[mythtv-users] PVR 350 vs PVR 250?

[Michael T. Dean]

On 08/30/2004 05:10 PM, Dave Bush wrote:

>On Mon, 30 Aug 2004 16:24:00 -0400, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
>  
>
>>On Mon, Aug 30, 2004 at 01:01:45PM -0500, Michael J. Lynch wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>The main differences are (as far as I know):
>>>
>>>    250:  Hardware based encoder only (No hardware based decoder).
>>>    350:  Hardware based encoder AND hardware based decoder.  TV out.
>>>      
>>>
>>Note that the 250MCE *has* the decoder, but since there's no TV-out
>>hardware, no one's figured out whether it can be used as a standalone
>>hardware decode-codec yet.
>>    
>>
>FWIW - I've had my PVR-350 for a few weeks now, and from what I can
>tell so far I wish I'd saved a few bucks and went with the PVR-250.
>
>I'm using the TV out on my Shuttle XPC SS40G, and it works like a
>charm. From reading this list for a while it also seems like it should
>be less problematic than trying to force the TV-Out on the PVR-350 to
>work.
>  
>
Yes.  The most important point about the PVR-350's decoder is that it 
can *only* be used with the PVR-350's TV out.  Since the PVR-350 isn't a 
true video card (it just has a framebuffer), there is no OpenGL or even 
X Video acceleration.  Therefore, if you try to play anything other than 
PVR-x50 recordings on the PVR-350's TV out (i.e. MOV, AVI, DivX, XviD, 
DVD's, etc.), you'll incur a *huge* performance penalty.  On my Athlon 
XP 2000+, I wasn't satisfied with the TV out on the PVR-350--except for 
PVR-350 recordings--so I'm using my 350 as a 250:  I don't even load the 
framebuffer module, and I'm using a GF4MX440 for TV out.

Therefore, I agree with Dave.  I wish I would have saved $80 by getting 
a PVR-250 instead of the $350.

Mike