pvr350 vs pvr250 [Archive] - SageTV Community

itchy

06-17-2003, 11:55 AM

Is the only difference between these that the 350 has mpeg decoders? Does this give any reward if I already have a Radeon that does mpeg decoding?

Thanks!

salsbst

06-17-2003, 11:59 AM

350 has an FM tuner, 250 does not. A card being used by SageTV really shouldn't be relied upon for radio listening, though, since it can't be recording TV at the same time, as I understand it.

dkardatzke

06-17-2003, 12:21 PM

Originally posted by itchy
Is the only difference between these that the 350 has mpeg decoders? Does this give any reward if I already have a Radeon that does mpeg decoding?

It does provide an advantage because the PVR-350 utilizes hardware decoding whereas the Radeon is really only hardware assisted decoding and most of the work is done by the software.

The big difference will be that if you use the 350 TV out you won't be able to see any of the UI or OSD, it's a video output only.

olyar15

06-17-2003, 03:50 PM

One thing to remember is that the hardware decoding for the 350 only works for the TV output, so if you are using your monitor, it uses software decoding.

jmeeks

06-24-2003, 05:48 PM

Does the ATI AIW9700 have TV out? Is that why you would recommend it over just the ATI 9700PRO? I know my tuner capability on my ATI AIW8500 is just going to waste ever since I started using SageTV. :)

Eventually, wouldn't you just want to get a display that was capable of handling a VGA signal, so you could get better scaling than just with TV out to get a better picture?

ozgreg

06-24-2003, 06:06 PM

I would NOT recommend the PVR 350, it is simply not worth the extra $$$. The limitations of not being able to see the UI via the PVR TV Out plus the lack of CSS (which means no watching DVD's) via the PVR350 TV Out makes it a poor choice. Personally I would be going for a PVR250 coupled with a ATI 9700 All in One Wonder) so you get TV encoding via the PVR250 ((plus TV antenna analog in) which you do not get with the ATI) and you get hardware decoding back out via the ATI Card.

ccclapp

07-05-2003, 10:20 PM

I am confused by this too.

Are people saying there is little or no benefit to the 350 vs 250? I now have a ATI 7500, but am looking to upgrade to a Vid card that has compoment out (ATI 8500, 9700).

Are you saying TV out from the 350 is NOT supported with Sage (if want OSD, guide, etc), but the Vid card's TV out (S-vid or component) will work fine with Sage?

Asside from my desire for Component out from the vid card, are their other reasons to go with the higher end cards? Why would one want the AIW (doesn't it have a tuner that would duplicate the 250/350?

Thanks

--Caleb

bodgadle

07-06-2003, 03:53 AM

The 350 is of great benefits to people (like myself) who are building a pvr system based on a MiniITX form factor where you dont really have the processing power to do proper mpeg decoding and you only have 1 pci slot in there. Having mpg2 capture & decoding on the card is essential in these situations.

so in situations like that or even low spec'd PC's then 350 is way better than the 250 and imho worth the extra cash.

fidget

07-06-2003, 09:40 AM

I am building a PC with a multi-tuner configuration. I am getting a PVR-350 as one of the tuners because I still have a need to dump shows to the VCR. I am expecting that I will be able to replay one show through the PVR-350 wile I watch another using the standard video card. We'll see if this is truly the case ;)

jmeeks

07-06-2003, 06:54 PM

I know there are several setups with both the PVR250 and 350. They co-exist just fine.

ccclapp

07-06-2003, 09:14 PM

...so, other than the extra $50, is there any reason NOT to get the 350?

--Caleb

jmeeks

07-07-2003, 04:33 AM

No. I have one myself. :)

dkardatzke

07-07-2003, 09:32 AM

One difference is that the new PVR-250s use a new chip that is supposed to run much cooler than the chip on the PVR-350. So if heat is a concern, you might want to rethink getting the PVR-350. You can find out more about this concern at SHS's forum at http://www.shspvr.com/forum/index.php

jmeeks

07-07-2003, 10:24 AM

Sorry, I didn't know the 350 only had the older hotter chip. My bad.

bodgadle

07-07-2003, 10:37 AM

I have a 350 in my miniITX case atm and heat has not been a issue for me and the machine has not been switched off at all in almost 2 months!

ccclapp

07-07-2003, 12:37 PM

Can the ATI 9700/9800 pro AIW (which I believe has a built in TV tuner and PVR) be used with Sage, instead of the 250/350?

Thanks

--Caleb

olyar15

07-07-2003, 01:05 PM

Originally posted by ccclapp
Can the ATI 9700/9800 pro AIW (which I believe has a built in TV tuner and PVR) be used with Sage, instead of the 250/350?

Thanks

--Caleb

No, Sage is only compatible (so far) with hardware-encoding cards. The AIW do their ecoding in software.