Current setup:
P3 1.0 Ghz (coppermine)
512 MB RAM
PVR-250 MCE
sucky onboard Trident graphics (connected to averkey vga->TV)

Things working reasonably well, but playback can be jittery (slow CPU / Video) and somewhat pixelated at times (small HD, low bitrate transcodes of recording). Am thinking of getting:

PCI NVidia GeForce 4 mx440 w/ TV-out (and chucking the averkey)
P3 1.13 Ghz (tualatin)
200GB HD

My biggest question is whether the video card is going to make a big difference (I get XVMC, yes?). Is PCI vs AGP going to really hurt me? I'm going to upgrade the CPU b/c the tualatin's can be had for cheap.

One more question - when I run the frontend on a faster (XP 1700+) computer connected to a computer monitor, the recordings look much better than on my TV. Is it the higher resolution + deinterlacing that makes such a huge difference?

Thx for anyone that can help.

For my money, I'd ebay the PVR-250 and buy a PVR-350. The trade up probably wouldn't cost you much, and you'd gain a hardware decoder. This greatly decreases your cpu load.

If you are not using deinterlace yes that is the difference. the deinterlace filter makes a HUGE difference. you can come close with 640x480 and the 480i mode of the nvidia drivers.

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