MVP v. Video Card on SDTV?

[jettman]

I am still contemplating getting an MVP w/Sage license to use w/my SDTV.
1. Would the MVP or a computer w/Video Card look better on an SDTV? Just wondering about quality.
2. I assume either won't look quite as good as directly plugging the coax directly into the TV?

[BobPhoenix]

I think the MVP looks better than the S-Video/Composite out of video cards (probably not component though) but until Sage is able to transcode files that the MVP doesn't support - like AVI's you will either have to do it before hand yourself or wait for Sage to be able to do it on the fly. Here is a post talking about that: http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?p=129617&postcount=10

BobP.

[kpsmith]

For what its worth I hooked up my MVP to my HD DLP samsung to test it out and was pretty impressed. Normally I run PC to DVI on the HDTV and the menu clarity on the MVP was nearly as good as the DVI hookup. Granted, there's a lot of upconvert stuff in this Samsung set that probably cleaned up the MVP image.

I then hooked it to its permanent home (rear projection HDTV) and the MVP menuing isn't nearly as crisp but the video is pretty darn good. I'd say if your hooking this to an SDTV go for the MVP.

[Gaurav]

I assume either won't look quite as good as directly plugging the coax directly into the TV?

I use a 50" projection SDTV.
MVP composite output looks a LOT better than the video card (ATI9600) S-video output.

My wife can't tell the diff in PQ between MVP / direct Coax.

[Alfiegerner]

I struggled for a while trying to get good PQ on the S-video out of a fx5600. The MVP blows it out of the water on video quality. Downsides are, as BobPhoenix says above, no divx support and menus can be a quite sluggish (although totally livable with). For me, there was such a huge increase in PQ I had to go with the MVP. I suppose it depends on how important the avi playback is and if you have another way of playing those files.

[blade]

Downsides are, as BobPhoenix says above, no divx support and menus can be a quite sluggish (although totally livable with).

Now that Sage has built in support for the MVP sluggish menus shouldn't be a problem anymore. Hopefully divx transcoding won't be too far away.

[JUC]

I have this hooked up to a 42" HD Plasma and was very impressed by the quality. I really expected the worse because I was using S-Video and before I was using my shuttle with DVI to HDMI but the quality difference really is negligible. I think it is because my material is only SD anyway so there is only so much you can do with it. Very acceptable though. Of course, once a HD version comes out we can all rejoice
JUC

[Alfiegerner]

Now that Sage has built in support for the MVP sluggish menus shouldn't be a problem anymore. Hopefully divx transcoding won't be too far away.

I am using the built-in MVP support of the 4.14 beta. The UI is still quite slow to respond in a number of areas - there's a couple of posts about it in this forum - but then I imagine they're wringing the MVP for everything its worth. Not that it detracts too much from the overall package - all in all I'm extremely pleased with my MVP setup :goodjob: .

[BobPhoenix]

I am using the built-in MVP support of the 4.14 beta. The UI is still quite slow to respond in a number of areas - there's a couple of posts about it in this forum - but then I imagine they're wringing the MVP for everything its worth. Not that it detracts too much from the overall package - all in all I'm extremely pleased with my MVP setup :goodjob: .

Actually I can't even say I really notice a difference from a regular PC client in the UI. And as you can see from the link I posted earlier Sage is working on Transcoding for the MVP so a future release will most likely eliminate the only downside I had with the MVP.

BobP.

[Alfiegerner]

For me there's a definite slowdown in the UI compared to the PC client. This appears when there are a great number of objects to render, e.g. if you have a large mp3 collection your music section will be slow. I don't want to bog down this thread with this though so I have started another thread on this topic.

[mayamaniac]

Picture quality is much better with the MVP, its identical to coax for SDTV. Your video card's S-video out will never look as good. Now, we are talking about SDTV only.

If you have an HDTV and you use DVI or component out from your video card to your HDTV, then picture quality will be on par with the MVP. Personally, I think the MVP always look better because it properly deinterlaces the video. But using the video card, you can play other file formats that the MVP lacks.

Overall, the MVP is not perfect SageTV client, but its the best thing we got for now, especiallly for the price.