x.v. color is not a requirement for excellent rendering. And yes, the trial version is missing some of the bells, but we're not certain what all are. Reading this forum can give you some clues. Win 10, i7

Unless you're absolutely certain the source footage was captured in x.v.color mode, don't bother enabling it. It doesn't gain you anything, and actually incurs an extra video processing-step (to convert non-xv to xv color-space), which will most likely degrade video quality.

If you have a choice between SVRT and hardware-video encoder, pick SVRT. Depending on the edits you made to your clip, SVRT can may be able to passthrough sections of the original source-footage, without recompressing it. That'll give you maximum quality. Any re-encoding cycle will degrade the audio/video a little bit, and unfortunately, consumer hardware video encoding (as of today) is somewhat lower quality than software video encoding.

On the downside, SVRT-rendered clips are not 100% "compliant" with the format specification. This may cause playback problems with some settop/media-playback devices, in which case you'd have to re-render the clip without SVRT.

So, say I never plan to burn these to disk. If I play them back on a tv it will be hdmi from comp or laptop, and most viewing will be the 720p uploads to youtube, my archives may never be looked at again.

Is SVRT recommended then? Windows 7
Intel i7 1.9 ghz quad core with overclock to 2.6
12GB RAM
NVidia 3GB 560M GPU
Sadly 5200 RPM Internal HDD

Experience with several users on this forum indicates that SVRT does not render as reliable a video as does direct PC computation. The same holds true with hardware encoding. Since your PC is of sufficient power in your case the only advantage of using SVRT or HA would be a slightly smaller video file size. Win 10, i7

You said "SVRT does not render as reliable a video as does direct PC computation. The same holds true with hardware encoding."

Due to the power of my system, if I unchecked fast render tech which makes me choose hardware or software render, are you saying the reliability of the video is best when using neither of those?
I could try it now to see what the speed difference is, but if I am satisfied with the speed, I should go without using the fast video render tech?
or did I misunderstand your line I copied? Windows 7
Intel i7 1.9 ghz quad core with overclock to 2.6
12GB RAM
NVidia 3GB 560M GPU
Sadly 5200 RPM Internal HDD

You understood correctly. If the render time using your PC without SVRT or HA is acceptable to you then don't bother using it. It benefits you very little. Win 10, i7

Ok, thanks, I understand everything now on this issue. Windows 7
Intel i7 1.9 ghz quad core with overclock to 2.6
12GB RAM
NVidia 3GB 560M GPU
Sadly 5200 RPM Internal HDD