Is pvr 350 supported by MS media center '05

[Scott5]

I'd like to get the pvr 350. My soyo mobo has intergrated 9100 s-video out. I figure that's got enough to "play computer" but not up to snuff for TV viewing on my SDTV.

Getting the pvr 350 as my first tuner eliminates the need to get another video card and saves a bit of money. Many here also suggest that the 350 onboard decoder is the route to the best quality.

Of course, Sage doesn't really seem to have the manpower to get this card to work reliably - so it'd be a gamble if I got a "cool" reliable system in the end.

If it doesn't work out for me - could I scrap sage and use the pvr 350 with Microsoft's media center '05? In other words, does MCE 2005 support the pvr 350's output?

Thanks!
Scott

[mlbdude]

MCE05 does not support the TV out of the 350. It does not suppoart any hardware decoders. MCE05 is moving very quicky towards HDTV so I would not assume they will any either.

[Scott5]

MCE05 might be moving quickly to HDTV (I thought I read on the site that they already supported it?) but surely microsoft realizes there are millions of SDTV's that they get get hooked up to! I'd be surprised if they didn't have twenty or thirty people working on it.

On the other hand - maybe it's the PVR350 that's the problem. M$ doesn't want to support something that runs hot in many cases and might natively be the cause of the end of file problem....

thanks MLBdude for the answer to my main question!

[jptaz]

Actually I would suspect the issue is that Microsoft is very much in bed with intel and a hardware based decoder does not increase sales of newer faster processors and also it detracts from new HTPC sales that ship with MCE 2005. Also if you look at Microsofts products they do not make their software work with hardware, but rather create an API that they expect hardware vendors to write drivers for that way they only need to make a stable API for developers to design to rather than making custom code to support lots of third party software and hardware. This basically puts the support burden on the hardware vendors. This is how they implemented HDTV tuners in MCE 2005. In order for an HDTV Tuner to work in MCE 2005 it needs to have BDA drivers.

This is the route that Frey has taken with the OSD Plugin archtiecture that the new MediamMVP Plugin uses that Matt wrote. I think it is a good approach since it allows third party developers to integrate new hardware much faster than Frey could.

Just my thoughts.

John

[bluenote]

Originally Posted by mlbdude

MCE05 does not support the TV out of the 350. It does not suppoart any hardware decoders. MCE05 is moving very quicky towards HDTV so I would not assume they will any either.

Hi mlb!

Wow, I haven't played with MCE yet, but the lack of hardware decode support sounds to me like a real limitation. I understand you to say that the 350 tv-out is not supported, but what is the effect of not supporting hardware decode for recording with a 350? Does this still mean that using a 350 (or a 250 for that matter) would be CPU independent for just *recording*? I can see the above poster's point about sales of newer CPU's and so forth with regard to playback....

thx

Cory

[stanger89]

In MCE the 350 would work exactly like a 250. Actually I think the primary reasons for no support for hardware decoding is 1) because like jptaz said, MS doesn't support hardware, it allows hardware to work (and Hauppauge hasn't created drivers) and 2) because the market for such devices is VERY small.

Remember, as much as the hardware decoder advocates here wish it weren't, the HTPC market is a very small portion of the PC market, and the portion that uses HTPCs with SDTVs (where HW decoders are beneficial) are an even smaller portion of that. It's just not really economically feasible to devote much in terms of resources to developing support for HW decoders.

Oh, and there's also the fact that you can't play DVDs, AVIs, or view the desktop through the 350 which would really put a crimp on what you could do in MCE.