winMPV picture quality?

[johngoes]

Hello!

I have been looking to set up a PVR and after reviews and such the SageTV and the PVR-500 sounds like what I want to work with. However, my SO doesn't want me cluttering up the family room with a noisy ugly old 'puter. So I read about the winMPV on the upcomming 3.0 info and that setup would work great except I would hate to buy all this stuff and have my SO complain about picture quality. For those of you with the winPVR hack, how do you feel about the picture quality? Do you get pixallation dropouts? Clear pictures. (Football look good?)

She'll have me rip it all out if it ain't almost indistinguishable from direct cable.

TV - JVC 32" w S-vid, comp, cable inputs
Computer not yet purchased but plan to get 3Ghz 512MB RAM and add at least 200MB drive to store TV shows. (My woodworking shows come on at oddball hours now.)

Thanks,

John
Austin TX

[dbfresh23]

I think you mean the Hauppauge Media MVP, for which sage is making a custom program to run it, although there is already a plugin to make it work. I don't own one, but i've heard both sides, some people love it while others hate it - so i'd assume you'll hear similar here.

You'll certainly get better quality spending the extra $100 necessary for the MVP to just make your server quiet and put it in the room with the tv, that is of course if this computer is planned to be a dedicated Sage computer and not a multi use system.

[Surtr]

An alternative would be to invest money in a good looking, quiet HTPC. You can definitely get them very, very quiet if you try (super quiet fans, suspended drives, etc). You will get excellent picture quality, but the only thing I haven't figured out about that is the slow bootup times (wifie doesn't like waiting for the HTPC to boot up to watch).

[PGPfan]

I'd say from experience it depends. If you have a high definintion TV or monitor/projector then yes, spend the extra cash on getting a quiet, nice looking computer case. It will give you the best picture. HOWEVER, if you are using a standard definition TV, get the MPV! The MPV has a picture quality that surpasses the TV out of most video cards on the market. The only concern is that you won't be able to play DVD's thru Sage if using the MPV. Sage doesn't stream the DVD across a network (although you can hack to make it work) and the MPV doesn't have a built-in DVD drive.

FWIW, I have a video projector (beyond Hi-Def) and use my HTPC for that, and I have 2 MPV's for bedroom and living room, everything running Sage. Wouldn't have it any other way.

-PGPfan

[PGPfan]

Originally Posted by Surtr

An alternative would be to invest money in a good looking, quiet HTPC. You can definitely get them very, very quiet if you try (super quiet fans, suspended drives, etc). You will get excellent picture quality, but the only thing I haven't figured out about that is the slow bootup times (wifie doesn't like waiting for the HTPC to boot up to watch).

You need to try running WindowsXP "embedded" for your OS. It will boot in (literally) about 3 seconds! Only bad part is that for most folks they can only use it as a time limited trial.

-PGPfan

[Surtr]

Wow, that sounds perfect. Any hints on where/how I can go about getting my hands on that?

[Surtr]

Oh yeah - also wanted to mention this: I thought seriously about an MPV for my family room setup, but opted for the full HTPC for DVD and DIVX playback. Plus I heard about some issues with sluggish response on the MVP (is this common?)

[dbfresh23]

Window XPe is easily available to download the demo from the MS site. But to use it any longer then 120 days you need to pay MS $1000 for the *commercial* software and $100 per license. I've been playing with it for a while, but i'm crossing my fingers thinking that maybe Frey will release a linux client to us users eventually. You can make a linux system similiar to how XPe works for FREE.

I'll also say that XPe isn't like any normal install when it comes to windows. It's a modular system and you actually have to "build" your windows install from scratch. Not easy enough for most modest users to do. But it's really fun to play with - I'm normally not a Windows fan, but I like XPe a lot.

Sorry for the tangent i've taken this topic on - i'll stop now

[Toddly]

I have 2 MVP's running off of a 2.6 GHz AMD CPU. It is connected to a SDTV and I cannot tell the difference for the most part recording at DVD Long Play. The remote response is pretty good and the system runs on a wired network. On my TV I can plug in both the cable and have the MVP running into it as well and all I have to do is change the input selection. Its the best of both worlds if you really want it, but as time has gone by I find we are all watching recordings 85% of the time.

[nielm]

IIRC One other point about the MPV is that it only plays back MPEG2 files -- not recompressed DivX/Xvid, nor ripped DVD's. I don't know if Sage is planning to workaround this in V3...

[Lucas]

One way to overcome the boot-up issue is to leave the HTPC always on.
This is what I do, since it records most of the time anyway.

That way, the wife only has to turn TV and AMP on and she is into TV heaven...

[hmca]

Starting from an S1 suspend instead of S3 will speed the boot ups, but the system fans run all the time.

[Menehune]

Originally Posted by nielm

IIRC One other point about the MPV is that it only plays back MPEG2 files -- not recompressed DivX/Xvid, nor ripped DVD's. I don't know if Sage is planning to workaround this in V3...

Yes, I've had to convert my .avi, mov, and .wmp files to .mpgs if I want them viewable on the MVP. Sometimes with a 3x-4x file size increase.

[johngoes]

Originally Posted by Toddly

I have 2 MVP's running off of a 2.6 GHz AMD CPU. It is connected to a SDTV and I cannot tell the difference for the most part recording at DVD Long Play. The remote response is pretty good and the system runs on a wired network. On my TV I can plug in both the cable and have the MVP running into it as well and all I have to do is change the input selection. Its the best of both worlds if you really want it, but as time has gone by I find we are all watching recordings 85% of the time.

I was planning to do this with my setup (cable in plus MVP in) so we can watch live TV or jump over to the s-video input to watch Sage recorded TV. If I go for the computer version I've been looking around for ebay or such deals for a 2.4-3.0 Ghz machine real cheap since all I'll use it for is storing movies and maybe music.

Thanks everyone for some good input!

John
Austin TX