support there is no difference between the cards).

2). If you do a partial uninstall your recorded shows and your schedules will be left behind so that when you install the new version they will still be there.

[_Shorty]

I thought the 350 also had FM radio tuning ability.

[jkoon]

Oh yeah actually it might, I forgot about that.

[Julia]

I think the FM tuner part of the 350 varied between releases, but I could be wrong. The hardware decoding part, only works on the TV out, so unless you're going to have it displaying the MPEG2 captures onto a TV screen, the decoding part won't be useful for you.

One thing I remember during upgrades for people with large video stores is that when you uninstall then reinstall, it marks all the existing video as non-deleteable. This can be a bit confusing when things you expected to expire didn't.

Julia

[urlybird]

Both the Hauppage 250 and 350 do hardware decoding - not just
the 350.

Can someone tell me if the 250 has S-Video out or only the 350 ?

[cmasters]

Only the 350 does hardware decoding so only it has svideo out.