[RndTbl] wintv PVR 150 cards $99 at futureshop this week

Adam Thompson athompso at athompso.net
Wed Oct 19 11:47:01 CDT 2005


While it's still on topic, a quick run-down of the Hauppage cards for 
those unfamiliar with them:

PVR-150   :   a basic framegrabber.  Requires more CPU cycles to do the 
MPEG encoding work.  Works fine if you have CPU bandwidth to spare.
PVR-250   :   hardware MPEG encoder.  Doesn't require much CPU while 
recording.  (However, it takes *more* CPU time to transcode if you don't 
happen to like their choice of encoding format!)
PVR-350   :   hardware MPEG encoder *and* hardware MPEG decoder.  
Doesn't require much CPU time to record OR play back.  Playback can be 
through the TV-OUT port on the PVR-350.  Linux supports using the 
PVR-350 as a display device for X, but only as an unaccelerated 
framebuffer.  In other words, it's really good for playing back MPEG 
video (in the same format as it recorded it in the first place) but 
really, really, REALLY bad for doing anything else like playing XMAME 
games or really, anything other than MPEG playback.  On the other hand, 
the TV-out generates "perfect" resolution for your TV set, and you can 
theoretically run a MythTV box without a VGA card at all...

The key point I wanted to make, is that although conventional wisdom 
says the PVR-150 requires the most CPU horsepower, that's not always the 
case.  With the PVR-150 you can control what encoding format gets used - 
and you only have to encode once.  With a PVR-250, if Hauppage's MPEG4 
flavor isn't to your liking, the CPU has to *decode* and then 
*re-encode* the video in realtime - actually taking more CPU time than 
if you didn't have the hardware acceleration in the first place.

The other point is that with the PVR-350, you'll get (reportedly) 
fantastic output quality but that for doing anything OTHER than watching 
MPEG4 playback, the performance will actually suck - and take lots of 
CPU time.

-Adam Thompson



Sean A. Walberg wrote:

>I was at Staples in Portage Place yesterday, they have the 250 for the 
>same deal.
>
>People looking for the 350 -- it came down in price on Sep 1.  We ordered 
>a few direct from Hauppauge, it ended up being $215 each after shipping 
>and taxes.   
>
>http://www.1click2computers.com/searches/results.asp?product_search=pvr-350&x=0&y=0
>
>has it for $180.60 Canadian.
>
>Sean
>
>On Wed, 19 Oct 2005, Theodore Baschak wrote:
>
>  
>
>>If you're interesting in setting up mythtv, the pvr 150 is on sale for $99
>>at futureshop this week ($50 instant savings, *NOT* mail in rebate for
>>once)
>>
>>http://www.futureshop.ca/catalog/proddetail.asp?sku_id=0665000FS10057681&catid=10524&logon=&langid=EN
>>
>>I've got this card working with mythtv on fedora core 4, following this
>>guide.
>>
>>http://wilsonet.com/mythtv/fcmyth.php
>>
>>Theodore Baschak
>>
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>Roundtable mailing list
>>Roundtable at muug.mb.ca
>>http://www.muug.mb.ca/mailman/listinfo/roundtable
>>
>>    
>>
>
>  
>

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.muug.mb.ca/pipermail/roundtable/attachments/20051019/c959da66/attachment-0001.html


More information about the Roundtable mailing list