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AverTV M179 vs. PVR-250/350

Crusty

Crusty

Lifer
There is quite a big price gap between the AverTV and PVR cards, but I am hard pressed to find any reviews about the AverTV cards.

I know the PVR cards are great, and work wonderfully, but I was wondering if anyone around here has any experience with the AverTV and can comment on the reception/features of the card?

I am set on one of these cards, because I want a hardware MPEG-2 card, and I am going to be using Linux on my new HTPC and these cards are the only ones that have decent support for what I want them to do.
 
I've never used the PVR cards but I have a Avermedia m150 in my htpc and it works wonderfully, never had a problem with it.
 
Originally posted by: Daniel
I've never used the PVR cards but I have a Avermedia m150 in my htpc and it works wonderfully, never had a problem with it.
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Well, the only reviews I could find on the M179 card were on newegg's site and two of them were bad :/

But this is encouraging 🙂
 
I use an avertv card but have no idea which model. 🙂 It has DBX stereo TV and I run cable, several game consoles, a Laserdisc player, and a VCR through it and it works great. Also does mpeg2 capture.
 
Originally posted by: Oyeve
I use an avertv card but have no idea which model. 🙂 It has DBX stereo TV and I run cable, several game consoles, a Laserdisc player, and a VCR through it and it works great. Also does mpeg2 capture.
Click to expand...

Have you tried hooking coax cable to it to watch tv? This is the part that concerns me, as the only reviews I have read have complained about the coax quality...
 
Originally posted by: MCrusty
Originally posted by: Oyeve
I use an avertv card but have no idea which model. 🙂 It has DBX stereo TV and I run cable, several game consoles, a Laserdisc player, and a VCR through it and it works great. Also does mpeg2 capture.
Click to expand...

Have you tried hooking coax cable to it to watch tv? This is the part that concerns me, as the only reviews I have read have complained about the coax quality...
Click to expand...

Nah! Svideo baby! Coax blows on all TV cards. IMO. Ive used several dif cards and was never satisfied with coax quality. Svideo is the way to go.
 
Originally posted by: Oyeve
Originally posted by: MCrusty
Originally posted by: Oyeve
I use an avertv card but have no idea which model. 🙂 It has DBX stereo TV and I run cable, several game consoles, a Laserdisc player, and a VCR through it and it works great. Also does mpeg2 capture.
Click to expand...

Have you tried hooking coax cable to it to watch tv? This is the part that concerns me, as the only reviews I have read have complained about the coax quality...
Click to expand...

Nah! Svideo baby! Coax blows on all TV cards. IMO. Ive used several dif cards and was never satisfied with coax quality. Svideo is the way to go.
Click to expand...

Well the whole point of having the card is to use it as a PVR so not using the coax is pointless. My 8500DV that I used to own had great TV reception. The PVR-250/350 have good reception too, but are twice the price. Would you mind trying to hook coax to it and seeing if it works well?
 
I have before. Its merely ok, much darker than using svideo but you can always adjust the brightness. Its not as sharp as svideo.
 
Originally posted by: Oyeve
I have before. Its merely ok, much darker than using svideo but you can always adjust the brightness. Its not as sharp as svideo.
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But are you viewing TV through S-Video? Or just your consoles and movies from the VCR?
 
Originally posted by: MCrusty
Originally posted by: Oyeve
I have before. Its merely ok, much darker than using svideo but you can always adjust the brightness. Its not as sharp as svideo.
Click to expand...

But are you viewing TV through S-Video? Or just your consoles and movies from the VCR?
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Everything. My cable box has svideo out.
 
Originally posted by: Oyeve
Originally posted by: MCrusty
Originally posted by: Oyeve
I have before. Its merely ok, much darker than using svideo but you can always adjust the brightness. Its not as sharp as svideo.
Click to expand...

But are you viewing TV through S-Video? Or just your consoles and movies from the VCR?
Click to expand...

Everything. My cable box has svideo out.
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Do you have digital cable? If so, that's why the S-Video looks so much better 😉. If not then, I dont see why it makes such a difference...
 
Yep, RCN digital. BTW, I think the model was called Avertv Stereo. I just checked it on their website. Its mpeg2 is software, they do have HW mpeg2 cards but I never had a problem with software encoding.
 
Well, you are comparing a Digital Signal to an Analog Signal. That's like comparing apple's to oranges. Your cable box decodes the digital signal and sends it out the S-Video so of course it's gonna look better then an Analog signal 🙂
 
Well, I think its a great card even if it is an older model. I can only assume the newer ones are even better so i dont think you'll go wrong picking one up. I think Happauges are too overpriced IMO. And for get about ATI. I had several ATI tv cards and they are all crap. IMO.
 
Originally posted by: Oyeve
Well, I think its a great card even if it is an older model. I can only assume the newer ones are even better so i dont think you'll go wrong picking one up. I think Happauges are too overpriced IMO. And for get about ATI. I had several ATI tv cards and they are all crap. IMO.
Click to expand...

Well, my whole point in this thread was to find out if the AVerTV M179 was comparable to the PVR series cards. The only reviews I had found about the AVerTV card were bad because were complaining about the quality of the coax input, so I wanna check to see if that is an issue with the card, or if it is an issue with that person's cable.
 
Originally posted by: Oyeve
They also have this one one newegg: TV

And this one: TV

And also this one W/HW encoding: TV
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The only reason I am looking at the M179 is for it's Linux support for the MPEG-2 encoding. This is gonna be used for a HTPC and the PVR series cards as well as the M179 card have the best support currently.
 
Well, from what I know of linux is that if its a brooktree chipset on the tuner it should work fine under later versions of linux. Now you have me wanting to put a tuner card in my linux box. 🙂 Im gonna dig out my many other tv tuner cards and pop em in my linux box to see if they work.
 
Originally posted by: Oyeve
Well, from what I know of linux is that if its a brooktree chipset on the tuner it should work fine under later versions of linux. Now you have me wanting to put a tuner card in my linux box. 🙂 Im gonna dig out my many other tv tuner cards and pop em in my linux box to see if they work.
Click to expand...

Well, it's not so much that the cards work in linux, it's that the HW encoding works 😉. The M179 is officially supported by the ivtv project, and is supposed to work great with mythTV.
 
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