"When I was interviewed by Wired (published May 2003, page 43; it's not worth looking up though, trust me), an editor contacted me for follow-up a few days after the freelancer who wrote the article to double-check that I was who I said I was and that I said the things that they were going to publish. Maybe they've become more lax in the two years since then, or maybe this reported falsified the contact information for the sources."
That's pretty interesting, but there's a subtle difference between wired magazine (dead tree) and wired news (online).
I mean besides the obvious. The online news, I imagine, has a faster turnaround time and less time for the type of process/verification you went through... not that should excuse anyone, i'm ust saying wired magazine != wired news.
"Are we sure that there wasn't a ghost writer on this one? ESB is that best and wasn't written by Lucas. Or, maybe he just learn to write this time around. Either way, I have read that it's damn good and can't wait to see it the minute it opens."
You can get the e-book of the official script already (on amazon) and if you take a look it's clear by the dialogue that it's old george at the helm, or that he's been replaced by a medicore fan fiction author, I can never quite tell.
" Dude you do relise that under the Broadcast flag it would be illegal to sell or trafic in them in the US don't you?
It wouldn't be illegal to own a non BF tuner but it would be to buy or sell a non BF tuner if the F.C.C.'s Broadcast Flag had held up in court."
That's not true, hypothetically if the broadcast flag was upheld you could not MANUFACTURE non BF tuners after July 2005. Stuff manufactured before July 2005 was to be grandfathered in, hence my joke about speculating on non BF HDTV tuner cards post BF value on Ebay =P
What am I going to do with the shipping container of non-broadcast flag HDTV cards I purchased on speculation that were destined for big Ebay profits in August!?!
"KnoppMyth has bugs(*), MythTV has bugs(*), the drivers have bugs(*), the hardware has bugs(*), the documentation is contradictory, the right documentation is hard to find, and the people on the mailing lists are generally unresponsive and unhelpful even when they do respond.
I did all the research, looked at all the reports of how people had done it, for months. I bought the best supported TV card (PVR 350), had a reasonably fast system (900 mhz), and used the most up-to-date versions of everything. "
I'm sorry you had such a horrible experience...
But a few points of contention... the pvr350 is NOT the most well supported card, the pvr250 is. Ironically, the hardest part of the install (dealing with the pvr350's TV out) was the easiest for you.
You've got a good point about the coherency/cohesiveness of the documentation out there. Although the best guide I've seen is jarod's fedora core mythtv guides
I can't speak for the mailing lists, but in general I try to cultivate a helpful community in the byopvr forum, I lurk/search the mailing lists and seemed pretty helpful IMHO.
What 900mhz system? is it a mini-itx EPIA board? I know recent knoppmyth builds have gotten better at supporting those boards.
Building a DVR isn't for everyone, and sometimes with some combinations of hardware and software you can fall into a crack like the above poster...
Would it be blasphemy to suggest that you consider a windoze solution, perhaps GBPVR (which is free as in beer)?
Good luck, and my condolences on your fustrating experience...
if you follow the same path as the author of the article Snapstream provides guide/listing data for US/Canada as part of the package.
SageTV provides listing data for US as part of it's package.
As noted in another post, zap2it provides 14-day listing service (for US and possibly other areas) in exchange for doing a survey every so often (kinda like how redhat used to provide updates if you maintained an account and did a survey)
Outside the US there's a plethora of XMLTV screen/web scraping plugins/etc for getting other guide data to your DIY PVR.
Snapstream and SageTV and Meedio (major 3rd party commercial PVR software vendors) all have trial periods and it behooves you to try before you buy.
Both to see which software "feels" right to you and to make sure it performs well on your hardware.
Not sure what to tell you re: your issue. I assume you have a software encoding card if you're recording right to divx (unless you have a plextor convertx). I usually record in MPEG2 even if i'm not going to move something over to DVD, but then again I have all harware encoding cards, so I have little choice in the matter.
e.
Re:PC-based DVRs have massive drawbacks...
on
Build Your Own DVR
·
· Score: 1
*clap clap clap*
well said!
It's not really a matter of saving money (especially with rebates and other offers making a TiVo STB dirt cheap)... Building your own DVR is about control and the freedom to innovate/customize features while not having to wait for some corporate identity overseeing which features you can and can't have...
IMHO not having DRM wrapped around my recordings (unless you are running a MCE 2005) is worth the price/effort of admission alone. But that's just may be me, I roll that way.
Although space cowboy is proposing an intriguing future option... there are OTA ATSC HDTV cards out there i.e. cards that can pick up local broadcast DTV via antenna. Some of these cards have support to pull unencrypted QAM "encoded" (not quite the right term) via digital cable box...
Also as noted, you can try and pull the HD content over firewire from your digital cable STB...
The HD feed hard drive space question really depends on several factors... I don't know off hand but it can definitely fill a drive quick (for comparison's sake a modest quality mpeg2 SDTV recording is like 2gigs/hour)
" is Non of the doit yourself DVR's support DirectTV due to the fact no TV card decodes the dish signal. (MAKE A DIRECTTV card reader TV CARD) that would be the only reason to go back to comcast"
well this is true, if you're doing SDTV and can stomach going from Digital -> Analog -> Digital... you can certainly hook up a direcTV STB with a homebrew PVR. Run the video/audio out to the video/audio in on the tuner/encoder card, use a serial/low speed port cable (or IR blaster) to change the set top box channels and Voila!
" You think you're clever, witty, and sophisticated, but you're not. This is not a political issue. OK? This is a technical issue. Analog technologies are being phased out in favor of digital replacements because analog signal transmission is inferior.
Holy crapthrashing christ, not every slashdot story is an invitation for condescending political commentary."
Ah, but it is... why does the FCC/govt they want the analog signals to go dark? Because the FCC wants to reclaim some of that frequency spectrum to resell/re-allocate which has been very lucrative for the FCC. That seems like a pretty political reason for me.
Furthermore, the content providers are dying to close analog loopholes and drag everyone kicking and screaming to closed propietary "protected"/DRM'd/encyrcpted digital connections e.g. HDMI/HDCP
*shrug* when there's big money involved, I think it's safe to say there's some political motivation, and it's not a purely technical issue.
Besides (DTV) might be superior as far as PQ/clarity but it doesn't seem to range as far the analog signals. Pull up antennaweb and compare the number of digital broadcast signals you'll be able to get OTA vs old school broadcasts... (assuming you live in an area that most of the broadcast places are currently broadcasting both).
With that said, by all means cut over to digital only, but not before the cable companies are mandated to have bi-directional CableCARDS available with an open spec rolled out.
as I repeatedly like to say... I love my series 2 Tivo, but *this* is one major advantage to building your own pvr as opposed to buying a STB.
I don't have to wait (nearly as long) to add functionality to my DIY PVR's... I can take advantage of a bevy of open source and commercial projects to install/modify/tweak to do what I want with my content, all without annoying DRM getting in the way.
A DIY PVR is neither as cheap or as easy as a TiVo (but it doesn't have to be very hard) but with a homebuilt PVR I don't have to deal with half hearted empty corporate promises and waiting... and waiting. I can drag/stream content (from my PC PVR)over my network to my g4 gooseneck imac right now and play it. If I pony up for a plextor convertX I could record mpeg2 right to the Mac. If I'm feeling adventuresome I could put the MythTV OSX client on it (and so on, and so on...)
All the times I've heard "why would you spend XYZ dollars on a PC/MAC based PVR, when a TiVo is 99 dollars or cable co DVR is 5 bucks a month?" This typoe of shennanigan is why.
I can move content freely to other platforms without waiting for a bunch of giant corporations to figure out how to get their DRM to talk to eachother or if they can spare the development time to support a given platform. *sigh*
All i need is obtrusive banner ads during FF to really burst a blood vessel =P
" I've got analog cable, and no plans to upgrade. Does this mean that I need to use an analog card like the Hauppage, and that if I had digital cable I'd need a digital card instead?"
For analog cable you certainly could/would use an analog card like one of the hauppauges.
FWIW: There's not such thing as a digital cable PC card (for the most part -- there's an HDTV card or two that will do unencrypted QAM but that's kinda a cable system crapshoot/roulette and I'd be surprised if the good digital cable channels were unencrypted). If you had digital cable you'd need the digital cable STB and take it's analog output and run it to through the an analog tuner/encoder's video/audio in (again like the hauppauge cards) and use an IR blaster to have the PC control the digital cable set top box.
I'm not sure which one you are thinking of, but ironcially on the same site you linked to SHSPVR there's a hauppauge model comparison page that helps distinguish visually/chipset wise (but not necessarily features/support) of the different hauppauge cards.
The pvr250's are pretty much EOL'd at this point. I know PCAlchemy has a few pvr250MCE's OEM's in stock but the pvr150's are cheaper.
(note: they sponsor my site, so make of that what you will)
one suggestion... for MPEG2 editing that's quick/easy and doesn't suffer from loss of sync try videoredo
or MPEG2vcr by womble (?? I think something like that... google around)
It's worth a trial download at least to see if it's easier on you for cutting out commercials. IMHO. Although I have no idea if either product runs on Win98 or not.
" More importantly, does anyone have experience with usb tv tuners like the Hauppage WinTV-PVR-USB2 with MythTV ? Are the linux drivers finally compatible with the video-for-linux model that MythTV requires ?
Has anyone tried using them in order to turn an XBox into a PVR that would like to share their experience ?"
Well... not so much on the wintv pvr usb2.0 (there's some non-full functioning hacks/implementation/projects out there for it on linux but they are dormant) but as others point out if you're going USB route plextor and it's recently announced open source/linux drivers for the Plextor ConvertX line is probably the way to go.
IMHO, with the Xbox's USB 1.1 ports you'd be better off just using it as a network mythTV CLIENT to a mythtv backend/server in your basement or closet or something... or using Xbox Media center or the like to pull content from other networked resources. I.e. stop trying to make the xbox the PVR/tuner/encoder and use it as a lightweight frontend (once you replace the stock xbox fans!)
"Most of the articles I have read mention the Hauppage TV tuner for the terrestrial channels (BBC1,2, ITV, Ch4) or a PVR (or whatever they're called) card for the free digital channels (BBC3, ITV2, etc.). However, I have not seen anyone discussing the control of an NTL or Sky set-top box through MythTV. How do you get it to record Stargate* on Sky One, then change the channel to the Sci-Fi channel and record repeats of the Twilight Zone*?"
Note: I'm on the wrong side of the pond, but the gist is-> Depending on the STB you could either use some sort of serial cable, or use an IR blaster to act as a quasi-remote control that's controlled by the PC/software. The PC realizes oh it's time for Twillight zone, sends the change channel sequence to the STB via IR blaster (just like if you changed the channel manually on the remote control) and the cable box changes the channel automagically... You'd obviously run the video/audio out from the cable box to the PVR card. Depending on how many sources you are talking about you might need multiple tuner/encoder cards (or a dual tuner card).
"Mini-ITX is a HUGE benefit in my opinion, because it has the Svideo out and RCA output right on board."
I run a mini-itx m10k setup on my pc pvr... and the svideo output isn't so hot. MII has the same chipset so i'd assume it's the same (although the pcmia slot thing is cool)
I'm hoping the new EPIA mini-itx mobo's like the SP and DP series and CN400 chipset are a little better in that department.
"The guy recommends to use the graphics card video output instead of the PVR-350 output, which might be true for HDTV, but for regular TV, the PVR-350 output will Always have Much better quality."
It's not a big mistake. I concur that the pvr350 has an awesome decoder/PQ but I think it's more trouble than it's worth. In order for it to be useful you need to use it with software that can force the UI through it's mpeg "only" decoder/tv out... so that limits you a little bit (to sagetv, gbpvr, & mythtv with special IVTV drivers)
For whatever reason it seems that half the people have a great totally stable experience with this combination and the another half have a lousy experience (not sure if that's because of certain chipsets on certain mobo's or ??? other factor...)
I think, alot of the svideo quality issues come from buying genric brand video cards that skimp on the TV out components or the tv out is an afterthought.
so, yes pvr350's tv out is great, but there's more to the story than just PQ, and I think recommending a regular video card for output isn't a bad one at all. (it's a much more flexible solution)
Slashdot Mirror
" I'd very much like an x86 case that has the size and quietness of a Mini for a project (yes, I need x86, I have a Mini here too)."
Check it, we put a nano-itx mobo IN your mini
Although I haven't seen (or looked) to see if any nano boards are out in the wild yet.
e.
"When I was interviewed by Wired (published May 2003, page 43; it's not worth looking up though, trust me), an editor contacted me for follow-up a few days after the freelancer who wrote the article to double-check that I was who I said I was and that I said the things that they were going to publish. Maybe they've become more lax in the two years since then, or maybe this reported falsified the contact information for the sources."
That's pretty interesting, but there's a subtle difference between wired magazine (dead tree) and wired news (online).
I mean besides the obvious. The online news, I imagine, has a faster turnaround time and less time for the type of process/verification you went through... not that should excuse anyone, i'm ust saying wired magazine != wired news.
*shrug* now where's my stack of old wired?
e.
"Are we sure that there wasn't a ghost writer on this one? ESB is that best and wasn't written by Lucas. Or, maybe he just learn to write this time around. Either way, I have read that it's damn good and can't wait to see it the minute it opens."
You can get the e-book of the official script already (on amazon) and if you take a look it's clear by the dialogue that it's old george at the helm, or that he's been replaced by a medicore fan fiction author, I can never quite tell.
e.
it's a trap!
e.
" Dude you do relise that under the Broadcast flag it would be illegal to sell or trafic in them in the US don't you?
It wouldn't be illegal to own a non BF tuner but it would be to buy or sell a non BF tuner if the F.C.C.'s Broadcast Flag had held up in court."
That's not true, hypothetically if the broadcast flag was upheld you could not MANUFACTURE non BF tuners after July 2005. Stuff manufactured before July 2005 was to be grandfathered in, hence my joke about speculating on non BF HDTV tuner cards post BF value on Ebay =P
*shrug*
e.
What am I going to do with the shipping container of non-broadcast flag HDTV cards I purchased on speculation that were destined for big Ebay profits in August!?!
=P
e.
I'm dying to play the original katamari damacy but not so much that i'm gonna buy a ps2/gamecube to do so...
e.
"KnoppMyth has bugs(*), MythTV has bugs(*), the drivers have bugs(*), the hardware has bugs(*), the documentation is contradictory, the right documentation is hard to find, and the people on the mailing lists are generally unresponsive and unhelpful even when they do respond.
I did all the research, looked at all the reports of how people had done it, for months. I bought the best supported TV card (PVR 350), had a reasonably fast system (900 mhz), and used the most up-to-date versions of everything. "
I'm sorry you had such a horrible experience...
But a few points of contention... the pvr350 is NOT the most well supported card, the pvr250 is. Ironically, the hardest part of the install (dealing with the pvr350's TV out) was the easiest for you.
You've got a good point about the coherency/cohesiveness of the documentation out there. Although the best guide I've seen is jarod's fedora core mythtv guides
I can't speak for the mailing lists, but in general I try to cultivate a helpful community in the byopvr forum, I lurk/search the mailing lists and seemed pretty helpful IMHO.
What 900mhz system? is it a mini-itx EPIA board? I know recent knoppmyth builds have gotten better at supporting those boards.
Building a DVR isn't for everyone, and sometimes with some combinations of hardware and software you can fall into a crack like the above poster...
Would it be blasphemy to suggest that you consider a windoze solution, perhaps GBPVR (which is free as in beer)?
Good luck, and my condolences on your fustrating experience...
e.
if you follow the same path as the author of the article Snapstream provides guide/listing data for US/Canada as part of the package.
SageTV provides listing data for US as part of it's package.
As noted in another post, zap2it provides 14-day listing service (for US and possibly other areas) in exchange for doing a survey every so often (kinda like how redhat used to provide updates if you maintained an account and did a survey)
Outside the US there's a plethora of XMLTV screen/web scraping plugins/etc for getting other guide data to your DIY PVR.
e.
Snapstream and SageTV and Meedio (major 3rd party commercial PVR software vendors) all have trial periods and it behooves you to try before you buy.
Both to see which software "feels" right to you and to make sure it performs well on your hardware.
Not sure what to tell you re: your issue. I assume you have a software encoding card if you're recording right to divx (unless you have a plextor convertx). I usually record in MPEG2 even if i'm not going to move something over to DVD, but then again I have all harware encoding cards, so I have little choice in the matter.
e.
*clap clap clap*
well said!
It's not really a matter of saving money (especially with rebates and other offers making a TiVo STB dirt cheap)... Building your own DVR is about control and the freedom to innovate/customize features while not having to wait for some corporate identity overseeing which features you can and can't have...
IMHO not having DRM wrapped around my recordings (unless you are running a MCE 2005) is worth the price/effort of admission alone. But that's just may be me, I roll that way.
e.
Although space cowboy is proposing an intriguing future option... there are OTA ATSC HDTV cards out there i.e. cards that can pick up local broadcast DTV via antenna. Some of these cards have support to pull unencrypted QAM "encoded" (not quite the right term) via digital cable box...
Also as noted, you can try and pull the HD content over firewire from your digital cable STB...
The HD feed hard drive space question really depends on several factors... I don't know off hand but it can definitely fill a drive quick (for comparison's sake a modest quality mpeg2 SDTV recording is like 2gigs/hour)
e.
" is Non of the doit yourself DVR's support DirectTV due to the fact no TV card decodes the dish signal. (MAKE A DIRECTTV card reader TV CARD) that would be the only reason to go back to comcast"
well this is true, if you're doing SDTV and can stomach going from Digital -> Analog -> Digital... you can certainly hook up a direcTV STB with a homebrew PVR. Run the video/audio out to the video/audio in on the tuner/encoder card, use a serial/low speed port cable (or IR blaster) to change the set top box channels and Voila!
*Shrug*
e.
" You think you're clever, witty, and sophisticated, but you're not. This is not a political issue. OK? This is a technical issue. Analog technologies are being phased out in favor of digital replacements because analog signal transmission is inferior.
Holy crapthrashing christ, not every slashdot story is an invitation for condescending political commentary."
Ah, but it is... why does the FCC/govt they want the analog signals to go dark? Because the FCC wants to reclaim some of that frequency spectrum to resell/re-allocate which has been very lucrative for the FCC. That seems like a pretty political reason for me.
Furthermore, the content providers are dying to close analog loopholes and drag everyone kicking and screaming to closed propietary "protected"/DRM'd/encyrcpted digital connections e.g. HDMI/HDCP
*shrug* when there's big money involved, I think it's safe to say there's some political motivation, and it's not a purely technical issue.
Besides (DTV) might be superior as far as PQ/clarity but it doesn't seem to range as far the analog signals. Pull up antennaweb and compare the number of digital broadcast signals you'll be able to get OTA vs old school broadcasts... (assuming you live in an area that most of the broadcast places are currently broadcasting both).
With that said, by all means cut over to digital only, but not before the cable companies are mandated to have bi-directional CableCARDS available with an open spec rolled out.
*Shrug*
e.
MythTV including support for the Plextor ConvertX (which has linux drivers as well as a Mac flavored version bundled with Elgato's EyeTV)
*shrug*
e.
as I repeatedly like to say... I love my series 2 Tivo, but *this* is one major advantage to building your own pvr as opposed to buying a STB.
I don't have to wait (nearly as long) to add functionality to my DIY PVR's... I can take advantage of a bevy of open source and commercial projects to install/modify/tweak to do what I want with my content, all without annoying DRM getting in the way.
A DIY PVR is neither as cheap or as easy as a TiVo (but it doesn't have to be very hard) but with a homebuilt PVR I don't have to deal with half hearted empty corporate promises and waiting... and waiting. I can drag/stream content (from my PC PVR)over my network to my g4 gooseneck imac right now and play it. If I pony up for a plextor convertX I could record mpeg2 right to the Mac. If I'm feeling adventuresome I could put the MythTV OSX client on it (and so on, and so on...)
All the times I've heard "why would you spend XYZ dollars on a PC/MAC based PVR, when a TiVo is 99 dollars or cable co DVR is 5 bucks a month?" This typoe of shennanigan is why.
I can move content freely to other platforms without waiting for a bunch of giant corporations to figure out how to get their DRM to talk to eachother or if they can spare the development time to support a given platform. *sigh*
All i need is obtrusive banner ads during FF to really burst a blood vessel =P
e.
" I've got analog cable, and no plans to upgrade. Does this mean that I need to use an analog card like the Hauppage, and that if I had digital cable I'd need a digital card instead?"
For analog cable you certainly could/would use an analog card like one of the hauppauges.
FWIW: There's not such thing as a digital cable PC card (for the most part -- there's an HDTV card or two that will do unencrypted QAM but that's kinda a cable system crapshoot/roulette and I'd be surprised if the good digital cable channels were unencrypted). If you had digital cable you'd need the digital cable STB and take it's analog output and run it to through the an analog tuner/encoder's video/audio in (again like the hauppauge cards) and use an IR blaster to have the PC control the digital cable set top box.
E.
I'm not sure which one you are thinking of, but ironcially on the same site you linked to SHSPVR there's a hauppauge model comparison page that helps distinguish visually/chipset wise (but not necessarily features/support) of the different hauppauge cards.
The pvr250's are pretty much EOL'd at this point. I know PCAlchemy has a few pvr250MCE's OEM's in stock but the pvr150's are cheaper.
(note: they sponsor my site, so make of that what you will)
*shrug*
e.
one suggestion... for MPEG2 editing that's quick/easy and doesn't suffer from loss of sync try videoredo
or MPEG2vcr by womble (?? I think something like that... google around)
It's worth a trial download at least to see if it's easier on you for cutting out commercials. IMHO. Although I have no idea if either product runs on Win98 or not.
good luck!
e.
" More importantly, does anyone have experience with usb tv tuners like the Hauppage WinTV-PVR-USB2 with MythTV ?
Are the linux drivers finally compatible with the video-for-linux model that MythTV requires ?
Has anyone tried using them in order to turn an XBox into a PVR that would like to share their experience ?"
Well... not so much on the wintv pvr usb2.0 (there's some non-full functioning hacks/implementation/projects out there for it on linux but they are dormant) but as others point out if you're going USB route plextor and it's recently announced open source/linux drivers for the Plextor ConvertX line is probably the way to go.
IMHO, with the Xbox's USB 1.1 ports you'd be better off just using it as a network mythTV CLIENT to a mythtv backend/server in your basement or closet or something... or using Xbox Media center or the like to pull content from other networked resources. I.e. stop trying to make the xbox the PVR/tuner/encoder and use it as a lightweight frontend (once you replace the stock xbox fans!)
*shrug*
e.
first, gratuitous link to my site build your own PVR and the byopvr forums.
Anandtech just did a round up of a bunch of windows MCE "certified" hardware encoding tuner cards.
Also HTPCnews did a Review comparing the new ATI 550 theater pro with the venerable wintv pvr150
E.
There is a plugin for SageTV to use MediaMVP
GbPVR *is* very cool and also supports MediaMVP (as well as UI output of the pvr350 tv out/decoder)
I thought there was a port (or work on a port) of a mythtv client out there for windoze (as blasphemic as that sounds)
e.
"Most of the articles I have read mention the Hauppage TV tuner for the terrestrial channels (BBC1,2, ITV, Ch4) or a PVR (or whatever they're called) card for the free digital channels (BBC3, ITV2, etc.). However, I have not seen anyone discussing the control of an NTL or Sky set-top box through MythTV. How do you get it to record Stargate* on Sky One, then change the channel to the Sci-Fi channel and record repeats of the Twilight Zone*?"
Note: I'm on the wrong side of the pond, but the gist is-> Depending on the STB you could either use some sort of serial cable, or use an IR blaster to act as a quasi-remote control that's controlled by the PC/software. The PC realizes oh it's time for Twillight zone, sends the change channel sequence to the STB via IR blaster (just like if you changed the channel manually on the remote control) and the cable box changes the channel automagically... You'd obviously run the video/audio out from the cable box to the PVR card. Depending on how many sources you are talking about you might need multiple tuner/encoder cards (or a dual tuner card).
hope that helps!
e.
"Mini-ITX is a HUGE benefit in my opinion, because it has the Svideo out and RCA output right on board."
I run a mini-itx m10k setup on my pc pvr... and the svideo output isn't so hot. MII has the same chipset so i'd assume it's the same (although the pcmia slot thing is cool)
I'm hoping the new EPIA mini-itx mobo's like the SP and DP series and CN400 chipset are a little better in that department.
e.
"The guy recommends to use the graphics card video output instead of the PVR-350 output, which might be true for HDTV, but for regular TV, the PVR-350 output will Always have Much better quality."
It's not a big mistake. I concur that the pvr350 has an awesome decoder/PQ but I think it's more trouble than it's worth. In order for it to be useful you need to use it with software that can force the UI through it's mpeg "only" decoder/tv out... so that limits you a little bit (to sagetv, gbpvr, & mythtv with special IVTV drivers)
For whatever reason it seems that half the people have a great totally stable experience with this combination and the another half have a lousy experience (not sure if that's because of certain chipsets on certain mobo's or ??? other factor...)
I think, alot of the svideo quality issues come from buying genric brand video cards that skimp on the TV out components or the tv out is an afterthought.
so, yes pvr350's tv out is great, but there's more to the story than just PQ, and I think recommending a regular video card for output isn't a bad one at all. (it's a much more flexible solution)
*shrug* that's my opinion anyways...
e.