I have a pvr-350 on my knoppmyth box. I am less than impressed with the video quality after trying many different configurations and settings.

The question I have is...

Is the tv output quality of the pvr350 exactly like a tv quality without? It is likey that their is some degradation in quality but is it noticable to your eye?

What I got from these forums is that the pvr350 has excellant tvout quality. However, this is all relative.

are you using the pvr for the tvout?

I don't have a pvr350, but from everything I gather it has the best tvout quality short of going vga -> component or dvi.

I have never actually heard anyone complain about the tvout quality from a pvr card.

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Xsecrets

Pal, wrong size settings?

I can't tell the difference between live tv and the output of the pvr350 with one of my recordings. I couldn't be happier with the output.

Thanks for the feedback. I checked the above mentioned. I am going to try this again.

If the quality is almost that of livetv that's great! One of these days I will get it going.

I am starting to wonder the same thing. I only have a PVR250, and am just now putting together a Myth Box. I am currently running cable into the 250 and it is doing the tuning. It then goes out through the SVIDEO on my nForce mobo. The quality leave much to be desired. So much so, that this really may not be the best option for me. The picture, is low in contrast, a little dim, and not nearly as sharp as the same cable line going to the tv or cable box. I could possibly live with some loss for the features, but it really is not good. Would the output from a 350 make a significant difference? Will the 350's output also output DVD playback, video playback, and playback from a second pvr being a 250?

Dunno about your situation. Maybe your TV out isn't very good?? Cables way too long??? Too low quality TV recording settings (which are also used for watching live TV)???

Going to a TV, the output from my 350 is very nice (watching recorded TV, that is -- the mythtv GUI fonts are a bit fuzzy). I'm using the composite video cable, however. On the other hand, viewing via my monitor isn't as good (regular video card analog VGA output to a plain CRT monitor). The brightness and contrast need to be adjusted (sharpness is, of course, good). My monitor is pretty old, and so that's probably the reason.

the pvr350 will display playback recorded on a pvr250. It will playback dvd and video's, however this is a big area of contention, I have just very recently heard rumors of people getting this working properly. If you have used the xv controls to adjust the picture and you are still not satisfied with it I would suggest you going with a vga to component converter. (I can't imagine anyone who is that disappointed with the tvout quality of the nvidia cards doesn't have an HDTV ready tv.)

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Have a question search the forum and have a look at the KnoppMythWiki.

Xsecrets

I beg to differ. Even after *much* fiddling and adjusting I find the nvidia tv out (S-video) sub-par. This is on a >6-7 year old mid-range 27" Panasonic TV which is definitely not HDTV ready. By comparison to output of the TV's own tuner or my VCR the picture is dim and muddy. As someone else here (or maybe in MythTV User over on Gossamer threads) noted, darker, lower contrast, not as sharp, ... My whites are grey, my fleshtones are washed out, my colors are shifted, ... At a guess these are artifacts of a couple things, a lower dynamic range from brightest to darkest, some kind of gamma or color temperature issue, and the deinterlacing.

Some of this can also be put down to the limitiations of the tuner on the PVR 250 (I find the lack of intelligence about following minor frequency drift particularly annoying), some to the capture bit rate and such, but I see the same issues with DVD playback which ought to be pretty close to a fixed reference. I'm also watching a lot of animation which tends to have large areas of a consistent solid color which provides a pretty good basis for comparison.