I also finally got the replacement video card I had been waiting for, and now I can say that the PVR is truly complete. The TV-Out works fine, with no colour problems, and there was even an unexpected performance boost. The old card didn’t support the XvMC library for the Nvidia drivers but this one does, and CPU usage during playback dropped from 80-90% down to 45-60%, making playback smooth even with other stuff going on in the background.
Now at last I can just sit back in the easy chair with the remote and treat it like just another appliance, and not just a tacked-on feature of the computer. Even if it really is…