Ideas on howto get my consoles on my htpc?

[mattdisaster]

Hey everyone-
Recently I've been trying to figure out the best way to get my console to hook up to the htpc. I have a pvr350 and tried using the s-video in on it to play my gamecube and it looked terrible, greyscale and slow. Then I tried using the svideo->tv in convertor they have, alittle bit better but very very lagged. So I moved over to my work station and an ati 8500dv and used the tv in using the convorter box. I'm stumped. Any ideas on whats the best way to get consoles on? Thanks in advance for any help.

-matt

[jowaldo]

I just pretty much gave up on running my consoles through the htpc... I too have a ati aiw 8500dv and it doesn't look so great through it.

Some people I know use dscaler with their capture cards, but last time I checked it doesn't work with all in wonder cards

Have you checked the avsforum?

[Tracie]

Hi Matt,
I've heard that those PVR 250 & 350 cards can have a pretty good lag to them - it has to do with the hardware decoding, but I can't tell you much more than that. Have you tried a software based card such as the Flyvideo 2000? Those are supposed to be much better for keeping "in sync" so to speak.

[mattdisaster]

I actually just said screw it, once I get a real tv I'll just hook them up through that- having them entered in xlobby as an offline game(life a dvd) so it says "Enter Gamecube Disk: Blah Blah" and then (using the usbirt thing) have it change to the input channel for gc or whatever the console it. But this is all speculation, since I dont have a tv to work with nor an ir device hehe. But thats for the idea, how does that card work for tv tunning? I hate the lag i get when changing the channel on the pvr350.

-matt

[Tracie]

I wish I could tell you from personal experience, but I don't have one. I've just seen a lot of people using them over on the AVS Forum. It seems that whenever someone brings up the lag issue over there, one of the software cards is almost always recommended, the Flyvideo being a really common one. I'd like to give it a try & at the price it would be worth a gamble, I just haven't had time or been motivated to take that next step. From everything that I've read it works with Dscaler & gives pretty good PQ when set up properly, but that's about all I can tell you about it.

[chadwolcott]

The PVR 250 doesn't do hardware decoding, so I'm guessing you meant hardware encoding.

Matt, do you get that channel change lag with all software? Is it just in sage? GotTv? You might have better luck trying something that doesn't timeshift record. I suspect that's where the lag comes in, it has to start the encoding stream, and a software encoding card "should" be worse, since it requires the CPU to do all the work rather than the TV Card.

[Tracie]

Yep, I got my codings crossed. Thanks Chad.