Just installed PVR-250 retail, questions.

[Bilar Crais]

I just put in a PVR250 retail, which thanks to the forum, was a snap.
I am impressed with the mpeg2 capability; CPU usage is from 3-8%.

I am somewhat less impressed with the tuner. While it is better than my old 8500DV, it isn't even close to my VideoMate Ultra. The VideoMate is probably 30-40 percent better picture.

Question:

Is there a way to use the VideMate tuner, and have the PVR250 encode the result? As far as I can tell, there is no output on the VideoMate.

[jkoon]

Originally Posted by Bilar Crais

Is there a way to use the VideMate tuner, and have the PVR250 encode the result? As far as I can tell, there is no output on the VideoMate.

I dont think this is possible.

[Bilar Crais]

Ah...too bad. That would have been killer. A few hours later, now that I have spent some time dialing in my setup, I'm liking the '250 more and more. :-)
I've managed to improve livetv significantly and it looks quite good. I'm curious to see what my burned caps look like on the family television, so I'm recording tonight's episode of the Shield.

BTV is certainly more responsive and useful with the new card!

[Bilar Crais]

There's not really a 30-40 percent disparity between the two tuners after all.
After I ditched the native decoder for Elecard, I can see there is very little difference...both are substantially better than our two consumer televisions.
In fact, the '250 seems immune from the vertical ghosting lines the other two tv's are subject to, and much less snow.

[carthur50]

Originally Posted by Bilar Crais

There's not really a 30-40 percent disparity between the two tuners after all.
After I ditched the native decoder for Elecard, I can see there is very little difference...both are substantially better than our two consumer televisions.
In fact, the '250 seems immune from the vertical ghosting lines the other two tv's are subject to, and much less snow.

I may be imagining it, but DVD's created from shows captured by my PVR-250 look better on the consmer TV than live TV on my consumer TV.

It could also be my subconscious mind trying to justify spending the money on the card, a DVD burner and BTV...

[Bilar Crais]

I'm pretty sure you're not imagining it...my DVD caps look much better than the live tv on our consumer televisions. I couldn't say the same of my AIW 8500DV. While it had excellent mpeg2 compression with the MMC software, it's tuner looked much worse than our regular tv's.