PVR-250 Picture Quality vs. AIW Radeon 9800 Pro?

[RobertP]

Just wondering if anyone has compared the two... Just picked up AIW 9800 Pro.. running on a P4C 2.8Ghz, 1GB DDR400... lots of SATA HD space.... would I notice a difference in PQ?

Thanks,

Robert

[RobertH]

depends on if you want the machine to be able to do other stuff while it is recording, if so then you will have to turn the recording quality down or even at dvdready highres you will probably get near to pegging off the cpu wich will cause frame skips/drops and sync issues. (and that includes doing transcoding in the background, or attempting to watch live tv because it takes the nvdvd decoder in version 3.2 almost 30-40% of the cpu just to playback a 720x480 dvd high res live stream)

where on the other hand the pvr uses NO cpu power other than what snapstream needs to dump it to disk

[RobertP]

Thanks for the reply RobertH,

Right now i'm able to record "dvd quality - hi res" while watching it on the tv without a problem..... i haven't checked cpu usage though.... I'll check that out tonight when i get home... However, I don't really think I'm cpu limited right now... I'm just curious if both the recorded mpeg2 file and the displayed video during live tv will be better using a hardware based card instead of the AIW... I've heard a few guys mention that the PVR-250's picture quality looked "great".... will i be able to notice a difference?

Thanks,

Robert

[RobertH]

I cant tell the difference between the recorded video when burned to a dvd and a normal bought dvd, the picture coming out of snapstream from the pvr is better than the picture I get when using the tuner built into my 38" tv (in fact I have only used the tuner 4 times in the past week and a half)

[RobertP]

you're using the pvr-250? if so, then it sounds like the 250 has great PQ.. exactly what i'm looking for..... have you used an AIW radeon with the theatre 200 chip? I think i have plenty of free CPU cycles.... i've got no pauses or sync issues.... the PQ isn't bad by any means.... it is better using the MMC 8.5 software that came with the card, but i'm assuming that's because it uses an overlay or something like that....

i hate to harp on this, but maybe i'm not being clear.... I understand that if i keep all things equal as far as settings go that the hardware encoder will chomp less on the cpu while recording..... What i'm really trying to find out is if my cpu is not under stress, does the PVR-250 serve up a better looking image than the AIW Radeon 9800 Pro in snapstream? (and also with the recorded Mpeg).

thanks,

Robert

[RobertH]

I havent used an ati card in over 2 years, I despise ati they have so many buggy products and their driver support is the worst I have ever seen.

well if youve got the harddrive space you can drive the pvr card upto 12 megabits per second wich is at the top end of dvd's and it will give you the most crystal clear picture. I record at 6.4Mbs and the quality is really good, so much better over the other tv tuners Ive tried (hauppauge wintv pci, and some other off brand) plus it uses almost no cpu at all so I can actually use my machine to play dvd's, games, etc at the same time and not screw up the recording wich is a big plus in my book as I havent broken down and spent the cash for dedicated recording box.

If I were you I would try out a pvr250, get one at circuit city or best buy (or somewhere else that doesnt have a restocking fee) and play with it, see if you like the quality. If you dont just return it and get the money back. That is what I did about a month ago, and since then I have not returned the original one but bought another for my second machine (which I need to get around to installing.....)

[RobertP]

good idea.... i think i might do that.... I'll try jacking up my bitrate a bit tonight too and see how much cpu it eats up.... i've been recording at DVD - Hi Res, which is just above 4 megabit... I was able to record, watch, and burn a dvd at the same time without issues... If my cpu bogs down at the higher bitrates I guess i'll just have to pick me up a pvr-250! thanks RobertH for all of the info and suggestions...

Robert

[bobbysue]

RobertH, You'd be surprised about ATI's turnaround since they fired all their top people two years ago. I saw your comment about ATI's buggy drivers. That too has been fixed. They have been kicking NVIDA's rear end for the past 3 quarters. I own several of thier high end cards and run a dual TV tuner setup on two of my systems. I also have the WIN PVR 250 with my new set-up and appreciate its MPEG-2 ability over ATI's. Any way I buy, build, upgrade a system every 4 months and like to buy the best and sometimes the most expensive. Either way, each person's experience builds their own like or dislike for a product. Two years ago I would not of thought of buying an ATI product, but now their hardware (for what you want to do) is as good or better than any other hardware out there. My 2 cents. Sorry if I'm off post.

[RobertP]

ok... did some testing last night... i jacked up my bitrate to the "best" quality setting - 7mbit.... and recorded a 30 minute episode while watching it on the tv... cpu averaged about 35% load...... quality was much better than the DVD-Hi Res 4mbit... I didn't try to do anything else while it was running.... it's kind of hard to do something else when it's in fullscreen mode on both the pc monitor and tv..... BTW, is there any way to push out the video to the tv and not have it on the monitor? that would be really useful... then I could really utilize this more and still be able to use my computer for other things.... I'm going to do some more testing tonight to see if i can get this thing to bog down...

Thanks again for the info....

Robert

[cgwaters]

Originally posted by bobbysue
RobertH, You'd be surprised about ATI's turnaround since they fired all their top people two years ago. I saw your comment about ATI's buggy drivers. That too has been fixed. They have been kicking NVIDA's rear end for the past 3 quarters. I own several of thier high end cards and run a dual TV tuner setup on two of my systems. I also have the WIN PVR 250 with my new set-up and appreciate its MPEG-2 ability over ATI's. Any way I buy, build, upgrade a system every 4 months and like to buy the best and sometimes the most expensive. Either way, each person's experience builds their own like or dislike for a product. Two years ago I would not of thought of buying an ATI product, but now their hardware (for what you want to do) is as good or better than any other hardware out there. My 2 cents. Sorry if I'm off post.

I must respectfully disagree; they haven't fired enough people yet.

Over the years, I've made the mistake of trying ATI cards three times now; I'm a sucker for advertising and token reviews. Each time, I figure they *must* have resolved their problems by now--after all, how could they stay in business otherwise? But I'm consistently disappointed and frustrated. Sure, ATI outperforms other cards, performance-wise--but that doesn't take into account all of the incompatibilities, quirks, and reboots that come along with it.

I'm on my third ATI now--an AIW 9700 Pro--and it has given me nothing but problems. See my half-dozen threads in this and the Community Support forum. Their drivers stink, most of their applications are downright ugly (if not buggy), and their support is practically non-existent. I've emailed them numerous times about my problems with the AIW--only to receive canned replies that indicate they either didn't read my message or have no interest in helping me resolve them. I suppose there is another option--they are purely incompetent.

At least the AIW works semi-well with my new PVR250. A shame that I had to buy a real tuner card when (I thought) I already had one. I'm hoping to unload the AIW on eBay and recoup at least some of my expense.

I just picked up an nVidia 5200 Ultra at Circuit City. Granted, it doesn't come anywhere near the performance numbers of the AIW; but I'm hoping it will work better. I don't think the nVidia can get much worse than the AIW. Personally, that's worth all the performance tradeoffs in the world.

[RobertH]

Originally posted by RobertP
ok... did some testing last night... i jacked up my bitrate to the "best" quality setting - 7mbit.... and recorded a 30 minute episode while watching it on the tv... cpu averaged about 35% load...... quality was much better than the DVD-Hi Res 4mbit... I didn't try to do anything else while it was running.... it's kind of hard to do something else when it's in fullscreen mode on both the pc monitor and tv..... BTW, is there any way to push out the video to the tv and not have it on the monitor? that would be really useful... then I could really utilize this more and still be able to use my computer for other things.... I'm going to do some more testing tonight to see if i can get this thing to bog down...

Thanks again for the info....

Robert

at the moment there is no way to do this, users have tried several methods, one was to make the tv video out the primary monitor and make their other device the secondary. But this seems to have the downside on some video cards as it leads the tv device to be slower/less fps. This also uses more memory on the video device and can consume more of the video cards processing resources. Twin/multi desktop is fine and easy to perform when the video card isnt doing anything else but when it is trying to run an application like snapstream in fullscreen and run another desktop/other applications it will put stress on the card and the system