Newbie Issues - help me decide!

[BigGator]

I've searched the archives - and it seems that this comes up a lot, but I haven't found a decent result yet, so here goes (system specs below).

I just built a box to act as my HTPC/PVR.

Athlon XP 2500+
Asus mobo
512MB Kingston PC-2700 RAM
40G Seagate Barracuda OS drive
120G 8M cache Seagate Barracuda DATA drive
ATI Radeon All-In-Wonder 9000

I just installed the trial of snapstream - and functionally - it's EXACTLY what I want. The only problem is the horrible quality of live TV.. it's terrible.

I've gone through the archives - and tried all the tweaks... tried changing record quality all the way up to BEST, tried the motion settings, using the ATI decoder, etc, etc... it still looks awful.

Is this just part of snapstream? does anyone get TV quality watching live? (other than having to use a PVR250?)

Thanks in advance!
"-)

[WillP]

My TV quality through PVS is crystal clear. Better than straight from the cable box (less noise). Of course I am using a PVR-250 for capture.... sorry. I also use the nvidia decoder.

I'm curious as to exactly what your recording quality settings are that you're getting such a bad picture. I myself have never used an ATI card for capture and have no point of comparison. But I have read posts claiming that you cannot possibly get as good of a picture from ATI cards as you can get from a PVR-250.

Maybe someone who has an AIW can help ya out.

Will

[Rita]

You ARE using the third party ATI decoders right??? And Snapstream 3.2 or higher?? Check your log to make sure the third party decoder is being used successfully.

I have a similar enough system:

I have
Athlon XP2600
Asus A7N8X Deluxe Mobo
512MB DDR 2100
30GB OS drive, 200GB data drive
ATI AIW 9000Pro
WinXP Pro
Snapstream 3.3 build 714

I do not watch on the computer, and I think there is a big difference in quality trying to watch on the computer vs TV. I imagine this is due to de-interlacing. So if you plan on watching on the computer check that setting. It will make your CPU work harder but your system is powerful enough to handle it. I normally use near DVD hi-res setting without deinterlacing cause I can't tell the difference on TV. Keep in mind that I have regular cable and some of the channels are not so clear...which may make me a lot less picky about clarity. At the moment I have everything set at the highest setting, with hardware deinterlacing enabled (which is probably doing nothing although my computer rebooted immediately after I chose that setting without asking or warning). My CPU usage with these settings is about 50% for Live TV. Less for playback.

On the computer screen the Live TV I get from Snapstream is the same as the Live TV I get using the ATI TV software after TV on demand is enabled. (Actually better cause the ATI version is unusable: the audio completely goes out of synch by more than 1 second! My old, old AIW 7500 did a better job than the 9000Pro although this may be due to the mobo's built in audio. ATI check fails it-although it also fails my CPU which has plenty of power. That ATI check never worked in my older machine either, I think it's just bad software.)

Check your settings, and make sure you are using the third party ATI decoder. Check your log to make sure Snapstream really is using it. The ATI drivers are flaky enough that I was not using the third party decoder when I thought I was and didn't know till I checked in the log. Something between WinXP and ATI broke and I couldn't completely uninstall and reinstall the ATI software and had to do a fresh OS install to make it all work.

After you're sure you're using the ATI decoder check your quality against what you get with the ATI software. You should get the same quality - although the CPU usage in snapstream will be a little higher anyway (for playback anyway-I don't remember the live TV numbers).

I have my ATI software set on DVD quality and I do not see a difference in live TV in Snapstream from the live TV in ATI. (Except maybe ATI's colors?) All the comments to ATI being not very good with snapstream apply mostly to older machines-yours is powerful enough. Live TV will NOT work on my old 900Mhz machine using an AIW card. But even that machine has acceptable playback on a 32" TV! (Using the ATI decoder not the default Snapstream decoder!) LiveTV requires more CPU cause it's encoding and decoding at the same time.

Keep in mind that I might be blind as a bat and might not be able to see a difference in quality where you might.

Good luck!

[BigGator]

Thanks Rita,
looks like you've got pretty much the same setup as I do - close enough for comparison at least.

Yes - I checked it to use the ATI decoder, will check the logs to make sure it actually IS using them.. haven't messed with de-interlacing yet (I'm currently watching it on a monitor during testing, once it's done - it'll be hooked up to my 55" TV).

I tried playing with the record settings all the way up to 'best' - and kept switching back/forth between PVS and the ATI software (watching a football game for comparison) and it was night and day better in the ATI software.

I REALLY hope I can get it working well in PVS, because the software is exactly what I want - the interface it perfect, the features are perfect!

Thanks for the help - I'll post back here after some more testing.
"-)

[Keith]

Just a quick note, when you say terrible picture can you briefly describe what is bad. Does it also happen on recordings or just LiveTV? Does it happen in both MPEG-2 and Window Media?

Last suggestion before hearing the description of why it looks bad is to view it on the TV before you try much more, you get different results on a TV screen especially if your bad pic is from interlacing (you should not have to worry about de-interlacing if viewing on TV). Try a recording on a 'DVD Ready' setting if you are getting choppy results from 'Best' setting and Keep the TV resolution down, try it at 640x480.

Let us know,

Keith

[BigGator]

I've got some testing to do today, I guess.

Someone on another forum suggested I use Rage3D Tweak to get to some of the ATI card features (and enable them!) that the ATI software can get to, but SnapStream, etc can't.

Also - it sounds like I need to get this hooked up to the TV for the real acid test.

Thanks all... I'm really trying to get this working as-is... I don't want to have to go buy a different TV card now (PVR250)
"-)

[Rita]

Biggator - search through the recent posts - i think under "getting a lot of flak from my wife" RobertH posted his "best" setup. I matched it exactly plus hardware deinterlacing and I am getting the exact same quality as the ATI comparing both on the monitor. That's a great setup for viewing on the monitor. Your system should be able to handle it and you can use that to compare quality to ATI. If it's not as good something is not setup right or some program is interfering. (I found out this weekend that Womble makes my TV tuner bad-while everything else works great-it affected the ATI TV software too not just snapstream.) I am not positive about color saturation, and you can tweak the motion sensitivity further if you want. But it really looks good on my system, I really don't think I'm that blind!
Like I said before - my comments do not apply to others with less CPU or memory! But at XP2500 it will work fine.

[Rita]

PS: I get same as ATI quality without any ATI tweaks

[BigGator]

well, after much tweaking - I've got it to the same quality as watching the ATI app (in on-demand/timeshift mode)... which is acceptable..

Only problem is - to get to this, I had to set it to 'best' quality on MPEG, which eats about 3G/hr of disk space, which is annoying.. I'd love to have 2 settings - one for live TV/Timeshift, and another for recorded shows (Where Windows Media would be fine).

Also - ANY encoded video stream looks awful when watching sports.

Here's a question .. if I put in a PVR-250, it will save me a lot of CPU, but will it make any difference to the QUALITY?

Thanks!!
"-)

[mcowger]

Yes - most people with a PVR 250 report a VERY significant quality increase.

[BigGator]

Well, my friend has a PVR250 that he hasn't been using, and we're going to experiment with it.. looks like I may need one of these.

So do I still use the AIW as the video output to the TV? I don't want to have to use 2 separate inputs to my TV from the computer.

Thanks again!
"-)

[WillP]

Sure you can still use the ATi card for output to the TV.

Will

[Rita]

Biggator- Post your thoughts after your experiments with the PVR-250. I'm very tempted to get one, I'm just putting it off since I don't really need it yet. And in the hopes of Snapstream (eventually) coming out with support for hardware decoding too - which isn't going to happen anytime soon I don't think.

My biggest gripes about the ATI card is the flaky drivers and using so much CPU that I'm not comfortable doing much transcoding to DivX. The CPU spikes starting and ending recordings and this sometimes has a visible effect on my recordings. With the PVR-250 it might not.

As far as saving space on the hard drive I assumed that the PVR-250 recording would be just as long since it records in MPEG2 only. So you'd have to transcode everything all the time-which is not a big deal at all if your CPU usage is really low. Since you have basically the same system I'd really like to know the quality and CPU usage differences you get!

I haven't had any issues with drive space so I don't know how much you save-but you can set the quality lower when your output is to TV only. You might want to experiment with that too. (My normal TV output setting is the Near DVD high res without deinterlacing.)

Very interested in hearing your results,
Rita

[BigGator]

My CPU usage hasn't been too bad - haven't seen it much over about 50% during timeshifting or recording...

Going to grab the PVR from my friend tonight - and slap it in my machine... should be interesting!
"-)

[WillP]

The PVR250 will drop cpu usage for recording to below 5%. I use one with the nvidia decoder and my cpu usage during liveTV is about 10% encoding at 6Mb/sec.

Will