RF remote, PVR 350, shared computer. plz help

[elconcho]

Hi all,

I'd like to go over what i'm thinking of putting together for my first PC-PVR setup to see what everyone thinks. I'm currently using a Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8000 PVR with my cable service. The thing's slow menus, bad UI and $40/month fee have driven me into thinking about investing in my own custom SageTV or BTV setup. (Thanks to the Explorer 8000 i'm addicted to skipping commercials and watching programming that I like--No more channel surfing; ever)

I have an Athlon 1900XP with 1GB RAM and plenty of HD space on my 2nd floor that I'd like to use as the PVR for the TV on my main floor. This way I could get away with not purchasing a dedicated PVR computer. I have some questions about this:

• If I run SageTV with the PVR-350 using the card's decoder for tv-out will I be able to use my computer while someone else watches tv using the PVR functionality?
  
• I'm thinking of buying a Firefly remote from Snapstream. It's RF and I could use it to run SageTV. However, it doesn't have IR as well, so i couldn't use it to control TV volume, etc. Are there other remotes that have IR as well as RF that I should consider?
• Will I be able to watch AVI's and other non-mpeg2 formats using the PVR-350's video output?

Any opinions, words of wisdom, etc are greatly appreciated.

[jkoon]

Well I don’t know much about sage…

Anyways as far as I know the pvr-350 output will only play mpeg files (but i suppose sage could have a workaround for this?).

And I thought I would mention that depending on how you setup your system, you can control the pc’s volume with the firefly remote, so for example on my htpc I just turn the volume up pretty high on my surround receiver and then control the volume adjustments internally using the firefly remote. The only downfall of this is you cant have the audio go louder than my receiver is turned up to.

[jkoon]

Yea, I learned very quickly to check the volume when I switch from my htpc to my xbox or something (I didnt say it was a perfect solution)

[coolair_x2]

Sage's 2.0 TV out on the 350 sounds better than it actually is. Even with the latest Hauppauge drivers it was highly unstable. After a few minutes the video would cut out.

In addition it only worked for TV or Mpeg2 recordings. The second I tried to listen to my MP3's no picture was output to the 350's out. It must have only activated it while the 350 was in the picture. This basically made it worthless to me as I wanted a complete solution.

Once I switched to the video out on my graphics card it worked much better. There was still enough not to like about Sage 2.0 that I uninstalled it and went back to using BTV.

I had BTV on my main machine for a few months and could at least record while I was surfing the web.
But, I am much happier now that I have a dedicated PC to my PVR tasks. BTV seems much more stable. I had many problems with BTV losing audio if I tried to record as one user and switch to another user on XP.

-Craig

[coolair_x2]

One more thing I about the remote. I am using Girder with USB-IURT with an AVCast video distribution system to distribute audio/video over the current house cabling. Basically it allows me to watch BTV or cable on any TV's in the house using a special assigned station. In addition it carries IR remotes signals over the cable wire so RF is not needed.
With Girder any of my remotes now control BTV as well as there previous functions. I have complete control over my PC with any of my IR remotes, other than turning it on from an power off state.

You can also use an RF remote extender from Radio shack. It reads IR signals and sends them to a base where it decodes the RF back into IR signals. I have also used this method with good success.

-Craig