[mythtv-users] PVR 250 vs 350 vs no hardware encoding; Dolby audio

[Ian Connor]

I just purchased this card from newegg and have been following the
guide on http://www.wilsonet.com/mythtv/ to get it working FC3.

The video and changing cannels now seem to work (back and front end on
the same shuttle pc that I am using).

However, audio and remote controller not so lucky. I was able to use
the script at: http://www.mind.lu/%7Eyg/ftvco/

Is there any such handy scripts to help me get the audio and remote
working? Has anyone got the magic script?

thanks for any advice - ian


On Sat, 08 Jan 2005 04:37:29 -0600, Robert Denier <denier at umr.edu> wrote:
> I picked up an x-pert tv-pvr by v-stream on newegg
> 
> TV TUNER KWRLD CAPTR VS-TV878RF (Qty=1,Price=$36.50)
> 
> It seems to allow mpeg4 encoding and playing back on athlon 2500 systems
> although I think if you turn the settings way up, you get a little slow
> down.  I probably need to switch away from reiserfs as per the
> recomendations eventually. (kernel 2.6.10)
> 
> These cards seem to have a bit of area digitalized that doesn't have
> picture when connected to my dish network receiver.  This is nothing
> new.  I got the same results when I used ati all in wonder cards in
> windows so I don't think its a fault of the card.
> 
> One possible advantage of recording directly in mpeg4 is if you can
> avoid transcoding it later when you make the final copy.  I don't know
> if thats possible.  Of course the mpeg4 versions will take up less disk
> space, but the mpeg2 versions will likely be a little sharper in the
> short term.  (Mpeg2 was last I looked a little sharper than mpeg4 when
> data rates aren't an issue, but that may have changed.  It was a close
> thing anyway.)
> 
> Afaik with the Hauppage cards that do mpeg encoding in hardware and feed
> the stream as needed, so you don't use any cpu time.
> 
> What I would really like that will _NEVER_ happen is a dish network
> receiver that works directly with myth and allows the decrypted mpeg2
> signal from the satellite to be used directly.  That way there is no
> further loss until transcoding occurs.
> 
> What I would eventually like to see is a lossless codec available for
> the recording process like huffuv.  (There may be something better, but
> the main thing is for it to be lossless.)  That way you could set the
> device to record using that and then transcode to the final form using
> as agressive of encoding options as you wanted.  (Afaik huffuv is
> basically motion jpeg with the error encoded with huffman encoding.)
> With that kind of approach you could, theoretically get better results
> than encoding to mpeg2 first with a hardware card, but those results
> come at the cost of a lot of disk space, at least for a little while.
> Note, that this kind of codec would likely be too bandwidth intensive to
> work across a network unless you had gigabit networking.
> 
> I'm not sure about the rest.  You really need someones opinion that has
> compared these side by side.  The quality of the electronics involved
> can sometimes have  a non trivial impact
> 
> -Robert
> 
> 
> Dan Christensen wrote:
> 
> >I'm about to order the components for a system that will run MythTV
> >(as well as do other things), and I have a few questions.
> >
> >I'm trying to decide between the PVR-250 and the 350, or maybe even
> >something without hardware encoding.  I was thinking that I would
> >store video in a format that allows for higher compression,
> >e.g. MPEG-4.  So is there any point in using a card which does
> >encoding in hardware?  In fact, would using one of the Hauppauge cards
> >mean that video would need to be decoded and then re-encoded, and
> >would this cause a loss in quality?
> >
> >For playback, I believe the 350 can only decode MPEG-2 in hardware.
> >Can it display video that is decoded in software?  Or would such video
> >need to be played through a separate video card?
> >
> >I'm not very familiar with Dolby audio.  Is support for this something
> >that people find useful when using MythTV?
> >
> >Thanks for any tips,
> >
> >Dan
> >
> >
> >
> >------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
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> >
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