"Rosyln" vs PVR-250 MCE

[cmaffia]

I originally purchased my SageTV Bundle with the Roslyn card about a month ago and was slightly disappointed by the video quality I was getting with the Roslyn card. I decided to purchase a genuine PVR-250 MCE which I just finished installing and let me tell you.. there is a MAJOR difference in quality between these two cards. I recommend that Frey Technologies bundle their software with the geniune PVR-250 MCE cards rather than the cheaper Rosyln cards. I am aware they are slightly more expensive. I would bet my life that customers would GLADLY pay more for the bundle if they saw the difference!

The SageTV software is TOP NOTCH and the genuine PVR-250 MCE really makes this software shine!

Anyone want to buy my spare Rosyln?

[mike208]

What?????

I was under the impression the rosyln cards would at least perform as well as the regular 250's and MCE cards, if not better then. Are you sure your card didn't have a problem or soemthing? I just ordered sage and a rosyln, and am awaiting its arrival. This is the first I have heard of the rosylns not performing up to par with the others, could someone else help shed some light on this?

[mike208]

Well several people from anandtech forums have said thier roslyn cards perform just as good as the 250(MCE) cards, i think your may have had a problem.

[kny3twalker]

it may be a drivers issue
the drivers for the retail cards have been tweaked and tested and tested and the video quality is much improved
you will probably similiar events happen with the roslyns
they are new they have more hardware capibilities and the drivers will improve
they are used in Windows MCE machines so microsoft will keep after hauppauge like when they did with the "retail" OEM version pvr 250s were used
I believe though that the quality of the roslyn should match the retail pvr 250s

[cmaffia]

Trust me.. there were no driver issues, hardware issues or codec issues. I did several clean installations (including OS). The MCE is near flawless! I LITERALLY ran the HWCLEAR program to clear out Rosyln drivers, popped the Rosyln out, plugged the MCE card in, installed drivers and that was that. It is very clear to my eyes which is the better card. I am using the SAME codecs, hardware, OS installation and everything else I used with the Roslyn card.

Remember you get what you pay for! There is a reason why they are cheaper. They are totally different cards, different boards, chipsets, etc. You can't even use the same drivers for each.

The Roslyn card I have is not defective. It is simply not of the same quality as the MCE card. Picture quality and control is so much better on the MCE even with default settings. When I say default settings I mean the TV properties of my Nvidia MX4000 card (TV-Out), the default settings of the Color Calibration within SageTV and the default settings of my TV set. I had to tweak EVERYTHING just to get a good contrast and brightness with the Roslyn. MPEG blocks ran rampant on dark colors.. and to make them less apparent meant tweaking brightness to make them less visible but resulted in a dark picture. For an entire month I could not find a happy medium... very frustrating. With the MCE, I reset all my settings to default and made VERY minor tweaks to the color calibration within SageTV and this resulted in a perfect picture.. I mean PERFECT.

Compare these two cards and see for yourself if possible.

P.S. Even if the reason is that the drivers are not yet tweaked,
I still suggest the MCE card because:

A) The drivers are already tweaked out of the box
B) So much more software support for the genuine cards (including the drivers)

Regards!

[kny3twalker]

A) The drivers are already tweaked out of the box
B) So much more software support for the genuine cards (including the drivers)

just that old cost issue though right?

[cmaffia]

Well for me I'd always want to spend a little bit more on something if it meant better quality, support and performace.

Let me make it clear that I am not saying anything bad or knocking the SageTV software or Frey Technolgies. I LOVE SAGETV!!

I felt that an opinion on the Rosyln card vs a genuine PVR-250 MCE card from someone who owns both was in order being that the Rosyln card just came out. I am sure not many people have had the opportunity to try both cards in their setup to compare.

Sorry my comparison isn't more technical folks. I can't say anymore other than the MCE looks way better and required much much less tweaking with significantly better results... at least for me. :-)


Cheers!

P.S. What better real world hardware capabilities do the Roslyn cards have over the PVR-250 MCE? Maybe I wont sell mine if this is the case.

Thanks

[justme]

I can't comment on the Roslyn itself. But I do own a AverMedia M150(blackbird) which uses the same design. I did have to adjust my M150's capture settings to mirror(in quality not values) my PVR250's. Once I did that the picture was great for me, but that's just my personal opinion.

P.S. What better real world hardware capabilities do the Roslyn cards have over the PVR-250 MCE? Maybe I wont sell mine if this is the case.

The one thing that any blackbird can do(easily) that is can't easily/reliably be done with a PVR250 is capture video straight to an AVI. This is usefull for veiwing inrealtime and some DVD authoring software likes AVI's better. Personally I doubt I'd ever use the realtime AVI. I bought a PVR(250 and M150) card for the built on HW encoding. I don't want to use my CPU power if I don't have to. But others, I know gamers, want this RealTime feature.

One thing about the hardware comparision of Roslyns/blackbirds and PVR250 is that they both share the same HW mpeg encoder chip. The only other areas where quility could be altered signifigantly(excusing driver tuning)... Is if the manufacturer used a lower quality tuner(this happened with Aver's M179). I believe the other area has to do with the chip that prepares the video from the tuner. This shouldn't be an issue though since this area is proven technology. But I'm no expert on the layout of these boards, so take this last part with a grain of salt. See SHS's site and I'm sure you'd find out the exact differences in a quick search.

[mlbdude]

What kind of tuner does the Roslyn Hauppauge use? Is it the same as the one in the MCE?

That is my complaint with my M150. The tuner gives a much dirtier picture with a less than perfect cable signal than the MCE right next to it. In fact, the tuner is noticeably smaller than the MCE one though that may mean nothing .

[xlr8shun]

http://www.htpcnews.com/main.php?id=pvr_card_id_guide

[cmaffia]

I know the MCE and Roslyn tuners have compleletey different tuners. I know that my MCE has the Phillips TV decoder chip where as I don't see it on the Roslyn.

[justme]

The true PVR250MCE just lacks a IR jack and always has RCA audio inputs. Where the PVR250 usually has just an 1/8 inch stereo jack for audio in and always has an IR jack. Much of the confusion about the PVR250MCE has to do with people calling Freestyles and Roslyns, a PVR250MCE by mistake. This is an easy thing to have happen considering the Freestyle and Roslyn both showed up in OEM MCE machines first. It was only later that the Roslyns became available to other nonMCE vendors.

The post above your has a great guide on how to tell which card you have. By the way my M150 uses a Phillips tuner. As far as the Phillips SAA7115 Video chip, this is what I was talking about when I mentioned the blackbirds use a different design for that part. The PVR250's need an audio converter as well as the Phillips Video encoder/converter. Blackbirds(including the Roslyn) use the CX23880(a combined audio/video converter) for the TV(both audio and video) signal processing, but use the same CX23416 chip the MCE uses to do the Mpeg encoding of that signal.

[cmaffia]

Purplexing because now I definitley know it isn't just me as my friend got his Roslyn on Friday and he came up with the same conclusion as me: Drivers are not yet tweaked.

Seems like the only difference between the genuine PVR-250 and the genuine PVR-250 MCE are the RCA audio outputs added the detracation of the IR jack on the MCE. Chipsets look the same.

Someone posted earlier that the Roslyn cards have more hardware capabilities than the 250/MCE. What added abilities does the Rosyln have?

[justme]

Seems like the only difference between the genuine PVR-250 and the genuine PVR-250 MCE are the RCA audio outputs added the detracation of the IR jack on the MCE. Chipsets look the same.

That's about the deal with PVR250 and PVR250MCE's. Edit:I forgot to mention the PVR250MCE also has an FM radio builtin to the tuner.

Someone posted earlier that the Roslyn cards have more hardware capabilities than the 250/MCE. What added abilities does the Rosyln have?

As for what blackbirds/Roslyns can do more easily read the second paragraph of my post(#8 in this thread).

[kny3twalker]

they have added hardware (roslyns)
the added hardware allows them to do AVI capture as I understand it

but no media center/ TiVo look company has made use of it yet

sage has promised to support it though
nice feature in my opinion

I would have got one but they were no supported yet when I got my pvr 250 MCE(or at least not that well) in comparsion to version 2 non beta
and I did not want to buy one from ebay since I have already purchased sageTV

[cmaffia]

What is the advantage of doing captures in AVI as compared to MPEG? Is the advantage less space with AVI? I've always thought the quality of MPEG to be superior to AVI.

[kny3twalker]

no delay with AVI capture
and I think AVI capture takes up more space

[stanger89]

Originally posted by cmaffia
What is the advantage of doing captures in AVI as compared to MPEG? Is the advantage less space with AVI? I've always thought the quality of MPEG to be superior to AVI.

*none of this applies to Sage since it dosn't and wont support software encoding*
Size depends on the codec, with no compression, or lossless compression, AVI will be about 10x the size of MPEG2, with MPEG-4 (DivX) or some other advance codec you could get to about 1/2 the Size of MPEG2. However to get reasonable CPU usage, you either get crappy PQ, or large file sizes.

*In relation to Sage*
Raw video capture won't (AFAIK) be supported for recording, however it has been commented that future versions of Sage (2.1?) may support a "Preview" where you could watch the raw video live (no-delay) an possibly with better PQ (not compressed).

This is important to some, but for those like me, it's ~useless since I don't watch LiveTV and any other sources I have (only the Xbox) are connected directly to my HDTV.

[heffe2001]

Actually, I have 3 Roslyns, 1 PVR250 and a Adaptec DVD PCI capture card, and as for my personal quality tests, my quality goes Roslyn, PVR250 then Adaptec in the rear. I was surprised at the quality difference between the Adaptec adn the Roslyn when I first got one. My other 2 Roslyns' are in another PC running a competing PVR solution, not BTV tho. Hopefully I'll be done testing that soon so I can switch those over to the Sage TV machine . I figure with 5 tuners I'd be able to tape all the stuff we like, as well as watch at least 2 live streams most of the time.

[sleight42]

So how does one tweak the Roslyn drivers? I just got mine and I, too, am having the same brightness and contrast issues. I've found a single page that seemed to result in some improvement.

http://htpcnews.com/main.php?id=gateway901_5

Incidentally, has anyone found a way to turn off the auto brightness adjustments?