If you just want to build a PVR for your TV then either knoppmyth or windows (MCE or with other applications) will probaly work just fine. But if you want a PVR that you can make work how you want it to work then you need mythTV.

I bought hauppauge's first PVR card almost ten years ago. They advertised it as pausing/recording/replaying live TV and so on and so forth. Well it turns out that they wrote the software so that it "worked" then never improved it. It could pause live TV except when I pressed the pause buttion it had to load a bunch of stuff and start buffering the video signal. So that the live TV wouldn't be paused until 10-15 seconds after I pressed the button. Their drivers crashed all the time but their tech support couldn't help with that. And somehow they made the application brake on multiprocessor machines. So it wouldn't work on my dual celeron setup. And all the recordings were stored in a proprietary format which was advertised as mpeg-2. It probaly was mpeg-2 underneith but there was no way to use it without their player.

I'm sure that there is better software avaiable for a windows PVR nowadays but I don't beleave that it is a stable as MythTV. I never reboot my mythTV box unless I'm upgrading the version of knoppmyth that is installed. It has ran for weeks at a time with no problem. And I know that if there is a problem with MythTV it will be fixed instead of hauppauge/whoever releasing a newer card and stopping support for the old one.

Mythtv is really kinda' like someone created a great piece of software, but it never made it past the beta stage.
I finally got my box going with a PVR-350 & 500, but I'm hardly impressed with ease of actually getting the system really up & running. There are so many little things that you pick up from this forum, from other forums, from ivtvdriver.org and other sites; there is just no clear and concise setup documentation. And now that my box is up and running, I'm hardly impressed by the picture on the TV; to fix that, I now have to play with the ivtv utilities, and probably place some kind of script in the system.
This is sort of like when I installed Smoothwall hardware firewall, but that's a much more refined product, and that's because it's actually commercial software on one hand, and it has a world of contributors on the "free" side.
I understand that Knoppmyth is not exactly like this, and it's great for the support it has, but things like having to go back in after an install and install and unpack things that aren't there [like the ivtv directorie/s].., should eventually be included in the iso; and why the big deal about TV out being such a big deal ?? It would seem that would be first priority, as I don't know many people who watch TV on their PC's; I have an older ATI tuner card if I just want to do that.
All in all, the hard work and help of many on this forum are about the only thing that got me through this whole thing, plus a lot of perserverence on my part. I can understand that Mythtv isn't going to be exactly like my Dish network DVR right now as far as picture etc..., but it can be, that's the kicker; it can be much better.
I guess when you think of all the things a project like this encompasses, like working with TV tuners, input & output, scheduling, so many things that can get pretty in-depth by themselves, I'd have to say that Mythtv is a great package, for what it is: it's up to the individual to put the time and effort into the system to make it what you want it to be.
I haven't really looked at things like SageTV that much, but I doubt those programs offer the same interface and features that my Dish DVR does; face it, if a company's gonna' offer something to the public, it has to be virtually 99.99% IDIOT-PROOF, so they pay people to produce a professional system.
Why we can't have things like RF control, etc, I don't know, but sure plan to investigage; there's no reason an RF remote's signals can't somehow be decoded and used by a system like Mythtv; my ideal of a system, I guess, would be to have one big box with at least 4 tuners and 3 outputs to the TV's, and being able to control anything from any TV.
Again, thanks to cecil, xsecrets, mjl, tjc, and so many others who have contributed and helped.
JMHO.....

Are you talking about MythTV or Knoppmyth? This thread is about Mythtv not knoppmyth. They are not the same thing. Your complaints seem to be about knoppmyth which is very much still prerelease status.

You are talking about TV output with one specfic very special bit of hardware (pvr-350). Have you tried the TV-out from an nvidia card? That will work straight from a cold boot.

Also have you tried the newest knoppmyth version. The pvr-350 tv-out support has improved.

If you expect a finished software package then please wait until a finished version of knoppmyth is released.

First thing, no complaints at all, and none were intended; I thought this was a thread where members were more of less giving observations and opinions. And, thanks ryanpatterson for your help too, you have contributed a lot and many of your posts helped me along the way.
I in NO way, shape, or form meant to be critical of mythtv or knoppmyth; both are awesome, although the word's overused.
I guess I'm just saying that Knoppmyth has the potential to be just about whatever you want it to be; the greatest majority of the groundwork has been laid, and it's up to contributors plus a lot of work on the part of the installer to make it as professional as he wants it.
BTW, Windows was NEVER a consideration. You all have heard it before, but I do not like Microsoft, I think they got away with murder as far as a business, and it like totally AMAZES ME when I go to my bank, or anywhere else where mission critical applications should be used, and what do I see ? Windows !!!!
What a joke. And that's just MHO too......