G'day all,

With the UK moving the digital TV I am heading for a crunch time.
Do I stick with the pvr-350 and not use the tv capture part (might be useful for old video tapes I suppose)
--or--
Move to a agp video card?

I am not sure whether to go to DVB-S or DVB-T or maybe a mixture. I have a dish with a quad LNB.
I have a DVB-S card now but I am not using it (due to other issues, another post to follow shortly!)

My MB has 5 PCI slots, at the moment I have a PVR-350, PVR-150, soundcard, pci video card and spare slot.

I hear conflicting reports about the PVR-350 and I seem to be having a few problems with it, nothing major, just annoying 'features' that I don't seem to be able to nail down. I also seem to have a problem with picture quality , anyway none of this is useful since the capture part of the 350 and 150 is going to be useless soon.

What would people recommend?

_________________
--
stinga

as of 17-May-2018
R8.2 - sort of working.
MB: gigabyte GA-P43-ES3G | RAM: 2GB
VGA: PNY Nvidia GT240 1GB
4 x Technisat skystar 2 dvb | 1 x TBS6981 dvb-s2
pata: 1x300Gb | sata: 2x1Tb 2x2Tb
Problems:
TBS6981 Does not work.

If you're not going to use the MPEG HW encoding or decoding,
then by all means get an AGP video card. The '350 is a pretty
mediocre video card when used with software decoding. I used
one that way for a while. It's watchable, but it looks like it
just can't quite keep up sometimes.

In theory, you can transcode recordings to a format that the
'350 MPEG decoder can handle. However, you can't do it with the
built-in transcoder but have to set up a user-job using
something like mencoder or transcode. I tried that for a while
using mencoder and never got satisfactory results. Firstly,
there's no way to build a seek table for the transcoded
recording, so skipping forward/backward is slow and ugly.
Secondly, I never got the transcoder to maintain A/V sync
during signal dropouts (damned airplanes).

So, I finally replaced the '350 with an FX5200, and now I can
use Myth's built-in transcoder which doesn't have either of the
two problems above.

_________________
Grant

G'day,

Thanks for the info.
Any particular version of the fx5200?

Anybody else want to recommend another agp card?

I think removing the pvr-350 is going to be the best solution at some point, I suppose I could make a low spec FE with it.

I suppose the other issue is then having to use a soundcard and getting that to work.
At the moment the soundcard I have is used for the 5.1 sound when playing DVD's

_________________
--
stinga

as of 17-May-2018
R8.2 - sort of working.
MB: gigabyte GA-P43-ES3G | RAM: 2GB
VGA: PNY Nvidia GT240 1GB
4 x Technisat skystar 2 dvb | 1 x TBS6981 dvb-s2
pata: 1x300Gb | sata: 2x1Tb 2x2Tb
Problems:
TBS6981 Does not work.

I'm using a PCI version from eVGA. It really should work for
xvmc and HD, but it won't. There seems to be some
incompatibility between the card and my motherboard. For SD
it's working great as long as I don't enable xvmc.

It sounds like you've got a working sound card, so you're good.
[Another advantage of not using the PVR-350 is that Myth's
volume control will work...]

_________________
Grant

G'day all,

So as I see it...
I have decided to move to a video card away from the pvr-350

I need to work out the sound card mappings so that 5.1 works for DVD movies and stereo/mono works for mpg recorded by mythv (would also be nice to get avi's I have working as well! and other formats, I get vision but not sound)

I will also need to sort out the remote, how do I go about that given that I will be removing the PVR-350 at some point? I have a skystar 2 pci card that came with a usb thing and remote, but was not going to use it since I had the pvr-350 remote working.

OK.
I found http://www.knoppmythwiki.org/index.php?page=VideoCards
Which says it all really.
So it looks like a FX5??? or a FX6???
There seem to be quite a few different FX5???'s around, does it matter on make? Fan/less etc...

I have managed to source another PVR-350 for testing, so it looks like I will be able to ghost my setup onto another machine and start trying to nail down all the changes that need to be made.

_________________
--
stinga

as of 17-May-2018
R8.2 - sort of working.
MB: gigabyte GA-P43-ES3G | RAM: 2GB
VGA: PNY Nvidia GT240 1GB
4 x Technisat skystar 2 dvb | 1 x TBS6981 dvb-s2
pata: 1x300Gb | sata: 2x1Tb 2x2Tb
Problems:
TBS6981 Does not work.

Either chip family should be OK. Given your motherboard, try to pick an AGP one (rather than PCI) with at least 128Mb-256Mb of RAM on board (not stolen from main memory), and a DVI output. Passively cooled is definitely nicer and widely available with these chip families.

tjc,

Many thanks for the reply, fx5200 128mb it is then.

_________________
--
stinga

as of 17-May-2018
R8.2 - sort of working.
MB: gigabyte GA-P43-ES3G | RAM: 2GB
VGA: PNY Nvidia GT240 1GB
4 x Technisat skystar 2 dvb | 1 x TBS6981 dvb-s2
pata: 1x300Gb | sata: 2x1Tb 2x2Tb
Problems:
TBS6981 Does not work.

What did you have to do to get the video out to your 5200.

I have replaced xorg.conf (linked to xorg.conf.350) with new stuff but is seems to be hosed still Getting output to 350 still and the old "respawn" stuff. Is there something that I am missing?

Also afre you using the VGA out or the DVI? Have all three cabled up VGA, DVI, and Composite from 350. I would like to keep the 350 in the box for a second tuner.

_________________
How can you be in two places at once, when your not anywere at all?

I just changed xorg.conf to use either the nv or the nvidia
driver.
Apparently.
What do you mean you're "getting output" on the '350?

For the X respawning issue, you'll have to look at the X server
log to see what the error is.


S-Video.

_________________
Grant

G'day all,

Thought I had better update and say that I have made the change so that all output is now on the fx5200, it was quite easy in the end.
At the same time I put in a new, bigger disk and upgraded, so that gave me the easiest way to install the fx5200, I just saved the new xorg.conf, copied over the /myth partition and then did an upgrade after doing a fresh install on the new disk.
(of course after backing up etc, because I went to a new disk it gave me an easy fall back, which I still have, in case I need anything off it)

_________________
--
stinga

as of 17-May-2018
R8.2 - sort of working.
MB: gigabyte GA-P43-ES3G | RAM: 2GB
VGA: PNY Nvidia GT240 1GB
4 x Technisat skystar 2 dvb | 1 x TBS6981 dvb-s2
pata: 1x300Gb | sata: 2x1Tb 2x2Tb
Problems:
TBS6981 Does not work.