whites are not white

[Dave999]

My picture is finally stable with BTV 3.5. My problem is that I have never gotten the whites to be white - from BTV 3.4 through all the betas and with the latest 3.5. The whites are not as white as the feed coming from the Satellite receiver or the TIVO. The whites are a little gray and the whole screen is a little washed out.

This problem is the same with 2 different decoder cards, FX5200, and onboard TV out on Chaintech 7NIF2 motherboard.

Gamma doesn't help. Brightness doesn't help. Can you help?

Thanks,
Dave

BTV 3.5, Athlon 2500+, Chaintech 7NIF2, 512 MB, Win2K, PVR-250btv

[btvbuddy]

this sounds familiar, seems that your sat NTSC decoder and your PCI NTSC decoder are not using the same color levels, gamma, white settings and such. This is expected because they are different devices, and i heard once no two NTSC decoders are alike - for detailed info on this search for Joe Kane's Video Essentials. Using this DVD you can calibrate your NSTC TV/sat/PCI cards so they are as close as possible to the REAL NTSC Standard for white and of course black levels and lume.

In a nut shell, sounds like you need to calibrate.

Good luck and let us know if you get a config your happy with.

[Eric3a]

NTSC: Never Twice the Same Color

Eric

[merrypig]

If you aren't already, try changing the gamma/brightness in the video card driver property panel rather than using the 'g' key in BTV.

[Dave999]

I have tried the settings in the vid card panel as well, and I still have the same problem. The quality setting is on "best", yet the picture looks too compressed in that subtle features on peoples faces are missing, for example. I am wondering if a "sharpness" adjustment would help, however my registry does not seem to have that key. I also woner if this captrue card (pvr-250btv) has anything to do with it because I have never gotten over this hurdle.

[btvbuddy]

First record at a max MPEG bitrate for your encoder if at all possible when trying to determine quality, most encoders natuarally soften the image (what makes manufacturers think we want that I will never know) - adding sharpness will help a little.

However, when I run the Video Essentials setup, all of the NTSC tuners I have tried MUST be set to SHARPNESS=0 to pass the tests. Plus the softness/sharpness issue is separate from the white balance problem you notice. The higher quality setup you have the more these problems become visible, geez I think somewhere I read that the NTSC white is on the blue side!

[davidregan]

Dave,
I also have a pvr250btv and have the same issues, washed out, fuzzy, blah picture. I've search for the "sharpnessvalue" in the registry that other posters are
talking about with no luck finding it. Have you?

Originally Posted by Dave999

I have tried the settings in the vid card panel as well, and I still have the same problem. The quality setting is on "best", yet the picture looks too compressed in that subtle features on peoples faces are missing, for example. I am wondering if a "sharpness" adjustment would help, however my registry does not seem to have that key. I also woner if this captrue card (pvr-250btv) has anything to do with it because I have never gotten over this hurdle.

[Dave999]

No luck here with finding the SharpnessValue. Does anyone know why some of us might not have that?



Also, does anyone have the PVR-250btv and get as good a picture as if it went direct to the TV? I'd love to hear about your hardware and especially your settings.

Dave

[ThickHead]

http://www.cask-of-amontillado.com/pvr_reg.html

ThickHead