PVR 250 or PVR 350

[Dj Ken]

What should I purcase? PVR 250 or PVR 350. Is comming versions of SnapStream supporting PVR 350 hardware at playback? Then PVR 350 seams to me like the right way to go, or?

[RobertH]

as of right now the next version (3.2) doesnt have support for the 350's hardware decoder as this would only be able to display the image of the decoding to the tv set, you would loose all the interface that snapstream has. But they have added that (and looking to making the interface work if I remember correctly) to the future feature list.

You would be better off just getting a pvr250 (note onsale this week at circuit city in the US) and using the tvout on your video card. The next version (3.2) has the ability to use 3rd party decoders to assist in displaying the mpeg2 data, currently they have tested this with ati, nvidia, the software decoder from hauppauge and several others.

So in short if you want to spend the extra money so you have the hardware "when/if" that feature comes to be by all means spend it, but dont get your hopes up on it being supported any time soon. Afterall they have only supported hardware encoding for one revsion

[comptechltd]

I purchased a 350 online mail-order for about $160.00. I went with the 350 because I wanted to buy it once. I have been caught before with trying to get off cheap and wind up paying double. This way I have all of the capabilities I should need in the forseeable future. I did the same with my video card. I bought an nvidia FX5200 with 128 MB RAM. Yes it may be overkill but my system has really worked flawlessly since the moment I assembled it.

Just my thought, your mileage may vary.

Steve

[BigRedBrent]

Originally posted by comptechltd
I purchased a 350 online mail-order for about $160.00. I went with the 350 because I wanted to buy it once. I have been caught before with trying to get off cheap and wind up paying double. This way I have all of the capabilities I should need in the forseeable future. I did the same with my video card. I bought an nvidia FX5200 with 128 MB RAM. Yes it may be overkill but my system has really worked flawlessly since the moment I assembled it.

Just my thought, your mileage may vary.

Steve

That is exactly what I would do for a dedicated PVR system.
A very bad video card for 3D gaming, but would work very good in a PVR system.