PVR350 tv-out as tv-in!!

[fieldeffect]

Apologies if this doesn't come as a surprise to anyone, but in trying to strangle a decent input quality out of my WinTV-PVR350 I was speaking to Hauppauge, and they told me to use the TV-Out backwards as a TV-In. This gives a better quality image than I could ever have possibly imagined from a TV Card. It's really a quantum leap. Did people already know about this?

This of course leaves me in the position where i'm using my TV-Out as a TV-In which means I need another TV-Out. I currently have a Matrox G550 which with a converter cable from VGA to SVid apparently gives good quality. Also reading here i'm thinking that the Radeon 9600 might be worth buying. So three questions:

1. Can anyone give any idea of whether the 9600 might be better than a Matrox G550?

2. More importantly, I love the TV-Out quality on the WinTV PVR 350, but I'm worried that doing a TV out from a standard video card might be lower quality (because it has to be converted from a VGA signal rather than streamed straight to a dedicated TV-Out). Am I just being paranoid, or should I expect a quality drop compared to the WinTVPVR350 TV Out?

3. After a bit of testing i'm starting to buy the final kit for my Tivo replacement AFter reading these boards a bit the only thing i've picked up as a thing to avoid is a motherboard with a VIA chipset. Anything else I should consider? (My test system is a v old P3-550 and crawls when running Sage, so i'm probably going to go for something suitably high spec to be on the safe side).

Thanks,

Nick.

[kny3twalker]

I do not believe you can use an output as an input

I would get an nforce 2 motherboard
for you want to use a pvr 350 and they seem to only like a few of the motherboards out there

your video card should not matter if you are using the pvr350s output

[fieldeffect]

You can. You do the following:

1. In the WinTV application, turn off the TV output (but leave localdisplay on)

2. Use the SCART cable that comes with the PVR-350 (the one that is a scart one end and a DIN/minijack the other end). Connect the DIN end to the TV-Out and the scart end to your video source.

3. In the WinTV application, make a new channel, composite channel 200.

The result is a FANTASTIC quality video input, but obviously you then can't use the TV-Out for output. Can someone do it and back me up on this. I might be new to these forums, but i'm not crazy

kny3twalker - the video card does matter because i'm using my PVR350's TV Out as an input (sorry that you don't believe me but I can't really do anything about that), but thanks for the motherboard advice. Hauppauge never seem very keen to publicise incompatibilities with their products.

[SHS]

This has be 100% False

[fieldeffect]

I must say this isn't the best introduction to a new set of forums. I've asked a couple of questions and been called a liar by two users.

I really hope that you'll both apologise when someone (guys! Please!) confirms that this works.

I can post a short video clip recorded this way if it helps.

This is turning into a matter of principle now. It annoys me that there is a way for PVR-350 users to get a really good quality input and they potentially won't even try it because you guys are deciding on no basis other than your own egos that it doesn't work

BETTER YET, someone call Hauppauge and ask them. That's how I found out.

*rant over*

*grrr*

[fieldeffect]

To back this up on a technical level, I would assume that the physical TV Out connector is just a physical connector which connects to a bus of some sort, or maybe the tuner.

Has nobody here ever tried using a speaker as a microphone, or vice versa????? It works.

This isn't some kind of educated guess. I was told this by Hauppauge and tried it and it works.

I get this input signal when the ONLY thing connected to the card is the input source to the TV Out, so it's not coming from anywhere else.

[mls]

I've notice that there or some very odd input selection available for the Roslyn cards also (that I don't fully understand).

Somewhere else I had also read something about the Roslyn (or may have been the original Blackbird, don't remember) actually having an Mpeg Decoder built in. So, there may be something there to that could be hooked up reversed also.

I don't have a 350 to test your method myself, but Hauppauge does seem to be doing some rather strange stuff lately. Since I can't test it myself, I can't say your statements are false either.

However, I would think SHS would know about this (if it was possible) since he does have a few connections with the Hauppauge team.

[Jack_PVR]

It is possible, my Sony video camera, and my HK receiver does just that. Come to think of it my PC's audio in does the same.

I think the thing here is your talking about the SCART 350, where many of us have the S-video version.

Hope you keep posting...

[mls]

Originally posted by Jack_PVR
It is possible, my Sony video camera, and my HK receiver does just that. Come to think of it my PC's audio in does the same.

I think the thing here is your talking about the SCART 350, where many of us have the S-video version.

Hope you keep posting...

Yep, my on-board audio jacks can be used multiple ways as in or out (althouth the auto-sensing software is sometime wrong about what it thinks gets plugged in lol).

Also, my fault, I keep forgetting about those Europians and their SCART stuff. Not sure if what he says is strictly for those cards though either.

I too hope to see more posts about it here though...

[SHS]

fieldeffect I'm waitting for a reply on this I wasn't calling you a liar but far I know the Philips SAA7127H Video DAC (Digital-to-Analog Converter) chip which use as TV output wasn't meant to be use as input device like the Philips SAA7115HL Video Digitizer and SAA7127H data sheet don't say any thing about it being two device.

[Ian Norman]

SHS
You are correct that a SAA7127 can't accept a video input ( technically impossible) but if Hauppauge had looped the video output of the SAA7127 to a spare input on the SAA7115 and mapped that to Composite 200 then it would work. Why they would do that who knows, but if that is the case then you would expect that the video signal level would now be effected since it has low impedance source ( the output of the SAA7127 ) hanging across it.
You would expect that the video level would be too low resulting in a odd looking picture or even some other problems, however if "Fieldeffect's" input source is not terminated or incorrectly terminated then maybe it looks OK.
The fact remains that if you can't get a good looking picture from a European PVR350 using the normal video inputs then I would return the PVR350 and get my money back or I'd at least check my connection leads in case there is a problem because if connecting a video source to an output of a device is what you call a "workaround" then that is odd indeed.
But, if it works doing it that way then go for it.
I must admit "strange things do happen in the field of Electronics"

[fieldeffect]

Sorry for flying off the handle.

The quality I get on my Svideo input is pretty crappy (maybe ok in a small window on a monitor, but nothing you would put up with on a TV). The effect was of a similar nature to the one you get if you try to feed an RGB signal into something expecting Svideo (some checkerboarding/diagonal banding). Hauppauge described this as "a problem with the way some cable boxes output video", which I assume actually means a problem in the way that the WinTV card is able to handle the output from some perfectly normal devices

Giving it a coax input it gives an image quality consistent with other TV cards, but again not good enougth (colour bleeding, fuzziness, interference lines).

The input quality using the TV out is (after quite a while switching between the two to decide) a little bit better than my TiVo on it's highest quality setting, and much better than any TV card i've ever seen.

I'm taking a guess that the quality I am getting through the TV out is the kind of quality that I should be getting through the standard SVideo in.

I don't know what the deal with the bad quality on the Svideo input is. I even tried routing it through an AV amp (in the hope that if some kind of framing info was missing this would add it), but no luck.

The SVideo input working well would be the best solution if there were a way to make it happen, cause I could then use the TV Out as a TV Out.